“Not dangerous at all. Not even that lucky. But a sufficiently paranoid mind will discern patterns and threats where only fortune has conspired.”

—  Glen Cook, book Water Sleeps

Source: Water Sleeps (1999), Chapter 30 (p. 112)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Not dangerous at all. Not even that lucky. But a sufficiently paranoid mind will discern patterns and threats where onl…" by Glen Cook?
Glen Cook photo
Glen Cook205
American fiction writer 1944

Related quotes

“[H]istorical patterns are clear: When Europeans feel sufficiently threatened– even when the threat's concocted nonsense– they don't just react, they overreact with stunning ferocity. One of their more humane (and frequently employed) techniques has been ethnic cleansing.”

Ralph Peters (1952) American military officer, writer, pundit

Source: 2000s, Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the Twenty-First Century (2007), p. 332

“The public mind [is] a cloudy region where only the simplest shapes are discerned with any accuracy.”

Hugh Kingsmill (1889–1949) British writer and journalist

"William Gerhardi", p. 131
The Progress of a Biographer (1949)

Richard Dawkins photo

“The human mind is a wanton storyteller and even more, a profligate seeker after pattern. We see faces in clouds and tortillas, fortunes in tea leaves and planetary movements. It is quite difficult to prove a real pattern as distinct from a superficial illusion.”

Richard Dawkins book A Devil's Chaplain

"Snake Oil"
A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

Michel De Montaigne photo

“Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book III, Ch. 8
This quote is a paraphrase of a lengthier statement, as follows: We ordinarily see, in the actions of the world, that Fortune, to shew us her power in all things, and who takes a pride in abating our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate in emulation of virtue; and most favours those operations the web of which is most purely her own; whence it is that the simplest amongst us bring to pass great business, both public and private; and, as Seiramnes, the Persian, answered those who wondered that his affairs succeeded so ill, considering that his deliberations were so wise, ‘that he was sole master of his designs, but success was wholly in the power of fortune’; these may answer the same, but with a contrary turn.
From Essays of Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton (1877), Book the Third, Chapter VIII — Of The Art Of Conference. Note : this is the version found at Project Gutenberg.
Attributed

“In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all.”

Richard Hofstadter The Paranoid Style in American Politics

The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)

Margaret MacMillan photo

“Over the years, historians have tried to discern grand patterns, perhaps one grand pattern, that explain everything.”

Margaret MacMillan (1943) Canadian historian

p.15

“The higher paranoid scholarship is nothing if not coherent — in fact the paranoid mind is far more coherent than the real world.”

Richard Hofstadter The Paranoid Style in American Politics

The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)

Robert Anton Wilson photo

“Everybody who has ever worked for a corporation knows that corporations conspire all the time. Politicians conspire all the time, pot-dealers conspire not to get caught by the narcs, the world is full of conspiracies. Conspiracy is natural primate behavior.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

The I in the Triangle, speech held at a bookstore in Santa Cruz, California (1990)

Sandra Day O'Connor photo

“It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.”

Sandra Day O'Connor (1930) Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Upholding the constitutionality of a "moment of silent prayer" in schools in Wallce v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985) (concurring).

Sun Tzu photo

“Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Disputed

Related topics