Probable Quotes

When it is not in our power to follow what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

I will embrace the first opportunity to get to California and it is altogether probable that when once there I shall never again leave it.

It is probable that there is no one thing that it is of eminent importance for a child to learn.

Suicide is possible, but not probable; hanging, I trust, is even more unlikely; for I hope that, by the time I die, my countrymen will have become civilised enough to abolish capital punishment.

In the discovery of secret things and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators of the common sort.

I knew it to be very doubtful whether the Cabinet, Parliament, and the country would take this view on the outbreak of war, and through the whole of this week I had in view the probable contingency that we should not decide at the critical moment to support France.

When mankind first saw the necessity of government, it is probable that many had conceived the desire of ruling.

I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

It is hard to say what the future holds, but this is probable - it won't be just like the past.

The sea has now changed from it's natural, to river coloured water, the probable consequence of some streams falling into the bay, or into the ocean to the north of it, through the low land.

If governments let themselves be fully bound by the decisions of their parliaments without protecting their own freedom to act, a breakup of Europe would be a more probable outcome than deeper integration.

I do have to earn a living, so I'm conscious of probable reactions from readers, but the most important one is still the awareness that if I'm not enjoying a story, the reader won't either.

Ergo, because of the money problem, it is probable that our orchestras will soon go down in quality.

It all comes down to probable cause: If you think something's up, maybe you gotta take a look.

Whether the prayer of Seneca was granted we do not know; but, as we do not again hear of Marcus, it is probable that he died before his father, and that the line of Seneca, like that of so many great men, became extinct in the second generation.

I don't say 'Tis impossible for an impudent man not to rise in the world, but a moderate merit with a large share of impudence is more probable to be advanced than the greatest qualifications without it.

Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

The concern around probable questions, which in a sense have been hidden, will grow around the world and the matter is critical, the reason we are doing all this is so we can respond correctly to what is reported to be a major catastrophe on the African continent.

I don't say 'Tis impossible for an impudent man not to rise in the world, but a moderate merit with a large share of impudence is more probable to be advanced than the greatest qualifications without it.

I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.

I think going to college for that one year was probable the best thing I have ever done.

I am in suspense as to the probable or improbability of being called into the Army, a station I would prefer to any other that of being in arms to defend an injured and grossly insulted country.

It is probable that for a long time to come the mass of mankind in civilized countries will find it both necessary and advantageous to labor for wages, and to accept the condition of hired laborers.

A few of the sublimest geniuses of Rome and Athens had some faint discoveries of the spiritual nature of the human soul, and formed some probable conjectures, that man was designed for a future state of existence.

A person's mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not give rise to probable cause to search that person.

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

Reality is not always probable, or likely.

Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.

Nothing seems to me more doubtful than Aristotle's remark that it is probable the arts and philosophy have several times been discovered and several times lost.