Popular quotes about Random! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 40
Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number - there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method.
John von NeumannI began in 1976, with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something down at random. And then, of course, I realized that it never can be random. It was all a way of opening a door for me. If I don't know what's coming - that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original - then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.
Gerhard RichterAlthough random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement... Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation.
Lynn MargulisBeauty is excrescence, superabundance, random ebulience, and sheer delightful waste to be enjoyed in its own right.
Donald C. PeattieThe man without a purpose is a man who drifts at the mercy of random feelings or unidentified urges and is capable of any evil, because he is totally out of control of his own life. In order to be in control of your life, you have to have a purpose-a productive purpose.
Ayn RandThe likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is 1 to a number with 40,000 noughts after it (1040,000).... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.
Fred HoyleNature designed with a random set of genes and circumstances in which we were born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of natureโs design. Are you? Goals will help you do that. I must add, donโt just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order.
Chetan BhagatEvery time I say thanks or thank you to a random person they blush and say you're welcome.
Charlie MorganI like to find the beauty in the ugly. When I'm in a thrift store, I gravitate toward pieces I know I'll wear a ton, and insane pieces that I'm sure most people would consider gross. But I find them inspiring. Our van is currently stocked with some of my random findings from this tour. Maybe I'll call my aesthetic 'van fashion.
Victoria LegrandSometimes it seems to me that in this absurdly random life there is some inherent justice in the outcome of personal relationships. In the long run, we get no more than we have been willing to give.
Sheldon B. KoppBasketball is an intricate, high-speed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions. But that spontaneity is possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice--perfecting their shooting, dribbling, and passing and running plays over and over again--and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court. This is the critical lesson of improve, too, and it is also a key to understanding a puzzle of Millennium Challenge: spontaneity isn't random.
Malcolm GladwellMy favorite random email I got was from some guy who wrote: "Mr. Max, with the hope of a six year old on the night before Christmas asking about Santa, I ask the same question: Do you really exist?
Tucker MaxHistory was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind. Surely, Watt with his steam engine, Faraday with his electric motor, and Edison with his incandescent light bulb did not have it as their goal to contribute to a fuel shortage some day that would place their countries at the mercy of Arab oil.
Joseph HellerMost of us, even if only for two minutes in our lives, have experienced at some time or another an inexplicable and random sense of complete bliss, unrelated to anything that was happening in the outside world.
Elizabeth GilbertTo get our universe, with all of its potential for complexities or any kind of potential for any kind of life-form, everything has to be precisely defined on this knife edge of improbability. [Y]ou have to see the hands of a creator who set the parameters to be just so because the creator was interested in something a little more complicated than random particles.
Francis CollinsI always have melodies flowing in my head - whether I'm just at home, at the mall, at a restaurant or wherever. I'm always humming along to the random melodies that form in my head.
ManikaI have a Woody Allen Jewish attitude to life: that it's all going to be disastrous. That it hasn't all been that way is simply down to some random quirk of fate.
Antony SherI don't want to be one of those people that's constantly promoting myself on Twitter. I think the fun thing about Twitter is being able to share all the little random things that happen in my life.
Bridgit MendlerEvery day, do something selfless for someone else that takes under five minutes. The essence of this thing you do should be that it makes a big difference to the person receiving the gift. Usually these favors take the form of an introduction, reference, feedback, or broadcast on social media. Do something that's not for yourself, every single day. Expect nothing in return. Over time, these random acts of kindness will really add up.
Adam RifkinI think I've been addicted to openness since long before my rock career. I was terrible as a teenager. I used to go out of my way to make people uncomfortable with personal details. I was always fascinated by the idea that we have these weird, random boundaries between what we do and don't show.
Amanda PalmerThe Universe was a silly place at best...but the least likely explanation for it was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that abstract somethings 'just happened' to be atoms that 'just happened' to get together in ways which 'just happened' to look like consistent laws and some configurations 'just happened' to possess self-awareness and that two 'just happened' to be the Man from Mars and a bald-headed old coot with Jubal inside.
Robert A. HeinleinThe whole thing of singing on my own has been accidental and random. I sang a huge amount as a kid, and I was a boy soprano. I didn't do that much classical music; I did a little bit. I had a lovely voice. And then when my voice dropped, I didn't worry about it consciously because I wasn't that invested in my singing at the time.
Sam AmidonSo when I open the door on Halloween, I am confronted by three or four imaginary heroes, such as G.I. Joe, Conan the Barbarian and Oliver North, who would look very terrifying except that they are three feet tall and facing in random directions. They stand there silently for several seconds before an adult voice hisses from the darkness behind them: "Say 'Trick or treat!
Dave BarryWe always knew how to honor fallen soldiers. They were killed for our sake, they went out on our mission. But how are we to mourn a random man killed in a terrorist attack while sitting in a cafe? How do you mourn a housewife who got on a bus and never returned?
A. B. YehoshuaI need geometry to set the grammar of the image expressive language . The structural skeleton, the composition and the geometric layout provide a perspective from which one can read the image; otherwise we would do what Dadaists did when they put words in a little bag and then took them out at random in order to compose a poem.
Augusto De LucaDon't let some random comment that you wouldn't have even thought about overshadow something important that you were actually trying to say.
LordeThe Buddhists believe that everything in life is random. There are patterns that are intrinsic to life. We don't know why, we just know they're there like the DNA. We have no idea.
Frederick Lenzin the press, my sex life was something else again. I was Lady Bountiful of the Sheets. Some of the best fiction of the Sixties was written about my amorous adventures with an assortment of lovers who could have only been chosen by a berserk random sampler.
Doris DayI'm listening to Gogol Bordello, which is totally random, but I love him. Just finished the new Joan Didion book, Blue Nights, which I loved. I haven't been to the movies in God knows how long. I haven't been doing anything but living in a bubble, making jewelry!
Pamela LoveThose who express random thoughts to legislative committees are often surprised and appalled to find themselves the instigators of law.
Mark B. CohenDeep inside I feel that this world we live in is really a big, huge, monumental symphonic orchestra. I believe that in its primordial form all of creation is sound and that it's not just random sound, that it's music. You've heard the expression, music of the spheres? Well, that's a very literal phrase. In the Gospels, we read, "And the Lord God made man from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul." That 'breath of life' to me is the music of life and it permeates every fiber of creation.
Michael JacksonPhillip is a repository of random snatches of film dialogue and song lyrics. To make room for all of it in his brain, he apparently cleared out all the areas where things like reason and common sense are stored.
Jonathan TropperWhat I "discovered" was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.
Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiI believe in God. It makes no sense to me to assume that the Universe and our existence is just a cosmic accident, that life emerged due to random physical processes in an environment which simply happened to have the right properties. As a Christian I begin to comprehend what life is all about through belief in a Creator, some of whose nature was revealed by a man born about 2000 years ago.
Antony HewishThe objective of US authorities was to terminate their existence as peoples - not as random individuals. This is the very definition of modern genocide.
Roxanne Dunbar-OrtizThe Internet is a big place where a lot of people can voice their opinions, and my mother chooses to pick fights with random people from all over the world who don't have the nicest things to say about me.
Chris EvansThere are people and places and events you'd prefer to forget or at least gloss over. In the end, you can slap a pretty label on it - like serendipity or fate. Or you can believe that it's just the random way life unfolds.
Emily GiffinPeople understand contests. You take a bunch of kids throwing rocks at random and people look askance, but if you go and hold a rock-throwing contest - people understand that.
Don MurrayThe future's so random, and so mobile, there's no way you're going to get to your vision of what you want your community to be just by chance alone. I really believe you have to let people know, to use your voice, to say, 'this is what I like about my place, I want to keep it this way, this is what I think can be improved, this is what I disapprove of.' That's the only way you can have a part in shaping the future.
Rick BassListen to your hunches, pay attention to your intuition, do not dismiss your random thoughts, inspirations or ideas.... They could be giving you the best advice you ever had.
Neale Donald WalschWhy did people run around in random directions when shooting started instead of literally hitting the deck to stay out of the line of fire? How stupid could you get?
Cheyenne McCrayI wanted to be an artist after all, and my teachers told me these were the best authors the 20th century had to offer. But these books sucked. They were so boring and sloppy and plotless. And Bob Dylan's lyrics seemed nonsensical to me - almost like he had just gotten high and written down whatever random thoughts occurred to him.
Simon Rich