Leonard Mlodinow

"Obviously it can be a mistake to assign brilliance in proportion to wealth. We cannot see a persons potential, only his or her results, so we often misjudge people by thinking that the results must reflect the person. The normal accident theory of life shows not that the connection between actions and rewards is random but that random influences are as important as our qualities and actions."

"After my two attempts at gently raising the issue of string theory, one afternoon I stepped into Feynmans office to ask him what he really thought."Can we talk a little about string theory?" I asked. … "Dont you think there are aspects of it that seem very promising?""Promising? What does it promise? Does it promise to tell you the mass of the proton? No. What does it promise to tell you?""Well, no one knows how to extract any quantitative predictions yet, but—""Youre wrong. It does make a quantitative prediction. Do you know what that is?"I looked at him. My mind was a blank."It requires that we live in ten dimensions. Is it reasonable to have a theory that requires ten dimensions? No. Do we see those dimensions? No. So it rolls them up into tiny balls or cylinders too small to detect. So the only prediction it makes is one that has to be explained away because it doesnt fit with observation."

"Another lottery mystery that raised many eyebrows occurred in Germany on June 21, 1995. The freak event happened in a lottery called Lotto 6/49, which means that the winning six numbers are drawn from 1 to 49. On the day in question the winning numbers were 15-25-27-30-42-48. The very same sequence had been drawn previously, on December 20, 1986. It was the first time in 3,016 drawings that a winning sequence had been repeated. What were the chances of that? Not as bad as youd think. When you do the math, the chance of a repeat at some point over the years comes out to around 28 percent."

"We afford automatic respect to superstar business moguls, politicians, and actors and to anyone flying around in a private jet, as if their accomplishments must reflect unique qualities not shared by those forced to eat commercial airline food. And we place too much confidence in the overly precise predictions of people - political pundits, financial experts, business consultants - who claim a track record demonstrating expertise."

"What I have learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized."

"Perception requires imagination because the data people encounter in their lives are never complete and always equivocal."