Home > Topic > unpredictable
81 " Most people bestow tremendous power onto those human beings we consider evil, who cause of threaten harm to others, even though we know they are acting from their own pain or fear. Would ignoring evil disarm it? Don’t dismiss the idea. As we have declared War on Terror, a War on Drugs, a War on Poverty, a War on Crime, the problems only seem to have gotten bigger. We cling tthe notion of evil as detrimental, unpredictable force in our world and refuse any suggestion that it is not real. We argue for our fear about terrorism or climate change or economic instability, heatedly trying to prove that things are only getting worse. And in doing so, we reinforce the principle that what we focus on grows. We create our experience by where we place our attention. What we resist, persists. "
― Ellen Debenport , The Five Principles: A Guide to Practical Spirituality
82 " Maybe you should get a very large life insurance policy on the next husband,” Lily suggested slurping her coffee loudly. “You know, before he makes an ash of himself.”“Very funny, but don’t think I haven’t thought of it. It’s an unpredictable way to score more rental properties, but I do seem to be good at burying men. "
83 " The few people who earned my respect are those who are predictable in their character but totally unpredictable the way they think! "
― Assegid Habtewold , The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For continued success in leadership
84 " He hams his Brummie accent, I tell myself, the way so many ex-pats ham their lost identity. The moustache is a pose. Yet, he hams this unpredictable matey belligerence, this curiously Midlands attitude. Colin is home away from home, I reflect, even if not the home you ever really liked. "
― Tim Parks
85 " Atheism is the default position in any scientific inquiry, just as a-quarkism or a-neutrinoism was. That is, any entity has to earn its admission into a scientific account either via direct evidence for its existence or because it plays some fundamental explanatory role. Before the theoretical need for neutrinos was appreciated (to preserve the conservation of energy) and then later experimental detection was made, they were not part of the accepted physical account of the world. To say physicists in 1900 were 'agnostic' about neutrinos sounds wrong: they just did not believe there were such things.As yet, there is no direct experimental evidence of a deity, and in order for the postulation of a deity to play an explanatory role there would have to be a lot of detail about how it would act. If, as you have suggested, we are not “good judges of how the deity would behave,” then such an unknown and unpredictable deity cannot provide good explanatory grounds for any phenomenon. The problem with the 'minimal view' is that in trying to be as vague as possible about the nature and motivation of the deity, the hypothesis loses any explanatory force, and so cannot be admitted on scientific grounds. Of course, as the example of quarks and neutrinos shows, scientific accounts change in response to new data and new theory. The default position can be overcome. "
―
86 " If everything was perfect in your life won't it be a predictable one. Life is unpredictable chaotic and madness but that's what makes life interesting won't you agree? "
87 " We have to make a consideration: emotional states are deeply influenced by external events, and here lies the problem. Since the external events are unstable, namely, that they are in perpetual change - a situation that Buddhist tradition definesas “impermanence” - they are very difficult to be managed, and this bring people to panic.This difficulty to experience a reality in which nothing is permanent, that all is in constant motion- change, belongs to the human incapacity to accept the discontinuity of an occurrence of events that are always unpredictable and new.Impermanence is a principle that is a natural thing, but, in relation to the social and interhuman fields, this becomes a problem: especially in the last ten years, we can witness scenarios where instability, turbulence and uncertainty, frantically increase and continue to increase. Instability and change are perceivable everywhere - from the personal interaction between people to economic instability: in poor words, we don’t know what the future will bring to us and we feel a continuous pressure.People feel a need for safety and stability, but this is an impossible thing in the conditions in which society finds itself, and here lies one of the main reasons why tensions, anxiety, and panic have became common situations. "
88 " I’m not above using unsavory beings to kick the Gods’ asses, but the Phantoms are too unpredictable for my taste,” I said. "
― Laura Kreitzer , Fallen Legion (Timeless, #4)
89 " If you couldn't sense heat, you'd not be alive. And if that heat never grew uncomfortable, you would never move. And if you were stagnant—unchallenged by unpredictable flares—you would never grow capable of shielding yourself from harsher flames. So yes, life was meant to drag you straight through the fire. "
― Richelle E. Goodrich , Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year
90 " This look said I was uncomfortably near some line. Nikos had a lot of lines, all hidden. If you shot a marble in on one side of his personality, instead of coming out the other it would bounce on secret internal walls and shoot out in some unpredictable way. I suspected some of those ways were deadly. "
― Mary Hughes , The Bite of Silence (Biting Love Series)
91 " The pony is mad. She can go from a relaxed walk to a flat out gallop in seconds if something spooks her, and she won’t stop until she practically crashes into something. I’ve seen her buck, rear and spin around in circles. She’s completely unpredictable and I don’t even trust her on the ground. As far as I’m concerned, Alec’s welcome to her, and he relishes the challenge. For some reason, he loves that pony most of all. Perhaps it’s because no-one else would give her a chance, that they’d written her off as crazy, mean, dangerous. Alec admires her independent spirit, I think, and maybe he likes that she still has that strength of spirit, that she still challenges him every time he rides her. He can’t completely dominate her, and he doesn’t try. He wants a partnership with her. And slowly, slowly, his father is taking that away from him, bullying the mare and his son at the same time, seeking to fit them into the same mould, the only one he knows. The strong succeed while the weak fall behind. "
― Kate Lattey , Flying Changes (Clearwater Bay, #1)
92 " What I find predictable is crazy people's ability to predict that unpredictable people can be predicted by their consistent unpredictable behavior, thus making all crazy people predictable when the world says they are unpredictable. Therefore, I must be “right” because I can predict crazy because I have been trained in the unpredictable nature of consistent craziness because I am crazy. "
― Shannon L. Alder
93 " Rain amplifies your mistakes, and water on the track can make your car handle unpredictably. When something unpredictable happens you have to react to it; if you’re reacting at speed, you’re reacting too late. And so you should be afraid. "
― Garth Stein , The Art of Racing in the Rain
94 " The test of an economic system lies in the choices it offers, the alternatives that are open to the people living under it. When choices are limited by coercion of one sort or another, the system must fall short of meeting the test in greater or less degree. The virtue of a free system – i.e., competitive capitalism – is that it allows energy to flow uncoerced into a thousand-and-one different forms, expanding goods, services, and jobs in a myriad, unpredictable ways. Every day, under such a system, a consumer’s plebiscite (the phrase is Ludwig von Mises‘) is held, the vote being counted in whatever money unit is the handiest. With his votes the consumer directs production, forcing or luring energy, brains and capital to obey his will. "
95 " There are enough ideas, images, symbols, and experiences in your head already to work with for a lifetime. It's a little like having a car with an unpredictable battery, though. Sometimes you get in and it starts right up. Other times, especially if it has been sitting idle for awhile, you turn the key and nothing happens. "
― Bert Dodson , Keys to Drawing
96 " Why give a robot an order to obey orders—why aren't the original orders enough? Why command a robot not to do harm—wouldn't it be easier never to command it to do harm in the first place? Does the universe contain a mysterious force pulling entities toward malevolence, so that a positronic brain must be programmed to withstand it? Do intelligent beings inevitably develop an attitude problem? (…) Now that computers really have become smarter and more powerful, the anxiety has waned. Today's ubiquitous, networked computers have an unprecedented ability to do mischief should they ever go to the bad. But the only mayhem comes from unpredictable chaos or from human malice in the form of viruses. We no longer worry about electronic serial killers or subversive silicon cabals because we are beginning to appreciate that malevolence—like vision, motor coordination, and common sense—does not come free with computation but has to be programmed in. (…) Aggression, like every other part of human behavior we take for granted, is a challenging engineering problem! "
― Steven Pinker , How the Mind Works
97 " I am quite scandalous, you see. I come packaged with unpredictable moments, brutal honesty, calamitous outbursts, the ghastly need for love, a fiendish lack of filter, the horrific need to question everything, nauseating affection, offensive kindness, indecent spirituality, obscene beauty, monstrous creativity, barbaric embellishments, contemptuous passion, sinful childhood traumas, unscrupulous hobbies, vexatious caring, abominable sensitivity, reprehensible humor, hideous sarcasm, displeasing feelings, unpalatable confidence, offensive compassion, villainous inspiration and a devilish wit. I am quite grotesque in my imperfectness and I am not ashamed to admit it. "
98 " She didn’t have a hat or a veil or anything in her hands. No one had offered so much as a single dried-out flower; she had nothing to hold onto to steady her shaking fingers. Her head pounded as hard and as painfully as her rapid heartbeat. She stood there, unable to move, staring at the man who waited at the end of the aisle. This unpredictable knight who hours ago had touched her, kissed her, caressed her in a way that still made her tremble, then sworn he would never do so again. This dark lord who despised her. This man she was about to marry. "
― Shelly Thacker , Forever His (Stolen Brides, #2)
99 " You're unpredictable and dangerous and protect those you love fiercely. You should be proud. To me you're more than a knight in some stupid shiny armour. You're the monster who no one can tame but the woman he loves. - Tess Snow "
― Pepper Winters , Twisted Together (Monsters in the Dark, #3)
100 " Hospital life--with its byzantine array of moving parts layered atop the unpredictable rhythms of illness--is a permanent state of flux. "
― Danielle Ofri , What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine