“The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”

—  Fred Hoyle

Hoyle on evolution, Nature, Vol. 294, No. 5837 (November 12, 1981), p. 105

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Fred Hoyle 19
British astronomer 1915–2001

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“A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Arguing that living organisms could not have arisen by chance alone.
The Intelligent Universe (1983), p. 19

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“However small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance was there.”

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“He knew we had no chance without him so he argued not to be separated from us, offering, in effect, to forfeit his own life on the chance that he might save ours.”

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Roald Dahl photo

“But there was one other thing that the grown-ups also knew, and it was this: that however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance is there. The chance had to be there.”

Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

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“We might have a chance now to rebuild it all with what we have left. We might have learned that we can exist only as a part of nature, not apart from nature.”

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Angus King photo

“I might have a chance of starting a movement toward change in this broken system.”

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Context: I think I can honestly say that if Olympia had announced her retirement because of ill health or to spend more time with Jock I probably wouldn't have run. … What perked me up is why she is leaving. Olympia has 30 years of seniority, she's likable, she works very hard, and if she can't make it work, nobody in either party is going to make it work. … I don't have any illusions it will be easy, but I do think particularly if the two parties are closely divided, I will have an influence … I might have a chance of starting a movement toward change in this broken system. This country has serious problems, but you can't address them if the institution set up to address the problems is broken.

Ben Carson photo

“Evolutionism is to think that a hurricane blowing through a junkyard could somehow assemble a fully equipped and flight-ready 747.”

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“It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Ch. 6
Context: It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dugout I might have been smashed to atoms, and in the open survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed. No soldier survives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

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