Random Events Quotes

Our lives today are not conducted in linear terms. They are much more quantified; a stream of random events is taking place. ~ J.G. Ballard

Tonight was definitely an eye opener, but a reminder of how I use to be & why. Self discovery happens at such random times. ~ April Mae Monterrosa

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

We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn't true. ~ Patrick Ness

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

The conversations had a nightmare flatness, talking dice spilled in the tube metal chairs, human aggregates disintegrating in cosmic insanity, random events in a dying universe. ~ William S. Burroughs

Random events often look like nonrandom events, and in interpreting human affairs we must take care not to confuse the two. ~ Leonard Mlodinow

Synchronicity (life) isn't a series of random events at all, but an expression of a deeper order. ~ Mary Alice Monroe

There are no random events, nor are there events or things that exist by and for themselves, in isolation. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Modern science hasn't managed to come up with answers to any of the most basic questions. How did life first appear on earth? How does evolution work? Is it a series of random events, or does it have a set teleological direction? There are all kinds of theories, but we haven't been able to prove one of them. The structure of the atom is not a miniature of the solar system, it's something much more difficult to grasp, full of what you might call latent power. And when we try to observe the subatomic world, we find that the mind of the observer comes into play in subtle ways. The mind, my friend! The very same mind which, ever since Descartes, proponents of the mechanistic view of the universe considered subordinate to the body-machine. And now we find that the mind influences observed results. So I give up. Nothing surprises me. I'm prepared to accept anything that happens in this world. I actually kind of envy people who can still believe in the omnipotence of modern science. ~ Koji Suzuki

Some people are comfortable talking about their lives, as if they can make sense of the progression of random events that made them what they are. This involves a kind of forward-looking faith in life; a conviction that cause and effect are linked, and that they are themselves more than the sum of their past. ~ Anna Funder

New Rule: You don't have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap. President Bush recently suggested that public schools should teach "intelligent design" alongside the theory of evolution, because after all, evolution is "just a theory." Then the president renewed his vow to "drive the terrorists straight over the edge of the earth."

Here's what I don't get: President Bush is a brilliant scientist. He's the man who proved you could mix two parts booze with one part cocaine and still fly a jet fighter. And yet he just can't seem to accept that we descended from apes. It seems pathetic to be so insecure about your biological superiority to a group of feces-flinging, rouge-buttocked monkeys that you have to make up fairy tales like "We came from Adam and Eve," and then cover stories for Adam and Eve, like intelligent design! Yeah, leaving the earth in the hands of two naked teenagers, that's a real intelligent design.

I'm sorry, folks, but it may very well be that life is just a series of random events, and that there is no master plan--but enough about Iraq.

There aren't necessarily two sides to every issue. If there were, the Republicans would have an opposition party. And an opposition party would point out that even though there's a debate in schools and government about this, there is no debate among scientists. Evolution is supported by the entire scientific community. Intelligent design is supported by the guys on lin ~ Bill Maher

People can find patterns in all kinds of random events. It's called apophenia. It's the tendency we humans have to find meaning in disconnected information. ~ Dan Chaon

This is the nature of sorrow; often it fades with time, but once in a while it remains lodged below the surface of things, a stubborn thorn beneath a fingernail, making itself felt every time you brush against it. (How well I knew this, for random events would startle me into the memory of a pair of ancient eyes.) ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

There isn't one single thing that will end unwinding. It will take a hodgepodge of random events that come together in just the right way and at just the right time to remind society it's got a conscience. -Sonia ~ Neal Shusterman

Our predilection for causal thinking exposes us to serious mistakes in evaluating the randomness of truly random events. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Cancer is the emergent property of the accumulated errors in an ordered system. It's the consequences of random events. ~ Steven Popkes

Our success should not be a random event, but the result of conscious actions. ~ Tony Jeary

It is a secret from nobody that the famous random event is most likely to arise from those parts of the world where the old adage"There is no alternative to victory" retains a high degree of plausibility. ~ Hannah Arendt

In the end, each life is no more than the
sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own
lack of purpose. ~ Paul Auster

These stories are about the defining moment, no matter how seemingly insignificant, from which point, things are never quite the same again. For the characters, random events come together marking a point in their lives which has an impact maybe well into the future. No matter how well you plan, you never really know what will happen tomorrow or in a few years from now. ~ Jan Merry

It may be hard to hear, but victim thinking is actually self-centered. If you're stuck in a victim mindset, you feel one down, helpless, and at the mercy of others. From this place you perceive yourself as the target of unfortunate events and other people. You may interpret random events as being about your exceptionally bad luck or as a sign that other people are out to get you. You become "terminally unique" in your outlook and you may even become paranoid. When you take on the role of victim as an identity or a badge of honor, you are actively participating in your victimization and disowning your authentic personal power. "You are only a victim for a nanosecond." - Pia Mellody ~ Vicki Tidwell Palmer

Because the question for me was always whether that shape we see in our lives was there from the beginning or whether these random events are only called a pattern after the fact. Because otherwise we are nothing. ~ Cormac McCarthy

The shedding of blood has historically been seen as a male act of heroism: from right-of-passage fistfights, to contact sports and combat. Infrequent, random events seen as standalone milestones; stories to tell once the pain - and enough time - has passed. Female bleeding is more mundane, more frequent, more getonwithit, despite its existence being the reason that every single life begins ~ Sinéad Gleeson

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

Stoicism, seen this way, becomes pure robustness - for the attainment of a state of immunity from one's external circumstances, good or bad, and an absence of fragility to decisions made by fate, is robustness. Random events won't affect us either way (we are too strong to lose, and not greedy to enjoy the upside), so we stay in the middle column of the Triad. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Book authors are in high demand for speaking engagements and appearances; they are the new 'celebrity' and celebrities gain access. Authors not only make money from royalties or book advances but from their keynotes, presentations and strategically branded product lines. This includes entrepreneurial ideas for you to extend yourself beyond just writing and prepares you to add speaking and consulting to your revenue stream. You have to begin to look outside book sales and towards the speaking market. There are radio, interviews, news, television, small channel television keynotes, lectures, seminars and workshops. These types of events have the possibility to be much more lucrative than just selling books. In essence, the book builds and brands you in the public eye. It gives you credibility and the opportunity to be more than you are. It enables you to now be a voice, a teacher, a leader, an expert - after all, you wrote the book on it! ~ Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

We see the world as less random than it actually is. ~ Nassim Taleb

- ... before I was going to college, my secret plan was to one day not tell anybody and just get on some bus to some random city and just move there and become this totally different person.
- Then what?
- ... and not come back until I had totally become this person ... I used to think about it all the time ...
- I don't get it ...
- That's because you don't uterlly loathe yourself ~ Daniel Clowes

Miracles occur, If you dare to call those spasmodic Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again, The long wait for the angel, For that rare, random descent. ~ Sylvia Plath

Because of the active principle and spirit or universal soul, nothing is so incomplete, defective or imperfect, or, according to common opinion, so completely insignificant that it could not become the source of great events. ~ Giordano Bruno

Reluctantly Bastian's thoughts turned back to reality. He was glad the Neverending Story had nothing to do with that.
He didn't like books in which dull, cranky writers describe humdrum events in the very humdrum lives of humdrum people. Reality gave him enough of that kind of thing, why should he read about it? Besides, he couldn't stand it when a writer tried to convince him of something. And these humdrum books, it seemed to him, were always trying to do just that.
Bastian liked books that were exciting or funny, or that made him dream. Books where made-up characters had marvelous adventures, books that made him imagine all sorts of things.
Because one thing he was good at, possibly the only thing, was imagining things so clearly that he almost saw and heard them. ~ Michael Ende

I would make my job a work of art. I would like whatever it is that I'm doing - everyone's experience of me, everyone's interaction with me, everyone's discussion, conversation, relationship with me - [to be] an event within which they get to see who they are. I would make of my life a work of art. ~ John Denver

Random violence is incredibly infectious. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

I've been in companies where they have galas. U.S. companies aren't government-funded, so they invite wealthier people to come to these events. It's a very glamorous art form. They send you off to talk to bankers, and they make you feel objectified in a way. ~ Sarah Hay

I confess that Magic teacheth many superfluous things, and curious prodigies for ostentation; leave them as empty things, yet be not ignorant of their causes. But those things which are for the profit of men
for the turning away of evil events, for the destroying of sorceries, for the curing of diseases, for the exterminating of phantasms, for the preserving of life, honor, or fortune
may be done without offense to God or injury to religion, because they are, as profitable, so necessary. ~ Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

Somehow she had climbed halfway up his body before he managed to grasp her waist. He plucked her off and set her on her feet.
She started to climb up his body again.
"Are you having fun?" he asked suspiciously.
"We're on the fucking moon!" she shouted. "There's nothing here!"
He stared at her. "I don't think you're having fun."
"No air!"
He shook his head. "Think about that logically. Could you have possibly said those words if there truly was no air? Of course
there's no air or atmosphere outside this bubble - "
"Ofcoursethere'snofuckingairhereorfuckingatmosphereonthefuckinggoddamnMOONyouGODDAMNFUCKINGCRAZYMORONICDJINN ... "
"Grace," he roared in her face. ~ Thea Harrison

The Real World'

The real word doesn't take flight
the way dreams do.
No muffled voice, no doorbell
can dispel it,
no shriek, no crash
can cut it short.

Images in dreams
are hazy and ambiguous,
and can generally be explained
in many different ways.
Reality means reality:
that's tougher nut to crack.

Dreams have keys.
The real world opens on its own
and can't be shut.
Report canrds and stars
pour from it,
butterflies and flatiron warmers
shower down,
headless caps
and shards of clouds.
Together they form a rebus
that can't be solved.

Without us dreams couldn't exist.
The one on whom the real world depends
is still unknown,
and the products of his insomnia
are avaialble to anyone
who wakes up.

Dreams aren't crazy-
it's the real world that's insane,
if only in the stubbornness
with which it sticks
to the current of events.

In dreams our recently deceased
are still alive,
in perfect health, no less,
and restored to the full bloom of youth.
The real world lays the corpse
in front of us.
The real world doesn't blink an eye.

Dreams are featherweights,
and memory can shake them off with ease.
The real world doesn't have to fear forgetfulness.
It's a tough customer.
It sits on our shoulders,
weights on our hearts, ~ Wisława Szymborska

Crime novels have a clear beginning, middle, and end: a mystery, its investigation, and its resolution. The reader expects events to play out logically and efficiently, and these expectations force the writer to spend a good deal of time working on macrostructure rather than prettifying individual sentences. ~ Jesse Kellerman

Everything that he was saying sounded incredible, but Frank knew enough about politics to know that governments got away with what they did because they counted on ordinary citizens dismissing events as being too incredible and implausible. ~ Thrity Umrigar

What is needed, then, is continuous agitation produced artificially even when nothing in the events of the day justifies or arouses excitement. Therefore, continuing propaganda must slowly create a climate first, and then prevent the individual from noticing a particular propaganda operation in contrast to ordinary daily events. ~ Jacques Ellul

Eli keeps showing me random things." he said, shaking his head.
"Like what?" I whispered, not able to help myself.
"His toes in the dirt, chicken noodle soup, Legos, pine cones, and Calico. Always Calico." He shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "What do you think he's trying to tell me?"
"Those are his favorite things. He's telling you his greats. ~ Amy Harmon

Each and every one of us has been born into a given historical reality, ruled by particular norms and values, and managed by a unique economic and political system. We take this reality for granted, thinking it is natural, inevitable and immutable. We forget that our world was created by an accidental chain of events, and that history shaped not only our technology, politics and society, but also our thoughts, fears and dreams. The cold hand of the past emerges from the grave of our ancestors, grips us by the neck and directs our gaze towards a single future. We have felt that grip from the moment we were born, so we assume that it is a natural and inescapable part of who we are. Therefore we seldom try to shake ourselves free, and envision alternative futures. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Being at one with everything just means accepting that the future is always going to be unsure and learning to find ways to be okay with the uncontrollable sequence of events. ~ Mohadesa Najumi

You don't think I know that?" Puck was shouting now, green eyes feverish. "You don't think I regret what I did, every single day? You lost Ariella, but I lost you both! Believe it or not, I was kind of a mess, too, Ash. It got to a point where I actually looked forward to our random duels, because that was the only time I could talk to you. When you were freaking trying to kill me!"
"Don't compare your loss to mine," I snarled. "You have no idea what I went through, what you caused."
"You think I don't know pain?" Puck shook his head at me. "Or loss? I've been around a lot longer than you, prince! I know what love is, and I've lost my fair share, too. Just because we have a different way of handling it, doesn't mean I don't have scars of my own."
"Name one," I scoffed. "Give me one instance where you haven't - "
"Meghan Chase!" Puck roared, startling me into silence. ~ Julie Kagawa

You cannot create a thing-not a thought, an object, an event-no experience of any kind-which is outside of God's plan. For God's plan is for you to create anything-everything-whatever you want. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

At all events, I do not mean to leave it unaltered. ~ James Branch Cabell

Lucretius wrote in The Nature of Things: Especially since this world is the product of Nature, the happenstance Of the seeds of things colliding into each other by pure chance In every possible way, no aim in view, at random, blind, Till sooner or later certain atoms suddenly combined So that they lay the warp to weave the cloth of mighty things: Of earth, of sea, of sky, of all species of living beings. ~ Marcelo Gleiser

Every minute, every second, the pattern of genes being expressed in your brain changes, often in direct or indirect response to events outside the body. Genes are the mechanisms of experience. ~ Matt Ridley

You have a lot to explore beyond this cottage if you want to know everything about the world. Explore until your heart is full, Belle. And then explore some more. ~ Random House Disney

I don't normally like getting dressed up, but when I go to events, I like to look put together. I've got to say, getting in a nice suit feels good. ~ Paul Dano

Since my 'Crown of Midnight' tour in 2013, we've had such a rapid jump in audience numbers that we've had to move to bigger venues, cap events, and find new and creative ways to keep the line flowing while still allowing me the chance to chat with each person, which will always be very, very important to me. ~ Sarah J. Maas

We avoid the familiar reproach that we base our constructions of mental life on pathological findings; for dreams are regular events in the life of a normal person, however much their characteristics may differ from the productions of our waking life. ~ Sigmund Freud

Yet you must not cling to the words of the old sages either; they, too, may not be right. Even if you believe them, you should be alert so that , in the event that something superior comes along, you may follow that. ~ Dogen

To be moved confuses the soul. One cannot convey these kinds of memories any more than the events of a dream ...
... if I have complained too long, it is because my memory, no longer having any fixed abode, has to carry its luggage with it. ~ Jean Cocteau

It's funny, because you always think the hard part is meeting someone the first time. It's not. It's the second time, because you've already used up all the obvious topics of conversation. And even if you haven't, it's strange and heavy-handed to introduce random conversational topics at this stage in the game. Hi, Reid. Let's converse about topics. HOW MANY SIBLINGS DO YOU HAVE? WHAT BOOKS DO YOU LIKE? ~ Becky Albertalli

All the chance events of our lives are materials from which we can make what we like. Whoever is rich in spirit makes much of his life. Every acquaintance, every incident would be for the thoroughly spiritual person - the first element in an endless series - the beginning of an endless novel. ~ Novalis

I've worked with all sorts of random people - everybody from Metallica to Britney Spears to Ozzy Osbourne to Michael Jackson to the Beastie Boys. I've got a really strange CV. It's interesting - I work with a lot of these disparate, different people to learn what it's like to work with random people. ~ Moby

In those days before the Great War when the events narrated in this book took place, it had not yet become a matter of indifference whether a man lived or died. When one of the living had been extinguished another did not at once take his place in order to obliterate him: there was a gap where he had been, and both close and distant witnesses of his demise fell silent whenever they became aware of his gap. When fire had eaten away a house from the row of others in a street, the burnt-out space remained long empty. Masons worked slowly and cautiously. Close neighbors and casual passers-by alike, when they saw the empty space, remembered the aspect and walls of the vanished house. That was how things were then. Everything that grew took its time in growing and everything that was destroyed took a long time to be forgotten. And everything that had once existed left its traces so that in those days people lived on memories, just as now they live by the capacity to forget quickly and completely. ~ Joseph Roth

When the life is monotonous , even grief is a welcome event ... ~ Maxim Gorky

Great joys,why do they bring us sadness? Because there remains from these excesses only a feeling of irrevocable loss and desertion which reaches a high degree of negative intensity. At such moments, instead of a gain, one keenly feels loss. sadness accompanies all those events in which life expends itself. its intensity is equal to its loss. Thus death causes the greatest sadness. ~ Emil Cioran

I cannot control what you bring into the theater when you see the film. I can't control what my parents bring in. I can't control what some random person on Twitter brings in to the theater. All I can control is the hour and 50 minutes that the movie lasts, and try to give it absolutely everything I can. ~ James Ponsoldt

I moved to Los Angeles, and 'The Office' became successful, and the charity/cocktail party circuit is really not my scene. But I played golf, and I started getting invited to charity golf events, and I just fell in love with the game ten-fold, and at a lot of these events, there were athletes. ~ Brian Baumgartner

A bit less obvious is the metaphor for human history, course, which refers to a path of running or flowing, as in the course of a river, a racecourse, and a headlong course. The metaphor is that A SEQUENCE OF EVENTS IS MOTION ALONG A PATHWAY, a special case of the TIME IS MOTION metaphor we met in the previous chapter. ~ Steven Pinker

A voice said: One. One. One, two. One, two. Then the footsteps went back into the distance. After a while, another voice said: One, two, three, four- And the universe came into being. It was wrong to call it a big bang. That would just be noise, and all that noise could create is more noise and a cosmos full of random particles. Matter exploded into being, apparently as chaos, but in fact as a chord. The ultimate power chord. Everything, all together, streaming out in one huge rush that contained within itself, like reverse fossils, everything that it was going to be. And, zigzagging through the expanding cloud, alive, that first wild live music. This had shape. It had spin. It had rhythm. It had a beat, and you could dance to it. Everything did. ~ Terry Pratchett

I would confront the thieves, I thought, and the self-evident justice of my case would cause them to crumble before me. I don't know why I expected such extravagant results from the application of mere justice. That kind of calculation is seldom borne out by worldly events. ~ Robert Charles Wilson

It was the Kojagar full moon, and I was slowly pacing the riverside conversing with myself. It could hardly be called a conversation, as I was doing all the talking and my imaginary companion all the listening. The poor fellow had no chance of speaking up for himself, for was not mine the power to compel him helplessly to answer like a fool?

But what a night it was! How often have I tried to write of such, but never got it done! There was not a line of ripple on the river; and from away over there, where the farthest shore of the distant main stream is seen beyond the other edge of the midway belt of sand, right up to this shore, glimmers a broad band of moonlight. Not a human being, not a boat in sight; not a tree, nor blade of grass on the fresh-formed island sand-bank.

It seemed as though a desolate moon was rising upon a devastated earth; a random river wandering through a lifeless solitude; a long-drawn fairy-tale coming to a close over a deserted world, - all the kings and the princesses, their ministers and friends and their golden castles vanished, leaving the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers and the Unending Moor, over which the adventurous princes fared forth, wanly gleaming in the pale moonlight. I was pacing up and down like the last pulse-beats of this dying world. Every one else seemed to be on the opposite shore - the shore of life - where the British Government and the Nineteenth Century hold sway, and tea and cigarettes. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I don't know how much more of this 'sugarplum' shit I can take.

I'm about ready to hand over my balls just so he can feel what it's like to have a pair again.

-Jackson 'Blame It on the Pain ~ Ashley Jade

From inside his room Reacher heard the lawn chair scrape across the blacktop, but he paid no attention. Just a random nighttime sound, nothing dangerous, not a shotgun jacking a round, not the hiss of a blade on a sheath, nothing for his lizard brain to worry about. And the only non-lizard possibilities were a lace-up footstep on the sidewalk outside, and a knock on the door, because the woman from the railroad seemed like a person with a lot of questions, and also some kind of expectation they should be answered. Who are you and why have you come here? ~ Lee Child

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do, watcha gonna do when they cut your wiener," Gavin sang as he pointed his gun at random objects.
"Wow, cops have gotten pretty hardcore lately" Carter muttered. ~ Tara Sivec

The events of September 11 were carried out by people armed not with weapons of mass destruction, but with blades you can buy at a newsagent ~ Phillip Adams