Fortuitous Quotes

On this page you will find all the quotes on the topic "Fortuitous". There are currently 47 quotes in our collection about Fortuitous. Discover the TOP 10 sayings about Fortuitous!
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  • At quite uncertain times and places, The atoms left their heavenly path, And by fortuitous embraces, Engendered all that being hath. And though they seem to cling together, And form 'associations' here, Yet, soon or late, they burst their tether, And through the depths of space career.

    Science   Careers   Space  
    James Clerk Maxwell, “Molecular Evolution”
  • The short story that eventually grew into Constellation was the first fiction set in Russia that I'd ever written, and that was right around the time I was giving up on a doomed, never-to-be-seen first novel. While I saw it could be something bigger, in hindsight fortuitous timing was as responsible as anything.

    Giving Up   Russia   Saws  
    Source: therumpus.net
  • Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again.

    Progress   Littles   Tiny  
    "Dinosaur in a Haystack". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "Can We Complete Darwin's Revolution?" (p. 327), 1995.
  • We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation.

    Animal   Men   Thinking  
    Carl Sagan (1973). “Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective”, p.5, Cambridge University Press
  • It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect . . . .The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms.

    "The Life of Lord Kelvin, Volume 2" by Silvanus Phillips, (2005 edition, p. 1093), 1910.
  • I see no reason to believe that a creator of protoplasm or primeval matter, if such there be, has any reason to be interested in our insignificant race in a tiny corner of the universe, and still less in us, as still more insignificant individuals. Again, I see no reason why the belief that we are insignificant or fortuitous should lessen our faith.

    Believe   Science   Race  
  • That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.

  • In August of 1921, one of the great American combinations was unveiled—even better than the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This fortuitous new blend was radio and baseball.

    Baseball   August   Radio  
    George Vecsey (2008). “Baseball: A History of America's Favorite Game”, p.95, Modern Library
  • I didn't start acting until I was 27, and that was just through Gary Shandling and Ben Stiller who I knew through stand-up. And they both in the same year offered me parts on their programs which was unbelievably lucky and fortuitous.

    Years   Acting   Lucky  
    Source: brightestyoungthings.com
  • How is it to be explained that something inside me revolts against the playing of obvious moves? Perhaps we may perceive the underlying reason in the fact that I derive satisfaction from seeking to reveal the concealed meaning of a position by means of maneuvering play and therefore I do not wish to see this satisfaction curtailed by a banal, more or less fortuitous decision. Naturally, this phenomenon is played out beneath the threshold of consciousness. The waking consciousness will, of course, in each individual case, give preference to the more rapid means of deciding the game.

    Moving   Mean   Games  
  • Photographs should celebrate the contingent, the spontaneous, the incomplete, the fortuitous. Direct, unblinking vision should be coupled with deliberate indifference as to subject. The ironic goal is a scrupulous recording of whatever chance brings to hand.

    Hands   Goal   Ironic  
  • I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property that we would care to call consciousness.

    "Dinosaur in a Haystack". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "Can We Complete Darwin's Revolution?", p. 327, 1995.
  • How comes it to pass, if they be only moved by chance and accident, that such regular mutations and generations should be begotten by a fortuitous concourse of atoms.

    John Smith, Simon Patrick, John Worthington (1821). “Select discourses”, p.53
  • The greatest dread of ordinary man is death, with its rude imposition interrupting fortuitous plans and fondest attachments with an unknown and unwelcome change. The yogi is a conqueror of the grief associated with death. By control of mind and life force and the development of wisdom, he makes friends with the change of consciousness called death-he becomes familiar with the state of inner calmness and aloofness from identification with the mortal body.

    Death   Grief   Men  
  • PLAGUE, n. In ancient times a general punishment of the innocent for admonition of their ruler, as in the familiar instance of Pharaoh the Immune. The plague today . . . is merely Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.

    Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.165, 谷月社
  • Nothing fortuitous happens in a child's world. There are no accidents. Everything is connected with everything else and everything can be explained by everything else. . . . For a young child everything that happens is a necessity.

    Children   World   Young  
    John Berger (2011). “A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor”, p.122, Vintage
  • It's good to keep in mind that prominence is always a mix of hard work, eloquence in your practice, good timing and fortuitous social relations. Everything can't be personalized.

  • A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the latter.

    Errors   Produce   Latter  
  • Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation

    Animal   Men   Creation  
    Carl Sagan (1973). “Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective”, p.5, Cambridge University Press
  • They whose activity of imagination is often shifting the scenes of expectation, are frequently subject to such sallies of caprice as make all their actions fortuitous, destroy the value of their friendship, obstruct the efficacy of their virtues, and set them below the meanest of those who persist in their resolutions, execute what they design, and perform what they have promised.

    Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.343
  • Composition is a side issue. Its role in my selection of photographs is a negative one at best. By which I mean that the fascination of a photograph is not in its eccentric composition but in what it has to say: its information content. And, on the other hand, composition always also has its own fortuitous rightness.

    Art   Mean   Issues  
    Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007”
  • Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery of the finger of God.

  • The Artist submits from day to day to the fatal rhythm of the impulses of the universal world which encloses him, continual centre of sensations, always pliant, hypnotized by the marvels of nature which he loves, he scrutinizes. His eyes, like his soul, are in perpetual communion with the most fortuitous of phenomena.

    Eye   Artist   Soul  
    Michael Wilson, Odilon Redon (1978). “Nature and Imagination: The Work of Odilon Redon”, Phaidon Press
  • It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena. A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the later. Prediction becomes impossible, and we have the fortuitous phenomena.

  • Fortuitous mostly for me,Lady Holloway," she said, her gaze steadfast on her husband. "For without our being childhgood neighbors, I am certain that my husband woud never have found me." Michael's gaze lit with admiration, and he lifted his glass in her direction. "At some point I would have realized what I was missing, darling. An I would have come looking for you.

  • When we contemplate the world of Epicurus, and conceive the universe to be a fortuitous jumble of atoms, there is nothing grand in this idea. The clashing of atoms by blind chance has nothing in it fit to raise our conceptions, or to elevate the mind. But the regular structure of a vast system of beings, produced by creating power, and governed by the best laws which perfect wisdom and goodness could contrive, is a spectacle which elevates the understanding, and fills the soul with devout admiration.

    Law   Ideas   Creating  
    Thomas Reid, William Hamilton, Harry M. Bracken, Thomas Reid, Sir William Hamilton (1967). “Philosophical Works”, p.496, Georg Olms Verlag
  • I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought.

    "Dinosaur in a Haystack". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, "Can We Complete Darwin's Revolution?" (p. 327), 1995.
  • Western civilization, because of fortuitous historical circumstances, has spread itself more widely than any other local group that has so far been known.

    Ruth Benedict (1973). “Patterns of Culture”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  • It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena.

  • There is no explanation in the Big Bang theory for the seemingly fortuitous fact that the density of matter has just the right value for the evolution of a benign, life supporting universe.

    Bangs   Density   Matter  
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