quotations about chance
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance ... logic can be happily tossed out the window.
STEPHEN KING
The Stand
In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.
LOUIS PASTEUR
lecture, Dec. 7, 1854
The best men are not those who have waited for chances, but taken them--besieged the chance, conquered the chance, and made the chance their servitor.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
But I don't believe coincidences are chance events. I think they're the times we happen to see the mysterious pattern connecting everything.
JULIE GITTUS
Saltwater Moons
Next him high arbiter
Chance governs all.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Yet they, believe me, who await
No gifts from Chance, have conquer'd Fate.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Resignation
What else is chance but the rude stone which receives its life from the sculptor's hand? Providence gives us chance, and man must mould it to his own designs.
FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
Don Carlos
Most coincidences are simply chance events that turn out to be far more probable than many people imagine.
IVARS PETERSON
The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari
Sometimes a wind comes up, blows you off course. You’re not ready for it, but if you’re lucky, you end up in a more interesting place than you’d planned.
NORA ROBERTS
The Calhouns
I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.
KURT VONNEGUT
The Sirens of Titan
Times go by turns, and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.
ROBERT SOUTHWELL
Times Go By Turns