Quotes About Chance

Scientists rightly resist invoking the supernatural in scientific explanations for fear of committing a god-of-the-gaps fallacy (the fallacy of using God as a stop-gap for ignorance). Yet without some restriction on the use of chance, scientists are in danger of committing a logically equivalent fallacy-one we may call the “chance-of-the-gaps fallacy.” Chance, like God, can become a stop-gap for ignorance.

I made mistakes. I can’t whine about it. I’m the one that messed up and I’m paying the consequences. However, if I am given a second chance, I won’t need a third chance. And to be honest with you, I picked the wrong vice. I should have picked alcohol. I should have picked drugs or I should have picked up beating up my wife or girlfriend because if you do those three, you get a second chance. They haven’t given too many gamblers second chances in the world of baseball.

If you enjoy math and you write novels, it's very rare that you'll get a chance to put your math into a novel. I leapt at the chance.

...in the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything.

Why would anyone want to be President today? The answer is not one of glory, or fame; today the burdens of the office outweigh its privileges. Its not because the Presidency offers a chance to be somebody, but because it offers a chance to do something.

You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.

I think more tolerance, more people having more access to a chance to be literate, and a chance to stay healthy makes for a more peaceful planet.

The boxing promotion part is really interesting, because I got the chance to do something with my sons. They carry their own weight, and I get a chance to listen to them and see what they have on their minds. I don't have to hand out things to do, and now they have things for me to do. It's an amazing privilege to get the opportunity to work with your children.

Today is the midterm elections. The Washington Post is predicting that there's a 98 percent chance of the Republicans taking the Senate and The New York Times says there's a 75 percent chance. And CNN said, 'Wait, that's today?'

There's a reason why every successful person in Hollywood has like seven or eight projects up in the air at any point. It's like a 90 percent chance for each project that it'll never happen. Every project has about a 10 percent chance of getting made, unless you're like a Quentin Tarantino or somebody who just gets whatever they want to get done. But those are the rare cases.

Treat all men alike.... give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a free man...free to travel... free to stop...free to work...free to choose my own teachers...free to follow the religion of my Fathers...free to think and talk and act for myself.

All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was alway controlling who got a chance and who didn't.

There are roles out there I want to play that I don't know if I'll ever get the chance to. But I'm not going to waste time waiting for those phone calls, passing up the chance to do these sorts of things. I'm more likely to go see a smaller, darker indie film, like Felony for instance, than I am to see an Avengers or perhaps even a Terminator.

I'm the least confident person in so many ways. But I believed that if somebody gave me the chance to tell a story, I would tell a story [well enough] that the person who gave me the chance would get their money back.

We were trying to do as much science as we could because that was the main purpose of the international space station. But without the shuttle to bring up heavy laboratory equipment and bring back samples, we were limited by what we could do, but I was proud that we actually accomplished more science that was planned for the flight. And I got a chance to do two Russian spacewalks on that flight, I had become an expert in U.S. spacewalks and using U.S. suits and techniques, and this was a chance to put on a Russian Orlan suit and do two construction space flights outside of the space station.

I think I'll give them another chance. Americans deserve another chance with my music.

Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.

I love sitting down and talking to people. CNBC gave me a chance to do it in a way that I liked. They gave me a chance to also develop the skills to learn from my mistakes.

Good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how much they'll be called on to do before the next chance.

Unless a man has trained himself for his chance, the chance will only make him ridiculous.

...treasure what it means to do a day's work. It's our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it's certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day's work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you'll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to.

When we talk about climate, we need to do everything we can to set the stage before the actors come on. And they may only have one chance at success. We should keep thinking: How do we maximize that chance of success?

If there is no fate and our interactions depend on such a complex system of chance encounters, what potentially important connections do we fail to make? What life changing relationships or passionate and lasting love affairs are lost to chance?

Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.

The people like the American Legion Post that gave us a chance to play. A place to play and a chance to play.

If you don't take a chance-you won't have a chance.

People will say, "You're never going to convince me that something as complicated as an eye could come about by sheer chance." And the answer is that natural selection is the very opposite of sheer chance. Natural selection is a non-random process.

If you take the burden of health care, of diseases off the backs of some other countries, it gives them a chance to use their own very limited resources in ways that help their people. And also there's a hopelessness associated with deadly diseases, that if that can be alleviated, people can build their own economies in their own countries and they'll be less reliant on the developed world for help.

We think in terms of fate even if we don't believe in it. Even something as trivial as missing the bus - we think: Well, it might be good for something. We always have that thought, no matter how critical we try to be. The idea that everything is always total chance - we're not made for that.

Same-sex marriage polls is our last chance to make a difference. If you're like me, you don't want to have to ask yourself on the day after the election, what else could I have done?

What do you think deja vu is for?". Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.

Chance arrives unannounced. It emerges, and when it leaves, we are lucky if the changes it has produced are only external.

If you chance your focus - you will change your life.

Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've missed the chance to have had other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy.

I never smoke grass and drive my car because, for one thing, no matter how many letters I write to the road commissions, they still refuse to start designing highways with second-chance exits.

Turn soft and lovely any time you have a chance

...remember the dangers of the New Groupthink. If it's creativity you're after, ask your employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas. If you want the wisdom of the crowd, gather it electronically, or in writing, and make sure people can't see each other's ideas until everyone has had a chance to contribute.

I had to wonder whether it was possible that this wasn’t already decided for me, and if maybe, just maybe, this was my one last chance to try and prove it. There was no way to know. There never is. But I reached out and took it anyway.

You have only one chance to raise your child.

There's more attention paid to entertainers than ever and less that they have to say. Not that entertainers were ever a great beacon of knowledge to begin with, but at least when the Beatles were the leaders of the culture, they had a message. It was brief; it wasn't terribly complicated. "Give Peace a Chance." "All You Need is Love." But at least they were trying. At least they had grown.

I worked when I was Congress on a second chance act. We have got to do a better job recognizing and correcting the errors in the system that do reflect on institutional bias in criminal justice. But what - what - what Donald Trump and I are saying is let's not have the reflex of assuming the worst of men and women in law enforcement. We truly do believe that law enforcement is not a force for racism or division in our country.

I've had the chance to work with some really good filmmakers. It's put me in a situation where I've been surrounded by great actors, and for me it's been a lot about standing in the background and watching people work.

A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad.

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.

I don't know if I can handle living in Tokyo. I feel like the culture shock would be so intense, especially with the service industry in America - you can't make up for that. Once you get a chance to travel a lot, you start to realize when that waitress comes back and asks you if you want some more to drink, that's an important moment. Nobody else does that!

If one reads enough books, one has a fighting chance.

An adult woman should not be so possessive of her own birthday that she begrudges her friends the chance to get married on the same day.

I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.