“It might seem daunting to think that effort and chance, as much as innate talent, are what counts. But I find it encouraging because, while our genetic makeup is out of our control, our degree of effort is up to us. And the effects of chance, too, can be controlled to the extent that by committing ourselves to repeated attempts, we can increase our odds of success.”
“The fact that human intuition is ill suited to situations involving uncertainty was known as early as the 1930's, when researchers noted that people could neither make up a sequence of numbers that pa...”
Leonard Mlodinow
“The outline of our lives, like the candles flame, is continuously coaxed in new directions by a variety of random events that, along with our responses to them, determine our fate.”
Leonard Mlodinow
“Random events often come like the raisins in a box of cereal - in groups, streaks, and clusters. And although Fortune is fair in potentialities, she is not fair in outcomes.”
Leonard Mlodinow
“The theory of randomness is fundamentally a codification of common sense.”
Leonard Mlodinow
“The nasty thing about the availability bias is that it insidiously distorts our view of the world by distorting our perception of past events and our environment.”
Leonard Mlodinow
