Rex Stout Quotes

To talk of luck and chance only shows how little we really know of the laws which govern cause and effect.

Chance. Stupid, dumb, blind chance. Just a part of the strange mechanism of the world, with its fits and coughs and starts and random collisions.

I think that's as far as you have to think, everything happens as a coincidence. It either happens or it doesn't. It's hard to map out a strategic plan by saying, 'If I do that, that's going to get me to the next level.' I think that's the wrong way to go into movies as an actor. It doesn't happen for me that way.

It's hard to believe in coincidence, but it's even harder to believe in anything else.

We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence.

Every single moment is a coincidence.

It is such a complex matter we live within, it is impossible to track logic and decision making really, so therefore each choice can actually only be seen as coincidence.

A very small cause which escapes our notice determines a considerable effect that we cannot fail to see, and then we say that the effect is due to chance.

He [the historian] should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

Much in our lives is chance.

Chance ... must be something more than the name we give to our ignorance.

These things do not happen by chance. There is much less luck in public affairs than some suppose.

I was not sure I wanted to issue orders to life; I rather liked the Greek notion of allowing Chance to take a formative hand in my affairs.

Coincidence exists, but believing in it never did me any good.

Life is a chance, a story is a chance. That I am here is a chance.

Nothing happens quite by chance. It's a question of accretion of information and experience ... it's just chance that I happened to be here at this particular time when there was available and at my disposal the great experience of all the investigators who plodded along for a number of years.

Fate laughs at probabilities.

Everything's serendipitous and there's no way of knowing who's going to get sick or who's going to get hit by a bus or who's going to fall in love and who's going to get pregnant. All the things that happen, it's up for grabs so it's kind of an exercise in surrender in a way.

Everybody believes in chance.

Tho' there be no such Thing as Chance in the World; our Ignorance of the real Ccause of any Event has the same Influence on the Understanding, and begets a like Species of Belief or Opinion.

As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we're not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.

Chance is a name for our ignorance.

You never know why something works or doesn't.

My life is a big accident, so where I end up, I think it's all accidents.