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The laws of probability are mighty powerful, and they never sleep. If this were more widely understood there’d be a lot less crowing about good luck, and a lot less guilt about bad luck. And we’d have a more civilized world. Some things really do happen by chance, and there is little we can do to change that.

— Harold Lewis Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions (1997)

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Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: Chapter 5, “Putting It All Together” (p. 31)
Work: Why Flip a Coin? The Art and Science of Good Decisions, 1997
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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The fact that self-interest can work against the common good is far-reaching, and no general solution is known.

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It doesn’t matter what the winners do when elected—the promise gets them the job, memories are short, and incumbency leads to tenure.

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Despite the babbling of the creationists, evolution is inevitable in a competitive world, and it does work.

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Philosophy is the misuse of a terminology which was invented for just this purpose.

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People who claim there is no such thing as native intelligence are nuts.

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Someone once said that he had made many mistakes in life, but never because he knew too much.

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It is a fallacy of human perception to see patterns that aren’t there, and to see order where there is none.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Harold Lewis (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.