Top 1002 Odds Quotes & Sayings - Page 13

The things that I've done that have totally been remembered, they've always started with the same kind of engine, they've always started with someone saying 'I have to make this film - I'm going to make this film whatever the odds'.

For a dying man it is not a difficult decision [to agree to become the world's first heart transplant] ... because he knows he is at the end. If a lion chases you to the bank of a river filled with crocodiles, you will leap into the water convinced you have a chance to swim to the other side. But you would not accept such odds if there were no lion.

Every generation of humans believed it had all the answers it needed, except for a few mysteries they assumed would be solved at any moment. And they all believed their ancestors were simplistic and deluded. What are the odds that you are the first generation of humans who will understand reality ?

Nathaniel Rich wrote 'Odds Against Tomorrow' well before Hurricane Sandy and its surge crashed onto the isle of Manhattan, well before the streets were flooded and the subways drowned, only the Goldman Sachs building sparkling above the darkened avenues.

People do judge books by their covers, and the magazine editors deciding whether to include your book on their pages are working in a visual medium. So if you're less than thrilled by the cover your publisher proposes, don't be afraid to ask for an alternate version. Odds are that they want you to be happy with the final product, anyway.

Classical music is at odds with contemporary culture precisely because of its insistence on the tension between the bodily and intellectual, the material and the spiritual, the thinglike and its transcendence in thought. A culture that is merely sensuous and that denies the activity of the mind within sensuous materials risks becoming pornographic.

I think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence - you know, the things that I want my own daughters to develop - the idea that we're going to get there through rewards and punishments seems completely at odds with the idea of character itself.

When you consider all the writers who never even had a machine. Who would have given an eyeball for a good typewriter. Any typewriter. All the ones who wrote on a matchbook covers. Paper bags. Toilet paper. Who had their writing destroyed by their jailers. Who persisted beyond all odds.

I don't think you can create culture and develop core values during great times. I think it's when the company faces adversity of extraordinary proportions, when there's no reason for the company to survive, when you're looking at incredible odds - that's when culture is developed, character is developed.

At the center of the Universe is a loving heart that continues to beat and that wants the best for every person. Anything that we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision must continue against all odds. Life is for service.

Data-driven predictions can succeed-and they can fail. It is when we deny our role in the process that the odds of failure rise. Before we demand more of our data, we need to demand more of ourselves.

That's still the greatest high, that feeling of being in control of 2,000 people. It's me and them, and I like the odds. It's not even so much the funny. It's getting them quiet. In the quiet moments in '700 Sundays,' I just really love that they're getting moved.

There's this tendency to think of the individual and the collective are somehow at odds or separate. But I think that's really false. We're all both. And when the individual suffers, the collective suffers, and vice versa.

My brother was told that he wouldn't walk, that he wouldn't be able to play drums, that he wouldn't be able to race a car - and he's done all those things. He's defied the odds, defied disability. I look at him and I'm so inspired, by his mentality and by how incredible the body and the mind are. There's really nothing you can't do. My brother has proved that.

As an employer, we're not - let's face it: most of us don't employ men as nannies. Most of us don't. Now you can call that sexist; I call that cautious and very sensible when you look at the stats. Your odds are stacked against you if you employ a man.

Like many other people, I grew up with so much adversity and negativity, it would have been easy to get overwhelmed and give in. But by turning negatives into positives, losing into a journey to winning, I have been able to overcome the odds that were against me and change them into motivation for my success.

As the Republican Party has moved farther and farther to the right, I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic Party.

The trick at every turn was to endure the test of living for as long as possible. The odds of survival were punishingly slim, for the world was naught by a school of calamity and an endless burning furnace of tribulation. But those who survived the world shaped it--even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them.

I remember vividly as a 15-year-old, in 1964, seeing Derry play Glentoran in the Irish Cup Final at Windsor Park in Belfast. Glentoran were one of the two big Belfast teams, along with Linfield. Any rural team playing them was up against the odds.

Most of my writing is an effort, one way or another, to figure something out about myself, and often when I read dialogue between my characters I recognize it as a discussion between two aspects of my own personality, aspects which are too often at odds.

In brief, our genetic heritage is at odds with our genetic future. For the first time in human history, the qualities it takes to survive as a species are compatible with the qualities it takes to love.

That which we remember is, more often than not, that which we would like to have been; or that which we hope to be. Thus our memory and our identity are ever at odds; our history ever a tale told by inattentive idealists.

Negro servants have been smuggling odds and ends out of white homes for generations, and white people have been delighted to have them do it, because it has assuaged a dim guilt and testified to the intrinsic superiority of white people.

The advice I give is , "Don't think of your career as a plan or blueprint. Think of it as growing toward the most light. Keep your eyes open about where the best experiences are happening." Everyone wants to see how someone else managed, defying odds.

If the election of the Father is not universal and the regeneration of the Holy Spirit is not universal, why would the atonement of the Son be universal? That would put the persons of the Trinity completely at odds with one another-but the triune God is completely unified.

Because I knew how hard I worked, I knew the pain, I knew the sacrifice, I knew the tears, I knew everything. Despite everything, I stuck to it. I toughed it out, and I kept my head in the game, even when the odds were against me.

The Constitution is a pantheon of values, and a lot of hard cases are hard because the Constitution gives no simple rule of decision for the cases in which one of the values is truly at odds with another.

The original Zal story by Ferdowsi gives a very moving account of an infant who had all odds against him - he was left to die in the wilderness and a giant, benevolent bird rescued him and became his guardian angel. This tale thrilled me; I've always wanted to write about it.

No matter how careful you are, the one risk no investor can ever eliminate is the risk of being wrong. Only by insisting on what Graham called the "margin of safety" - never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be - can you minimize your odds of error.

You don't have to fight to be brave. Millions of good, fine, decent folks show more bravery than heavyweight champs just by getting out of bed every morning, going out to do a good day's work and living the best life they know how against the law of odds.

As a son of Jamaican immigrants whose father cut sugarcane as a contract farm worker for over a decade and whose mother was a cook who fed those migrant workers out in the fields, the odds have always been against me growing up in rural South Bay, Fla.

Wall Street sometimes gets confused between risk and uncertainty, and you can profit handsomely from that confusion. The low-risk, high-uncertainty [situation] gives us our most sought after coin-toss odds. Heads, I win; tails, I don't lose much.

I'm pretty excited when I get a good kick up in the air and our wings start chasing, because I know it's a 50-50. When you kick well and compete well, the odds fall on our side.

You know, I think I did originally have some sort of idea of maybe a Where Eagles Dare kind of mission against impossible odds, but it really sort of died before I had a chance to really go anywhere with it, and then just doing the book was out of the question.

Aladdin' was probably my favorite Disney animation when I was a kid. The animation was great and Robin Williams was unbelievable as the Genie. 'Aladdin' was an amazing adventure and the lead character was a hero for guys, which I loved. It wasn't a princess or a girl beating the odds; it was a street rat. That seemed really cool to me.

You are frightened of everything. You call it caution. You call it common sense. You call it practicality. You call it playing the odds, but that's only because you're afraid to call it by its real name, and its real name is fear.

The odds are definitely better on getting the right job than getting a good partner for life. Someone who will grow with you. Someone to develop memories with. Someone who was there in the beginning. Someone who will be there at the end.

People who say they have a best friend at work are seven times as likely to be engaged in what they're doing. And if they don't have a best friend at work, the odds of being engaged are just 1 in 12.

I'm just a kid that defied the odds. I'm just a kid that ignored the doubt. I'm just a kid from a little place in Dublin, Ireland, that went all the way, and I'm going to continue to go all the way.

I think portraying human beings trying to hold on to their humanity against pretty much certain odds that they'll die horribly in some way someday, and that they'll face horrible things along the way, I don't know - I think that's a beautiful thing. It's a wonderful thing.

I like to say, 'Chop suey's the biggest culinary joke that one culture has ever played on another,' because chop suey, if you translate into Chinese, means 'tsap sui,' which, if you translate back, means 'odds and ends.'

Some social scientists say that in-group/out-group biases are hard-wired into the human brain. Even without overt prejudice, it is cognitively convenient for people to sort items into categories and respond based on what is usually associated with those categories: a form of statistical discrimination, playing the odds.

The odds of being successful are the same for every group that is educated in America. It's just that the group that is not wealthy is 95 percent of the population. So if there are 100 successful people in a room, probably 95 out of 100 came from more modest means.

Mad; adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.

If you want to provide for your family, maybe show business is not a high degree of success. You will need to keep your day job until you make it, and know it's an odds thing just like the NFL. I personally wouldn't recommend anybody to go into this business.

It's a different mindset. Coming from where I come from, we always had to defeat the odds. We didn't have what other people had. We had to work twice as hard for everything. To be noticed to be seen. Even back then it drove me to be the best that I can be. I wanted everyone to know I was somebody you had to watch.

Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds withother nationalities, having quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous.

Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.

Remembering what you've been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you're feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

People with anxiety disorders such as OCD know that nothing can be more paralyzing than having too many options. Go to a store to buy a sweater, find four that you like and the odds are pretty good you'll stare and stare... and buy nothing at all.

In his personal life, Donald Trump shows that even when a family faces difficulties, the role of the father must remain strong - his children are a testament to the fact that a father who remains engaged can overcome many odds and set children on the right path.

The press don't wake up in the morning simply to be a mouthpiece for pols - they're out to uncover and expose news. That often is at odds with what politicians are setting out to do - it's both symbiotic and antagonistic. They need each other, they work in concert with one another, they work against one another.

It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.

'Aladdin' was probably my favorite Disney animation when I was a kid. The animation was great and Robin Williams was unbelievable as the Genie. 'Aladdin' was an amazing adventure and the lead character was a hero for guys, which I loved. It wasn't a princess or a girl beating the odds; it was a street rat. That seemed really cool to me.

When I worry about risks, I worry about the biggest ones, particularly those that are difficult to predict - the ones I call small but deep holes. While odds are you will avoid them, if you do fall in one, it's a long way down and nearly impossible to claw your way out.

It is no easy task to walk this earth and find peace. Inside of us, it would seem, something is at odds with the very rhythm of things and we are forever restless, dissatisfied, frustrated, and aching. We are so overcharged with desire that it is hard to come to simple rest. Desire is always stronger than satisfaction.

Well, the odds must be against anybody being able to fly around the world in a balloon on the first attempt. All of us who are attempting to go around the world in balloons are effectively flying in experimental craft because these craft cannot be tested.

Historically, the stock market is like a gambling casino with the odds in your favor. Over the long pull, stocks are given something like nine and a half to ten percent compounded per year. The banks have probably given you something in the order of four to five.

First a piece of Irish wisdom: you should always listen to a bookie. For they have a saying, 'Money tells a good story,' and somewhere in their odds is a kind of science-fiction existentialism that decrees that we, the people, know everything. In other words, betting patterns often make for good, unconscious soothsaying.

As a romance novelist, I have a rather skewed view of babies. You see, they don't typically fit into the classic structure of the romance novel - romance is about two people finding each other and falling in love against insurmountable odds. Babies... well... babies are complicated.