A Quote by Ethan Zuckerman

Engineering serendipity is this idea that we can help people come across unexpected but helpful connections at a better than random rate. And in some ways it's based on trying to reassess this notion of serendipitous as lucky - to think of serendipitous as smart.

Ethan Zuckerman

Quote Topics

Across Based Better Come Connections Engineering Help Help People Helpful Idea Lucky Notion People Random Rate Serendipity Smart Some Than Think Trying Unexpected Ways

Quote Author

Ethan Zuckerman
American - Activist

The concept of serendipity often crops up in research. Serendipity is the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things that were not being sought. I believe that all researchers can be serendipitous.

Akira Suzuki

Hence the vogue for double majors. It isn’t enough anymore to take a bunch of electives in addition to your primary focus, to roam freely across the academic fields, making serendipitous connections and discoveries, the way that American higher education was designed (uniquely, among the world’s systems) to allow you to do.

William Deresiewicz

Things happen in weird, serendipitous ways.

Jon M. Chu

There is no debate that social media is a great tool for networking with others in our industry. It can lead to friendships, support, and serendipitous connections with reviewers, agents, reporters, or editors.

M. J. Rose

I work on everything all at once, which is maybe the worst way to go about it. But I think that actually it works really well in terms of the serendipitous connections between all of these many different projects and these many different realms.

Jonathon Keats

Work hard, not in grunt work, but in chasing such opportunities and maximizing exposure to them. This makes living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters-you gain exposure to the envelope of serendipity.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

In the end, all journeys are spiritual. So go off the main road. Be givers of hospitality and gracious takers of it too. Accept the serendipitous moments of life because, when all is said and done, you may find out that they were not serendipitous at all. And know that faith is as real as bread broken among friends. What you believe will take you far on your journey. If you search carefully, you will find good food all along the way.

Alton Brown

Serendipitous discoveries are made by chance, found without looking for them but possible only through a sharp vision and sagacity, ready to see the unexpected and never indulgent with the apparently unexplainable.

Horace Walpole

What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?

Gustave Flaubert

I'm pretty sure my mom is the only person on the planet who thinks that she got cancer so that I could find my calling in life, but as I started to build this company, all my years of useless education, random jobs, and weird interests merged into this serendipitous moment.

Yael Cohen

Many people think all I do is some random engineering work in between caving expeditions. It's been far more deliberate than that.

William Stone

It [moviemaking] is like a dream. When you're dreaming, you make some very strange connections between some random stuff and random people.

Quentin Dupieux

In fact, so much of life, as you know, is serendipitous. That's why you better be prepared at any time for anything, because it may happen to you.

Bill Moyers

I find listening to music in terms of influences, and trying to keep up with what's going on, is sickening! I mean, I'm not deliberately musically illiterate. But I have a pretty serendipitous approach to it.

Carey Mercer

People are trying to build a society where they can talk across the aisle so to speak, and have civil discourse. At the same time we're trying to inform ourselves about what's really true so that we can make evidence based decisions that is better than superstition or rumor. But the fact is that people who use evidence based decision making have much better life outcomes, greater life satisfaction, they live longer, they make better personal and medical decisions, better financial decisions. But parallel to that is you can't reason somebody out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.