Quotes about a chance
page 14

“If nobody likes your work, you have to go on just for the sake of the work. And you're in no danger of letting the public make you repeat yourself. Every artist ought to pray that he may not be "a success". If he's a failure he stands a good chance of concentrating upon the best work of which he's capable.”

Gustav Holst (1874–1934) English composer

Remark to Clifford Bax, reported in Imogen Holst Gustav Holst: A Biography (1969) p. 81.

Failure, Success

“Absolutist statements about Islam being "fundamentally violent" are deceptive, because Muslims can and do choose to ignore or renounce the more violent aspects of their dogma -- just as Christians do. […] in the modern world, there are many, many Muslims who do not follow this version of Islam, who are decent human beings who want the same things other human beings want - peace, security, and a chance to succeed.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

July 11, 2009 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34163_BNP_Leader_Griffin-_Islam_is_a_Cancer_Requiring_Global_Chemotherapy/comments/

World, Peace

“For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

On the Mindless Menace of Violence (1968)

Men, Hunger, Books, School

“The Darwinians have coined the terms pseudoteleology and teleonomy to designate the finality which they at the same time deny. Appearances are deceptive, they say; the materials of life are always the work of chance. What some take for finality is only the result of the ordering of random materials bynatural selection. Even were this to be true, as it is not, the demon of finility would still not have been exorcized. For natural selection is, in essence and function, the supreme finilizing agent. Actually, the terms pseudoteleology and teleonomy are the homage paid to finality, as hypocrisy pays homage to virtue. Giard (1905), himself a shrewd scholar but blinded by a foolish anticlericalism, went so far as to abjure Lamarckism and write, "To account for the wondrous adaptations such as those we observe between orchids and the insects that fertilize them, we have hardly any choice but the bare alternative hypotheses: the intervention of a sovereignly intelligent being, and selection." He cannot have seriously subjected his supposed dilemma to critical scrutiny or he would have seen that he was substituting for the dethroned divinity just such another, a sorting and finalizing, in sum transcendental, agent, natural selection. Paul Wintrebert, a convinced and even intractable atheist, did not fall into the same trap but realized perfectly that Giard's alternative involves, whatever opinion be held, recognizing the intervention of a purposive guiding agent. Giard's concept, which is that held by many atheists and "freethinkers", gives a singular and belittling idea of God. The Almighty, obliged to remodel and retouch His own handiwork.”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 165
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)

Life, God, Intelligence, Idea

“Prayer must lead us beyond mind, words, and ideas to a more spacious place where God has a chance to get in.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (1999), p. 127

God, Idea

“One hundred percent of terrorist attacks on commercial airlines based in America for 20 years have been committed by Muslims. When there is a 100 percent chance, it ceases to be a profile. It's called a 'description of the suspect.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Source: 2003, Treason : Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (2003), p. 265

“I want to win, I want to win everything. If I have a chance to win, why not?”

Alexander Ovechkin (1985) Russian ice hockey player

Paul Hunter (June 12, 2008) "Ovechkin fashions himself a designer", The Toronto Star, p. S02.

“No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

March 1759, p. 97
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I

“True democracy consists not in lowering the standard but in giving everybody, so far as possible, a chance of measuring up to the standard.”

Irving Babbitt (1865–1933) American academic and literary criticism

Source: "English and the Discipline of Ideas" (1920), p. 65

Democracy

“On every hand we hear that the quality of immigration is not what it used to be. This is unwisely construed as meaning that we must withdraw our faith in mankind and raise rigid barriers always. Such a confession would declare the weakness of our institutions and undermine our faith in the principles on which the government is founded. The continuance of our faith is not interrupted by our intense conviction that there is no room in our midst for those whose direct purpose is political, social, or economic mischief, and whose presence jeopardizes the physical or moral health of the community. Certain laws of supply and demand take care, in normal times, of the coming and going of the alien. But it may be that today conditions abroad are so intolerable that men and women run chances in coming over without knowing the actual conditions they must face. Wise immigration laws would deal with such a pressure.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

Women, Men, Health, Faith

“He was concerned only with the naked fundamentals of life. The warm intimacies of small, kindly things, the sentiments and delicious trivialities that make up so much of civilized men's lives were meaningless to him. A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs. Bloodshed and violence and savagery were the natural elements of the life Conan knew; he could not, and would never, understand the little things that are so dear to civilized men and women.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Beyond the Black River" (1935)

Life, Women, Men, Dogs

“Great riches come to many men by chance.”

Bias of Priene (-600–-530 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the Seven Sages

The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 230)

Men

“I finally got tired of making movies where all I did was walk across the screen and look pretty. I got a big chance to do some real acting in The Postman Always Rings Twice, and I'm not going to slip back if I can help it. I tried to persuade the studio to give me something different. But every time I went into my argument about how bad a picture was, they'd say, 'well, it's making a fortune.”

Lana Turner (1921–1995) American actress

That licked me.
On her experience in the film industry; quoted in MacPherson, Virginia; "Imagine This, Lads; Lana Turner Asks That You Concentrate On Her Acting," Toledo Blade (October 15, 1946).
On her career

Time, Help

“I am one of the guys that thinks you never have to give up. When you have that 'X' that says you're eliminated, then you give up. Not anybody in the league, not Kansas City, not Pittsburgh, has that 'X' that says they are eliminated. We're still fighting for something. We still have a chance to do a lot of things. We're still fighting for something. We still have a chance to do a lot of things.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Gano, Rick, Chi Cubs 6, St. Louis 3 http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap?gid=260730116, Yahoo! Sports, Retrieved on June 16, 2007 2006

Guy, Thinking, Fight

“A technology that by chance gains an early lead in adoption may eventually 'corner the market' of potential adopters, with the other technologies becoming locked out.”

W. Brian Arthur (1946) American economist

Source: Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns and Lock-in by Historical Events, (1989), p. 116

“As Tarzan finished reading, Clayton entered and came toward him with extended hand.
Here was the man who had Tarzan's title, and Tarzan's estates, and was going to marry the woman whom Tarzan loved — the woman who loved Tarzan. A single word from Tarzan would make a great difference in this man's life.
It would take away his title and his lands and his castles, and — it would take them away from Jane Porter also. "I say, old man," cried Clayton, "I haven't had a chance to thank you for all you've done for us. It seems as though you had your hands full saving our lives in Africa and here.
"I'm awfully glad you came on here. We must get better acquainted. I often thought about you, you know, and the remarkable circumstances of your environment.
"If it's any of my business, how the devil did you ever get into that bally jungle?"”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

"I was born there," said Tarzan, quietly. "My mother was an Ape, and of course she couldn't tell me much about it. I never knew who my father was."
Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 28 : Conclusion

Love, Life, Business, Reading

“The painful experience of many gamblers has taught us the lesson that no system of betting is successful in improving the gambler's chances. If the theory of probability is true to life, this experience must correspond to a provable statement.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter VIII, Unlimited Sequences Of Bernoulli Trials, p. 198.

Life, Pain, Success

“Events,” I say to the Captain, “events control our lives, although we have no understanding of them nor do they have any motivation. Everything is blind chance, happenstance, occurrence; in an infinite universe anything can happen. After the fact we find reasons.”

Barry N. Malzberg book Beyond Apollo

Source: Beyond Apollo (1972), Chapter 60

Motivation, Understanding, Universe

“Moon landing was a huge challenge that was solved by human perseverance and ingenuity, in spite of the mere 50% chance of success according to American astronaut Neil Armstrong. Imagine what else we can accomplish if America and the whole world is determined to eradicate wars, diseases, pollutions, global warming, poverty, homelessness, world hunger, and other human sufferings.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Hunger, War, World, Disease

“The more times your cells divide, the greater the chance of mutations that lead to cancer. That is why the average oncological patient is a mature person or even a senior.”

Marek Sanak (1958) Polish scientist

Mazurek, Maria (13 May 2016): Komórki rakowe to anarchizujące potwory https://gazetakrakowska.pl/komorki-rakowe-to-anarchizujace-potwory/ar/9985395. Gazeta Krakowska (in Polish), pp. 18–19.

Time, Personality

“I have often since then asked myself why these five were successful when others, with long records of diplomacy, were unsuccessful, and, in fact, had allowed a bad situation to get worse, so that there was a danger of the conflict spreading.... I think that the answer really lies in the fact that those five Prime Ministers brought a fresh approach to bear on the problem. They were not seeking advantage for their own countries. They had no axe of power-politics to grind. They had but one interest-how to end the fighting in such a way that the chances of continuing peace and stability were enhanced....”

Sukarno (1901–1970) first President of the Republic of Indonesia

Speech at the Opening of the Bandung Conference

Peace, Way, Problem, Thinking

“Very few of the Christians recanted, although an altar with a fire burning on it was generally kept in the arena for their convenience. All a prisoner had to do was scatter a pinch of incense on the flame and he was given a Certificate of Sacrifice and turned free.
It was also carefully explained to him that he was not worshiping the emperor; merely acknowledging the divine character of the emperor as head of the Roman state. Still, almost no Christians availed themselves of the chance to escape.”

Daniel P. Mannix (1911–1997) animal collector and author

About early Christians in the Arena. Those about to Die (1958), Chapter 14

“It was not for the sake of oil that the risky decision to cease this corrupt coexistence was made. But at least now the Iraqi people have a chance of controlling their own main resource, and it will be our task to ensure that the funding and revenue are transparent instead of opaque.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

April 18, 2003 http://www.slate.com/id/2081707/: On Iraq 2000s, 2003

People, Decision

“The family is the primary transmitter of social capital – the values and character traits that enable people to seize opportunities. Family structure is a primary predictor of an individual's life chances, and family disintegration is the principal cause of the intergenerational transmission of poverty.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Column, March 21, 2014, " Paul Ryan was right – poverty is a cultural problem" http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-the-lefts-half-century-of-denial-over-poverty/2014/03/21/1aeaff4e-b049-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html at washingtonpost.com. 2010s

Life, People, Family

“The trade unions that were swayed by Marxist teaching did not want social peace. They calculated that their chances of acquiring political power would improve with the growing dissatisfaction of the workers. One of the first necessities with which the Hitler Government found itself faced was that of dissolving the organizations that kept alive the antagonism between employers and employees. They were replaced by the Labour Front.”

Robert Ley (1890–1945) Nazi politician

Quoted in Social Policy in the New Germany by Bruno Rauecker - 1936

Peace

“I’m not against a global pact to reduce CO2. Indeed, I favor it. But in the absence of one — and there is no chance of getting one in the foreseeable future — there is no point in America committing economic suicide to no effect on climate change, the reversing of which, after all, is the alleged point of the exercise. For a president to propose this with such aggressive certainty is incomprehensible. It is the starkest of examples of belief that is impervious to evidence. And the word for that is faith, not science.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2010s, 2013, Obama's war on global warming is economic suicide (2013)

Faith, Exercises, Suicide, Science

“Can any thing in this world be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth can come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster?”

Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) English clergyman

Sermon XX, Part II

World, Art, Thinking

“I've watched the politicians. I've dealt with them all my life. If you can't make a good deal with a politician, then there's something wrong with you. You're certainly not very good. And that's what we have representing us. They will never make America great again. They don't even have a chance. They're controlled fully — they're controlled fully by the lobbyists, by the donors, and by the special interests, fully.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

Life

“Given that the first manned Moon landing only had a 50 % chance of landing safely on the moon’s surface, it was an exemplary faith in technology and human spirit.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Faith

“It’s been my great fortune to be surrounded by people that have reminded me of how important process is, not outcome. When you’re an actor, or really an artist of a collaborative form, you have so little control of the outcome. And if you are only focused on that…it won’t turn out well. If you’re focused on the outcome, chances are you’re focused on people’s perceptions of the outcome—how much money something makes, how it looks, rather than how it feels. And I think that has been the most valuable—one of the most valuable—lessons I’ve learned is to really appreciate, recognize, and practice the process, not the outcome.”

Zoey Deutch (1994) American actress

Interview with Coveteur Magazine, 2018 http://coveteur.com/2018/05/14/zoey-deutch-talks-beauty-secrets-career/

Money, People, Feeling, Thinking

“If any real efforts are to be made to free Black people of the constraints and conditions that characterize racial subordination, then theories and strategies purporting to reflect the Black community’s needs must include an analysis of sexism and patriarchy. Similarly, feminism must include an analysis of race if it hopes to express the aspirations of non-white women. Neither Black liberationist politics nor feminist theory can ignore the intersectional experiences of those whom the movements claim as their respective constituents. In order to include Black women, both movements must distance themselves from earlier approaches in which experiences are relevant only when they are related to certain clearly identifiable causes (for example, the oppression of Blacks is significant when based on race, of women when based on gender). The praxis of both should be centered on the life chances and life situations of people who should be cared about without regard to the source of their difficulties.”

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw book Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex

Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex (1989)

Life, Women, People, Hope

“Particles that, like 4He, show constructive interference are said to be bosons—a shorthand term for "particles obeying Bose–Einstein statistics." …One way to recognize bosons is their tendency to imitate one each other…. the presence of one boson increases the chance that another of its identical siblings will also appear in the same spot. There's an attraction between them. We will speak… of an attractive identity force drawing together identical bosons. Lasers are a spectacular example…”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Way, Appearance, Siblings, Drawing

“Hey, hey, what I'm sayin' is -
Do it to me one more time.
Oh, give you one more chance,
This heart of mine.
Do it to me one more time, baby.
Can't get enough of your love!”

Lionel Richie (1949) American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer and actor

Do It to Me.
Song lyrics, Back to Front (1992)

Love, Time, Heart, Baby

“I think my chances of getting into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame are about as good as Milli Vanilli's.”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

Ask Al Archives: August 2003 http://www.weirdal.com/aaarchive.htm#081503.

Thinking

“Every weekend families across Britain settle down to watch the X-factor or Britain’s Got Talent. We revel in the discovery of new talent, the chance for someone to come from nowhere and suddenly make it big based simply on their raw ability and hard work. Yet (perhaps outside the realm of music and entertainment) our society is all too often the opposite of this ideal of opportunity.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Jo Cox: Opportunity must knock in a fairer society http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/jo-cox-opportunity-must-knock-in-a-fairer-society-1-6857022 (24 September 2014)

Family, Music

“Allah says [in the Koran]: "If they repent before you overcome them, you should know that Allah is forgiving and merciful."… we are opening the door of forgiveness[…] and acceptance of Islamic law, to all who have strayed and committed a crime in the name of religion… Everyone who belongs to this group that has wronged itself who has not yet been apprehended in terrorist operations – we offer them a chance to return to Allah… Anyone who accepts this and surrenders of his own free will… will be treated according to the law of Allah.”

Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (1924–2015) former King of Saudi Arabia

Saudi Crown Prince Abdallah Bin Abd Al-Aziz Gives Saudi Terrorists One Last Chance http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/121.htm June 2004.

Religion, Law, Forgiveness

“[…] In real war an officer may have only one chance at succeeding. Consider each problem.”

David Gemmell book Quest for Lost Heroes

Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 1

War, Problem

“[I]f we lose our chance now…that chance will not return either to us or to our children. The memories of the last War will grow dim. The world will get back into the old rut, familiar professions and piety about peace will again soothe us to sleep, and the various countries will once more base their security upon military preparation. So they will all, in the end, find themselves drifting hopelessly upon those currents that make for war. … And remember what the next war will be like. The old lines which divide combatants from non-combatants, the weak and the diseased from the strong and the robust, men from women and children, will all be obliterated and civilization itself assailed, and from sea and sky will be brought to a heap of ruins.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester (24 May 1929), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 487
1920s

Women, Men, War, Children

“We are not authors of our lives; we are not even part-authors of the events that mark us most deeply. Nearly everything that is most important in our lives is unchosen. The time and place we are born, our parents, the first language we speak - these are chance, not choice. It is the casual drift of things that shapes our most fateful relationships. The life of each of us is a chapter of accidents.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Vices of Morality: The fetish of choice (p. 109-110)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Life, Fate, Parent, Time

“Some consider that when I play I am excessively cautious, but it seems to me that the question may be a different one. I try to avoid chance. Those who rely on chance should play cards or roulette. Chess is something quite different.”

Tigran Petrosian (1929–1984) Soviet Georgian Armenian chess player and chess writer

Attributed without citation in "Tigran Petrosian's Best Games" http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1014968 at chessgames.com

Question

“You may regret this, but you will soon notice that is a good idea to give chance a chance in the further creation of new brands of vehicles. This will make available a source of intelligence that is much more powerful than any engineering mind.”

Valentino Braitenberg (1926–2011) Italian-Austrian neuroscientist

Source: Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology (1984), p. 26

Intelligence, Idea

“(In 1985, Jordan broke his foot and the management, namely Jerry Krause, wanted to limit his return for fear of worsening the injury - the idea was to play seven minutes in each half) The [Bulls] came up with this whole theory you can play seven minutes a game when I'm practicing two hours a day… I didn’t agree with that math. I wanted to play. I wanted to make the playoffs. […] Jerry [Reinsdorf] said, "Let me ask if you had a headache and" - there was a 10 percent chance then I’d reinjure my ankle - "and you've got 10 tablets and one of them is coated with cyanide, would you take it?" I looked at him and said, "How bad is the headache?" Jerry looked at me and said, "I guess that's a good answer, you can go back and play."”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Hall of Fame induction address, 2009 http://www.nba.com/bulls/news/jordanhof_speech_090912.html

Fear, Game, Idea

“A specimen of research that is to be examined with the help of a microscope has first to be carefully prepared, cleaned, freed from extraneous matter, and firmly kept under the lens. In a similar way, the “bare object” to be examined by wisdom, is prepared by Bare Attention. It cleans the object of investigation from the impurities of prejudice and passion; it frees it from alien admixtures and from points of view not pertaining to it; it holds it firmly before the Eye of Wisdom, by slowing down the transition from the receptive to the active phase of the perceptual or cognitive process, thus giving a vastly improved chance for close and dispassionate investigation.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

Source: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965), pp. 34-35

Wisdom, Way, Passion, Help

“The two grand tyrants of the Earth, Time and Chance.”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Die zwei größten Tyrannen der Erde, der Zufall und die Zeit.
Vol. 1, p. x; translation vol. 1, p. xi
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91)

Time

“In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.
Lecture, University of Lille (7 December 1854)
Alternate translations of this or similar statements include:
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Fortune favors the prepared mind.
In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind.
Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.

“One of the early presidents of Harvard College wrote a dissertation on the question, "Whether angels speak any language; if so, whether it is Hebrew." Much futile discussion on such questions has at various times brought debating into ill repute. A question should offer something more than an ingenious exercise; it should offer the chance of arriving at some conclusion regarded by the particular audience or disputants as of some practical importance. It should be discarded if, like the proposition, "The pen is mightier than the sword/' it offers no possibility of arriving at reasonably sound conclusions through the process of argument.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: Argumentation and debating, 1908, p. 4-5; as cited in: Branham (2013, p. 32-33)

Angels, Exercises, Question, Time

“The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

The Big Bang in Astronomy, New Scientist, Vol. 92, No. 1280 (November 19, 1981), p. 527

“We aim at a target—an end—marked by a point. The arrows go to right and left, high or low, according to the address of the shooters. In the mean time, after a considerable number of trials, the butt, which has not yet been touched, perhaps, a single time, becomes so well pointed out by the marks around it, that they would aid at once in rediscovering it, if it should chance to be lost sight of. Nay, more than this; even aims the most unfortunate may be made to conduce to this end; commencing with those marks which are farthest away, if they be sufficiently numerous, one may learn from them the real position of the point they surround.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

Learning, Time

“Oh very young,
What will you leave us this time?
There’ll never be a better chance to change your mind
And if you want this world to see better days
Will you carry the words of love with you?
Will you ride the great white bird into heaven?
And though you want them to last forever
You know they never will — you know they never will”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Oh Very Young
Song lyrics, Buddha and the Chocolate Box (1974)

Love, World, Bird, Change

“Now our forces are killing lots of al-Qaida jihadists, preventing another terrorist attack on U. S. soil, and giving democracy in Iraq a chance — and Democrats say we are "losing" this war. I think that's a direct quote from their leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, but it may have been the Osama bin Laden tape released this week. I always get those two confused.
OK, they knew what Petraeus was going to say. But we knew what the Democrats were going to say. If liberals are not traitors, their only fallback argument at this point is that they're really stupid.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"From the halls of Malibu to the Shores of Kennedy" (12 September 2007) http://anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=207. 2007

War, Stupidity, Quotes, Democracy

“I had a chance to play that instrument for six days. Hearing German spoken around me made me think of my father, who died in 1960, and whom I hadn't thought much about in recent years. And I remembered what he meant to me. I played "Du, du liegst mir im Herzen" because my father used to sing it to me. So I sat there, thinking of my father, and weeping.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in the liner notes from Alone Together (1980)

Thinking, Singing

“More men than I have put men to death, but I am the last man in the world that would take a man's life. Two years ago—even if my own life was at stake—and I am confident, if I thought a man would shoot me—I would give him a chance of keeping his life, and would part with my own; but if I knew that through him innocent persons' lives were at stake, I certainly would have to shoot him if he forced me to do so; but I would want to know that he was really going to take my innocent life.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

Sentencing (1880)

Life, Death, Men, World

“Wherever there was a group of people, and a treasure to be administered, there Peter knew was backbiting and scandal and intriguing and spying, and a chance for somebody whose brains were "all there."”

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist

Section 2
100%: the Story of a Patriot (1920)

People

“Some of the beliefs and legends bequethed to us by Antquity are so universally and firmly established that we have become accustomed to consider them as being almost as ancient as humanity itself. Nevertheless we are tempted to inquire how far the fact that some of these beliefs and legends have so many features in common is due to chance, and wether the similarity between them may not point to the exestience of an ancient, totally unknown and unsuspected civilization of which all other traces have disappeared.”

Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) chemist and physicist from England

As quoted in Morning of the Magicians (1963) by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Berger, p. 181

Universe

“It is incredible that only idiots are absolutely sure of salvation. It is incredible that the more brain you have the less your chance is. There can be no danger in honest thought, and if the world ever advances beyond what it is to-day, it must be led by men who express their real opinions.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Great Infidels (1881)

Men, World

“To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Providence and Improvidence, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

God, Way

“Third Theory.—According to this theory, there is nothing in the whole Universe… that is due to chance; everything is the result of will, intention, and rule. It is a matter of course that he who rules must know. The Mohametan Ashariyah adhere to this theory, notwithstanding evident absurdities implied in it. …The Ashariyah were therefore compelled to assume that motion and rest of living beings are predestined, and that it is not in the power of a man to do a certain thing or to leave it undone. …It follows also from this theory, that precepts are perfectly useless, since the people to whom any law is given… can neither do what they are commanded nor abstain from what they are forbidden. …According to this theory, it must also be assumed that the actions of God have no final cause. All these absurdities are admitted by the Ashariyah for the purpose of saving this theory.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17

God, People, Law, Universe

“We figure to ourselves
The thing we like; and then we build it up,
As chance will have it, on the rock or sand,—
For thought is tired of wandering o’er the world,
And homebound Fancy runs her bark ashore.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Act I, sc. 5.
Philip van Artevelde (1834)

World

“The easiest and most popular way of practically refuting… any Fallacy is, by bringing forward a parallel case, where it leads to a manifest absurdity. A metaphysical objection may still be urged against many cases in which we thus reason from calculation of chances; an objection not likely indeed practically to influence any one, but which may afford the Sophist a triumph over those who are unable to find a solution.”

Richard Whately (1787–1863) English rhetorician, logician, economist, and theologian

Source: Elements of Rhetoric (1828), p. 52-53

Way

“If I laugh just a little bit
Maybe I can forget the chance
That I didn’t have to know you
And live in peace, in peace”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

If I Laugh
Song lyrics, Teaser and the Firecat (1971)

Peace, Forgetting

“A chance remark by Ardini, an Italian master carver whom I met there [in Rome], that 'marble changes colour under different people's hands' made me decide immediately that it was not dominance which one had to attain over material, but an understanding, almost a kind of persuasion, and above all greater co-ordination between head and hand. This thought has recurred again and again ever since - and has developed my greatest interests; the reason why people both move differently and stand differently in direct response to changed surroundings; the unconscious grouping of people when they are working together, producing a spatial movement which approximates to the structure of spirals in shells or rhythms in crystal structure; the meaning of the spaces between forms, or the shape of the displacement of forms in space, which in themselves have a most precise significance. All these responses spring from a factual and tactile approach to the object.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Extract from Barbara Hepworth: Carvings and Drawings, (from Chapter 1: The excitement of discovering the nature of carving, 1903-1930), with an introduction by Herbert Read, London, 1952
1947 - 1960

People, Spring, Understanding, Change

“My father never missed a drink in his life. Or a joint. Or a party. Or a chance to get laid. He also never missed a day of work, or a house payment, or a car payment. I never went hungry, although he did a couple of times so I wouldn't. This is a man who survived four heart attacks. The doctors revoked his organ donor card and issued him a "Hazardous Waste" decal.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Norman Rockwell is Bleeding (2004)

Life, Cars, Drink, Time

“Sometimes, and in particular dealing with a dictator, the only chance of peace is a readiness for war.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour conference in Blackpool, 2 October 2002. Perhaps echoes an old latin proverb, Si vis pacem, para bellum (If you want peace, be prepared for war).
2000s

War, Peace

“One striking characteristic of modern education is the unanimous disapproval of exploiting the powerful feeling of shame. … Yet in ancient education, e. g. in the Socratic dialogs, this very arousal of shame is a chief device; the teacher greets the hot flush as a capital sign that the youth is educable, he has noble aims. Such a youth has dignity in his very shame.
The difference seems to be that we cannot offer available opportunities for honor, we do not have them; and therefore we must protect what shreds of dignity the youth has. Since he has no future, if we make him ashamed of his past and present, he is reduced to nothing. In other ages, the community had plenty of chances of honor, and to belong to the community itself was an honor.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 149.

Youth, Age, Education, Feeling

“She has a 101 percent chance of surviving. She will not die. She does not have that permission from me.”

Peter Rhee (1961) American surgeon

As trauma chief of the University Medical Center at Tucson after treating Representative Gabrielle Giffords [Doctor: Giffords has '101 percent chance' of surviving, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41018273/ns/health-health_care/, MSNBC, January 11, 2011, 2011-01-12]

“Before you can escape from your burrow you must know you are trapped. Then there's a chance.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

“Although "jumping to conclusions" is an expression, rather than an activity, it is as dangerous as jumping off a cliff, jumping in front of a moving train, and jumping for joy. If you jump off a cliff, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful landing unless there is something below you to cushion your fall, such as a body of water or an immense pile of tissue paper. If you jump in front of a moving train, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful voyage unless you are wearing some sort of train-proof suit. And if you jump for joy, you have a very good chance of experiencing a painful bump on the head, unless you make sure you are standing someplace with very high ceilings, which joyous people rarely do. Clearly, the solution to anything involving jumping is either to make sure you are jumping to a safe place, or not to jump at all.”

Daniel Handler book The Vile Village

Lemony Snicket
The Vile Village (2001)

Pain, People, Water, Joy

“A throw of the dice will never abolish chance.”

Stéphane Mallarmé Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard

Un Coup de Dés Jamais N'Abolira Le Hasard
Title of poem (1897), as quoted in Mallarmé's Un coup de dés : An Exegesis (1949) by Robert Greer Cohn.
Observations

“You know I need a dream
Like I need my breath
We need to take the life
Before we get the death
You know I need your love
Like I need the light
Yes I need the chance
Can it be tonight?”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Short Stories
Song lyrics, Short Stories (1974)

Love, Life, Death, Dreams

“I confidently predict the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of history. Something will go wrong in the machinery that converts money into money, the banking system will collapse totally, and we will be left having to barter to stay alive. Those who can dig in their garden will have a better chance than the rest. I'll be all right; I've got a few veg.”

Margaret Drabble (1939) Novelist, biographer and critic

The Guardian, January 2, 1993.

Money, Confidence, History

“It might seem daunting to think that effort and chance, as much as innate talent, are what counts. But I find it encouraging because, while our genetic makeup is out of our control, our degree of effort is up to us. And the effects of chance, too, can be controlled to the extent that by committing ourselves to repeated attempts, we can increase our odds of success.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 8, The Order In Chaos, p. 162

Thinking, Effort, Success

““Any chance you own a hijab?”
The answer was no, but Malika could borrow one. Come to that, she could steal one freshly washed off the wall behind her house and claim a sudden, God-inspired attack of modesty if she got caught. The old crows were quite stupid enough to believe that.”

Jon Courtenay Grimwood (1953) British writer

Source: Stamping Butterflies (2004), Chapter 53 (p. 323)

God, Stupidity, Housing

“I have long believed that an experimentalist should not be unduely inhibited by theoretical untidyness. If he insists in having every last theoretical T crossed before he starts his research the chances are that he will never do a significant experiment. And the more significant and fundamental the experiment the more theoretical uncertainty may be tolerated. By contrast, the more important and difficult the experiment the more that experimental care is warranted. There is no point in attempting a half-hearted experiment with an inadequate apparatus.”

Robert H. Dicke (1916–1997) American astronomer

as quoted by

Heart

“When people are eating meat, I think of it as a bit like smoking. It’s sort of Russian roulette. You may not get diabetes, but your chances of getting diabetes, about 1 in 3. You may not get cancer, but, your chances, if you’re a man, about 1 in 2. A woman, 1 in 3. Your chances of gaining weight, 2 out of 3. It’s not all diet, but, most of it is. The best thing that you can do to make sure that you empty all those bullets out of the chamber and not taking a risk with your health is to get the animal products out of your diet and eat healthy foods.”

Neal D. Barnard (1953) American physician, author, and clinical researcher

Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

People, Health, Food, Thinking

“Getting my first chance to play in front of crowds like that, situations like that, is going to be huge for us going on. We have a lot of young guys on this team, and getting as far as we did is going to be beneficial down the road for us.”

Aaron Judge (1992) American baseball player

quoted by Newsday https://www.newsday.com/sports/aaron-judge-makes-spectacular-catch-but-falls-short-at-the-plate-in-yankees-game-7-loss-1.14574441

Guy

“If you score first, you have a 75 per cent chance of not losing the game. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to work out that you have to get off to a good start and score.”

Phil Brown (footballer) (1959) English association football player and manager

06-Mar-2007, Hull City OWS
It's maths, not rocket science.

Game

“[P]robability as a measurable degree of certainty; necessity and chance; moral versus mathematical expectation; a priori an a posteriori probability; expectation of winning when players are divided according to dexterity; regard of all available arguments, their valuation, and their calculable evaluation; law of large numbers…”

Jacob Bernoulli book Ars Conjectandi

Ars Conjectandi (1713)

Law, Mathematics

“He was just a young man who'd come to town on a donkey, bored to death or something, who'd taken advantage of the chance to be entertained by a small-town kid who was bored to death, too. That's the only way I could figure it out without accepting the general theory that he was crazy.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

"Locomotive 38, the Ojibway" (1940)

Death, Way

“Judy: [yelling at defendant, who is being sued for bleaching plaintiff's clothes and has just cursed at plaintiff in court] LISTEN TO ME!!! Where do you think you are? You think you're on Springer? [audience laughs] You're NOT! You're NOT! You wanna go to a therapist, go someplace else---
Defendant: No, I don't need a therapist.
Judy: Listen to me!
Defendant: I don't need to see a therapist… [continues trying to talk over Judy]
Judy: Only one person is going to have--only one… judgment for the plaintiff in the amount of $5000! Your counterclaim is dismissed!
Defendant: Excuse me? No! What about my computer? But what about my computer? But what about my computer?
Judy: [getting up to walk off the set] That's all. Your counterclaim is dismissed.
Defendant: …and you just gonna walk away like that? That don't even make no sense! What about my computer, I don't get no chance to say nothin'…
Judy: [over defendant's continued protests] I told you - I told you: it's my playpen, I have the word. Goodbye, go someplace else!”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1cYWq1bm_Q
Dialogue

Thinking, Sense, Personality, Clothes

“It is very difficult to be wise (through the mind); it is not difficult to be wise occasionally and by chance, but it is difficult to be wise assiduously and by choice.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“If the pages of this book contain some successful verse, the reader must excuse me the discourtesy of having usurped it first. Our nothingness differs little; it is a trivial and chance circumstance that you should be the reader of these exercises and I their author.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"To the Reader" ["A quien leyere"], preface to Fervor of Buenos Aires [Fervor de Buenos Aires] (1923)

Books, Exercises, Success

“When effort is needed, effort will appear. When effortlessness becomes essential, it will assert itself. You need not push life about. Just flow with it and give yourself completely to the task of the present moment, (…) Don’t be afraid, don’t resist, don’t delay. Be what you are. There is nothing to be afraid of. Trust and try. Experiment honestly. Give your real being a chance to shape your life. You will not regret.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Present moment
Source: I am That, P.140.

Life, Effort, Appearance

“The first 'Colour charts' were unsystematic. They were based directly on commercial colour samples. They were still related to Pop Art. In the canvases that followed, the colours were chosen arbitrarily and drawn by chance. Then, 180 tones were mixed according to a given system and drawn by chance to make four variations of 180 tones. But after that the number 180 seemed too arbitrary to me, so I developed a system based on a number of rigorously defined tones and proportions... Based on mixtures of the three primary colours, along with black and white, I come up with a certain number of possible colours and, by multiplying these by two or four, I obtain a definite number of colour fields that I multiply yet again by two, etc. But the complete realization of this project demands a great deal of time and work.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote on Richter's 'Colour Charts', in an interview with Irmeline Lebeer, 1973; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: on 'Colour-charts' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/subjects-2/colour-charts-8 1970's

Art, Time

““Now here is a treasure, Averroës Commentaries on Aristotle in a tolerable translation from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona.” He lasciviously stroked the red leather boards, knowing well how his pupil ached for the chance to pore through it. “A liar’s gloss on a liar’s lies. Surely this is a rare criminal.””

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 1, “Trinity” (p. 7)

“Dialogue in Hell:
Fourth Dialogue
There are tremendous populations riveted to labor by poverty, as they were in other times by slavery. What difference, I ask you, do your fictions make to their happiness? Your great political movement has after all only ended in the triumph of a minority privileged by chance as the ancient nobility was by birth. What difference does it make to the proletariat bent over in its labor, weighted down by the heaviness of its destiny, that some orators have the right to speak, that some journalists have the right to write? You have created rights which will be purely academic for the mass of the people, since it cannot make use of them. These rights, of which the law permits him the ideal enjoyment and necessity refuses him the actual exercise, are the people only a bitter irony of defeat.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Happiness, People, Law, Exercises

“You all should feel angry tonight, very angry, because yet again the legal system in this country has let you down. A court has ruled that a man who committed a ghastly crime against a little girl should walk free and unsupervised. The details are distasteful, but you should know. Hans Lester Watt abducted and raped a three-year-old girl. The 42-year-old was drunk when he took the toddler, and assulted her so badly, she needed medical attention. He said it was revenge, to get back at the innocent little girl's grandmother, whom he claimed had insulted his dead mother. Watt was jailed for 11 years. When due for release last year, the Queensland Attorney-General, understandably, applied to have him classified as a dangerous sexual offender. That meant his jail term could be extended, or at least he'd be released with a supervision order. Remember, this was a three-year-old girl. The court refused the request. The judge found the circumstances were "unique" — that Watt was not an unacceptable risk. Well, I agree it was unique — thank God the rape of a three-year-old doesn't happen often in this country. A psychiatrist said the chances of Watt re-offending were low if he did not drink alcohol, moderate if he did drink, and said the best chance of rehabilitation was if he lived in a dry Aboriginal community. The Attorney-General appealed the judge's decision. Well, yesterday, the Supreme Court turned him down, upheld the earlier ruling that let the child rapist walk free — unsupervised. My mantra for years has been "Who's looking after the children?" In my opinion, the Queensland Supreme Court certainly is not — this decision was a travesty.”

Derryn Hinch (1944) New Zealand–Australian media personality

Today Tonight, 24 April 2013.

God, Children, Alcohol, Feeling

“Yahtzee was born in Warwickshire, England, on the day of the great storm of 1983. Twenty years later, when England had become too small to accommodate the five hundred kilometre-wide tumour growing out of the back of his neck, he moved to Brisbane, Australia, where a chance encounter with an enraged surfer caused the tumour to become detached. It has now gone on to star in a number of Japanese fetish videos, while Yahtzee occupies a treehouse on the edge of the city, struggling to learn how to live with corks around his hat. The enraged surfer tries to keep in touch, but Yahtzee never answers his phone.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

About page http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/about.htm Fully Ramblomatic

Star, Learning

“I’ve found that volunteer work can enrich one’s life providing balance and perspective. Indeed, the WJC was probably the most important thing to me outside of Seagram, offering a chance to develop aspects of my personality.”

Edgar Bronfman, Sr. (1929–2013) Canadian-American businessman

Good Spirits.

Life, Personality

“There are two things that kill a genius — a fatal disease and contentment. When a man is contented he goes to sleep. Voltaire had no chance to be contented, and so he wrote eternally and unceasingly, more than any other man in the history of the world.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Voltaire (1916)

World, Disease, History, Sleep

“I've come out here tonight to challenge you… challenge you, the WWE Universe, into seeing things my way and to learn how to just say "no." See, because the people who cheer for Jeff Hardy are just slaves to the vices associated with his (with quote fingers) "living in the moment." I feel bad for you, I really do. You walk around almost blind and you wear your prescriptions proudly on your sleeves like they were badges of honor. What was it the doctor told you? 'Just take one… every four hours,' right? Aside from myself, there's not a person in this arena who hasn't abused prescription medication or taken a recreational drug. And I know, trust me, it's hard being straight-edge, it's hard to live a straight-edge lifestyle. It's extremely difficult to be me, but what concerns me now is that none of you realize how much more difficult it is to live the life… that you all live. I'm positive nobody in here takes into account the long-term consequences of alcohol on your liver. (Smattering of cheers from audience) See, and you cheer that. That's nothing to cheer. You drink because it's fun, right? (Audience cheers a little louder) Eventually, it's not gonna be fun anymore when it spirals out of control and its no longer… it's no longer fun. Sooner or later, you're just drinking to feel normal. And then there's the smokers. You know, I don't know what's more disgusting–is watching a smoker pollute his/her lungs with over 4,000 foreign chemicals, or having to listen to the smoker convince themselves that they can quit whenever they want to. It's… it's hard to quit, I know, it takes a very strong person to quit, but an even stronger person never would've started smoking in the first place. (Audience boos and chants "Hardy") I didn't want to come out here and be the bearer of bad news, but let's face facts: chances are pretty slim that any of you here will ever get the monkey off your back. You'll never be able to pry the cigarette from your lips, or find the self-control to pour your drink from your glass, or the self-respect to take the pill out of your mouth. See, it starts, and it can't happen without learning how to say "no" to temptation, and that's why I'm out here. I'm out here to challenge you before it's too late. Please, learn how to say "no" to temptation, learn how to say "no" to your vices, learn how to control yourself.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

July 24, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Life, People, Alcohol, Way

“I volunteered for a number of reasons. One of these, quite frankly, was that I thought this was a chance for immortality. Pioneering in space was something I would willingly give my life for.”

Scott Carpenter (1925–2013) American test pilot, astronaut and aquanaut

Statement in We Seven (1962)

Life

“From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should become a citizen. I insisted that there was no safety for him or for anybody else in America outside the American government; that to guard, protect, and maintain his liberty the freedman should have the ballot; that the liberties of the American people were dependent upon the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box; that without these no class of people could live and flourish in this country; and this was now the word for the hour with me, and the word to which the people of the North willingly listened when I spoke. Hence, regarding as I did the elective franchise as the one great power by which all civil rights are obtained, enjoyed, and maintained under our form of government, and the one without which freedom to any class is delusive if not impossible, I set myself to work with whatever force and energy I possessed to secure this power for the recently-emancipated millions.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/dougl92/dougl92.html (1892), p. 460. 1890s, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892)

People, Freedom, Dependency, Country

“The usual people tried to claim responsibility.
First the IRA, then the PLO and the Gas Board. Even British Nuclear Fuels rushed out a statement to the effect that the situation was completely under control, that it was a one in a million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all, and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic, before finally having to admit that it wasn't actually anything to do with them at all.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 2

People

“It’s clear that the Democratic Party believes a radical left candidate is their best chance to win the White House this year. Hillary’s just a little bit too sane. Under the bus with her.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

May 31, 2008 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30149_The_First_Notes_of_Hillarys_Swan_Song&only

Housing

“Man, whence is he? / Too bad to be the work of a god, too good for the work of chance.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 61; usually attributed to Doris Lessing in the form: "Man — who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!"
Misattributed

God

“Spade pulled his hand out of hers. He no longer either smiled or grimaced. His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes burned madly. He said: "Listen. This isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around – bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. … Fourth, no matter what I wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I've no reason in God's world to think I can trust you and if I did this and got away with it you'd have something on me that you could use whenever you happened to want to. That's five of them. The sixth would be that, since I've got something on you, I couldn't be sure you wouldn't decide to shoot a hole in *me* some day. Seventh, I don't even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you'd played me for a sucker. And eighth – but that's enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won't argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we've got what? All we've got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you." … "But suppose I do? What of it? Maybe next month I won't. I've been through it before – when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I'll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over then I'd be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you over I'll be sorry as hell – I'll have some rotten nights – but that'll pass. Listen." He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning over her. "If that doesn't mean anything to you forget it and we'll make it this: I won't because all of me wants to – wants to say to hell with the consequences and do it -- and because – God damn you – you've counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others. … Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business – bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy. … Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales."”

Dashiell Hammett book The Maltese Falcon

… Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: "I won't play the sap for you."
Chap. 20, "If They Hang You"
spoken by the character "Sam Spade" to "Brigid O'Shaughnessy."
The Maltese Falcon (1930)

Love, Money, God, World

“[Glossary of Broken Dreams] was born out of the frustration that debate culture (not only) on digital platforms has become radically fragmented and fractalized, making it hard to call it discourse. It's a Tower of Babel-like context confusion that pleases me as a nerd, but as a political being who wants society to progress, it doesn't please me at all. […] I just thought it was time for something like a political spring cleaning of concepts. Because picking up the broom and taking a chance to get rid of stuff is the only way to prevent us all from becoming social liberal hoarders. One of my examples is the concept of privacy that, at the moment, everyone coddles like a puppy. Let me say this, as a good old Neo-leftist, I'm having problems with the conservative and deeply bourgeois can of worms that the privacy debate entails. I think it's time to change our thought patterns here. Instead of trying to find ways to defend our privacy come hell or high water, we should ask ourselves why privacy is such a major concern for us? Is what we're trying to achieve here just reformist symptom-control rather than a solution to the underlying problems?”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

from an interview about Grenzfurthner's film Glossary of Broken Dreams (via Boing Boing https://boingboing.net/2018/05/24/at-the-golden-calf-slaughterho.html)

Dreams, Way, Spring, Hell