Probabilities Quotes

Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve. ~ James Anthony Froude

We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones. ~ Jeffrey Kluger

Throughout these lectures I have delighted in showing you that the price of gaining such an accurate theory has been the erosion of our common sense. We must accept some very bizarre behavior: the amplification and suppression of probabilities, light reflecting from all parts of a mirror, light travelling in paths other than a straight line, photons going faster or slower than the conventional speed of light, electrons going backwards in time, photons suddenly disintegrating into a positron-electron pair, and so on. That we must do, in order to appreciate what Nature is really doing underneath nearly all the phenomena we see in the world. ~ Richard Feynman

Classical mechanics gave us a deterministic view of the world. Quantum mechanics, conversely, gives us a probabilistic view instead. According to Newton, if you know the cause af an event, you can predict the outcome. According to M.Born, you can only predict how likely that outcome will be. ~ Leonid V. Azaroff

A man must study general conditions, to seize them so as to be able to anticipate probabilities. ~ Jesse Lauriston Livermore

If we only identify with the mortal world, then we identify with a level of scarcity and lack and brokenness, and that will be our experience. But if we shift our experience of self-identification - and this is what enlightenment is - from the body-self to the spiritual-self, then we place ourselves under an entirely different set of possibilities and probabilities. ~ Marianne Williamson

The calculus of probabilities, when confined within just limits, ought to interest, in an equal degree, the mathematician, the experimentalist, and the statesman. ~ Francois Arago

I think a lot about the might-have-beens, the what-ifs. About the little places in history where one tiny, minute change can lead to a new and unimaginable future. It's like chess, so many permutations, probabilities, choices, cross-roads ... I think a lot about the future, our future. And I see uncertainty. ~ Lavie Tidhar

The balance of probabilities, therefore, comes out strongly against the existence of a god. ~ J. L. Mackie

Bullish or bearish are terms used by people who do not engage in practicing uncertainty, like the television commentators, or those who have no experience in handling risk. Alas, investors and businesses are not paid in probabilities; they are paid in dollars. Accordingly, it is not how likely an event is to happen that matters, it is how much is made when it happens that should be the consideration. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I'd always hated the word realistic. Or, more truthfully, I'd always hated the way people used the word realistic - as if it were a limitation, as if reality were something that conformed so severely to likelihood that surprising things could never, ever happen. From what I'd seen, reality was much more complicated than that. Sometimes it was remarkably predictable, but a lot of the time it didn't go the way anybody would expect. I didn't believe in using probabilities to rule out possibilities. ~ David Levithan

The anti-precog has to be present when the precog is in the process of deciding, not after. The anti-precog makes all futures seem equally real to the precog; he aborts his talent to choose at all. A precog is instantly aware when an anti-precog is nearby because his entire relation to the future is altered. In the case of telepaths a similar impairment - " "She goes back in time," G. G. Ashwood said. Joe stared at him. "Back in time," G.G. repeated, savoring this; his eyes shot shafts of significance to every part of Joe Chip's kitchen. "The precog affected by her still sees one predominant future; like you said, the one luminous possibility. And he chooses it, and he's right. But why is it right? Why is it luminous? Because this girl - " He shrugged in her direction. "Pat controls the future; that one luminous possibility is luminous because she's gone into the past and changed it. By changing it she changes the present, which includes the precog; he's affected without knowing it and his talent seems to work, whereas it really doesn't. So that's one advantage of her anti-talent over other anti-precog talents. The other - and greater - is that she can cancel out the precog's decision after he's made it. ~ Philip K. Dick

Certainty is not biologically possible. We must learn (and teach our children) to tolerate the unpleasantness of uncertainty. Science has given us the language and tools of probabilities. We have methods for analyzing and ranking opinion according to their likelihood of correctness. That is enough. ~ Robert A. Burton

You never get bored ... when you have the probabilities of your next meal to speculate on, pro and con. ~ Samuel Hopkins Adams

I am fully assured, that no general method for the solution of questions in the theory of probabilities can be established which does not explicitly recognize, not only the special numerical bases of the science, but also those universal laws of thought which are the basis of all reasoning, and which, whatever they may be as to their essence, are at least mathematical as to their form. ~ George Boole

Do not personally give any more conscious consideration, either of you, to events that you do not want to happen. Any such concentration, to whatever degree, ties you in with those probabilities, so concentrate upon what you want, and as far as public events are concerned, take it for granted that sometimes even men are wiser than they know. ~ Seth

Sometimes the probabilities are very close to certainties, but they're never really certainties. ~ Murray Gell-Mann

The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect science, what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment-the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how, ability, or just gut instinct to change the course of another's life for the better. ~ Atul Gawande

In quantum mechanics there is A causing B. The equations do not stand outside that usual paradigm of physics. The real issue is that the kinds of things you predict in quantum mechanics are different from the kinds of things you predict using general relativity. Quantum mechanics, that big, new, spectacular remarkable idea is that you only predict probabilities, the likelihood of one outcome or another. That's the new idea. ~ Brian Greene

Our necessary ignorance of so much means that we have to deal largely with probabilities and chances ~ Friedrich A. Hayek

My only one!
In your last letter
"My head aches
my heart is stunned!"
you say.
"If they hang you,
if I lose you;"
you say;
"I can't live!"
You'll live my dearest wife,
like a black smoke in the wind my memory will vanish;
you'll live, the red-haired sister of my heart
at most one year it lasts
in the twentieth century
the grief of death..
Death
a dead body swinging on a rope.
My heart doesn't accept
such a death..
But
be sure that, my love,
if some pitiable gypsy's
hairy black spider like hand
slips the rope
around my neck,
to see the fear in my blue eyes
they'll look in vain
at Nâzım!

And I,
in the twilight of my last morning,
shall see my friends and you,
and carry only the grief
of an unfinished song
to the soil...
My wife!
Good hearted,
golden coloured,
with eyes sweeter than honey, my bee;
why did I write you
that they want to hang me,
the trial is in the first step
and they don't pluck like a turnip
the head of a man.
Come, forget them all.
These are so far away probabilities.
If you have some money
buy me a flannel underwear,
my sciatica is acting up.
And don't forget that always
there should be good thoughts in the mind
of a prisoner's wife. ~ Nâzım Hikmet Ran

Have I ever remarked on how completely ridiculous it is to ask high school students to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives and give them nearly no support in doing so? Support like, say, spending a day apiece watching twenty different jobs and then another week at their top three choices, with salary charts and projections and probabilities of graduating that subject given their test scores? The more so considering this is a central allocation question for the entire economy? ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

People don't realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but that's as far as we go. And I've had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward. The number of mistakes I have made are just awesome. There is no number large enough to account for that. ~ Alan Greenspan

One's lack of confidence over oneself contributes to one's downfall, even if such a downfall is avoidable. It diminishes whatever probabilities there are of overcoming the hurdles on the path to our success. It strips us of our ability to win a battle even when the circumstances favor us. Most of our strength, capacity and resilience gets nullified when we harbor the slightest of doubts over our own adequacies. The more the sense of insecurity, the closer we move towards defeat. ~ Nihar Satpathy

Was he happy? One would ask that question in vain. A question like this makes sense only when applied to creatures who are rich in alternative possibilities, so that the actual truth can be contrasted with partly real probabilities and reflect itself in them. ~ Bruno Schulz

Alternatives! Probabilities! ~ Garth Nix

Scientists are stuck in this belief that we tell people probabilities, not absolute answers. ~ Stephen Schneider

The paranormal world is a much more desired realm. There's no limit to possibilities, no comparison to probabilities, no concept of actualities. There's no solid platform for racism, judgment or hierarchy. It is exactly the manifestation you choose it to be, darkness and death included. ~ Rachel A. Olson

According to AC, serious historical inquiry incorrectly considers the question *what if* to be the turf of Philip K. Dick or comic book titles like *What if the Incredible Hulk Had the Brain of Bruce Banner?* Although historians were not in the business of assigning probabilities to historical events, AC opined they should. 'Look, chum," he once expounded, 'it's not like anything can happen at any time. You have to consider *conditions of possibility*. ~ H M Naqvi

I am now about to set seriously to work upon preparing for the press an account of my theory of Logic and Probabilities which in its present state I look upon as the most valuable if not the only valuable contribution that I have made or am likely to make to Science and the thing by which I would desire if at all to be remembered hereafter. ~ George Boole

Adam went to bed comforted, having woven for himself an ingenious web of probabilities - the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth. His ~ George Eliot

I don't simply create probabilities, I guide them. ~ Lionel Suggs

The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices. ~ Anonymous

Consider nothing impossible, then treat possiblities as probabilities. ~ Charles Dickens

The scientific community thrives on probabilities, working theories and fact-based hypothesis that have resulted in the advances we have made in fields such as medicine and technology. The Christian community thrives on miracles. ~ Al Stefanelli

The final story of randomness - utter chaos - has not yet been told to us by the mathematicians. It seems remarkable that something so fundamental for probability theory has not been defined and even more remarkable that we can go so far in mathematics lacking a definition. By simply assuming randomness exists, mathematicians assign elementary probabilities to events, and that is their starting point. But they have not captured chaos and looked it in the eye. ~ Heinz R. Pagels

Behind each door of what-if lies an unanswerable question that unhinges an infinite Rube Goldberg machine of probabilities. The life we have is the only one we will ever know, and even that with tenuous certainty. ~ Maria Popova

And, uh . . . to whom do you pray?'

'We worship the perfect cohesion of space and time and nonlinear probabilities represented by cabbage.'

'Wow, that's . . . yeah. ~ Delilah S. Dawson

The waves of probabilities collapse into a physical reality through observation by a conscious mind. ~ Ilchi Lee

The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more. ~ Isaac Asimov

Statistics, likelihoods, and probabilities mean everything to men, nothing to God. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Goethe (I don't know why, but Goethe somehow always speaks up in my critical moments) said: "Man must experience his own destiny" - not a factual destiny forced on him by History, but the nonrecurrent, his very own. Perhaps this was possible a hundred years ago. At the time of the French Revolution and also of the Napoleonic Wars, an individual still had the means of turning against the collective destiny adroitly, cunningly. He could hide or build emergency dams hastily in his soul. And a hundred years ago when someone mounted the scaffold or fell on the battlefield, he knew that what was then being consummated personally was his destiny. But today? There is no longer a "personal destiny;" there are only statistical probabilities. One cannot feel it to be personal destiny when an atom bomb explodes or when a dictatorship enunciates an outmoded, stupid judgment on a society. This is why I must go somewhere from this place where, perhaps, it will be possible for me to live my own destiny for a time. Because here I have already become only a piece of data in a category. ~ Sandor Marai

...the absence of certainty does not mean that one interpretation is as valid as any other. Probabilities and plausibilities matter; and when the evidence is less precise or less tangible than we would like it to be, some explanations are still more likely than others. ~ Mary Lefkowitz

Arguments derived from probabilities are idle. ~ Plato

I find fault with my children because I like them and I want them to go places - uprightness and strength and courage and civil respect and anything that affects the probabilities of failure on the part of those that are closest to me, that concerns me - I find fault. ~ Branch Rickey

Feminine way of life is "life by probabilities". There are no absolutes, and the same laws can be interpreted differently at different times. Change is the only constant, and people live by Passion, Beauty and Freedom. But with too much freedom it can decline into decadence, corruption and debauchery. ~ Amish Tripathi

In the froth, space doesn't have a definite structure. It has various probabilities for different shapes and curvatures. It might have a 50 percent chance of being in one shape, a 10 percent chance of being in another, and a 40 percent chance of being in a third form. Because any structure is possible inside the singularity, we say the singularity is constructed from probabilistic foam, or quantum foam. Quantum gravity governs the probabilities for the various foam structures. ~ Clifford A. Pickover

How do people make the judgments and how do they assign decision weights? We start from two simple answers, then qualify them. Here are the oversimplified answers: People overestimate the probabilities of unlikely events. People overweight unlikely events in their decisions. ~ Daniel Kahneman

The more people you contact, the higher your sales will be because of the law of probabilities. ~ Brian Tracy

With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible. ~ Aristotle.

The true power is in the imagination which dares to speculate upon that which is not yet. The imagination, backed by great expectations, can bring about almost any reality within the range of probabilities. ~ Seth

The art of drawing conclusions from experiments and observations consists in evaluating probabilities and in estimating whether they are sufficiently great or numerous enough to constitute proofs. This kind of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than it is commonly thought to be ... ~ Antoine Lavoisier

Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard that has enormous value in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's sure. We nine can't understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us. ~ Reginald Rose

Life is a self-correcting, negative regulatory system because it is always moving toward a specific target destination in the future. This target destination we call 'self preservation'.

Achieve this goal it must constantly reduce the probabilities that interfere with its movement toward that future target.

Hence, it conserves by self-regulating, like a thermostat set at a specific temperature, as it advances, all the while seeking to re-adapt in accordance with the changes it incurs.

Putting this principle to work in our daily life means learning to adapt to new information while always adhering to a basic plan that can, in general, be modified according to alterations in the data encountered.

Thoughts from; SPIRAL FORECASTING: Nature's Inside Track to Future Success ~ Nahu Lanham

The key is to develop a case where the probabilities of the market going in your favour is greater than it going against you. ~ Adam Harris 2019

On the Promise of the Present The eternal self dwells in eternity, and eternity intersects linear time at only one point: the present. Who you are in this moment, therefore, is who you truly are. And who you are is love itself. From that essential point of perfect being, created anew by God in every instant, miracles flow naturally. Love interrupts the past and opens the future to new probabilities. No matter who you are, no matter how young or old you are, in the present, all things are possible. ~ Marianne Williamson

The primary difference between the classical layer and the quantum layer is that the classical layer deals with facts and the quantum layer deals with probabilities. In situations where classical laws are valid, we can predict the future by observing the past. In situations where quantum laws are valid, we can observe the past but we cannot predict the future. In the quantum layer, events are unpredictable. ~ Freeman Dyson

Don't worry, boss," HARV said. "I get the feeling that this is only the tip of the iceberg of complications."
"HARV, you're a machine. You don't get feelings."
"Would it make you feel better if I said I've done a numerical analysis on the probabilities and the results are skewed toward you having more problems with this case? ~ John Zakour

Physicists traced the failure to the jitters of quantum uncertainty. Mathematical techniques had been developed for analyzing the jitters of the strong, weak, and electromagnetic fields, but when the same methods were applied to the gravitational field-a field that governs the curvature of spacetime itself-they proved ineffective. This left the mathematics saturated with inconsistencies such as infinite probabilities. ~ Brian Greene

The novelist is bound by the reasonable possibilities, not the probabilities, of his culture. ~ Flannery O'Connor

From books, I winnowed the glue that held together my psyche as it struggled to stay whole. It was from stories and myths that I learned to dream, to imagine a different life, to realize potentials and probabilities other than those of the painful, poverty-mired existence I found myself in as a child. With a book I could hide in a corner, safe from the heavy hand and belt of my stepfather, and for a while not worry about where our next meal would come from, or where we would be sleeping that night, or when my mother would break and have to be sent yet again to the mental institution. Books, for me, we tiny life rafts that I clung to desperately. ~ J. Don Cook

He did not believe in luck at all, good or bad. Gamblers believed in luck, and he was not a gambler. Never had been, never would be. John Henry Holliday believed in mathematics, in statistics, in the computation of odds. Fifty-two cards in a deck. Make it easy. Say it's fifty. Any card has a 2 percent chance of being dealt from a full deck. Keep track of what's out. Adjust the probabilities as the hand progresses. ~ Mary Doria Russell

I had no wish to take any determined route on that stroll; I attempted, rather, a maximum latitude of probabilities in order not to wear out expectation with an obligatory anticipation of a single one of them. I was able, within the imperfect limits of possibility, to walk, as they say, at random. I accepted, without any conscious prejudice but that of avoiding the wider avenues and streets, the most obscure invitations of chance. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Don't censor your dreams or vision with practicalities and probabilities. ~ Jack Canfield

Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits-a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities. ~ John Maynard Keynes

How foolish it would be to suppose that one only needs to point out this origin and this misty shroud of delusion in order to destroy the world that counts for real, so-called 'reality.' We can destroy only as creators.
But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new 'things. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Contrary to the popular notion that only creationism relies on the supernatural, evolutionism must as well, since the probabilities of random formation of life are so tiny as to require a 'miracle' for spontaneous generation tantamount to a theological argument. ~ Chandra Wickramasinghe

We don't deal in absolutes. We deal in probabilities. ~ Seth Klarman

We either base our 'confidence' on reason (evident probabilities, past experience, competence, etc) or we base our beliefs on faith, which is blind by definition. Faith is the most dishonest position it is possible to have, because it is an assertion of stoic conviction that is assumed without reason and defended against all reason. If you have to believe it on faith, you have no reason to believe it at all. ~ AronRa

How much time is wasted in what is called thought, but is merely care--an anxious idling over the fancied probabilities of result ~ George MacDonald

Everett's approach, which he described as "objectively deterministic" with probability "reappearing at the subjective level," resonated with this strategy. And he was thrilled by the direction. As he noted in the 1956 draft of his dissertation, the framework offered to bridge the position of Einstein (who famously believed that a fundamental theory of physics should not involve probability) and the position of Bohr (who was perfectly happy with a fundamental theory that did). According to Everett, the Many Worlds approach accommodated both positions, the difference between them merely being one of perspective. Einstein's perspective is the mathematical one in which the grand probability wave of all particles relentlessly evolves by the Schrodinger equation, with chance playing absolutely no role. I like to picture Einstein soaring high above the many worlds of Many Worlds, watching as Schrodinger's equation fully dictates how the entire panorama unfolds, and happily concluding that even though quantum mechanics is correct, God doesn't play dice. Bohr's perspective is that of an inhabitant in one of the worlds, also happy, using probabilities to explain, with stupendous precision, those observations to which his limited perspective gives him access. ~ Brian Greene

First, the only certainty is that there is no certainty. Second, every decision as a consequence is a matter of weighing probabilities. Third, despite uncertainty we must decide and we must act. And lastly we need to judge decisions not only on the results, but how those decisions were made. ~ Robert Rubin

We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Trading effectively is about assessing probabilities, not certainties. ~ Yvan Byeajee

Results rarely specify their causes unambiguously. If we have no direct evidence of fossils or human chronicles, if we are forced to infer a process only from its modern results, then we are usually stymied or reduced to speculation about probabilities. For many roads lead to almost any Rome. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Although we deal with probabilities and expectations, the actual results can deviate substantially from such expectations, particularly on a short-term basis. ~ Warren Buffett

The approach and strategies are very similar in that you gather all the information you can and then keep adding to that base of information as things develop. You do whatever the probabilities indicated based on the knowledge that you have at that time, but you are always willing to modify your behaviour or your approach as you get new information. In bridge, you behave in a way that gets the best from your partner. And in business, you behave in the way that gets the best from your managers and your employees. ~ Warren Buffett

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing. ~ James Anthony Froude

How English you are, Basil! If one puts
forward an idea to a real Englishman, - always a rash
thing to do, - he never dreams of considering whether the
idea is right or wrong. The only thing he considers of any
importance is whether one believes it one's self. Now, the
value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the
sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the
probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it
will not be colored by either his wants, his desires, or his
prejudices. However, I don't propose to discuss politics,
sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons better
than principles. Tell me more about Dorian Gray. How
often do you see him? ~ Oscar Wilde

wherefore one who divines well in regard to the truth will also be able to divine well in regard to probabilities. It ~ Aristotle.

The most obvious problem with estimating a dummy dependent variable model using OLS is that the predicted probabilities aren't guaranteed ~ Roberto Pedace

Why couldn't she have this, just enjoy this, without creating obstacles, digging up problems, worrying about mistakes, about tomorrow's? Why let the maybe's, the what if's, the probabilities spoil something so lovely? ~ Nora Roberts

Reason, said Butler, provides no complete system of knowledge, and in ordinary life it can offer us only probabilities. ~ Bruce L. Shelley

Quantum physics might seem to undermine the idea that nature is governed by laws, but that is not the case. Instead it leads us to accept a new form of determinism: given the state of a system at some time, the laws of nature determine the probabilities of various futures and pasts rather than determining the future and past with certainty. ~ Stephen Hawking

Probabilities direct the conduct of the wise man. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any programme our fear has sketched out. Fear is almost always haunted by terrible dramatic scenes, which recur in spite of the best-argued probabilities against them. ~ George Eliot

Religious faith depends on a host of social, psychological and emotional factors that have little or nothing to do with probabilities, evidence and logic ~ Michael Shermer

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset. ~ Arthur Stanley Eddington

So, what is light? Is it a pure bombardment by particles (photons) or a pure wave? Really, it is neither. Light is a more complicated physical phenomenon than any single one of these concepts, which are based on classical physical models, can describe. To describe the propagation of light and to understand the phenomena like interference, we can and have to use the electromagnetic wave theory. When we want to discuss the interaction of light with elementary particles, however, we have to use the photon description. This picture, in which the particle and wave descriptions complement each other, has become known as the wave-particle duality. The modern quantum theory of light has unified the classical notions of waves and particles in the concept of probabilities. The electromagnetic field is represented by a wave function, which gives the probabilities of finding the field in certain modes. The photon is the energy associated with these modes. ~ Mario Livio

Planning is worrying, only in a productive, proactive form. Worry has to be a large element of planning, or else how could you project different possible scenarios, situations, outcomes, and probabilities, and then plot a course of action? A worry-free man is not a plotter. ~ Jarod Kintz

A stochastic process is about the results of convolving probabilities-which is just what management is about, as well. ~ Anthony Stafford Beer

a world of known risk, in short, risk (Figure 2-3, center). I use this term for a world where all alternatives, consequences, and probabilities are known. Lotteries and games of chance are examples. Most of the time, however, we live in a changing world where some of these are unknown: where we face unknown risks, or uncertainty (Figure 2-3, right). The world of uncertainty is huge compared to that of risk. Whom to marry? Whom to trust? What to do with the rest of one's life? In an uncertain world, it is impossible to determine the optimal course of action by calculating the exact risks. We have to deal with "unknown unknowns." Surprises happen. Even when calculation does not provide a clear answer, however, we have to make decisions. ~ Gerd Gigerenzer

Mrs. Boffin, insisting that Bella should make tomorrow's expedition in the chariot, she went home in great grandeur. Mrs. Wilfer and Miss Lavinia had speculated much on the probabilities and improbabilities of her coming in this gorgeous state, and, on beholding the chariot from the window at which they were secreted to look out for it, agreed that it must be detained at the door as long as possible, for the mortification and confusion of the neighbours. ~ Charles Dickens

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities
that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Probabilities - the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth. ~ George Eliot

You can flip a coin but Schrodinger's pet cat will still be in that box. ~ Scott Edward Shjefte

We cannot predict whether a given photon will arrive at A or B. All we can predict is that out of 100 photons that come down, an average of 4 will be reflected by the front surface. Does this mean that physics, a science of great exactitude, has been reduced to calculating only the probability of an event, and not predicting exactly what will happen? Yes. That's a retreat, but that's the way it is: Nature permits us to calculate only probabilities. Yet science has not collapsed. ~ Richard P. Feynman

I'm angry because you think everything happened by chance but there are billions of people on this planet and I found you so if you're saying I could just as well have found someone else then I can't bear your bloody mathematics!" Her fists had been clenched. He stood there looking at her for several minutes. Then he said that he loved her. It was the first time. They never stopped arguing and they never slept apart; he spent an entire working life calculating probabilities and she was the most improbable person he ever met. She turned him upside-down. ~ Fredrik Backman

I teach something called The Law of Probabilities, which says the more things you try, the more likely one of them will work. The more books you read, the more likely one of them will have an answer to a question that could solve the major problems of your life.. make you wealthier, solve a health problem, whatever it might be. ~ Jack Canfield

The true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth. Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth is likely to make a good guess at probabilities. ~ Aristotle.