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Quotations about odds
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Anxiety is the unwillingness to play even when you know the odds are for you. Courage is the willingness to play even when you know the odds are against you.
Thomas Szasz (b. 1920) Hungarian-American psychiatrist, educator
The Second Sin (1973)
Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Mort (1987)
Let no one be discouraged by the belief that there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills — against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence … Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation …
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
“Day of Affirmation,” address, University of Capetown, South Africa (6 Jun 1966)
(Source)
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) American clergyman and author
“I Am Only One”
It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong — but that’s the way to bet.
Hugh E. Keough (1864-1912) Canadian-American sports journalist
(Attributed)
Variants:Also attributed to Damon Runyon, Franklin Pierce Adams, Grantland Rice, and Burns Mantle, all of of whom in turn credited Keough. The saying itself, a take-off on Ecclesiastes 9:11, has a number of antecedents: see here for more background.
- "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but the betting is best that way."
- "To be sure the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but it is ninety-nine times in a hundred."
