Probable Quotes - page 9
[T]he great aim-the moral and political significance of the act, and its probable and desired fruit in binding the two countries together by interest and affection. Neither you nor I attach for the moment any superlative value to this Treaty for the sake of the extension of British trade. ... What I look to is the social good, the benefit to the relations of the two countries, and the effect on the peace of Europe.
William Ewart Gladstone
It is probable... that the greatest inventor in science was never able to do more than to accelerate the progress of discovery, and to anticipate what time, "the author of authors," would have gradually brought to light. Though logarithms had not been invented by Napier, they would have been discovered in the progress of the algebraic analysis, when the arithmetic of powers and exponents, both integral and fractional, came to be fully understood. The idea of considering all numbers, as powers of one given number, would then have readily occurred, and the doctrine of series would have greatly facilitated the calculations which it was necessary to undertake. Napier had none of these advantages, and they were all supplied by the resources of his own mind. Indeed, as there never was any invention for which the state of knowledge had less prepared the way, there never was any where more merit fell to the share of the inventor.
John Napier
O just ones, hear me! You cannot condemn this man, monkey or parrot for saying that the moon is the world he comes from. If he is a man, all men are free. Is he then not free to imagine what he wants, even if he does not come from the moon? Can you force him to have only your visions? Impossible! You may make him say that he believes that the moon is not a world, but still he will not believe it. To believe something, one must imagine that it is more probable than not. Unless you show him what is probable or he realizes it himself, he may tell you that he believes and yet he will not believe.
Cyrano de Bergerac
I didn't ever really talk until I started hanging out in '80 or '81 with the drag queens at the Metropolis [or Met, a gay new wave club] in Portland. I was very, very quiet. So much so that at one point when I was very young I was diagnosed as a probable autistic. And then I started hanging around with bitchy drag queens and with [my friends] Ursula and Robin, and they basically raised me. I found my inner bitch and I ran with her.
Courtney Love
The politicians to a man agree, that it is free from particular reflections, but that the satire on general societies of men is too severe. Not but we now and then meet with people of greater perspicuity, who are in search for particular applications in every leaf; and it is highly probable we shall have keys published to give light into Gulliver's design. Lord -- is the person who least approves it, blaming it as a design of evil consequence to depreciate human nature . The duchess dowager of Marlborough is in raptures at it; she says she can dream of nothing else since she read it: she declares, that she has now found out, that her whole life has been lost in caressing the worst part of mankind, and treating the best as her foes: and that if she knew Gulliver, though he had been the worst enemy she ever had; she should give up her present acquaintance for his friendship.
John Gay
[O]ne or two others, and certainly the Australians, require a good deal of education. They must realise that, if we denounce the Japanese Alliance, we can no longer rely on the assistance of the Japanese Fleet, and we must prepare for the possibility that Japan may enter into arrangements which may bring her into hostility with us. This would mean maintaining on the China Station a Fleet superior not only to the Japanese Fleet, but also to any probable combination of the Japanese Fleet with any other Fleet in those waters. This would, of course, be in addition to maintaining the two-Power standard in European waters, both in home waters and in the Mediterranean. The logical conclusion of denouncing the Japanese Alliance would be that Australia and New Zealand should undertake the burden of naval supremacy in China seas. This they are neither willing nor able to do.
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
...For natural science he [Otto von Bismarck] shewed little interest, and indeed at that time it scarcely could be reckoned among the ordinary subjects of education; philosophy he pursued rather as a man than as a student, and we are not surprised to find that it was Spinoza rather than Kant or Fichte or Hegel to whom he devoted most attention, for he cared more for principles of belief and the conduct of life than the analysis of the intellect.
...He [Otto von Bismarck] astonished his friends by the amount and variety of his reading; it was at this time that he studied Spinoza. It is said that he had among his friends the reputation of being a liberal; it is probable enough that he said and did many things which they did not understand; and anything they did not understand would be attributed to liberalism by the country gentlemen of Pomerania; partly no doubt it was due to the fact that in 1843 he came back from Paris wearing a beard.
Baruch Spinoza
There does not seem to be cause for alarm in the dual relationship of the press to the public, whereby it is on one side a purveyor of information and opinion and on the other side a purely business enterprise. Rather, it is probable that a press which maintains an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation, is likely to be more reliable than it would be if it were a stranger to these influences. After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of opinion that the great majority of people will always find these are moving impulses of our life. The opposite view was oracularly and poetically set forth in those lines of Goldsmith which everybody repeats, but few really believe: 'Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.'.
Calvin Coolidge
The interest of research workers has frequently been focused on the phenomenon of regularly shaped crystals suddenly forming from a liquid, e.g. a supersaturated salt solution. According to the atomic theory the forming force in this process is to a certain extent the symmetry characteristic of the solution to Schrödinger's wave equation, and to that extent crystallization is explained by the atomic theory. Nevertheless this process retains a statistical and - one might almost say - historical element which cannot be further reduced: even when the state of the liquid is completely known before crystallization, the shape of the crystal is not determined by the laws of quantum mechanics. The formation of regular shapes is just far more probable than that of a shapeless lump. But the ultimate shape owes its genesis partly to an element of chance which in principle cannot be analysed further.
Werner Heisenberg
