Erich Maria Remarque Quotes

No other human activity is so continuously or universally bound up with chance. And through the element of chance, guesswork and luck come to play a great part in war.

No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

In war, you win or lose, live or die - and the difference is just an eyelash.

Human affairs are governed by such a variety of whimsical circumstances, that we should always be prepared to stand the shock of that disappointment which the best concerted measures are constantly subject to.

Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive. You swam in a river of chance and coincidence. You clung to the happiest accidents- the rest you let float by.

There was no protection, no quota system when it came to luck. It was like that moment in math when a child learns that the odds of heads or tails is always one-in-two, no matter how many times one has flipped the coin and gotten heads. Every flip, the odds are the same. Every day, you could be unlucky all over again.

Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back.

That's the way the system works. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

I want to acknowledge luck, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others.

Everybody believes in chance.

Used to think that luck wuz luck and nuthin' else but luck-- It made no diff'rence how or when or where or why it struck; But sev'ral years ago I changt my mind, an' now proclaim That luck's a kind uv science--same as any other game.

So much of life is what you roll and where you land.

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.

Every time I make a plan, God laughs at me.

I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not.

The soldiers that didn't come back were the heroes. It's a roll of the dice. If a bullet has your name on it, you're a hero. If you hear a bullet go by, you're a survivor.

Fortuitous circumstances constitute the moulds that shape the majority of human lives, and the hasty impress of an accident is too often regarded as the relentless decree of all ordaining fate.

Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance.

The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes, But Here or There as strikes the Player goes.

I don't believe in providence and fate, as a technologist I am used to reckoning with the formulae of probability.

It's difficult because nothing's preordained by plan and you can't control it. That's one of those joys and thrills and nerve-racking realities of being an actor. A lot has to do with luck, no matter what your talent or contribution can be.

I say the one thing about luck is you can't really count on it.

History is totally unpredictable.