Quotes about a chance
page 16

Craig Ferguson photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Cass Elliot photo
Pierre Schaeffer photo

“People who try to create a musical revolution do not have a chance, but those who turn their back to music can sometimes find it.”

Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995) French musicologist

Electronic Musician magazine, December 1986
Interviews

“As we survey the various stages of evolution, from the simplest one-cell creatures up to man. we see a steady improvement in the methods of learning and adaptation to a hostile world. Each step in learning ability gives better adaptation and greater chance of survival. We are carried a long way up the scale by innate reflexes and rudimentary muscular learning faculties. Habits indeed, not rational thought, assist us to surmount most of life's obstacles. Most, but by no means all; for learning in the high mammals exhibits the unexplained phenomenon of "insight," which shows itself by sudden changes in behavior in learning situations -- in sudden departures from one method of organizing a task, or solving a problem, to another. Insight, expectancy, set, are the essentially "mind-like" attributes of communication, and it is these, together with the representation of concepts, which require physiological explanation. At the higher end of the scale of evolution, this quality we call "mind" appears more and more prominently, but it is at our own level that learning of a radically new type has developed -- through our powers of organizing thoughts, comparing and setting them into relationship, especially with the use of language. We have a remarkable faculty of forming generalizations, of recognizing universals, of associating and developing them. It is our multitude of general concepts, and our powers of organizing them with the aid of language in varied ways, which forms the backbone of human communication, and which distinguises us from the animals.”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: Hebb, D. O., The Organization of Behavior, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1949.
Source: On Human Communication (1957), On Cognition and Recognition, p. 304

Herman Melville photo
W. Somerset Maugham photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Samuel Butler photo
N. R. Narayana Murthy photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Dylan Moran photo
Tom Brady photo
David Dixon Porter photo
Mike Oldfield photo
Leonard Mlodinow photo
Roberto Clemente photo
George H. W. Bush photo

“This is an historic moment. We have in this past year made great progress in ending the long era of conflict and cold war. We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U. N.'s founders. We have no argument with the people of Iraq. Indeed, for the innocents caught in this conflict, I pray for their safety.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

WAR IN THE GULF: THE PRESIDENT; Transcript of the Comments by Bush on the Air Strikes Against the Iraqis http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE2DF1F3AF934A25752C0A967958260 The New York Times. January 17, 1991 (NYT transcript of Bush speech from the Oval office January 16, 1991, (Eastern time) two hours after air strikes began in Iraq and Kuwait.)

Marcus Aurelius photo
Ernie Banks photo

“You must try to generate happiness within yourself. If you aren't happy in one place, chances are you won't be happy anyplace.”

Ernie Banks (1931–2015) American baseball player and coach

George Bush Presidential Library and Museum :: Born to Play Ball – Shortstops, George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, 2008-12-09 http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/exhibits/2008-born_to_play_ball/shortstops.php,

Robert Baden-Powell photo
M. K. Hobson photo
Bill Gates photo

“Life is not fair. Get used to it… Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Though widely attributed to Gates on the internet, this list of life suggestions is actually based on one from Charles J. Sykes. More information at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/language/document/liferule.htm
Misattributed

Averroes photo
John Muir photo
Marcus Orelias photo

“I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such a strain, now is your chance to—Well, we warned you.”

Garrett Fort (1900–1945) screenwriter

Prologue; Edward Van Sloan actually comes out from behind an on-screen curtain to deliver this speech.
Frankenstein (1931)

Michael Badnarik photo
Amir Taheri photo
Glenn Beck photo
Newton Lee photo
Dave Matthews photo

“Take these chances
Place them in a box until a quieter time
Lights down, you up and die.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Ants Marching
Remember Two Things (1993)

Nina Kiriki Hoffman photo
John Pilger photo

“The censorship is such on television in the US that films like mine don't stand a chance.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

(2002) [author, http://www.sprword.com/mustwatch.html, Must Watch - Sprword.com - Spread the Word, Sprword.com, 2007-02-13, 2010-01-14]

John Barrowman photo
W. Somerset Maugham photo
Zoran Đinđić photo
Heinrich Heine photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
James Hudson Taylor photo

“One difficulty follows another very fast – but God reigns, not chance.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Five: Refiner’s Fire. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1985, 250).

Erving Goffman photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“Nothing in the many processes of Nature, whether she deals with men or with things, comes by chance or accident or is really at the mercy of external causes.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Renaissance in India (1918)

Phil Brooks photo

“Punk: [after hearing John Laurinaitis propose a WWE Championship match at Survivor Series against Alberto Del Rio] Okay, pardon me for not being all smiles, that's exactly what I want, but… what's the catch? You gonna make it a handicap match, or is Ricardo Rodriguez the special guest referee? No, are you gonna be the special guest ring announcer with your majestic voice?
Laurinaitis: Punk, there's only one thing you have to do.
Punk: There's one thing I have to do… for you. I have to do something for you to get a title shot? Let me guess—I gotta re-grip your skateboard, you need new ball bearings?
Laurinaitis: You know what, Punk? I know you don't like me, okay? And that's okay. I'm not playing the part of Executive Vice President of Talent Relations, I am the Executive Vice President of Talent Relations and the General Manager of Raw. So in order for me to make it official, you need to tell me in front of the WWE Universe that you respect me. Tell me that you respect me.
Punk: Are you Aretha Franklin? You want me to tell these people I respect you when I know clearly that you don't respect me 'cause I don't wear a bourgeois suit and I don't tow the company line? You wanna talk about respect? Respect, Johnny, is earned, it isn't just given. And you're gonna come out here and say that when you're in charge, this place… this place is just oh so run like a tight ship. Have you watched the product? We've got rings collapsing, you got Kevin Nash interfering in every other match of mine; this place isn't any better with you in charge. How's that for respect?
Laurinaitis: Punk, you're about to make a big mistake. Okay, swallow your pride, stand up like a man, and tell me that you respect me.
Punk: Okay. All right. Don't get hot. [Imitating Laurinaitis] I respect you, Funk-man. That all right? Was that good enough?
Laurinaitis: I tell you what, Punk. You've got one more chance to show me and tell me you respect me, and I mean it.
Punk: Okay, Mr. Laurinaitis, sir, Executive Vice President of Talent Relations and interim Raw General Manager. I respect you. I respect the fact that each week, you come out here in front of the millions of fans in the WWE Universe, live on the USA Network, with this awesome, completely lost deer-in-the-headlights look on your face; I respect the fact that you don't know how close to hold the microphone to your mouth when you speak; I respect the fact that you used to compete in this ring with your awesome Kentucky waterfall mullet, and you were never any good, but you somehow still ascended to the top of the WWE corporate structure, showing the world new-found levels of brown-nosery; but above all, I respect the fact that never before in this business has somebody with so little done so much! I respect you! How's that sound?! Does that sound good enough for you?!”

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

October 24, 2011
WWE Raw

Tom Robbins photo
Thomas Wolfe photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Robert Silverberg photo

“Never pass by a chance to shut up.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Source: Short fiction, The Emperor and the Maula (2007), p. 477

William F. Buckley Jr. photo
Jean Baudrillard photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“Plowboy: In your opinion, what are mankind's prospects for the near future?
Asimov: To tell the truth, I don't think the odds are very good that we can solve our immediate problems. I think the chances that civilization will survive more than another 30 years—that it will still be flourishing in 2010—are less than 50 percent.
Plowboy: What sort of disaster do you foresee?
Asimov: I imagine that as population continues to increase—and as the available resources decrease—there will be less energy and food, so we'll all enter a stage of scrounging. The average person's only concerns will be where he or she can get the next meal, the next cigarette, the next means of transportation. In such a universal scramble, the Earth will be just plain desolated, because everyone will be striving merely to survive regardless of the cost to the environment. Put it this way: If I have to choose between saving myself and saving a tree, I'm going to choose me.
Terrorism will also become a way of life in a world marked by severe shortages. Finally, some government will be bound to decide that the only way to get what its people need is to destroy another nation and take its goods … by pushing the nuclear button.
And this absolute chaos is going to develop—even if nobody wants nuclear war and even if everybody sincerely wants peace and social justice—if the number of mouths to feed continues to grow. Nothing will be able to stand up against the pressure of the whole of humankind simply trying to stay alive!”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Jean Paul Sartre photo

“The anti‐Semite understands nothing about modern society. He would be incapable of conceiving of a constructive plan; his action cannot reach the level of the methodical; it remains on the ground of passion. To a long‐term enterprise he prefers an explosion of rage analogous to the running amuck of the Malays. His intellectual activity is confined to interpretation; he seeks in historical events the signs of the presence of an evil power. Out of this spring those childish and elaborate fabrications which give him his resemblance to the extreme paranoiacs. In addition, anti‐Semitism channels evolutionary drives toward the destruction of certain men, not of institutions. An anti‐Semitic mob will consider it has done enough when it has massacred some Jews and burned a few synagogues. It represents, therefore, a safety valve for the owning classes, who encourage it and thus substitute for a dangerous hate against their regime a beneficent hate against particular people. Above all this naive dualism is eminently reassuring to he anti‐Semite himself. If all he has to do is to remove Evil, that means that the Good is already given. He has no need to seek it in anguish, to invent it, to scrutinize it patiently when he has found it, to prove it in action, to verify it by its consequences, or, finally, to shoulder he responsibilities of the moral choice be has made. It is not by chance that the great outbursts of anti‐Semitic rage conceal a basic optimism. The anti‐Semite as cast his lot for Evil so as not to have to cast his lot for Good. The more one is absorbed in fighting Evil, he less one is tempted to place the Good in question. One does not need to talk about it, yet it is always understood in the discourse of the anti‐Semite and it remains understood in his thought. When he has fulfilled his mission as holy destroyer, the Lost Paradise will reconstitute itself. For the moment so many tasks confront the anti‐Semite that he does not have time to think about it. He is in the breach, fighting, and each of his outbursts of rage is a pretext to avoid the anguished search for the Good.”

Pages 31-32
Anti-Semite and Jew (1945)

Hugo Ball photo
Jeanette Winterson photo
Tokyo Sexwale photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Abby Sunderland photo

“I will definitely attempt to sail around the world again. In fact, I can’t wait for the chance to try again.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 197

Mitt Romney photo
Donald Rumsfeld photo

“I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny -- "The sky is falling." I've never seen anything like it! And here is a country that's being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot —one thing after another.
From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it's never been done, everything instantaneously. We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.
Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

DOD news briefing following the fall of Baghdad (11 April 2003) http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030411-secdef0090.html

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor photo
Anatole France photo

“Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when He did not want to sign.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Le hasard, c'est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu, quand il ne veut pas signer. — Théophile Gautier, La Croix de Berny (1845), letter III: Edgard Meilhan au Prince de Monbert http://books.google.com/books?id=3TEtAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA29&dq=%22le+pseudonyme+de+Dieu,+quand+il+ne+veut+pas+signer%22&ei=twPuR9TxGYXaygSI-5mYDg
Misattributed

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Ted Nelson photo
Richard Burton photo
William C. Davis photo

“The South had a far better chance of preserving its institutions and quirks of culture by remaining a part of a larger nation.”

William C. Davis (1946) American historian

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 21

Richard Stallman photo
Statius photo

“So strange is Chance, so blind the purposes of men!”
Pro fors et caeca futuri mens hominum!

Source: Thebaid, Book V, Line 718 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Yoshida Shoin photo
Ernst Kaltenbrunner photo

“Where do you think I was today? I stood straight in front of him (Himmler) for a whole hour and talked, and he… he played with a puzzle the whole time – you know, this glass cube with three balls on the inside… When I finished, he took off his pince-nez, wiped it with a handkerchief – he has a skull even on his handkerchief – and said, "Listen, Ernst! Have you by any chance, ever had a dream, where you're riding in the back of a ragged truck to who knows where, and some monsters are sitting around you?" I didn’t say anything. Then he smiled and said, "Ernst, you know, I know as well as you that no astral exists. But what do you think, if you, and even Canaris, have your own people in 'Annenerbe', shouldn’t I have my own people there as well?" I did not understand what he meant. "Think Ernst, think!" he said. I kept silent. Then he smiled and asked, "Whose man do you think is Kröger?" …Yes, Emma… It seems I'm too simple for all these intrigues… But I know that while the Führer needs me, my heart will keep beating… You know, Emma… Sometimes it seems to me, that it's not me who is alive, but it's the Führer who is living inside me…”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

To Emma, recorded by secret spy listening device WS-M/13 located in Kaltenbrunner's bedroom, 1/14/1935. Quoted in "Kröger's Revelation" - by Viktor Pelevin - 1991 - Page 277

Hillary Clinton photo

“I’ve worked across the aisle to pass laws and treaties and to launch new programs that help millions of people. And if you give me the chance, that’s what I’ll do as President.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

Nigel Cumberland photo

“Unless you think that the majority of people are living successful lives, chances are that at some point you will have to act differently from those around you. Success can take many forms and it is often about standing out from the crowd or being above average, spotting when the crowd moves one way and making sure that you move the other.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Neil Peart photo
Emily Hahn photo

“I have deliberately chosen the uncertain path whenever I had the chance.”

Emily Hahn (1905–1997) American writer

Saturday Review of Literature, March 26, 1955

Robert Oppenheimer photo

“It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

As quoted in Play to Live (1982) by Alan Watts

Gerhard Richter photo
Miguel de Cervantes photo

“I know what's what, and have always taken care of the main chance.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 9.

Koenraad Elst photo
Brian Cox (physicist) photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
Silvio Berlusconi photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Bruce Springsteen photo
Joseph Campbell photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Freeman Dyson photo
David Graeber photo
Andrew Marvell photo
Stewart Lee photo
Larry Bird photo

“I have really enjoyed coaching. It's a great experience. Every player should have the chance to do it. The problem is, I'm not that good at it.”

Larry Bird (1956) basketball player and coach

Peter Vecsey (May 26, 2000) "Looks Like Larry's Indy Mood to Stay", New York Post.

Hugh Plat photo
John Gray photo
Samuel Butler photo

“The turtle obviously had no sense of proportion; it differed so widely from myself that I could not comprehend it; and as this word occurred to me, it occurred also that until my body comprehended its body in a physical material sense, neither would my mind be able to comprehend its mind with any thoroughness. For unity of mind can only be consummated by unity of body; everything, therefore, must be in some respects both knave and fool to all that which has not eaten it, or by which it has not been eaten. As long as the turtle was in the window and I in the street outside, there was no chance of our comprehending one another.
Nevertheless, I knew that I could get it to agree with me if I could so effectually buttonhole and fasten on to it as to eat it. Most men have an easy method with turtle soup, and I had no misgiving but that if I could bring my first premise to bear I should prove the better reasoner. My difficulty lay in this initial process, for I had not with me the argument that would alone compel Mr. Sweeting to think that I ought to be allowed to convert the turtles — I mean I had no money in my pocket. No missionary enterprise can be carried on without any money at all, but even so small a sum as half a crown would, I suppose, have enabled me to bring the turtle partly round, and with many half-crowns I could in time no doubt convert the lot, for the turtle needs must go where the money drives. If, as is alleged, the world stands on a turtle, the turtle stands on money. No money no turtle. As for money, that stands on opinion, credit, trust, faith — things that, though highly material in connection with money, are still of immaterial essence.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

Van Jones photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Bernard Cornwell photo