#randomness

[The sound of the wind] was just more proof that the workings of the world were random, that beauty, like suffering, was meaningless, that human life was as pointless as waves on sand. ↗

— Anita Diamant

#beauty #day-after-night #meaninglessness-of-life #random-chance #randomness

Chance doesn't mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that's the way that novelty, new things, come about. ↗

— John Polkinghorne

#chance #come #contingency #happens #historical

We could not, for example, arrive at a principle like that of entropy without introducing some additional principle, such as randomness, to this topography. ↗

— Michael Polanyi

#arrive #could #entropy #example #for example

If you hear a "prominent" economist using the word 'equilibrium,' or 'normal distribution,' do not argue with him; just ignore him, or try to put a rat down his shirt. ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#humor #randomness #humor

I listen to Radio 4 and put the iPod on shuffle. I like the randomness of, say, the Stones, then something from Nina Simone, Nick Drake or Bob Dylan. ↗

— Catherine McCormack

#bob dylan #drake #dylan #i #ipod

Ka knew very well that life was a meaningless string of random incidents ↗

— Orhan Pamuk

#randomness #life

The world is big in some ways, and so small in others. ↗

— Ashly Lorenzana

#overwhelming #randomness #universe #world #life

The two go hand in hand like a dance: chance flirts with necessity, randomness with determinism. To be sure, it is from this interchange that novelty and creativity arise in Nature, thereby yielding unique forms and novel structures. ↗

— Eric Chaisson

#determinism #nature #necessity #randomness #age