“The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle.”

—  Hannah Arendt

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical…" by Hannah Arendt?
Hannah Arendt photo
Hannah Arendt85
Jewish-American political theorist 1906–1975

Related quotes

Mark Hopkins (educator) photo

“The moral government of God is a movement in a line onwards towards some grand consummation, in which the principles, indeed, are ever the same, but the developments are always new,— in which, therefore, no experience of the past can indicate with certainty what new openings of truth, what new manifestations of goodness, what new phases of the moral heaven may appear.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 284.

Jerry Seinfeld photo

“It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

John Gray photo

“The basis of the [scientific] method is a belief in natural uniformity – if two events are regularly connected in our observations we can conclude that they obey a universal law. But this is not a conclusion we reach by observation. No amount of evidence can demonstrate the existence of laws of nature, since new experience can always overturn them. Science rests on the belief that the future will be like the past; but that belief is rationally groundless. This is not a new line of thinking. David Hume argued that the expectation that the future will be like the past, which is the basis of induction, is a matter of habit. Hume wanted to show that since miracles transgress known laws of nature it was unreasonable to accept reports of them, in the Bible or anywhere else. But his arguments against induction showed that the laws of nature could not in fact be known, so events that seemed impossible could happen at any time. The upshot was that faith in miracles returned by the back door of sceptical doubt.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Cross-correspondences (p. 68)
The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death (2011)

Gustav Radbruch photo

“To be sure, one value comes with every positive-law statute without reference to its content: Any statute is always better than no statute at all, since it at least creates legal certainty. But legal certainty is not the only value that law must effectuate, nor is it the decisive value. Alongside legal certainty, there are two other values: purposiveness and justice. In ranking these values, we assign to last place the purposiveness of the law in serving the public benefit.”

Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949) German politician

"Statutory Lawlessness and Supra-Statutory Law" (1946)

Miguel de Unamuno photo

“And love, above all when it struggles against destiny, overwhelms us with the feeling of the vanity of this world of appearances and gives us a glimpse of another world, in which destiny is overcome and liberty is law.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), III : The Hunger of Immortality

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. photo

“Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen everyday.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Source: Life's Little Instruction Book: 511 Suggestions, Observations, and Reminders on How to Live a Happy and Rewarding Life

“Every germinating truth is revolutionary against prevailing errors; every germinating virtue, revolutionary against prevailing vices opposed to it. And, therefore, there is always an outcry at the rising up of new youthful truths and virtues.”

Karl Georg von Raumer

Source: Contributions to the history and improvement of the german universities - A history of pedagogy; volume 4 (1855), p. 99

Adam Smith photo

“The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter XI, Part III, Conclusion of the Chapter, p. 292.
Context: The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

“On this new earth, cleansed and renovated—this eternal new earth—we will fulfill our eternal purpose for God. It is heaven on earth—always better.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 108

“Some people tell me it is very utopian or naïve to think that one can get rid of copyright and intellectual property, but to a certain extent it is already happening in practice. … Because of its rigid and bureaucratic structure, the law is always left behind by the questions posed by new technologies.”

Mattin (1977) Spanish musician

Page 168.
"Anti-Copyright: Why Improvisation and Noise Run Against the Idea of Intellectual Property" (October 2008)

Related topics