quotations about chance
In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.
LOUIS PASTEUR
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lecture, Dec. 7, 1854
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance ... logic can be happily tossed out the window.
STEPHEN KING
The Stand
We live as it were by chance, and by chance we are governed.
SENECA
Seneca's Morals
Chance never writ a legible book; chance never built a fair house; chance never drew a neat picture. It never did any of these things, nor ever will; nor can it be without absurdity supposed able to do them, which yet are works very gross and rude, very easy and feasible, as it were, in comparison to the production of a flower or a tree.
ISAAC BARROW
Works
Most coincidences are simply chance events that turn out to be far more probable than many people imagine.
IVARS PETERSON
The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari
The best men are not those who have waited for chances, but taken them--besieged the chance, conquered the chance, and made the chance their servitor.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.
KURT VONNEGUT
The Sirens of Titan
What else is chance but the rude stone which receives its life from the sculptor's hand? Providence gives us chance, and man must mould it to his own designs.
FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
Don Carlos
Next him high arbiter
Chance governs all.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Sometimes a wind comes up, blows you off course. You’re not ready for it, but if you’re lucky, you end up in a more interesting place than you’d planned.
NORA ROBERTS
The Calhouns
Times go by turns, and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.
ROBERT SOUTHWELL
Times Go By Turns