Randomness Quotes

• So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.

  Sidney Poitier

  Determined, Pure, Seems

  "What does randomness look like?" by Aatish Bhatia, www.wired.com. December 21, 2012.

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• Expose yourself to as much randomness as possible.

  Ben Casnocha

  Ben Casnocha (2015). “My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley”, p.87, John Wiley & Sons

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• Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Life, Mistake, Civilization

  Jeanette Winterson (2013). “The Stone Gods”, p.78, Penguin UK

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• Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.

  Eric Hoffer

  Creativity, Order, Chaos

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• Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.

  James Gleick

  Lying, Care, Patterns

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• This is the central illusion in life: that randomness is a risk, that it is a bad thing.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Risk, Illusion, Bad Things

  "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder". Book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2012.

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• The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Inspirational, Science, Light

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• When some systems are stuck in a dangerous impasse, randomness and only randomness can unlock them and set them free.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Dangerous, Stuck, Impasse

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012). “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, p.102, Random House

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• Real randomness requires an infinite amount of information.

  Tristan Perich

  Real, Information, Infinite

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.

  Aristotle

  Motivational, Wise, Intelligent

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• You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Order, Pseudo, Embrace

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2016). “Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile”, p.25, Random House

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• There is a certain fate to the universe and a certain randomness.

  Harlan Coben

  Fate, Certain, Universe

  Harlan Coben (2008). “Hold Tight”, p.289, Penguin

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• Perhaps randomness is not merely an adequate description for complex causes that we cannot specify. Perhaps the world really works this way, and many events are uncaused in any conventional sense of the word. Perhaps our gut feeling that it cannot be so reflects only our hopes and prejudices, our desperate striving to make sense of a complex and confusing world, and not the ways of nature.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Feelings, Confusing, World

  "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Chance Riches", p. 342, 1983.

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• Random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random

  Donald Knuth

  Numbers, Method, Should

  Donald E. Knuth (2014). “Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2: Seminumerical Algorithms”, p.25, Addison-Wesley Professional

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• Randomness works well in search sometimes better than humans.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Sometimes, Wells, Humans

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012). “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, p.103, Random House

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• I think that’s what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by.

  Peter Cameron

  Thinking, People, Important

  Peter Cameron (2009). “Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel”, p.159, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

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• Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.

  John von Neumann

  Witty, Powerful, Humorous

  "Various techniques used in connection with random digits" by John von Neumann in "Monte Carlo Method" edited by A.S. Householder, G.E. Forsythe and H.H. Germond, 1951.

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• If there is no randomness in the universe, then what do we mean by chaos?

  Rupert Sheldrake

  Mean, Chaos, Ifs

  Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham (2001). “Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness”, p.59, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co

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• Letting go of randomness is one of the hardest decisions a person can make.

  Douglas Coupland

  Letting Go, Decision, Hardest

  "Microserfs". Book by Douglas Coupland, June, 1995.

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• For what are myths if not the imposing of order on phenomena that do not possess order in themselves? And all myths, however they differ from philosophical systems and scientific theories, share this with them, that they negate the principle of randomness in the world.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Philosophical, Order, Principles

  Stanislaw Lem (1996). “Highcastle: A Remembrance”, Mariner Books

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• In love, fidelity signifies this extended victory: the randomness of an encounter defeated day after day through the invention of what will endure.

  Alain Badiou

  Victory, Encounters, Defeated

  Alain Badiou, Nicolas Truong (2012). “In Praise Of Love”, p.45, Profile Books

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• Chaos theory, a more recent invention, is equally fertile ground for those with a bent for abusing sense. It is unfortunately named, for 'chaos' implies randomness. Chaos in the technical sense is not random at all. It is completely determined, but it depends hugely, in strangely hard-to-predict ways, on tiny differences in initial conditions.

  Richard Dawkins

  Science, Differences, Way

  Richard Dawkins (2017). “Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist”, p.87, Random House

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• Randomness has an incredibly powerful place in our culture. If you think about it, you can see it driving the algorithms that run our information economy, patterns that make up the traffic of our cities, and on over to the way the stars and galaxies formed.

  DJ Spooky

  Running, Stars, Powerful

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• The threads of circumstance that lead to tomorrow are so tenuous that all the fussing and worrying about decisions is futile compared to the pure randomness of existence.

  Nick Bantock

  Worry, Decision, Tomorrow

  Nick Bantock (2000). “The artful dodger: images & reflections”, Chronicle Books Llc

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• While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Practice, Information, Theory

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility"”, p.198, Random House

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