Quotes & Sayings About Chances

Don't delay acting on a good idea. Chances are someone else has just thought of it, too. Success comes to the one who acts first. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

money can't buy good health or a serene state of mind - especially the latter. You can fly to the ends of the earth in search of the best climate or the best medical treatment and the chances are that you will have to keep flying! — Ruskin Bond

You have the courage to take chances. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Substitution is a true test of strength. The real performance of a player is seen not only during playing time but also and more especially when the player is substituted. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone. — Shannon L. Alder

Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly. — Stephen R. Covey

Don't be afraid to take chances. The biggest risk is not taking any risk. — Nicky Hilton

Ellie's head sinks into her hands, and she weeps for the unknown Boot, for Jennifer, for chances missed and a life wasted. She cries for herself, because nobody will ever love her like he loved Jennifer, and because she suspects that she is spoiling what might have been a perfectly good, if ordinary, life. She cries because she is drunk and in her flat and there are few advantages to living on your own except being able to sob uninhibitedly at will. — Jojo Moyes

Your objective is to avoid being on a string.
The first step, I think, is to get over the fear of losing a man by confronting him. Just stop being afraid, already. The most successful people in this world recognize that taking chances to get what they want is much more productive than sitting around being too scared to take a shot. The same philosophy can be applied to dating: if putting your requirements on the table means you risk him walking away, it's a risk you have to take. Because that fear can trip you up every time; all too many of you let the guy get away with disrespecting you, putting in minimal effort and holding on to the commitment to you because you're afraid he's going to walk away and you'll be alone again. And we men? We recognize this and play on it, big time. — Steve Harvey

Just think it, and chances are it will happen. — Paul Auster

Love does not call us to the dance only to deny us chances . There is consistency in this journey. As in the beginning, so shall it be in the middle and the end. Love does not tempt us to leave what we know, only to leave us without direction, resources, synergy and flow. — Tama J. Kieves

We all want more: more money, a bigger house, fancier clothes, faster cars - all the stuff the people on TV have and tell us we need to be happy. We keep moving forward in search of something, but that something already lives inside of us. And that something is, simply, gratitude. It's stopping in the middle of the cacophony of more and saying, "What I have is enough; I am enough; I am grateful for all that is in this moment, all that is me: the chances I have been given, the things I have done, the good, the bad, and the embarrassing. I am grateful for them because they have brought me to this place. They have been my guides and my teachers. — Paul Williams

I'm not afraid to take chances or go off on my own. — Norman Reedus

More often than not, the chances that are presented to us go unnoticed. Their lessons left unlearned. The most common occurrence is love. Many guard their hearts out of fear that they will be broken, but what is learned by denying one's self? Chance is a miracle. Not an act of God, but a genuinely inexpiable opportunity that can surpass the bonds of one's fate potentially altering the outcome. — A.C. Heller

If you find yourself caring for a relative with dementia, the chances are you'll need help. — Phyllis Logan

Yet in reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all those with a take on the future of the potato crisp, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.
Our era is perverse in passing off an exception as a rule. — Alain De Botton

Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don't freeze up. — Thomas Wolfe

Daniel?" The throaty question had him closing the space between them, pulling her closer into his embrace.
"The way you say my name, that was the second mistake. You haven't closed your heart yet. — Suzan Battah

It is madness to hate all roses because you got scratched with one thorn. To give up on your dreams because one didn't come true. To lose faith in prayers because one was not answered, to give up on our efforts because one of them failed. To condemn all your friends because one betrayed you, not to believe in love because someone was unfaithful or didn't love you back. To throw away all your chances to be happy because you didn't succeed on the first attempt. I hope that as you go on your way, you don't give in nor give up! — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

USE COMMON SENSE. If somebody offers you a thousand dollars for this book, chances are their motives are not pure. Then again, a thousand dollars is a lot of money. Take the money and run. — Pseudonymous Bosch

Don't go through life with a closed mind. Allow innovations and creativity to flow. We should always challenge ourselves to excel in more ways than one. Be open to ideas or suggestions on how to improve. And, the chances of reaching your goals will increase enormously. — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

Even though fathers, grandparents, siblings, memories of ancestors are important agents of socialization, our society focuses on the attributes and characteristics of mothers and teachers and gives them the ultimate responsibility for the child's life chances. — Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

If you are born into poverty, the chances are good that your children will be born into poverty. Find a way to give poor kids the same cognitive stimulus that rich kids receive, and they should end up with the same tools for success. — George Kaiser

You have to keep taking chances on the wrong people till you find the right one. — Lisa Kleypas

If you want to change an external part of your life, then you are first required to change the internal beliefs that hold these patterns in place. If you want others to respond to you or your work in different ways and with more appreciation, then examine your expectations for your work and your efforts. When you believe in yourself, chances are others will find your worth also. — Meredith L. Young-Sowers

There was a moment when I was watching Martin Lawrence and Will Smith in 'Badboys' that I felt, you know, inspired. I don't know if I was proud, because so many people do the work. Everyone's part of a team that develops over the years and gives people chances. There have been some good moments watching people develop. — Russell Simmons

Studies show that each common interest between people boosts the chances of a lasting relationship and also brings about a 2 percent increase in life satisfaction. — Gretchen Rubin

Second chances don't come cheap. — Chris Cole

When the phone started ringing too many times, I had to take it back to what I can handle. I take my chances on a job or a person as opposed to a situation. I don't like to have a situation placed over my head. — Bill Murray

When your goal is to build people up, to make them feel better, to share in their joy, you too reap the rewards of their positive feelings. The next time you have the chance to correct someone, even if their facts are a little off, resist the temptation. Instead, ask yourself, "What do I really want out of this interaction?" Chances are, what you want is a peaceful interaction where all parties leave feeling good. Each time you resist 'being right,' and instead choose kindness, you'll notice a peaceful feeling within. — Richard Carlson

I like to take chances. The actors I admire are the ones who aren't afraid to make themselves nasty, bad or even goofy. I've never shied away from controversial characters. — Matt Dillon

If you won't admit there are kooks among those who share your political viewpoint, chances are, you're one of the kooks. — Raul Ramos Y Sanchez

It's never been important to be a huge star or to have some breakout role. If you're the lead, you get a lot more screen time and you get a lot more chances to develop that character more thoroughly than you would if you do it in a little supporting part. — Famke Janssen

Life is a temporary condition, Henry. And it's uncertain. That's why you have to seize chances when you find them. Pursue what you want. Take risks. Live, love...all of it. Every last one of us is going to die, but if we don't live as we truly want, if we're not with the one we want to be with, we're dead already. — Martha Brockenbrough

If you feel sick and tired of how things are in your life, chances are it's because you're making yourself sick and tired - by engaging in too many energy leaking things. — Karen Salmansohn

I believe that peace with the Palestinians is most urgent - urgent than ever before. It is necessary. It is crucial. It is possible. A delay may worsen its chances. Israel and the Palestinians are, in my judgment, ripe today to restart the peace process. — Shimon Peres

The Pew Economic Mobility Project studied how Americans evaluated their chances at economic betterment, and what they found was shocking. There is no group of Americans more pessimistic than working-class whites. Well over half of blacks, Latinos, and college-educated whites expect that their children will fare better economically than they have. Among working-class whites, only 44 percent share that expectation. Even more surprising, 42 percent of working-class whites - by far the highest number in the survey - report that their lives are less economically successful than those of their parents'. In — J.D. Vance

My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours ... it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us more powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually. — Frederick Buechner

The person who takes no chances generally must take whatever is left over after others have finished choosing. Overcaution is as bad, if not worse, than lack of caution. Both should be avoided. Life will always contain an element of chance. Not to win is not a sin. But not to try is a tragedy. — Venita VanCaspel

Let no one persuade you of a single thing. Study your hunger and how to feed it. Trust in whatever sounds twist your viscera. Write in the cadences of first love, of second chances, of air raids, of outrage, of the hideous and the hilarious, of headlong acceptance or curt refusal. Make the bitter music of bumdom, the sad shanties of landlessness, cool at the equator and fluid at the pole. Set the sounds that angels make after an all-night orgy. Whatever lengthens the day, whatever gets you through the night. Make the music that you need, for need will be over, soon enough. Let your progressions predict time's end and recollect the dead as if they're all still her. Because they are. — Richard Powers

Are we, intellectual sirs, not actively or passively 'producing' more and more words, more books, more articles, ceaselessly refilling the pot-boiler of speech, gorging ourselves on it rather, seizing books and 'experiences', to metamorphose them as quickly as possible into other words, plugging us in here, being plugged in there, just like Mina on her blue squared oilcloth, extending the market and the trade in words of course, but also multiplying the chances of jouissance, scraping up intensities wherever possible, and never being sufficiently dead, for we too are required to go from forty to the hundred a day, and we will never play the whore enough, we will never be dead enough — Jean-Francois Lyotard

Life is about trusting your feelings and taking chances, losing and finding happiness, appreciating the memories, learning from the past, and realizing people change. — Atul Purohit

Ride at any fence hard enough, and the chances are you'll get over. The harder you ride the heavier the fall, if you get a fall; but the greater the chance of your getting over. — Anthony Trollope

I make wishes, but she says never be afraid to take chances. — Delano Johnson

Courage is heartworth making itself felt in deeds. It never waits for chances; it makes chances. — George Matthew Adams

It chances that I'd a letter myself by today's post, from Uncle Jonas Henry.' He chuckled. 'Seemingly he's as throng as he can be, and a trifle hackled with me for loitering here. I shall have to post off to Huddersfield next week, sir - and a bear-garden jaw I'll get when I arrive there, if I know Jonas Henry! — Georgette Heyer

A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the facade of his appearance. — Alanis Morissette

What is not grasped has all the chances to become real. — Edmond Jabes

Take a chance on me and I will prove how worthy your life is. — Heenashree Khandelwal

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance. Never settle for the path of least resistance. Livin' might mean takin' chances but they're worth takin'. Lovin might be a mistake but it's worth makin'. — Lee Ann Womack

Faced with the way the system does you in the 'hood sometimes, if you don't literally get out, your chances are slim. You'll definitely die mentally. You'll pretty much die physically. — Lupe Fiasco

The great thing about taking big chances when you're younger is you have less to lose, and you don't know as much. So you take big swings. — Amy Poehler

The view backward showed you all the twists and turns your life had taken, all the contingencies and chances, the random elements of good luck and bad luck that made up one person's existence. — William Boyd

In life, we all have a second chance but it's what we do with those chances that counts. — Abdulazeez Henry Musa

If at first you do succeed don't take any more chances. — Kin Hubbard

The worst thing that can happen to us is that our wings melt and we fall into the sea. — Kevin James Moore

In the cool of the evening I take to the bridges over the creek. I am prying into secrets again, and taking my chances. I might see anything happen; I might see nothing but light on the water. I walk home exhilarated or becalmed, but always changed, alive. "It scatters and gathers," Heraclitus said, "it comes and goes." And I want to be in the way of its passage and cooled by its invisible breath. — Annie Dillard

You gotta kiss a lot of frogs," he often told his team, "before you find a prince." In fact, frog kissing was one of his mantras: he encouraged his engineers to try out many variations to increase their chances of stumbling on the right one. But — Adam M. Grant

Chance favors the well prepared. The more stuff you throw in, the more chances you have of looking like, 'I did that.' — Mitchell Hurwitz

Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last — Margaret Atwood

I don't think it will ever be too late for her, that she still holds out hope that one day he'll see what he left for never replaced what he gave up. — Courtney Giardina

According to Hugh Fudenberg, MD, the world's leading immunogeneticist and 13th most quoted biologist of our times (nearly 850 papers in peer review journals), if an individual has had five consecutive flu shots between 1970 and 1980 (the years studied) his/her chances of getting Alzheimer's Disease is ten times higher than if they had one, two or no shots. I asked Dr. Fudenberg why this was so and he said it was due to the mercury and aluminum that is in every flu shot (and most childhood shots). The gradual mercury and aluminum buildup in the brain causes cognitive dysfunction. Is that why Alzheimer's is expected to quadruple?219 — James Perloff

I have no shortage of material or offers, it's just a case of what you select to do. But I think it's realistic that my chances of playing Romeo are now over. — Sean Connery

In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: it's the next work, still to be written, that offers the second chance. — Cynthia Ozick

Sometimes we don't get second chances, Owen. Sometimes things just end. — Colleen Hoover

I'm not God, and I can't always offer chances. I'm not sure if this won't be your last. — Kellyn Roth

There's one logical generational difference and that is that young women will have more chances to support a female president than older women. Older women feel it's their last chance, so that's just a factual, obvious difference. But other than that it depends on experience, on individual experience. — Gloria Steinem

Familiar like a forgotten song from long ago that takes you back to a moment the second you hear it. And you recognize who you were. Then. And now. And you have to figure out how to reconcile the two. — Katy Regnery

Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a man's heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned. — J.R.R. Tolkien

When a guy becomes a husband, he has a responsibility not to take as many chances as when he was single. It's called common sense. You'll depend on me not to get hurt or killed chasing an adrenaline rush. — Dee Henderson

Women do not avoid fighting because they are dainty or scared, but because they have a greater stake than men in staying alive to rear their offspring. Women compete with each other just as tenaciously as men, but with a stealth and subtlety that reduces their chances of being killed or injured. — Anne Campbell

I'm just saying that I ... I regret that everybody else has nineteen chances, and only I am limited to a single chance for my genes to continue."
"Because you believe your genes would confer a great blessing upon the human race."
Ram thought about this for a moment, "I suppose that's what every adolescent male believes with his whole heart. — Orson Scott Card

I wish everyone had the same chances," I say. "Because it stinks a big one that they don't." - Catherine — Cynthia Lord

They'll go to jail' said the Captain. 'And they'll stay there until Christmas. Then, if they promise to give up piracy and take an honest job somewhere, they may be allowed to go free. — Alexander McCall Smith

Chance is a second master. — Pliny The Elder

Playing video games was all fine and well. When you were killed in a game, you just started again. In this Shadowrealm, though, there were no second chances, and a lot more ways to die. — Michael Scott

If you buy a book on golf instruction buy the thinnest book you can find. The thinner the book, chances are the easier and more elementary the instruction. It can do one of two things: help you more or hurt you less. Both are good compared to the alternative. — Chi Chi Rodriguez

If you want twenty minutes of quality time with someone you love, schedule three or four hours with him or her one afternoon, and chances are, somewhere in the middle of that three or four hours you will have your twenty minutes of quality time. When — Matthew Kelly

There's something pleasing about large, well-lit spaces. I love that dealers are willing to take massive chances in order to give this much room to their artists. Most of all, I love that more galleries showing more art gives more artists a shot. — Jerry Saltz

He then alone will strictly be called brave who is fearless of a noble death, and of all such chances as come upon us with sudden death in their train. — Aristotle.

My advice to fledgling entrepreneurs is always the same: build a company that you plan to be with for the next 10 years - that is the best way to increase your chances of success. — Vivek Wadhwa

It's not that I don't value my life. It's just that I love taking chances, testing myself, stepping over the line. — Wendy O. Williams

As a rabbi, I've spent long hours counseling people I've married, and in each case I like to talk with the couple about not only compatibility and love, but also their relationship with money. If you and your partner are not in the same financial mind-frame, then chances are your marriage won't work. You can't be an army of one when you are married. Financial problems are the number one cause of divorce. — Celso Cukierkorn

If your parents don't have babies, chances are you won't either. — Someone

Don't take chances. Take vitamins. — Helen Saul Case

I strongly believe that success is directly proprotional to one's ability to be simple and comfortable. In fact, simplicity and comfort have a multiplication effect, thus increasing the chances of expedited and sustained success. — Vishwas Chavan

To focus solely on endings is to trade conclusions for the very beginnings that created them. And if this cycle should persist, we will likewise miss the beginning that will follow this ending. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

You can drastically increase your chances for success if you try lots of things and bring the best forward. — Jonah Peretti

Think back for a moment on your own history
not just where you were born or where you grew up, but the circumstances that contributed to your being right here, right now. What were the moments along the way that wounded or scared you? Chances are, you've had a few. But here's what's remarkable: You are still here, still standing. — Oprah Winfrey

I arrived in Dallas two days before the party and planned on leaving the day after. I hated the city as much as I thought I would. All anyone could talk about were the Cowboys and their chances in the playoffs. Charlene was happy. Joe was not, or so it seemed to me, in spite of the fact that he had finally gotten exactly what he thought he wanted from a wife: she gave him an adorable boy, she did everything in their home including laundry, and most important, she did not embarrass him. Whenever I was alone with Joe during the two days I was there, Charlene would send her son into the room with us. The first time I carried him, Charlene made sure to mention how surprised she was that I had motherly instincts. She probably used the pronoun we more in one day than I have in my whole life. I did not blame her. Most plain women stake their claims clumsily. — Rabih Alameddine

Mastering our thoughts can only be achieved after we truly understand what reality is. Thus, it is time to shatter your pre-conceived concept of reality. First, the majority of what you perceive as reality exists only in your mind, and, chances are, you spend most hours of your life in this illusion. — Alaric Hutchinson

Are you prepared to have quite
obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me
chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your own
two or three days after I have made them myself all that kind of thing? — A.A. Milne

To dig a straight furrow, the plowman needs to keep his eyes on a fixed point ahead of him. That keeps him on a true course. If, however, he happens to look back to see where he has been, his chances of straying are increased. The results are crooked and irregular furrows ... Fix your attention on your ... goals and never look back on your earlier problems ... If our energies are focused not behind us but ahead of us
on eternal life and the joy of salvation
we assuredly will obtain it. — Howard W. Hunter

I tell people that if I'm ignoring them, chances are I may not have heard them. I depend on hearing aids, but I've not found it a problem. I'm visually very aware! — Joseph Mawle

It has been said that sometimes the greatest hope in our lives is just a second chance to do what we should have done right in the first place. — Richard Paul Evans

But there's one thing about quitters you have to guard against - they are contagious. If one boy goes, the chances are he'll take somebody with him, and you don't want that. So when they would start acting that way, I used to pack them up and get them out, or embarrass them, or do something to turn them around. — Bear Bryant

the greater the positive deeds they put out in the universe, the better the chances of their attracting good luck. — Ashwin Sanghi

Read your work aloud, if you can, if you aren't too embarrassed by the sound of your voice ringing out when you are alone in a room. Chances are that the sentence you can hardly pronounce without stumbling is a sentence that needs to be reworked to make it smoother and more fluent. A poet once told me that he was reading a draft of a new poem aloud to himself when a thief broke into his Manhattan loft. Instantly surmising that he had entered the dwelling of a madman, the thief turned and ran without taking anything, and without harming the poet. So it maybe that reading your work aloud will not only improve its quality but save your life in the process. — Francine Prose

Parents don't believe that lifting life-chances in one school means reducing them in another. — David Blunkett

Solomon's Laws:
8. If a guy who's smart, handsome, and rich invites you and your girlfriend to a nudist club ... chances are he's got a giant shmeckel. — Paul Levine