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1 " Statistics, likelihoods, and probabilities mean everything to men, nothing to God. "
― Richelle E. Goodrich , Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year
2 " Attitude at work shows attitude in life. If you want to know how people are doing in their lives, watch how they perform in their work. Do they have full commitment in giving their best to whatever they do? Do they treat their very act of being involved in an activity seriously? You can see that people who work halfheartedly are the very same people who get halfhearted results in life. The truth is we are always in a game because life is a game. We either play to win or not.Those who are serious about winning are the ones who do. Most people want to have fun playing the game, but winners are the ones who want to have serious fun. The most fun you can have in anything you do is by playing to win & by winning. The irony of life is that those who are not serious about life, end up in situations that are not funny. Winning results from the intention to win. The stronger your intent to win, the more your probabilities of winning. Playing to win mindset is considered obsolete by many, but you will see that whenever two evenly matched players are competing head to head, the one who is more intent on winning is the one who does. Individuals with strong intention of winning are able to overcome tougher challenges.Intention to win is important.Play to win. "
3 " The dilemma is this. In the modern world knowledge has been growing so fast and so enormously, in almost every field, that the probabilities are immensely against anybody, no matter how innately clever, being able to make a contribution in any one field unless he devotes all his time to it for years. If he tries to be the Rounded Universal Man, like Leonardo da Vinci, or to take all knowledge for his province, like Francis Bacon, he is most likely to become a mere dilettante and dabbler. But if he becomes too specialized, he is apt to become narrow and lopsided, ignorant on every subject but his own, and perhaps dull and sterile even on that because he lacks perspective and vision and has missed the cross-fertilization of ideas that can come from knowing something of other subjects. "
― Henry Hazlitt
4 " From books, I winnowed the glue that held together my psyche as it struggled to stay whole. It was from stories and myths that I learned to dream, to imagine a different life, to realize potentials and probabilities other than those of the painful, poverty-mired existence I found myself in as a child. With a book I could hide in a corner, safe from the heavy hand and belt of my stepfather, and for a while not worry about where our next meal would come from, or where we would be sleeping that night, or when my mother would break and have to be sent yet again to the mental institution. Books, for me, we tiny life rafts that I clung to desperately. "
5 " A system of justice does not need to pursue retribution. If the purpose of drug sentencing is to prevent harm, all we need to do is decide what to do with people who pose a genuine risk to society or cause tangible harm. There are perfectly rational ways of doing this; in fact, most societies already pursue such policies with respect to alcohol: we leave people free to drink and get inebriated, but set limits on where and when. In general, we prosecute drunk drivers, not inebriated pedestrians.In this sense, the justice system is in many respects a battleground between moral ideas and evidence concerning how to most effectively promote both individual and societal interests, liberty, health, happiness and wellbeing. Severely compromising this system, insofar as it serves to further these ideals, is our vacillation or obsession with moral responsibility, which is, in the broadest sense, an attempt to isolate the subjective element of human choice, an exercise that all too readily deteriorates into blaming and scapegoating without providing effective solutions to the actual problem. The problem with the question of moral responsibility is that it is inherently subjective and involves conjecture about an individuals’ state of mind, awareness and ability to act that can rarely if ever be proved. Thus it involves precisely the same type of conjecture that characterizes superstitious notions of possession and the influence of the devil and provides no effective means of managing conduct: the individual convicted for an offence or crime considered morally wrong is convicted based on a series of hypotheses and probabilities and not necessarily because he or she is actually morally wrong. The fairness and effectiveness of a system of justice based on such hypotheses is highly questionable particularly as a basis for preventing or reducing drug use related harm. For example, with respect to drugs, the system quite obviously fails as a deterrent and the system is not organised to ‘reform’ the offender much less to ensure that he or she has ‘learned a lesson’; moreover, the offender does not get an opportunity to make amends or even have a conversation with the alleged victim. In the case of retributive justice, the justice system is effectively mopping up after the fact. In other words, as far as deterrence is concerned, the entire exercise of justice becomes an exercise based on faith, rather than one based on evidence. "
― , Entheogens, Society and Law: The Politics of Consciousness, Autonomy and Responsibility
6 " Today, and let us celebrate this fact, We can eat the light of our beloved, warmed by compassion or cooled by intellectual feeling. And if we are surprised, and some of us disappointed, that the light is now only green - well, such was the vital probability awaiting us. We have, after all, an increase in the energy available for further evolution; we can use the energy of our position relative to the probabilities in the future to reach the future we desire. The full use of this energy is just beginning to be explored, and we have the opportunity open to few generations to create our best opportunities. We must not slacken in our desire now if we desire a future. The pressure of probabilities on the present increases the momentum of evolution, and as the voluble helix turns, and turns us away from our improbable satiation, we can see that the shadow cast on the present from the future is not black but rainbowed, brilliant with lemon yellow, plum-purple, and cherry-red. I have no patience with those who say that their desire for light is satisfied. Or that they are bored. I have myself a still unsatisfied appetite for green: eucalyptus, celadon, tourmaline, and apple. (" Desire" ) "
7 " I don’t wanna be in a fake-perfect-relationship. Because, however, it will eventually turn to be a shitty relationship. And why on earth, I would put myself inside a shitty and tiring relationship while there are probabilities and chances to have a real happy relationship out there? "
― Nina Ardianti , Restart
8 " The century of Einstein and Planck was also the century of Hitler. The Gestapo and the scientific renaissance were children of the same age. How humane the nineteenth century seemed, that century of naive physics, when compared with the twentieth century, the century that had killed his [Viktor's] mother. There is a terrible similarity between the principles of Fascism and those of contemporary physics.Fascism has rejected the concept of a separate individuality, the concept of " a man," and operates only with vast aggregates. Contemporary physics speaks of the greater or lesser probability of occurrences within this or that aggregate of individual particles. And are not the terrible mechanics of Fascism founded on the principle of quantum politics, of political probability?Fascism arrived at the idea of the liquidation of entire strata of the population, of entire nations and races, on the grounds that there was a greater probability of overt or covert opposition among these groupings than among others: the mechanics of probabilities and of human aggregates.But no! No! And again no! Fascism will perish for the very reason that it has applied to man the laws applicable to atoms and cobblestones!Man and Fascism cannot co-exist. If Fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, man who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people. "
9 " Walking on a path of uncertainties, Shuffling on the probabilities of uncertainties, Waging on the possibilities of uncertainties, Waiting for the occurrences of uncertainties,Solving the mysteries of wandering uncertainties,We move, lead and live. "
― Pushpa Rana ,
10 " The Hartle-Hawking derivation of the unconditional probability of the existence of a universe of our sort is inconsistent with classical theism. The unconditional probability is very high, near to 1. For purposes of simplification, we are saying the probability is 99 percent; there is a 99 percent probability that a universe of our sort—I will call it a Hartle-Hawking universe—exists uncaused.The universe exists uncaused since the probability amplitude is determined by a summation or path integral over all possible histories of a finite universe. That is, the probability that a Hartle-Hawking universe exists follows directly from the natural-mathematical properties of possible finite universes; there is no need for a cause, probabilistic or otherwise, for there to be a 99 percent probability that a Hartle-Hawking universe will exist.This is not consistent with classical theism. According to classical theism, if a universe is to have any probability of existing, this probability is dependent on God's dispositions, beliefs, or choices. But the Hartle-Hawking probability is not dependent on any supernatural states or acts; Hartle and Hawking do not sum over anything supernatural in their path integral derivation of the probability amplitude.Furthermore, according to classical theism, the probability that a universe exist without divine causation is 0, and the probability that if a universe exists, it is divinely caused, is 1. Thus, the probabilities that are implied by classical theism are inconsistent with the probabilities implied by the Hartle-Hawking wave function of the universe. "
11 " I was told, and indeed I saw several examples, that neither time nor place was much minded, and that I might hazard being equally careless of chronology and geography; but I piqued myself on having studied Aristotle, and scrupulously attended to the probabilities of time and place. "
― Charlotte Turner Smith ,
12 " How much time is wasted in what is called thought, but is merely care--an anxious idling over the fancied probabilities of result "
― George MacDonald , A Daughter's Devotion
13 " Accidents happen. That's what everyone says. But in a quantum universe there are no such things as accidents, only possibilities and probabilities folded into existence by perception. "
― J. Michael Straczynski , Before Watchmen: Nite Owl/Dr. Manhattan
14 " Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices. "
15 " If the universe was scientific and just left to itself, then we’d have statistical probabilities to rely on. But once people are involved it sometimes becomes much more problematic because they’re erratic. People do crazy things that don’t make sense. "
― Sara Sheridan , Brighton Belle (Mirabelle Bevan Mystery #1)
16 " The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect science, what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment-the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how, ability, or just gut instinct to change the course of another's life for the better. "
― Atul Gawande , Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
17 " Because Wikipedia is a process, not a product, it replaces guarantees offered by institutions with probabilities supported by process. "
― Clay Shirky , Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
18 " Don't worry, boss,” HARV said. “I get the feeling that this is only the tip of the iceberg of complications.”“HARV, you’re a machine. You don’t get feelings.”“Would it make you feel better if I said I've done a numerical analysis on the probabilities and the results are skewed toward you having more problems with this case? "
― John Zakour , The Doomsday Brunette (Nuclear Bombshell, #2)
19 " The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more. "
― Isaac Asimov , Foundation and Empire (Foundation #2)
20 " All business proceeds on beliefs on judgements of probabilities and not on certainties. "
