Predictable Quotes & Sayings

CEOs hate variance. It's the enemy. Variance in customer service is bad. Variance in quality is bad. CEOs love processes that are standardized, routinized, predictable. Stamping out variance makes a complex job a bit less complex. — Marcus Buckingham

Technology tends toward avoidance of risks by investors. Uncertainty is ruled out if possible. People generally prefer the predictable. Few recognize how destructive this can be, how it imposes severe limits on variability and thus makes whole populations fatally vulnerable to the shocking ways our universe can throw the dice. — Frank Herbert

It's the treasure in the empty field; it's worth selling everything to own
your entertainment, your 401(k) or your registered retirement savings plan, your home, your comfort, the sand where you stick your head, your last word, your right answers, your safe and predictable nice little life centered on avoiding heartbreak or inconvenience to your schedule. — Sarah Bessey

I don't like American football. I think it's boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It's played on a diamond. — Jim Jarmusch

I have to say that Adam Levine is truly a daring young man to go on Twitter to bash Fox News. He's so rebellious, so subversive. I mean, for a musician, seriously, could you find a more predictable stance than that? He's as edgy as a hacky sack, which also describes his music. — Greg Gutfeld

Once upon a time she had felt trapped inside her story with its familiar characters and predictable plot. Now she felt locked out of it. — Roderick Townley

...the perfect enigmas, the ones that, at first glance, were inexplicable. I liked to see how - in a disorganized but predictable world - an organized but totally unpredictable way of reasoning emerged. — Pablo De Santis

Nick was waiting for him.
Gabriel hesitated. He wished those text messages had come with some kind of sign, whether Nick was pissed or exasperated or just completely done with him. Hell, a freaking emoticon would have been helpful.
His own room sat pitch-dark at the opposite end of the hallway. A black hole. Gabriel eased around the creaky spot in the floor and slid past his twin's room. Once in his own, he flung his duffel bag onto the ground and shut the door, closing the dark around himself. He sighed and kicked his shoes into the well of blackness under the bed. Maybe Nick hadn't heard him. Maybe he thought he was still out in the car.
"You are so predictable."
Gabriel swore and fumbled for the light switch.
Nick was straddling his desk chair backward, his arms folded on the backrest.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Gabriel snapped. "Why are you sitting here in the dark?"
His twin shrugged. Because I knew you'd walk right past my room. — Brigid Kemmerer

By fantasizing one builds a more predictable world, and then one has no time to notice what is really happening, because of the din made by one's expectations crashing down. — Peter Nadas

Humanity seems bent on creating a world economy primarily based on goods that take no material form. In doing so, we may be eliminating any predictable connection between creators and a fair reward for the utility others may find in their works. — John Perry Barlow

In fiction: we find the predictable boring. In real life: we find the unpredictable terrifying. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Don't decide that you're going to be a writer or musician and just expect it to happen because it's a big gamble and a lot less predictable than a conventional job. But you do increase the likelihood of success by working as hard as you can and holding yourself to the highest standard you can muster. — Max Bemis

He shared the common human hallmark: he was simultaneously predictable and unfathomable -- a routine miracle. — Robert Sheckley

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible. — Hannah Arendt

We have trauma, and we have grief. People die, and we find it baffling. Painful. Inexplicable. Grief is baffling. There are theories on how we react to loss and death, how we cope, how we handle loss. Some believe the range of emotions mourners experience is predictable, that grief can be monitored, as if mourners are following a checklist. But sorrow is less of a checklist, more like water. It's fluid, it has no set shape, never disappears, never ends. It doesn't go away. It just changes. It changes us. — Mira Ptacin

The metaphysical doctrine of determinism simply asserts that all events in this world are fixed, or unalterable, or predetermined. It does not assert that they are known to anybody, or predictable by scientific means. But it asserts that the future is as little changeable as is the past. Everybody knows what we mean when we say that the past cannot be changed. It is in precisely the same sense that the future cannot be changed, according to metaphysical determinism. — Karl Popper

In 302, the Roman emperor Diocletian commanded "there should be cheapness," declaring, "Unprincipled greed appears wherever our armies ... march ... Our law shall fix a measure and a limit to this greed." The predictable result of Diocletian's food price controls were black markets, hunger and food confiscation by his soldiers. Despite the disastrous history of price controls, politicians never manage to resist tampering with prices
that's not a flattering observation of their learning abilities. — Walter E. Williams

That means if you want to become strong, you become predictable. You keep your word, know and then honor your commitments, mind the details, invest in daily spiritual input, assume rather than avoid responsibility, admit your mistakes, correct your screw-ups, and keep a healthy watch over yourself. — Anonymous

Sometimes the most interesting visual phenomena occur when you least expect it. Other times, you think youre getting something amazing and the photographs turn out to be boring and predictable. So I think thats why, a long time ago, I consciously tried to let go of artists angst, and instead just hope for the best and enjoy it. I love the journey as much as the destination. If I wasnt a photographer, Id still be a traveler. — Michael Kenna

Love isn't something predictable, Sky, and doesn't follow rules. You can't decide who to fall in love with, or when. Love and logic don't go together, but when I'm with you, everything makes sense. — Lisa Swallow

The knowledge of the laws of life makes life predictable. — Sunday Adelaja

In Paris explanations come in a predictable sequence, no matter what is being explained. First comes the explanation in terms of the unique, romantic individual, then the explanation in terms of ideological absolutes, and then the explanation in terms of the futility of all explanation. — Adam Gopnik

Every 20 minutes you've got to have a bump, you've got to have a change in course, you've got to unsettle the audience. It can't be too predictable so something has to happen. I think that was something that Hitchcock did very well too. You couldn't let an audience feel too settled in. — Barbara Broccoli

In their predictable lives, where everything — Lisa Unger

Hooks need to be predictable and not predictable at the same time. — Ken Hill

I think movies in general should have more respect for the audience than they do. Too many films are afraid to confuse people, so all the information is given to them right away, and there's nothing left for the film to do. It ruins many stories, because everything becomes obvious and predictable. I want my films to engage people more and make them more actively involved in the story. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

One element of Madonna's career that really takes center stage is how many times she's reinvented herself. It's easier to stay in one look, one comfort zone, one musical style. It's inspiring to see someone whose only predictable quality is being unpredictable. — Taylor Swift

The more predictable the business, the more valuable it is. — Donald J. Trump

A disruption of the circadian cycle - the metabolic and glandular rhythms that are central to our workaday life - seems to be involved in many, if not most, cases of depression; this is why brutal insomnia so often occurs and is most likely why each day's pattern of distress exhibits fairly predictable alternating periods of intensity and relief. — William Styron

Don't settle for comfortable misery, a sad state where you're hanging on to what is most predictable and familiar at the risk of letting exciting opportunities pass you by. — Dan Miller

A good story will keep you wondering about what's happening, what's going on, where does this go? Now it's going to go that way, now it's going to go that way. It has to do that. If it's predictable, it's just boring. — Fede Alvarez

Shane looked ... pale. Pale and shaken and - how predictable was this? - pissed. — Rachel Caine

Obviously no one has ever cautioned you against pricking the vanity of proud men or wild animals; neither is completely predictable."
"And which of those categories do you fit into?"
"I'll leave the choice solely to your discretion," he mused and bowed solicitously. — Marsha Canham

Simple and predictable seem pretty darn tantalizing when you're a witch.
Lately, I've wished for a lot of things to be the way they were. Gone are my lust
for the macabre and the sweetly sinful fantasies of meeting a vampire. Something
about unconscious people slumped against the dark leather of the booths at
crimson made it less sexy. — Cyrese Covelli

The sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of 'Fuck You', so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response. We've long ago reached that level. — Noam Chomsky

He liked that bones were solid things, surviving even the white heat of cremation. Bones would last; it was easy for him to put his faith in something so solid and predictable. — Kim Edwards

Al ... You ever kill anybody? In the United States? Because I know you mean it and everything, but I know these guys better than I know you. They're soldiers, that's all. No questions, no time to ask, no talk. Cops are worse, and less predictable. When you pull a gun, you've gotta be ready to kill somebody, and I'm telling you it's better to run. — Phillip Rock

Different levels of photography require different levels of understanding and skill. A "press the button, let George do the rest" photographer needs little or no technical knowledge of photography. A zone system photographer takes more responsibility. He visualizes before he presses the button, and afterwards calibrates for predictable print values. — Minor White

I think one of the reasons to be here on earth is to finally be who we are, at all times - to know and be predictable to ourselves. — Louise Erdrich

Somehow, when ownership interests are divided into shares that bounce around with Mr. Market's moods, individuals and professionals start to think about and measure risk in strange ways. When short-term thinking and overly complicated statistics get involved, owning many companies that you know very little about starts to sound safer than owning stakes in five to eight companies that have good businesses, predictable futures, and bargain prices. — Joel Greenblatt

There is a somewhat-surprising, somewhat totally predictable paucity of struggle in entertainment television. I do like being a part of a show featuring a family from a struggling socioeconomic strata. — Lucas Neff

I tried that too,' said Laurent. 'I don't like to think of myself as predictable. But apparently I cycle through all the normal responses. Shall I tell you what you're going to do when I stick the knife in for the first time? — C.S. Pacat

Studies of people who report high well-being in their fifties and sixties indicate that they have lived lives that involved personal risks. They are not people whose lives have been calm and predictable. A life under tight control sometimes produces quiet desperation. High well-being is a life that has depth and quality. Risks, losses, problems, and tragedy add pain to a life. That pain becomes a teacher. We learn; the pain gives us no choice. — Jennifer James

In one was, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely this reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me. — Christopher Hitchens

God asked us to get His knowledge and wisdom to build a predictable life rather than expecting miracles. — Sunday Adelaja

Citizenship is the name of a reciprocal relationship between an individual and a sheltering polity. When there was no state, no one was a citizen, and human life could be treated carelessly. Nowhere in occupied Europe were non-Jews treated as badly as Jews. But in places were the state was destroyed, no one was a citizen and no one enjoyed any predictable form of state protection. — Timothy Snyder

When Newton breached this philosophical barrier by rendering all motion comprehensible and predictable, some theologians criticized him for leaving nothing for the Creator to do. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

So much of television is incredibly predictable. You watch the first five minutes and you know where it's going to go. If you can just create an element of surprise in both the storytelling and tone of a show, you're going to be way ahead of the pack. — David Nevins

Be willing to step outside your comfort zone once in a while; take the risks in life that seem worth taking. The ride might not be as predictable if you'd just planted your feet and stayed put, but it will be a heck of a lot more interesting. — Edward Whitacre Jr.

It's twilight. It's the safest time of day for us. The easiest time. But also the saddest, in a way ... the end of another day, the return of the night. Darkness is so predictable, don't you think? — Stephenie Meyer

Even though we were still waiting for Don, therapy was well begun. We were engaged in a subtle, often predictable, and very important contest with the family about who was going to be present at the meetings. Carl and I had revealed some of what our relationship had to offer: a good-humored liking for each other, an ability to cooperate, and an insistence on remaining ourselves. I was clearly not going to be the reverential assistant to the older man. And perhaps most important, Carl had intuitively modeled some of the process of therapy for the family. By sharing insight into his own personality, he was saying by demonstration, It's important to search for you own unconscious agenda. — Augustus Y. Napier

I'm a creature of adaptation. I take advantage of the second and the moment. My comedy breathes; it's not really that predictable. I do have a linear style, but other than that, there's a lot of abstract. I just go off on what I'm thinking. I'm not that topical. I like to talk about me and my experiences. — Tommy Davidson

In poetry I can let the language go, allow an image that seems out of place to enter and see what happens, always listening to the music that's being created, just like the world around us, never predictable, always shifting and intertwining, reflecting and echoing itself. — Pattiann Rogers

So predictable makes you to sleep??
Makes you to get interested???
So what to start??? A company called Predictable???
Really??? — Deyth Banger

Life isn't always predictable. But it's how we survive the bad weather that defines us. — K.K. Allen

They [progressives] are men and women who tend to believe that the human being is perfectible and social progress predictable, and that the instrument for effecting the two is reason; that truths are transitory and empirically determined; that equality is desirable and attainable through the action of state power; that social and individual differences, if they are not rational, are objectionable, and should be scientifically eliminated; that all people and societies strive to organize themselves upon a rationalist and scientific paradigm. — William F. Buckley Jr.

A discussion between Haldane and a friend began to take a predictable turn. The friend said with a sigh, 'It's no use going on. I know what you will say next, and I know what you will do next.' The distinguished scientist promptly sat down on the floor, turned two back somersaults, and returned to his seat. 'There,' he said with a smile. 'That's to prove that you're not always right.' — John B. S. Haldane

If you grow up in a home where actions don't lead to predictable consequences, you don't develop strategies to control your impulses. — David Brooks

THE KEY TO A WONDERFUL LIFE

The key to a wonderful life
Is to never stop wandering into wonder.
Because to live a predictable life,
Only fills a person with strife,
And such a person will always be wondering:
'What a limitless life could be lived beyond the lines?'
Such is a question a curious spirit would never sit and ponder.
So always pursue new ventures in your life,
And be willing to open doors to different light;
This is the only way to keep it magical and always filled with wonder.
Days will feel shorter, but your happiness will grow stronger --
Because living a life without curiosity and adventure,
Is a stale life where days only feel longer and
Longer.

Poetry by Suzy Kassem — Suzy Kassem

Jamie: Please don't pretend like you know me, ok?
Landon: But I do, I do. We've had all the same classes in the same school since kindergarten. Why you're Jamie Sullivan. You sit at lunch table 7. Which isn't exactly the reject table, but is definitely in self exile territory. You have exactly one sweater. You like to look at your feet when you walk. Oh, oh, and yeah, for fun, you like to tutor on weekends and hang out with the cool kids from "Stars and Planets." Now how does that sound?
Jamie: Thoroughly predictable, nothing I haven't heard before.
Landon: You don't care what people think about you?
Jamie: No. — Nicholas Sparks

As soon as things become predictable, they become boring. — Hunter Parrish

The magic of boy meets girl, the angst of catch and release, the serendipity of meant-to-be, It doesn't matter if a romantic comedy follows a predictable course, we respond because it's rooted in truth. In magic. — Victoria Van Tiem

How predictable, how perfectly average, how amusing. — Gillian Flynn

Sometimes, you can be more than enough for someone, but they choose not to be in your life. Always remember that Satan works hard to keep people miserable by feeding their fears, so they stay in their comfort zone. The truth is some people value what is predictable, more than chemistry. — Shannon L. Alder

To live in a fully predictable world is not to be a man. — C.S. Lewis

The advice that I have valued in my own life has never turned on fixed maxims or canned metaphors. More crucially, lists of precepts don't work like targeted advice because lists contain inherently constraining messages. They seem to say that complex matters are knowable, that a given process leads to foreseeable results. It implies a thin and predictable world, whereas the sort of advice that has mattered to me bespeaks a quite tentative optimism, the optimism of the quest whose outcome is finally unknowable. — Peter D. Kramer

A somewhat casual observer from outer space might well deduce that the course of evolution in this planet had produced a species of large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains; peculiar animals which rested when they sent their brains away from them but performed in rather predictable manner when their brains were recalled. — Kenneth E. Boulding

I don't like my wrestling or entertainment in general to be too clean or predictable for me as a fan. When I say clean, I'm not talking about dirty jokes, middle fingers and stuff like that. I'm actually not even a big fan of that. A lot of people talk about the attitude era being so great but a lot of it was terrible crap, sex jokes and over-the-top terrible bad comedy. It was Jerry Springer-like. They made a joke about a woman's breasts. Hilarious, but where's the wrestling? I look back on a lot of stuff now, and I'm like where's the wrestling? It's just a lot of crappy jokes. — Dean Ambrose

It was in its strangeness and in its familiarity an illustration of someone else's life going on in its own way, steeped in itself, its own business, its own dailyness, its own particular sorrow or joy, all of it more or less predictable — Alice McDermott

Asian Homo erectus died without issue and does not enter our immediate ancestry (for we evolved from African populations); Neanderthal people were collateral cousins, perhaps already living in Europe while we emerged in Africa ... In other words, we are an improbable and fragile entity, fortunately successful after precarious beginnings as a small population in Africa, not the predictable end result of a global tendency. We are a thing, an item of history, not an embodiment of general principles. — Stephen Jay Gould

If the Democrats feel they have lost the public's confidence in their stewardship of national security, then the threat of Iran offers a Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, or John Kerry an opportunity to get out front now and pledge support for a united effort - attacking Bush from the right about too tepid a stance rather from the predictable left that we are 'hegemonic' and 'imperialistic' every time we use force abroad. — Victor Davis Hanson

But what clicked with Joss most of all was that Greenwalt was able to balance his edginess with an old-school approach to narrative. It was Greenwalt, Joss says, who was "constantly pulling us back to 'But do we care about Buffy? But is Buffy in trouble?'" "We learned early on when we started writing that we've got to have the metaphor," Greenwalt explains. After all, a storyline that's just about a cool monster every week would quickly get old and predictable. "You've got to have the Buffy of it - what does it mean? — Amy Pascale

If a system is chaotic (most are), then it implies that however good the resolving power may be, the time over which the system is predictable is limited. Perfect predictability is not achievable, simply because we are limited in our resolving power. — Leonard Susskind

He had a particular facination with the I Ching, that art of tossing three coins three times and divining a pattern out of heads and tails. Pete would begin with questions:
What determined the pattern? Was it random? Was it a higher power? Was is mathematical? Wasn't poker based on mathematical probability and not just luck? Did that mean randomness was actually mathematical? And if the I Ching was governed by mathematics, hey, wouldn't that mean the I Ching was actually predictable, a prescribed answer? And if it was prescribed, did that mean that your life followed the I Ching, like some sort of equation? Or did the I Ching simply capture correctly what had already been determined as the next series of events in your life? — Amy Tan

Human nature is both predictable and mysterious; prone to great and sudden advances, yet still mired in despicable self-interest. — Neal Shusterman

I think the influence of books is neither direct and more predictable. Books themselves are too unruly, and so are readers. — Maureen Corrigan

Flash Floods are about as predictable as a crazy dream after one too many fish tacos - one minutes you're fine, and the next minute a moose is floating past you wearing a fishing hat and ladies' pajamas. — Doreen Cronin

The future will be less predictable, forecast rises will shrink, company lifetimes will shrink, new entrants will proliferate and it's going to just get more unpredictable. — Steve Jurvetson

A great deal of the American medical community's resources is geared to addressing the cosmetic needs of both women and men whom fear that by showing the deleterious effects of aging their marital relationship is in jeopardy. The most ethical plastic surgeons decline to perform impetuous work; the less ethical, but often the wealthiest professionals, perform all requested work irrespective of the long-term viability of the services rendered. The plastic surgeon's sales pitch is predictable: everyone can receive the face that he or she can afford. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Clean air and water, a diversity of animal and plant species, soil and mineral resources, and predictable weather are annuities that will pay dividends for as long as the human race survives - and may even extend our stay on Earth. — Alex Steffen

It wasn't because you weren't beautiful, talented, funny, creative or had everything in common. It was because some men prefer plain vanilla ice cream. It's predictable and a safe choice. Confident and adventurous men prefer the complexity and layers of a sundae, even the ones sprinkled with a little bit of nuts on top. — Shannon L. Alder

But what's perfectly obvious in the realm of geography is not so obvious in those other arenas. And, as we are about to discover, what's true geographically is equally true relationally, financially, physically, and academically. There is a parallel principle that affects parenting, dating, marriage, our emotions, our health, and a host of other areas as well. Just as there are physical paths that lead to predictable physical locations, there are other kinds of paths that are equally predictable. — Andy Stanley

The only predictable thing about grief is that it's unpredictable. — Lynda Cheldelin Fell

At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order. — Frank Herbert

After years of pretending at emotions, he'd grown to appreciate their mystery, their chaos and randomness. Sometimes they were predictable, one-dimensional, almost stupid - other times they were so confounding, complex, and exquisite that he was convinced humans really were as special as they thought themselves to be. — Kim White

If she's too predictable because you talk about the relationship all the time instead of going out and having one, he'll get bored quickly. — Sherry Argov

You and I should do whatever we can to keep our youthful joy alive. If your life is too predictable, don't go postal. Take a ridiculous ride back to whatever it was that gave you joy as a child. Jump on a trampoline. Saddle up a pony. Give adulthood a rest. — Nick Vujicic

If our style is masterful, if it is fluid and at the same time complete, then we can re-create ourselves, or rather, we can re-create the Infinite Goof within us. We can live on top of content, float above the predictable responses, social programming and hereditary circuitry, letting the bits of color and electricity and light filter up to us, where we may incorporate them at will into our actions. That's what the voices said. They said that content is what a man harbors but does not parade. And I love a parade. — Tom Robbins

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible. — Isaiah Berlin

If life were predictable it would cease to be life,and be without flavor — Eleanor Roosevelt

If science could comprehend all phenomena so that eventually in a thoroughly rational society human beings became as predictable as cogs in a machine, then man, driven by this need to know and assert his freedom, would rise up and smash the machine.
What the reformers of the Enlightenment, dreaming of a perfect organization of society, had overlooked, Dostoevski saw all too plainly with the novelist's eye: namely, that as modern society becomes more organized and hence more bureaucratized it piles up at its joints petty figures like that of the Underground Man, who beneath their nondescript surface are monsters of frustration and resentment. — William Barrett

Why do you love it? I had a sense that I would enjoy her answer. I knew it would be unexpected and unique. Everything about her was unexpected and unique. She was my bright light of eccentricity in a very predictable and ordinary world. She made everything new and interesting or funny. — Penny Reid

People encounter one another (thought Ambrogio), bumping into one another like atoms. They do not have their own trajectories and so their actions are random. But when taken together, those random events (so thought Ambrogio) were their own form of consistency, which could be predictable in certain parts. Only He Who created everything knows this in full. — Evgenij Vodolazkin

I like shows that have some level of intelligence to them. When it's not as predictable, when you don't know what's coming at you. — Mehmet Oz

Getting what you want means making the decisions you need to make to get what you want.
Not the decisions those around you think you should make.
Making the safe decision is full, predictable and elads nowhere new.
The unsafe decision causess you to think and respond in a way you hadn't thought of.
And that thought will lead to other thoughts which will help you achieve what you want.
Start taking bad decisions and it will take you to a plce where others only dream of being. — Paul Arden

Traumatic events challenge an individual's view of the world as a just, safe and predictable place. Traumas that are caused by human behavior. . . commonly have more psychological impact than those caused by nature. — American Psychological Association

Darkness is so predictable. — Stephenie Meyer

It doesn't mean I'm not thinking it. I always feel a bit defeated when I have to follow up with "I love you too". It's like the sequel to a film: I Love You and I Love You Too. You know the second one's always going to be a predictable reworking of the first. — James Hannah

Science affects all our ways of thinking about the world: both the physical world, which, if I may make so bold, is easy to understand because it is regular and follows simple laws, and also the social world, which is more baffling and less predictable. — Arthur Lewis

There was what people called "present bias" - the tendency, when making a decision, to undervalue the future in relation to the present. There was "hindsight bias" - which he thought of as the tendency for people to look at some outcome and assume it was predictable all along. The — Michael Lewis