“Chance is as relentless as necessity.”
Simon Blackburn (1944) British academic philosopher
Source: Think (1999), Chapter Three, Free Will, p. 85
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Mark Twain637
American author and humorist 1835–1910Related quotes
“Mothers are the necessity of invention.”
Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist
“Necessity, the mother of invention.”
George Farquhar (1677–1707) Irish dramatist
The Twin Rivals (1702), Act i. Compare: "Necessity is the mother of invention", Wycherly, Love in a Wood (1672), act iii. sc. 3.; "Art imitates Nature, and necessity is the mother of invention", Richard Franck, Northern Memoirs (written in 1658, printed in 1694); "Magister artis ingenique largitor Venter" (translated: "Hunger is the teacher of the arts and the bestower of invention"), Persius, Prolog., line 10.
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
Commonly misattributed due to Benjamin Jowett's popular idiomatic translation (1871) of Plato's Republic, Book II, 369c as "The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention." Jowett's translation is noted for injecting flowery, if not florid, language familiar to his Victorian era audience. (See "Note on the Translation", by Elizabeth Watson Scharffenberger, ed., in Republic (2005), Spark Educational Publishing, ISBN 1593080972, p. liii http://books.google.com/books?id=9FLdTCiaI_MC&pg=PR53.) Jowett himself, in Plato's Republic: The Greek Text, Vol. III "Notes", 1894, p. 82, gives a literal translation of Plato as "our need will be the real creator," without the proverbial flourish. The Greek text is: ποιήσει δὲ αὐτήν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἡ ἡμετέρα χρεία. Perseus.tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0167%3Abook%3D2%3Asection%3D369c <br class="br">Misattributed
“Necessity, the mother of invention.”
William Wycherley (1640–1716) English dramatist of the Restoration period
Love in a Wood (1671), Act III, scene 3. (This was already a common proverb before Wycherley, cf. Invention, Necessity.)
“Revolutions are not born of chance but of necessity.”
Victor Hugo book Les Misérables
Source: Les Misérables
“Necessity is the mother of all invention.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
“Invention is the mother of all necessities.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …
1970s, The argument: causality in the electric world (1973)
“Chance is necessity hidden behind a veil.”
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer
Der Zufall ist die in Schleier gehüllte Notwendigkeit.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 20.
“Art imitates Nature, and Necessity is the Mother of Invention.”
Richard Franck (1858–1938) German composer
Northern Memoirs, written in 1658 and published in 1694 along with another work by Franck, The Contemplative and Practical Angler