Not Random Quotes

Live in the space between chaos and shape. I walk the line that continually threatens to lose its tautness under me, dropping me into the dark pit where there is no meaning. At other times the line is so wired that it lights up the soles of my feet, gradually my whole body, until I am my own beacon, and I see then the beauty of newly created worlds, a form that is not random. A new beginning. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Long before there were effective treatments, physicians dispensed prognoses, hope, and, above all, meaning. When something terrible happens-and serious disease is always terrible-people want to know why. In a pantheistic world, the explanation was simple-one god had caused the problem, another could cure it. In the time since people have been trying to get along with only one God, explaining disease and evil has become more difficult. Generations of theologians have wrestled with the problem of theodicy-how can a good God allow such bad things to happen to good people?

Darwinian medicine can't offer a substitute for such explanations. It can't provide a universe in which events are part of a divine plan, much less one in which individual illness reflects individual sins. It can only show us why we are the way we are, why we are vulnerable to certain diseases. A Darwinian view of medicine simultaneously makes disease less and more meaningful. Diseases do not result from random or malevolent forces, they arise ultimately from past natural selection. Paradoxically, the same capacities that make us vulnerable to disease often confer benefits. The capacity for suffering is a useful defense. Autoimmune disease is a price of our remarkable ability to attack invaders. Cancer is the price of tissues that can repair themselves. Menopause may protect the interests of our genes in existing children. Even senescence and death are not random, but compromises struck by natural s ~ Randolph M. Nesse

Don't complain about the problem. It's not random. You're going to need that victory in the future. God is taking you from glory to glory. When you come through this challenge, that victory will be the fuel you use that gets you to the next level of glory. ~ Joel Osteen

That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we're not always so glad to be here, it's our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch. ~ Donna Tartt

I always believed in animal spirits. It's not their existence that is new. It's the fact that they are not random events, but actually replicate in-bred qualities of human nature which create those animal spirits. ~ Alan Greenspan

I really believe this. Souls have a purpose and their energy belongs with a certain other energy. They go where they belong. It's not random… ~ Suanne Laqueur

Success is not random. ~ Lorii Myers

The Journey is not random rambling. It is a deliberate motion toward an End that draws, urges, captures, and seduces you forward. ~ J. Earp

If you truly feel that self esteem and motivation have to happen first before you can make changes in your life, then we'll probably be sharing walkers at a retirement home as we talk over what might have been. ~ Shannon L. Alder

We are pattern seekers, believers in a coherent world, in which regularities appear not by accident but as a result of mechanical causality or of someone´s intention. We do not expect to see regularity produced by a random process, and when we detect what appears to be a rule, we quickly reject the idea that the process is truly random. Random processes produce many sequences that convince people that the process is not random after all. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Both psychics and witches know that the Universe is not random but instead has patterns, cycles, structure, and most of all, meaning. ~ Mat Auryn

finding God or a higher power reminds us that we are not the center of the universe. There is much we don't understand about human existence, and there is order and purpose to it anyway. It helps us feel that our suffering is not random or meaningless." Yet ~ Sheryl Sandberg

Life is not random, for randomness is simply purpose that we've yet to discern. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Human rights violations are nit accidents; they are not random in distribution or effect. Rights violations are, rather, symptoms of deeper pathologies of power and are linked intimately to the social conditions that so often determine who will suffer abuse and who will be shielded from harm. ~ Paul Farmer

The basic distortions in the media are not innocent errors, for they are not random; rather they move in the same overall direction again and again, favoring management over labor, corporatism over anti-corporatism, the affluent over the poor, private enterprise over socialism, Whites over Blacks, males over females, officialdom over protesters, conventional politics over dissidence, anticommunism and arms-race militarism over disarmament, national chauvinism over internationalism, US dominance of the Third World over revolutionary or populist nationalist change. The press does many things and serves many functions but its major role, its irreducible responsibility, is to continually recreate a view of reality supportive of existing social and economic class power. ~ Michael Parenti

But in fact, when you try to model that on a computer you find that because of the very structure of matter and of the chemical bonds that are the basis of every organism, evolution is not random at all. It will tend to follow certain paths. ~ Kevin Kelly

Noll tried to register Gaussian Quadratic with the US Copyright Office at the Library of Congress, another body perplexed by the works on display. His request was originally denied "since a machine had generated the work."10 He explained that a human being had written the program that, through a mix of randomness and order, generated the work. The Library of Congress again declined: randomness was unacceptable. Noll finally argued that although the numbers produced by the program appeared random, "the algorithm generating them was perfectly mathematical and not random at all," and the work was finally patented. ~ Zabet Patterson

The things that excite you are not random. They are connected to your purpose. Follow them. ~ Terrie Davoll Hudson

There is no effective difference between guessing a variable that is not random, but for which information is partial or deficient ( ... ), and a random one ( ... ). In this sense, guessing (what I don't know, but what someone else may know) and predicting (what has not taken place yet) are the same thing. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The reuse of names by later (Maya) kings (of Palenque) is not random, but conforms to a reversed re-ordering. The overall king list suggests a closed system. We hesitate to think that Maya dynasties were predestined to end by themselves . . ~ David Stuart George Stuart

Chaos theory, a more recent invention, is equally fertile ground for those with a bent for abusing sense. It is unfortunately named, for 'chaos' implies randomness. Chaos in the technical sense is not random at all. It is completely determined, but it depends hugely, in strangely hard-to-predict ways, on tiny differences in initial conditions. ~ Richard Dawkins

Fate is cruel but maybe not random. Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and gravel to it. ~ Donna Tartt

I've thought of it ever since, the idea that we don't stray far, that what feels like discovery is only the revealing of what was hidden but there, waiting. I remember because I think this might be a path to forgiveness, to realize that no matter how violent, how frightening my mother was, it was not random but at least partly inescapable, that who she was had been set in motion long before and she had to suffer that person as much as I did. ~ David Vann

The thing you are passionate about is not random; it stems from an inner yearning. Don't ignore it or allow others to talk you out of it. Go get it! ~ Steve Maraboli

He'd discovered the tables now and was staring at the pile. It looked like the work of a miniaturist beaver: a heap of objects that was illegible yet clearly not random. To Sasha's eye, it almost shook under its load of embarrassments and close shaves and little triumphs and moments of pure exhilaration. It contained years of her life compressed. The screwdriver was at the outer edge. Sasha moved closer to Alex, drawn to the sight of him taking everything in. ~ Jennifer Egan

Why is the human need to be in control relevant to a discussion of random patterns? Because if events are random, we are not in control, and if we are in control of events, they are not random, there is therefore a fundamental clash between our need to feel we are in control and our ability to recognize randomness. That clash is one of the principal reasons we misinterpret random events. In fact, inducing people to mistake luck for skills, or pointless actions for control, is one of the easiest enterprises a research psychologist can engage in ask people to control flashing lights by pressing a dummy button, and they will believe they are succeeding even though the lights are flashing at random. Show people a circle of lights that flash at random and tell them that by concentrating they can cause the flashing to move in clockwise direction, and they will astonish themselves with their ability to make it happen. ~ Leonard Mlodinow

Violence against women is not random or anonymous. In West Virginia, 88 percent of sexual-assault victims already know their attacker. In my hometown, Alicia McCormick, an advocate for our domestic-violence shelter at the YWCA, was killed in her home by a man doing handiwork in her apartment complex. That one of my greatest advocates could fall victim to something she fought against her whole life was a tragedy that moved me to action. ~ Shelley Moore Capito

Every single world we've visited isn't just random - it's the result of countless choices, all of them combining to create a new reality. You and I have been given an infinity of chances, and that's so much more than mot people will ever get - but in the end we get to live in only one world, and that's the world we make. I want us to create that world together. ~ Claudia Gray

The location of Giza and more specifically that of the Great Pyramid is not random in reference to the three only holy sites of Islam. The lunar year's quantity itself was encoded therein. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim

All of my best friends are dead people. Someday I've got to figure out how that happened. ~ Claudia Gray

Still on the subject of eating, we don't have our own plates, or our own knives and forks or cups. Like most of what we use, they're communal, they're handed out at random. There's no chance for anything to become imbued, to come alive through fondness. Nothing here is aware, no chair, no cup. Nobody can get fond of anything. At home I walked through a haze of belongings that knew, at least vaguely, who they belonged to. Grampar's chair resented anyone else sitting on it as much as he did himself. Gramma's shirts and jumpers adjusted themselves to hide her missing breast. My mother's shoes positively vibrated with consciousness. Our toys looked out for us. There was a potato knife in the kitchen that Gramma couldn't use. It was an ordinary enough brown-handled thing, but she'd cut herself with it once, and ever after it wanted more of her blood. If I rummaged through the kitchen drawer, I could feel it brooding. After she died, that faded. Then there were the coffee spoons, rarely used, tiny, a wedding present. They were made of silver, and they knew themselves superior to everything else and special. ~ Jo Walton

The running commentary, the loving support, the jokes and the observations and the random thoughts that are made a little less random when they're shared. The desire to be heard is as deeply seeded as the desire to be loved. ~ David Levithan

I'm listening to Gogol Bordello, which is totally random, but I love him. Just finished the new Joan Didion book, Blue Nights, which I loved. I haven't been to the movies in God knows how long. I haven't been doing anything but living in a bubble, making jewelry! ~ Pamela Love

I cook better than you," Nick corrected absently. "I think monkeys can probably be taught to cook better than you."
"I'd like to have a monkey that cooked for me," said Jamie. " I would pay him in bananas. His name would be Alphonse."
"I agree, that would be awesome." Mae said. "People would come for dinner just to see the monkey chef."
"You're raving," Nick said, defrosting chicken in the microwave. Mae was a bit impressed with how he seemed to look at the appliance and instantly comprehend its mysteries, when she'd been heating up ready-made meals for years by a method of pressing random buttons and hoping. " I know that's the only way Jamie communicates with people, but I expected better of you, Mavis."
"We're cutting out the whole Mavis thing right now, Nick," Mae said warningly.
"How many bananas would be good payment for a monkey?" Jamie wanted to know. " I would want to pay Alphonse a fair wage. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

World is so full of idiots that you can't even imagine to escape. The only solution is isolation. But it still spares one! ~ Raheel Farooq

These random accidents of kindness will teach us all something about what it means to be human on this planet. We must be the change we are expecting. It's up to us. ~ Linda Armstrong

Because to me, there is no logic of any kind behind misogyny. Therefore, it's funny, because it's so completely random to me. It's senseless. ~ Joss Whedon

What is mathematics? Ask this question of person chosen at random, and you are likely to receive the answer "Mathematics is the study of number." With a bit of prodding as to what kind of study they mean, you may be able to induce them to come up with the description "the science of numbers." But that is about as far as you will get. And with that you will have obtained a description of mathematics that ceased to be accurate some two and a half thousand years ago! ~ Keith Devlin

It's just...sometimes he says or does something so random it's like he's a life-form from another planet who's failing at blending into life on earth but trying like really hard, and you just have to share it with other people. ~ Emma Mills

Never underestimate a situation. Chance is random and is able to undo every preparation. ~ Elaina J. Davidson

I need to stop carving out four-hour chunks to do random things and go home and watch my children grow up. ~ Neil Patrick Harris

Then you understand the wide range of the totally new and unexpected creations they can sometimes come up with. Most people's minds travel along the same road traveled by everyone else, never straying off the route of conventional wisdom. Makers know no such boundaries. They have a rare ability to make their own roads of thought. Their minds venture through the wilderness of all that exists, combining random bits of knowledge in ways that have never been imagined before. ~ Terry Goodkind

I love words; it doesn't matter which, it doesn't matter about what. (I am writing down, at random, things that he said one night, while the kasaba slept in the darkness.) Conversation is a link between people, maybe the only one. That's what an old soldier taught me, we were captured together, thrown into a prison together, chained together and bound to the same iron ring on the wall. ~ Mesa Selimovic

What we're doing is wrong. Making it a one-time deal is wrong. Trying to convince ourselves it was dirty and tawdry and something to be ashamed of is wrong. It was the best damn sex of my life, Aspen. I felt connected to you, like hell, I don't know. I wasn't just getting off in some random girl; I was sharing something deep and meaningful…with you. I don't care how many school policies tell us no. I'm saying yes. ~ Linda Kage

...nothing is more blissful than to occupy the heights effectively fortified by the teaching of the wise, tranquil sanctuaries from which you can look down upon others and see them wandering everywhere in their random search for the way of life, competing for intellectual eminence, disputing about rank, and striving night and day with prodigious effort to scale the summit of wealth and to secure power. O minds of mortals, blighted by your blindness! Amid what deep darkness and daunting dangers life's little day is passed! To think that you should fail to see that nature importantly demands only that the body may be rid of pain, and that the mind, divorced from anxiety and fear, may enjoy a feeling of contentment! ~ Titus Lucretius Carus

In terms of size, mammals are an anomaly, as the vast majority of the world's existing species are snail-sized or smaller. It's almost as if, regardless of your kingdom, the smaller your size & the earlier your place on the tree of life, the more critical is your niche on Earth: snails & worms create soil, & blue-green algae create oxygen; mammals seem comparatively dispensable, the result of the random path of evolution over a luxurious amount of time. ~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Is this your holiday homework?" asked Sarah. "Don't do it, Rose! And Eve will write you a note to say it's iniquitous to give eight-year-olds homework. You will, won't you, Eve?"
"I could never spell 'iniquitous,' Sarah darling!"
"Hot concrete," said Rose mournfully, prodding her porridge.
"Write this," ordered Saffron. "'The ancient Egyptians are all dead. Their days are very quiet.' Porridge is meant to look like hot concrete. Eat it up ... Read the next question!" ...
"What would you say if you bumped into Tutankhamen in the street?"
"'Sorry!'" said Sarah at once. "Put that."
"We have to answer in proper sentences."
"'Sorry, but it was your fault! You were walking sideways! ~ Hilary McKay

Her fluency was marvelous. She would say things at random, intricate, flamelike, or slide off into a parenthetical limbo peppered with fireworks
admirable linguistic feats which a practiced writer might struggle for hours to achieve. ~ Henry Miller

Simon picked a dagger completely at random, then sat at his desk waggling it about.
Jon nodded to it. "Nice."
"Yeah," Simon said, nodding back and gesturing with it. "That's what I thought. Nice. Very stabby."
He stabbed the dagger into the desk, where it got stuck and Simon had to pry it out of the wood. ~ Cassandra Clare

Without road maps fate just takes over to create random events. ~ Steven Redhead

Lothaire betrayed us! Again." -Random demon . ~ Kresley Cole

You'll have to go get laid by a random stranger."
Bo pointed to the television. "Can I wait for a commercial or do I have to git-'er-done right now?"
"You can wait. ~ Rachel Gibson

I think every job that you do gives you the opportunity to learn something new. As hokey as that sounds, that's why I have a problem saying no to my friends. That's why I do so many random comedy shows. ~ Busy Philipps

This is Leo's first night here. Leo was in charge of putting the napkins out and I notice that he put them on the right and they're supposed to go on the left. I only know this because I like to read books like Ann of Green Gables, and Little House on the Prairie, and I pick up random things like that from the stories. ~ Mia Sheridan

The history of Buenos Aires is written in its telephone directory. Pompey Romanov, Emilio Rommel, Crespina D. Z. de Rose, Ladislao Radziwil, and Elizabeta Marta Callman de Rothschild - five names taken at random from among the R's - told a story of exile, desolation, disillusion, and anxiety behind lace curtains. ~ Bruce Chatwin

Do yourself a favor,' I said. "Forget it. Forget you ever saw me."
"Forget that you tried to kill me too?"
"Yeah. That, too."
"But who are you?"
"Percy-" I started to say. Then the skeletons turned around. "Gotta go!"
"What kind of name is Percy Gotta-go?"
I bolted for the exit. ~ Rick Riordan

To die this way seems so random, so trivial. I have been robbed of meaning before being robbed of life. To die in darkness, alone -- for what purpose was I ever alive. It is as if I emerged from darkness into delusion, then sank back into darkness forever. ~ Carolyn Ives Gilman

The antidote to loneliness isn't just being around random people indiscriminately, the antidote to loneliness is emotional security. ~ Benedict Wells

It's going to go little random, probably I look like an idiot, I can't make difference between a normal person smile and person who likes me, but still... that's another story which probably I am going to save it for later, if I try to memorize it. ~ Deyth Banger

I'd like to think humans have a stronger sense of justice than the random forces of nature do. ~ Dan Wells

There are no random acts. ~ Mitch Albom

Blankets on the other hand are incredibly needy as they are always trying to fill a "void". Are a bit whorish in that the instant you walk away from them in less than a minute they'll be all over someone else, and the moment you actually need them they're nowhere to be found. ~ Nicole McKay

Actually, I was prone to random acts of stupidity. I considered it to be one of my talents. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

I will say that I'm going to take full credit for this. I knew Josh [Hutcherson] was going to be a star. One of the things you do, as a music video director, is spot talent. Th at's one of my things. I don't just do random people. ~ Joseph M. Kahn

Life is random and fucked-up and arbitrary, until you find someone who can make sense of it all for you - if only temporarily. ~ Matthew Quick

My answers are typically 'guesses' cleverly disguised as answers. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

She has bitten into a crisp juicy apple and wondered if the bite and the thought were connected
one never knew what went together, and seemingly random acts could be cosmically related. ~ Delia Ephron

Sometimes a random fact of kindness that seems like no big deal to you can mean the world to someone else. ~ Kay Cassidy

It's hard to know another person. It's like everyone fades and glows in ever - changing light. Like we're each a playing card in a deck, random only to a certain point. Yet still random enough to keep us guessing which card will be played next. ~ E.M. Crane

I need geometry to set the grammar of the image expressive language . The structural skeleton, the composition and the geometric layout provide a perspective from which one can read the image; otherwise we would do what Dadaists did when they put words in a little bag and then took them out at random in order to compose a poem. ~ Augusto De Luca

The best random keys are created by harnessing natural physical processes, such as radioactivity, which is known to exhibit truly random behavior. The ~ Simon Singh

The record is replete with witnesses reporting that they were intimidated
by various authorities. Could all of them, unconnected and unknown to
each other, be having the same fantasies? And if the threats were real, the
obvious question is: why would any law enforcement officer at any level,
or any anonymous phone caller, for that matter, threaten someone if the
assassination was the result of a random act by a lone nut that was no longer
alive? But this is akin to asking why any information about the murder
of John F. Kennedy was ever withheld, let alone still withheld after fifty
years, on the grounds of "national security" if Lee Harvey Oswald was a
minimum-wage loser, with no conspirators, who was out to impress his
estranged wife. ~ Donald Jeffries

A group of scientists wanted to find the most effective mosquito repellents. So they tested 10 different substances, including campout standbys like DEET, as well as a random choice: Victoria's Secret perfume Bombshell. Turns out the perfume is almost as good as DEET. ~ Annalee Newitz

Your life depends on a random stranger who could kill you, will probably disrespect you, and will most likely pay you much less than you deserve. But even those prospects are better than the ones you used to have. This is the life of los jornaleros – the day laborers. ~ Gustavo Arellano

You're going to throw me naked into a pit and make me drench myself in baby lotion, aren't you?" Bride
You live in New Orleans, where they can't even dig a grave. So tell me where I'm going to find this pit?" Vane
"It's an above ground pit." Bride
"Hardly secretive." Vane
"But possible," Bride ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I want gifts and Christmas music. I don't care how many Draziri are out there. They won't take Christmas from me."

"Yes, but we don't have a suitable male," Orro said. "And only one dog."

I looked at him.

"What is this Christmas?" Wing asked.

Orro turned from the stove. "It's the rite of passage during which the young males of the human species learn to display aggression and use weapons."

Sean stopped what he was doing and looked at Orro.

"The young men go out in small packs," Orro continued. "They brave the cold and come into conflict with other packs and they have to prove their dominance through physical combat. Their fathers teach them lessons in the proper use of swear words, and the young men have to undergo tests of endurance, like holding soap in their mouths and licking cold metal objects."

Sean made a strangled noise.

"At the end of their trials, they go to see a wise elder in a red suit to prove their worth. If they are judged worthy, the family erects a ceremonial tree and presents them with gifts of weapons."

Sean was clearly struggling, because his head was shaking.

"Also," Orro added, "a sacrificial poultry is prepared and then given to the wild animals, probably to appease the nature spirits."

Sean roared with laughter. ~ Ilona Andrews