Chances Are Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

Chances are you're using overeating as a way to escape yourself. It's an attempt not to feel or think about what you really need to feel and face. — Karen Salmansohn

The single most important technique for making progress is to write ten words. Doesn't matter if you're badly stuck, or your day is completely jam-packed, or you're away from your computer - carry a small paper notebook and write a sentence of description while you're waiting on line at a coffee shop. I think of this as baiting a hook. Even if you have a few days in a row where nothing comes except those ten words, I find that as long as you have to think about the novel enough to write ten words, the chances are that more will come. — Naomi Novik

When we get involved with other people, the chances of a clash are present even with people we love because we do not have the same scripts in our heads. — Sol Stein

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

My rule of thumb is that if you spend 2 percent of your nest egg per year, adjusted upward for the cost of living, you are as secure as possible; at 3 percent, you are probably safe; at 4 percent, you are taking real risks; and at 5 percent, you had better like cat food and vacations very close to home. For example, if, in addition to Social Security and pensions, you spend $50,000 per year in living expenses, that means you will need $2.5 million to be perfectly safe, and $1.67 million to be fairly secure. If you have "only" $1.25 million, you are taking chances; if you are starting with $1 million, there is a good chance you will eventually run out of money. — William J. Bernstein

The most-asked question when someone describes a novel, movie or short story to a friend probably is, 'How does it end?' Endings carry tremendous weight with readers; if they don't like the ending, chances are they'll say they didn't like the work. Failed endings are also the most common problems editors have with submitted works. — Nancy Kress

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

For sure, all over Poland, kids had my picture of a lemur on their bedroom wall - but the chances are they may never get to see a real lemur in Madagascar. I thought this was great and it really meant a lot to me. — Nigel Dennis

Wherever we are, we can improve our chances of getting ahead by keeping a book in hand — Michael Hyatt

My goal is to make furniture that people can be comfortable living with. If you're not preoccupied with making an impact with your designs, chances are something that looks good today will look good tomorrow. — Sam Maloof

They are approaching now a lengthy brick improvisation, a Victorian paraphrase of what once, long ago, resulted in Gothic cathedrals - but which, in its own time, arose not from any need to climb through the fashioning of suitable confusions toward any apical God, but more in a derangement of aim, a doubt as to the God's actual locus (or, in some, as to its very existence), out of a cruel network of sensuous moments that could not be transcended and so bent the intentions of the builders not on any zenith, but back to fright, to simple escape, in whatever direction, from what the industrial smoke, street excrement, windowless warrens, shrugging leather forests of drive belts, flowing and patient shadow states of the rats and flies, were saying about the chances for mercy that year. — Thomas Pynchon

It's hard to really get that excited about movies. Think about it like this: how many good comedy movies come out a year? Maybe one or two? And then, in those movies, what are the chances that there's a character that I'm the best fit to play? It's really small! — Aziz Ansari

When you think everything is someone else's fault, chances are that you're looking at the wrong side of the looking glass. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

So on one hand, because the wilderness was familiar to me, it really helped me be brave. But it still was scary sometimes. I had to say to myself: "Chances are, you're not going to be mauled by a bear." — Cheryl Strayed

I tend to be a person who starts with the presumption that I should trust you until you abuse the privilege, and then our relationship is forever changed. That's a very big line, and chances are it's not going to work if it's crossed. I warn people that this is how I'm going to deal with it. — Penny Pritzker

There will be many times in your lives
at school, and more particularly when you are a grown up
when people will distract or divert you from what needs to be done. You may even welcome the distraction. But if you use it as an excuse for not doing what you suppose to do, you can blame no one but yourself. If you truly wish to accomplish something, you should allow nothing to stop you, and chances are you'll succeed. — Julie Andrews Edwards

I didn't become leader to transform the Liberal Democrats into an enlarged form of the Electoral Reform Society. It's not the be all and end all for us. There are other very, very key ambitions in politics, not least social mobility and life chances, that I care about as passionately if not more. — Nick Clegg

The chances of a person breaking through their own habits and sloth and limited mind to actually write something that gets out there and matters to people are slim. — George Saunders

The chances are that your job likes you precisely as much as you like it, but no more. — Napoleon Hill

They don't think much o'laughter, the rich,' Clarrie observed.
'Nor the powerful, for that matter. When did a teacher ever encourage her class to laugh?
When a maid giggles, chances are she'll get give the order of the boot.
And do you know why? Laughter puts folk down, that's why.
It makes the pompous look foolish and the proud trip and fall. — Katie Flynn

There are times in our lives when we labor so hard, for so long, that it may feel that we have nothing to show for it. That we have failed. We get discouraged, because we don't achieve what we yearned for or anticipated.
But a lack of desired results doesn't mean we failed ... it means we have locked our sights on the end result, instead of focusing on the process itself.
No one can guarantee your success.
What you can do, however, is consistently act - progressing towards your goals, so that your chances of success grows exponentially with each step you take. — Jaime Buckley

The ultimate evil is the weakness, cowardice, that is one of the constituents of so much human nature. When, rarely, unalloyed nobility does occur, its chances of prevailing are slim. Yet it exists, and its mere existence is reason enough for not wiping the name of mankind off the slate. — John Simon

When armies begin to move and flags wave and slogans pop up watch out little guy because it's somebody else's chestnuts in the fire not yours. It's words you're fighting for and you're not making an honest deal your life for something better. You're being noble and after you're killed the thing you traded your life for won't do you any good and chances are it won't do anybody else any good either. — Dalton Trumbo

Our chances are always pretty good — Joe Flacco

Once our minds are 'tattooed' with negative thinking, our chances for long-term success diminish. — John C. Maxwell

The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

This is what happens when nice people are pushed too far. We give too many chances, and so when we've finally had enough, we are well and truly done. When a nice person shuts a door on you, it's shut for good. — Deb Caletti

Look I have somewhere I have to be and I don't particularly love that I have to go, but you freaking out and making a scene is not going to do anything other than piss me off. I hope you had a good time last night and you can leave your number but we both know the chances of me calling you are slim to none. If you don't want to be treated like crap maybe you should stop going home with drunken dudes you don't know. Trust me we're really only after one thing and the next morning all we really want is for you to go quietly away. I have a headache and I feel like I'm going to hurl, plus I have to spend the next hour in a car with someone that will be silently loathing me and joyously plotting my death so really can we just save the histrionics and get a move on it? — Jay Crownover

When you try to bring about behavioral change by an effort of will, you actually do violence to yourself, and the chances are very good that you will not succeed. This is so universally true that you can actually make money from it. — Srikumar Rao

Chances are, while you can come across as introverted, the real reason for your apparent reserve is you're happy to be the life of your own party (be it in your head or in your own space) rather than follow the crowd. — Rosemary Breen

Your chances of dying a violent death are 1/500th of what they used to be during medieval times. — Peter Diamandis

When it comes to looking after all the species that are already endangered, there's such a lot to do that sometimes it might all seem to be too much, especially when there are so many other important things to worry about. But if we stop trying, the chances are that pretty soon we'll end up with a world where there are no tigers or elephants, or sawfishes or whooping cranes, or albatrosses or ground iguanas. And I think that would be a shame, don't you? — Martin Jenkins

Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same. — Ben Horowitz

The chances of finding out what's really going on in the universe are so remote, the only thing to do is hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied. — Douglas Adams

To whoever will listen.

I've been thinking about black holes a lot. How their gravity is so strong it bends time and space. How you'd be stretched down to atoms passing the event horizon.

I kind of feel like I'm being stretched to atoms. Like I'm falling apart and becoming so metaphorically thin that I'm transparent. But, as nothing that happens past the event horizon affects the universe outside of it, nothing that I'm feeling is affecting anyone in the outside world, either.

The event horizon is a point of no return. Nothing, not even light, can escape it.

I wonder what will happen when I pass the event horizon and fully submerge myself into the black hole.

There are theories that if you enter a blackhole under a specific angle, you'll survive and hit the bottom of it. The chances are incredibily small.

I doubt I'll survive. — Emily Trunko

A problem never exists in isolation; it is surrounded by other problems in space and time. The more of the context of a problem that a scientist can comprehend, the greater are his chances of finding a truly adequate solution. — Russell L. Ackoff

If you've gone through pain now, learned your lesson, chances are, you'll probably experience MINOR pain later in life. If you haven't witnessed any pain now, you might suffer greatly later in life. In the end, everyone is equal. — Amrita Ramanathan

Chances are like criticism; few like to take it, some love to give it, yet most never see it. — Carl Henegan

You have only so many chances to tell stories. I didn't want to be forever wedded to one form of storytelling when there are so many out there. — Michael Koryta

Choices, not Chances, are responsible for the quality of our Life. Spend time to Think, Reflect, Introspect & then Choose.-RVM — R.v.m.

Since my first novel was rescued from a slush pile, it makes me sad that most publishing houses no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts. Nor are many willing to take chances on novels that are not deemed immediately "marketable." — Katherine Paterson

It's hard to be good at anything. If you're passionate, the chances are that you will find a job that will make you happy. — Arthur Rankin Jr.

I don't wanna be in a fake-perfect-relationship. Because, however, it will eventually turn to be a shitty relationship. And why on earth, I would put myself inside a shitty and tiring relationship while there are probabilities and chances to have a real happy relationship out there? — Nina Ardianti

Try this: Identify a bottom-up improvement or innovation in your organization, and interview the person who championed it. Chances are you will find a hero story of some kind. Why do we have to be heroes to implement perfectly good ideas? — Alan G. Robinson

I decided I should go after the roles I like, that I am inspired by, and then, if I am having a good time, chances are that people will like watching you. — James Marsden

I know that it's easier to portray a world that's filled with cynicism and anger, where problems are solved with violence. What's a whole lot tougher is to offer alternatives, to present other ways conflicts can be resolved, and to show that you can have a positive impact on your world. To do that, you have to put yourself out on a limb, take chances, and run the risk of being called a do-gooder. — Jim Henson

We are not trying to entertain the critics. I'll take my chances with the public. — Walt Disney Company

The person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was getting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful. Chances are, he isn't likely to carry the cat that way again, either. But if he wants to, I say let him! — Mark Twain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

Chance is a second master. — Pliny The Elder

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 are plenty of chances in life, what's important is what you make of them. — Katja Michael

It's lovely to get one successful show - the chances of finding a second one are not so hot. — Graham Norton

Opposites generally create intense chemistry. There are more chances of fireworks when different people are together than similar personalities. — Sonam Kapoor

Sending children away to get control of their anger perpetuates the feeling of 'badness inside them ... Chances are they were already feeling not very good about themselves before the outburst and the isolation just serves to confirm in their own minds that they were right. — Otto Weininger

Even as our economy starts to pick up, and new jobs are created, there is a risk that young people in Britain won't get the chances they deserve because businesses will continue to look elsewhere. — Iain Duncan Smith

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

We all fantasize about a relationship we'd like to do over or something we'd like to change about our past. I think there are a lot more opportunities for second chances in our lives than we think. — Jean Smart

Do you believe a man must be hard?" she asked. She was taking a chance. "Or strong?" By her tone, she left no doubt she saw a difference.
Again Sorilea touched the tray; the smallest of smiles might have quirked her lips for an instant. Or not. "Most men see the two as one and the same, Cadsuane Melaidhrin. Strong endures; hard shatters."
Cadsuane drew breath. A chance she would have scoured anyone else for taking. But she was not anyone else, and sometimes chances had to be taken. "The boy confuses them," she said. "He needs to be strong, and makes himself harder. Too hard, already, and he will not stop until he is stopped. He has forgotten how to laugh except in bitterness; there are no tears left in him. Unless he finds laughter and tears again, the world faces disaster. He must learn that even the Dragon Reborn is flesh. If he goes to Tarmon Gai'don as he is, even his victory may be as dark as his defeat. — Robert Jordan

Never act upon wishful thinking. Act without checking the facts, and chances are that you will be swept away along with the mob. — Jim Rogers

They almost ran me off the road several times. There are so many chances that they take to get the right photo. — Loni Anderson

The chances are that, being a woman, young,
And pure, with such a pair of large, calm eyes,
You write as well ... and ill ... upon the whole,
As other women. If as well, what then?
If even a little better,..still, what then?
We want the Best in art now, or no art. (L144-149) — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I would live the same life over if I had to live again,
And the chances are I go where most men go. — Adam Lindsay Gordon

There are a few chances in life where you get to take a different road. I think it's important to stay creative, look at the moment, and look at the future. — Robert David Hall

I think you are a little afraid because you suspect what I suspect - that there was no natural disaster. They did it themselves, to themselves."
"If this is their own sad handiwork, ... what are our chances of finding friends among people so much to be feared? — Frank Herbert

For every action, there's an infinity of outcomes. Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers - and one comes true. — China Mieville

It's better to keep grief inside. Grief inside works like bees or ants, building curious and perfect structures, complicating you. Grief outside means you want something from someone, and chances are good you won't get it. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

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

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