Quotes about probability
page 28

“I think they’re getting more visible. The fight is getting louder. I don’t know if it’s getting better for everyone, for those that are already in the limelight and have gotten their break, probably.”

Simisola Kosoko (1988) Nigerian singer and songwriter

Source: https://notjustok.com/article/interviews/simi-in-conversation-with-notjustok-for-womens-history-month/ Simi talking about Women in the music industry

Thinking, Fight

“We'll probably just execute them. You don't have to support the government, but you should report the truth.”

Prayut Chan-o-cha (1954) Thai military officer, junta chief, and politician

Source: On how the government would deal with journalists who did not adhere to the government's laws https://web.archive.org/web/20210316002628/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand-junta-media-idUSKBN0ML0RV20150325 (25 March 2015)

Support, Truth

“We need to teach, preach, impact love and compassion into the world. Too much bitterness, No love for one another. If only we could be more compassionate towards one another, more kind and thoughtful ,this world be probably be a better place”

Ini Edo (1982) Nollywood actress

Source: https://quotes.ng/mobile/author.php?title=ini-edo&id=1873

World, Love

“Korea was probably the high point of my whole career as far as real gratification is concerned.”

James Robinson Risner (1925–2013) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Source: "Nine Feet Tall" in Air Force Magazine https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0212tall/ (1 February 2012)

“It cannot be said that we didn't show good will, moderation, patience, sometimes there probably was too much of it ... the initiative of the great national understanding was backed by millions of Poles.”

Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923–2014) Polish military officer and politician

Source: Excerpts of Martial law speech (14 December 1981)

Understanding, Patience

“If forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy that will almost certainly kill her is impermissible, how different... to compel... a pregnancy that will probably shorten her life? Or... that will leave her life in shambles?”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

Life

“I probably seem quite at ease now saying I’m mixed race, I’m black, I’m Zambian, but for a while that was quite torturous, quite angsty. As a young woman I wasn’t very tender or nice to myself…Now I’m older, I’m much more able to be tender and kind to the younger me that I see in the book.”

Namwali Serpell (1980) Zambian feminist academic and writer

Source: On coming to terms with her mixed race identity in “Namwali Serpell: 'As a young woman I wasn’t very nice to myself'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/30/namwali-serpell-the-old-drift-interview in The Guardian (2019 Apr 30)

Books

“This is a kindness, a thing done to another human being for no reason other than compassion. A private, dignified act of basic human decency, which history, being the bastard that it is, will probably neglect to commemorate.”

Alastair Reynolds book On the Steel Breeze

Source: On the Steel Breeze (2013), Chapter 28 (p. 304)

History

“Happy species endowed with infinite appreciation of pleasures and low sensitivity to pain would probably not survive the evolutionary battle.”

Amos Tversky (1937–1996) Israeli psychologist

attributed, but source not available.

Pain, Happiness, Pleasure

“There isn’t a right way to be educated; there are as many ways as there are fingerprints. We don't need state-certified teachers to make education happen — that probably guarantees it won't.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

"I Quit, I Think" (1991)

Teachers, Way, Education

“Probably one of the most completely misunderstood of all modern institutions is militarism. While military organizations take their origin in man's lust for war, militarism is something more than a mere war machine. By militarism I mean that institution in which the nation maintains large national armies and navies in time of peace, usually raised on the principle of conscription.”

John Thomas Flynn (1882–1964) American journalist

Source: As We Go Marching (1944), p. 98-99

War, Peace, Time

“Because physical theories typically predict numerical values, an improvement in experimental precision reduces the tolerance range and hence increases corroborability. In most psychological research, improved power of a statistical design leads to a prior probability approaching ½ of finding a significant difference in the theoretically predicted direction. Hence the corroboration yielded by "success" is very weak, and becomes weaker with increased precision. "Statistical significance" plays a logical role in psychology precisely the reverse of its role in physics. This problem is worsened by certain unhealthy tendencies prevalent among psychologists, such as a premium placed on experimental "cuteness" and a free reliance upon ad hoc explanations to avoid refutation.”

Paul E. Meehl (1920–2003) American psychologist

Source: [Theory-testing in psychology and physics: A methodological paradox, Philosophy of Science, 34, 2, 1967, 103–115, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/288135]

Problem, Success

“It is known that very distant nebulae, probably galactic systems like our own, show remarkably high receding velocities whose magnitude increases with the distance. This curious phenomenon promises to provide some important clues for the future development of our cosmological views. It maybe of advantage, therefore, to point out some of the principal facts which any cosmological theory will have to account for. Then a brief discussion will be given of different theoretical suggestions related to the above effect. Finally, a new effect of masses upon light will be suggested which is a sort of gravitational analogue of the Compton effect.”

Fritz Zwicky (1898–1974) Swiss astronomer

Source: Fritz Zwicky, [On the redshift of spectral lines through interstellar space, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 15, 10, 1929, 773–779, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC522555/] (quote from p. 773)

Light, Distant, Future

“I've come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us... I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children's power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), pp. xxxiii-xxxiv

Dependency, Nature, Thinking, Children

“There isn't a right way to become educated; there are as many ways as fingerprints. We don't need state-certified teachers to make education happen – that probably guarantees it won't... We don't need a national curriculum or national testing either. Both initiatives arise from ignorance of how people learn or deliberate indifference to it.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Source: "I Quit, I Think" (1991)

People, Learning, Teachers, Education

“But you can't just stand there and try to judge
It hurts but your jealousy probably tears you up inside as much
And it's such a pleasure every button that I touch
I treasure every glutton that I punish in my lust”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Stimulate" (from 8 Mile, 2002)
2000s

Hurt, Pleasure, Tear, Jealousy

“Very little is 100% true or 100% untrue – most beliefs exist on a spectrum of probability. Therefore, learning to think in terms of probabilities instead of absolutes may be one of the most effective upgrades to your thinking.”

Unknown author

Learning, Thinking

“It was fairly evident that at least 90 per cent of all magic, probably more, was balderdash and sheer mystification.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Waldo

Waldo (p. 186)
Short fiction, The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein (1999)

“Some people are not much more than herd animals, which rot together when the world becomes uncomfortable… I am not one of them. If I had a motto, it would probably be: The herd over there, I here”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

translated from Norwegian with google <br class="br">Source: Kranglefant på nettet https://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/kranglefant-pa-nettet/65497877 (Publisert lørdag 09. januar 1999 - 09:18)

Animals, World, People

“But with every job I’ve done that I’ve really enjoyed, I’ve never really ‘seen’ myself in it. If you can see yourself in something, you’ve probably already worked out your performance or the why. But if there’s that friction, then it means you’re going to come up with something new.”

Jonathan Bailey (1988) British actor

"Jonathan Bailey: Why romance is such serious business for Jonathan Bailey" in the Los Angeles Times https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2022-05-24/jonathan-bailey-viscount-anthony-bridgerton (24 May 2022)

“Petronius once told me that pathological murderers tend to start their killing sprees while they are children. Find a man who takes prostitutes off the streets as a personal vocation, and he'll probably have a set of neat jars with his childhood collection of dissected rats.”

Lindsey Davis book Nemesis

Nemesis (2010)

Childhood, Personality, Children

“Even if I knew ancient warfare, which I don’t, they probably have their own strategies here.”

Catherine Asaro Saga of the Skolian Empire

“The strategy is the same everywhere,” she muttered. “Kill.”
Source: Saga of the Skolian Empire, Skyfall (2003), Chapter 11, “Warlords of the Snow” (p. 134)

“I see the significance of the Marshall Plan in the fact that probably for the first time in history a victorious country held out its hand so that the vanquished might rise again.”

Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967) German statesman, Federal Chancellor of Germany, politician (CDU)

Oral History Interview with Konrad Adenauer https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/oral-histories/adenauer (10 June 1964), Harry S. Truman Library

Time, History, Country, Victory

“Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in psychology. It is the word "maladjusted."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Certainly we all want to live the well adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities. But I must honestly say to you tonight my friends that there are some things in our world, there are some things in our nation to which I'm proud to be maladjusted, to which I call upon all men of goodwill to be maladjusted until the good society is realized. I must honestly say to you that I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism and the self defeating effects of physical violence.
1960s, Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965)

“Our country, our nation is built by two institutions, the state and the language. A language whose epicenter today is no longer on these banks of the Seine, but probably much more towards the Congo River basin.”

Emmanuel Macron (1977) 25th President of the French Republic

Macron lashes out at Zemmour: “Our identity is not built on narrow-mindedness" https://palnws.be/2021/09/macron-haalt-uit-naar-zemmour-onze-identiteit-is-niet-gebouwd-op-bekrompenheid/ <br class="br">2017, 2021

Country

“No one can possess what we call good judgement, which is about the same thing as an instinct for recognizing Reasonable Probabilities, whose mind is not trained to follow truth. And in many of the most important things of life. Reasonable Probabilities are our only guides.”

Victor Hope, 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow (1887–1952) British politician, agriculturalist and colonial administrator (1887-1952)

12 September 1936, Advice to the pupils of the Bishop Cotton School, Simla, also quoted in Speeches and Statements of the Marquess of Linlithgow, p. 19-20

Truth, Training, Life

“However, as one or another of the philosophers has probably noted ere now, the morning was not quite over yet.”

Lin Carter book Kesrick

Source: Kesrick (1982), Chapter 13, “Wed and Widowed” (p. 86)