A Quote by David R. Ellis
Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damn near zero.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
The probability of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search the chance of success is zero.
There were a number of particularly delightful incidents. There is, for example, the physicist who introduced me to one of my favorite laws, which he described as Murphys law or the fourth law of thermodynamics (actually there were only three last I heard) which states: If anything can go wrong it will.
We define thermodynamics ... as the investigation of the dynamical and thermal properties of bodies, deduced entirely from the first and second law of thermodynamics, without speculation as to the molecular constitution.
It is a remarkable fact that the second law of thermodynamics has played in the history of science a fundamental role far beyond its original scope. Suffice it to mention Boltzmann's work on kinetic theory, Planck's discovery of quantum theory or Einstein's theory of spontaneous emission, which were all based on the second law of thermodynamics.
Labeling and diagnosis is a catastrophic way to communicate. Telling other people what's wrong with them greatly reduces, almost to zero, the probability that we're going to get what we're after.
Of all the statements that have been made with respect to theories on the origin of life, the statement that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses no problem for an evolutionary origin of life is the most absurd… The operation of natural processes on which the Second Law of Thermodynamics is based is alone sufficient, therefore, to preclude the spontaneous evolutionary origin of the immense biological order required for the origin of life.
At the point so near to zero, just almost before the death, life's value jumps to infinity!
Yet there seemed to be some truth in the law of probability, according to which the chance of success is directly proportionate to the number of repetitions.
Success happened real quick, so I was just all over the place and damn near lost my mind on the second album.
Girls are really resentful to their fathers when they don't get a chance to spend time with them, but now that my daughter knows everything I say damn near will come true or damn near is what it is, she loves me for that, she respects me for it, and I feel the same way with her.
Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don't have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolism; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions.
Once I got home, I sulked for a while. All my brilliant plans foiled by thermodynamics. Damn you, Entropy!
The only number that would ever be enough is 0. Zero pounds, zero life, size zero, double-zero, zero point. Zero in tennis is love. I finally get it.
In the future, when people look back at the early days of Bitcoin, they'll say, 'It was so obvious that the ability to move money anywhere, instantly, at near-zero cost would be a huge success.
Money comes and goes. I may make a million dollars, then get a divorce and damn near lose all of it.
Professor Eddington has recently remarked that 'The law that entropy always increases - the second law of thermodynamics - holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of nature'. It is not a little instructive that so similar a law [the fundamental theorem of natural selection] should hold the supreme position among the biological sciences.
Related Authors
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Quotes
Mexican
Director
Ava DuVernay Quotes
American
Director
David Lynch Quotes
American
Director
George Lucas Quotes
American
Director
Guillermo del Toro Quotes
Mexican
Director
John Waters Quotes
American
Director
Judd Apatow Quotes
American
Director
Martin Scorsese Quotes
American
Director
Nicolas Winding Refn Quotes
Danish
Director
Oliver Stone Quotes
American
Director
Peter Jackson Quotes
New Zealander
Director
Quentin Tarantino Quotes
American
Director
Ridley Scott Quotes
British
Director
Steven Spielberg Quotes
American
Director
Werner Herzog Quotes
German
Director
Woody Allen Quotes
American
Director