Quotes & Sayings About Skill And Luck

It seems I have always been fortunate to be in a certain provident, which must be my sole skill, and worth, and luck. [p. 138] — Chang-rae Lee

It had taken skill, tact, an ability to choose friends well, and a great deal of luck — Guy Gavriel Kay

Some people, through luck and skill, end up with a lot of assets. If you're good at kicking a ball, writing software, investing in stocks, it pays extremely well. — Bill Gates

Nowadays when a poet with one privately printed book can have his next three years taken care of by a Guggenheim fellowship, a Kenyon Review fellowship, and the Prix de Rome, it is hard to remember what chances the poet took in that small-town world, how precariously hand-to-mouth his existence was. And yet in one way the old days were better; [Vachel] Lindsay after a while, by luck and skill, got far more readers than any poet could get today. — Randall Jarrell

Being deeply learned and skilled, being well trained and using well spoken words; This is good luck. — Gautama Buddha

You make your Own luck. — Neale Donald Walsch

We were two girls who got lucky, and luck's not a skill that anyone can learn — Ally Carter

As it happened, the guy who was the honor man or best in our class was part of our platoon. He never had as many kills as I did, though, at least partly because he was sent to the Philippines for a few months while I spent my time in Iraq. You need skill to be a sniper, but you also need opportunity. And luck. — Chris Kyle

There is one world in which I believe the habit of mistaking luck for skill is most prevalent - and most conspicuous - and that is the world of markets. By — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Then again, she had-through a bizarre combination of skill, dumb luck and incredible misfortune-managed to build up a file any Debunker would envy. — Stacia Kane

To guess what to keep and what to throw away takes considerable skill. Actually it is probably merely a matter of luck, but it looks as if it takes considerable skill. — Richard P. Feynman

Being a successful investor & winning in the stock market is a matter of skill & discipline and not luck alone — Jack D. Schwager

Don't confuse luck with skill when judging others, and especially when judging yourself. — Carl Icahn

Captaincy is 90 per cent luck and 10 per cent skill. But don't try it without that 10 per cent. — Richie Benaud

He's very pretty. For a human."
"He's very broken," said Magnus. "Like a lovely vase that someone has smashed. Only luck and skill can put it back together the way it was before. — Cassandra Clare

How many times had he felt alone at midnight, with the hard dark pressing in and no sign of morning? Many times before, and with luck he would survive this one as he had survived the others. No, he decided. With more than luck. With every skill of reasoning and power of concentration he had. That, plus some good old fashioned lowdown strength of will. — Robert McCammon

The histories of the lives and fortunes of men are full of instances of this nature,
where favorable times and lucky accidents have done for them, what wisdom or skill could not. — Laurence Sterne

and when love came to us twice
and lied to us twice
we decided to never love again
that was fair
fair to us
and fair to love itself.

we ask for no mercy or no
miracles;
we are strong enough to live
and to die and to
kill flies,

attend the boxing matches, go to the racetrack,
live on luck and skill,
get alone, get alone often,
and if you can't sleep alone
be careful of the words you speak in your sleep;
and
ask for no mercy
no miracles;

and don't forget:
time is meant to be wasted,
love fails
and death is useless. — Charles Bukowski

There are numerous studies looking at people that won the lottery and their happiness levels. After six to 12 months, most lottery winners are about as happy or unhappy as they were before winning. Likewise, those who suffer crippling accidents return near to their previous levels of happiness in a similar time frame. What determines our happiness is more choice than circumstances, more skill than luck. — Douglas A. Smith

It takes vast willpower, luck, and skill to be the first. But it takes a gigantic heart to be number two. — Johan Harstad

Here is part of the tradeoff with diversification. You must be diversified enough to survive bad times or bad luck so that skill and good process can have the chance to pay off over the long term. — Joel Greenblatt

We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses. This is an uncomfortable notion which I have gradually come to accept by reading what other survivors have written, including myself, when I re-read my writings after a lapse of years. We, the survivors, are not only a tiny but also an anomalous minority. We are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless. — Primo Levi

Orm always afterwards used to say that, after good luck, strength, and skill at arms, nothing was so useful to a man who found himself among foreigners as the ability to learn a language. — Frans G. Bengtsson

Luck is only my lover, not my wife," replied Bahktiaan easily. He drew his saber. "If ever I wed, it will be skill and intelligence."
"Tedious bedfellows," said Sergi. — Kate Elliott

We focus on our goal, anchor on our plan, and neglect relevant base rates, exposing ourselves to the planning fallacy. We focus on what we want to do and can do, neglecting the plans and skills of others. Both in explaining the past and in predicting the future, we focus on the causal role of skill and neglect the role of luck. We are therefore prone to an illusion of control. We focus on what we know and neglect what we do not know, which makes us overly confident in our beliefs. — Daniel Kahneman

This is ten percent luck, Twenty percent skill, Fifteen percent power of will, Five percent pleasure, Fifty percent pain, and a hundred percent reason to remember the name. — Mike Shinoda

As an immerser I progressed to the ranks I aspired to - those that granted me a certain cachet and income while keeping me from fundamental responsibilities. This is what I excelled at: the life-technique of aggregated skill, luck, laziness and chutzpah that we call floaking. — China Mieville

Once the true relationship between inflation and unemployment is understood, with luck and skill, a free lunch is possible. — Paul Ormerod

It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority - a majority, mark you; not all - of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?"

"No," Gurgeh sighed, looking down.

"Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage. — Iain M. Banks

The human mind has a tendency to observe unsystematic events and assign a pattern to the results. A habitual risk-taker reorganizes the stream of random events and retrospectively attributes the outcome of indiscriminate trials to their own gambling "strategies." We often hear people say that they are lucky or unlucky, when in actuality they can claim no ownership in the occurrence of chaotic outcomes. A false sense of the existence of luck can cause people to discount the value of their actual effort, skill, and training. — Kilroy J. Oldster

It's human nature to find patterns where there are none and to find skill where luck is a more likely explanation (particularly if you're the lucky manager). — William J. Bernstein

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Why did investment banking pay so many people with so little experience so much money? Answer: When attached to a telephone, they could produce even more money. How could they produce money without experience? Answer: Producing in an investment bank was less a matter of skill and more a matter of intangibles - flair, persistence, and luck. — Michael Lewis

It was at this time that backgammon was invented and began to be popular. It is a kind of paradigm of how wealth is acquired, which in this world is not the reward of intelligence or ability, just as luck is not a product of skill ... If luck favours the player, he gets what he wants; if it doesn't, a skilled and prudent man cannot win that which fortune only bestows on whom it likes. It is thus that the good things of this world are apportioned by chance. — Mas'udi

So it's probably eighty percent luck and twenty percent skill. — Chris LeDoux

Over and over and with the least provocation, they pulled from their stock of stories tales about the old folks, their grands and great-grands; their fathers and mothers. Dangerous confrontations, clever manoeuvres. Testimonies to endurance, wit, skill and strength. Tales of luck and outrage. But why were there no stories to tell of themselves? About their own lives they shut up. Had nothing to say, pass on. As though past heroism was enough of a future to live by. As though, rather than children, they wanted duplicates. — Toni Morrison

Consider an event from the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the world's greatest military strategists: During a meeting, his subordinates informed Napoleon Bonaparte of a new general who was turning out to be extremely capable. The new man's bravery, skill, determination and organizational capabilities were outlined for Napoleon in great detail. Napoleon waved his hand impatiently. 'That's all very well,' said Napoleon. 'But tell me: Is he lucky?' Napoleon's question may sound rather strange in our times, but he saw luck as a personal trait rather than an extraneous factor. A — Ashwin Sanghi

There may be such a thing as habitual luck. People who are said to be lucky at cards probably have certain hidden talents for those games in which skill plays a role. It is like hidden parameters in physics, this ability that does not surface and that I like to call "habitual luck". — Stanislaw Ulam

For a mother, mornings of young, school-age children are a carefully orchestrated combination of timing, skill, and luck. It's nothing short of an act of God to get three children to school by eight, looking halfway presentable. — Jill Smokler