When you’ve grown up with limited resources, there’s almost a narrative that everything’s unlikely and the odds are against you. I guess then, if things start to happen, you immediately think, ‘Do I even deserve this?’
Figure skating is an unlikely Olympic event but its good television. It’s sort of a combination of gymnastics and ballet. A little sexy too which doesn’t hurt.
I’m very good at deconstructing. I’m a very good troubleshooter for why something is unlikely to work. And most everything is unlikely to work.
My homeland of Belarus is an unlikely place for an Internet revolution. The country, controlled by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, was once described by Condoleezza Rice as ‘the last outpost of tyranny in Europe.’
‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ is without a doubt the best film we are ever likely to see on the subject – unless there is a sequel, which is unlikely, because at the end, the Lincolns are on their way to the theater.
What is necessary is possible, what we want is expensive. What is unnecessary is unlikely.
It took them only an instant to cut of that head, but it is unlikely that a hundred years will suffice to reproduce a singular one.
In the World Cup finals, you’re unlikely to meet a continental rival. In Copa America, you know they are just around the corner and that you will have to beat them to win the competition.
A voyage to Europe in the summer of 1921 gave me the first opportunity of observing the wonderful blue opalescence of the Mediterranean Sea. It seemed not unlikely that the phenomenon owed its origin to the scattering of sunlight by the molecules of the water.
While my six-song EP is unlikely to set any sales records, it’s one of my biggest personal achievements – on par with starting my own company. On par with selling my own company.
We are unlikely to spend our last moments regretting that we didn’t spend enough of our lives chained to a desk. We may instead find ourselves rueing the time we didn’t spend watching our children grow, or with our loved ones, or travelling, or on the cultural or leisure pursuits that bring us happiness.
Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.
Removing the faults in a stage-coach may produce a perfect stage-coach, but it is unlikely to produce the first motor car.
Either God is alive, in which case he’ll deal with us as he sees fit. Or he is dead, in which case he was never alive, it being unlikely that he died of old age.
A talib fires three shots at point-blank range at three girls in a van and doesn’t kill any of them. This seems an unlikely story.
Just as your own existence is unlikely and far from inevitable, the evolution of modern humans as a species depended on a whole string of chance events – some happening in the environments our ancestors inhabited, and some inside their own bodies, including random mutations in their DNA.
Moreover the incorporation requires the same components needed for protein synthesis, and is inhibited by the same inhibitors. Thus the system is most unlikely to be a complete artefact and is very probably closely related to genuine protein synthesis.
I recognized that information was, in many respects, like a public good, and it was this insight that made it clear to me that it was unlikely that the private market would provide efficient resource allocations whenever information was endogenous.
Global poverty is a complex web of interlinked problems. There is no one ‘silver bullet’ that will solve global inequality. Multiple contributing factors must be tackled in parallel. Yes, education alone is unlikely to lead to employment without economic reform to address the demand side in much of the developing world.
The idea of a computer winning the Nobel Prize for physics is not too unlikely, citing a computer as joint recipient. It’s obviously not a huge leap to think of something similar happening in fiction.
War as Napoleon knew it just not possible any more. However, we’re very unlikely to accept or recognize ‘world peace’ even when we get it.
When children do not have three square meals a day, a proper education, and at least one adult who they know loves and is committed to them, it’s very unlikely they will grow up to be productive citizens of the world.
Guantanamo is still open, but it’s unlikely that serious torture is going on at Guantanamo. There is just too much inspection.
There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.
Ever since the collapse of cap and trade legislation and the realization that President Obama is unlikely to ever utter the words ‘climate change’ in public again, much less use the bully pulpit to prepare the nation for the catastrophic risks of inaction, the movement has been in a funk.
At the highest stage of capitalism, the most necessary revolution appears as the most unlikely one.
If you’ve just been sacked from work, with no money coming in and a baby to feed, clothe and keep warm, it’s unlikely you’ll have a thousand pounds or so to spare.
And what could be a hotter ticket than the improbable triumph of ‘The Book of Mormon,’ the musical-comedy moon shot of the season? Its creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, of Comedy Central’s ‘South Park,’ are the most unlikely Rodgers and Hammerstein team ever to bowl a thundering strike.
Courage is found in unlikely places.
To separate children from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.
If I got too famous, I’d just quit acting, but I think it’s highly unlikely I’m going to get really famous.
You never know where your career will take you. A competitor in the market could suddenly become an unlikely partner. Be flexible, keep your slate clean, and stay open to unlikely collaborations.
Sweet, loveable, and with every click revealing a new surprise, ‘Botanicula’ creates both a wonderful world where bees and twigs play in the universe and sets up a daring story of a group of unlikely heroes taking on a tree’s last hope of survival.
I’m always amazed how many politicians have a very unlikely story, and when I talk to groups of students, I remind them that not everybody who gets into politics is a lawyer or went to school to study it. We all come to it for different reasons.
You get some really unlikely friendships on ‘Big Brother’ and that’s one of the joys of it.
My heroes and heroines are often unlikely people who are dragged into situations without meaning to become involved, or people with a past that has never quite left them. They are often isolated, introspective people, often confrontational or anarchic in some way, often damaged or secretly unhappy or incomplete.
What we are unlikely to do as a leading brand space is just buy revenue or partnership with hotels.
I’d be interested in finding out if there is a light you walk into, and if you do meet people from your life and walk hand in hand with Jesus. I would hate for my death to be tragic: I’d like to be old when it happens. But hopefully a young death is unlikely.
I came to the conclusion that it was unlikely that a man as really awful as I think that Steve Jobs was could possibly create a great company for the long term. I just don’t believe bad guys do well in the long run.
Musicians now find themselves in the unlikely position of being legitimate. At least the IRS thinks so.
The list of unlikely sex symbols is pretty long if you look online.
The sound of the Seekers, that four-part harmony sound, three boys and a girl, is so unlikely, you would not choose those four voices to blend together.
My colleague Bill Keegan has written a very short book (‘Saving the World?’) on an unlikely topic – he is the first economist to try to rehabilitate Gordon Brown.
Life gives you enough hard knocks so it’s unlikely you’ll stay that sure of yourself.
My life is neither a disaster nor supernatural, yet it is an unlikely event.
Making the New York Times’ list is the kind of thing you don’t even let yourself imagine because it seems so unlikely, so it was incredible to actually see my name there.
For peer review, replication, and objectivity to make any headway on the continuum, for science to find the right answers to anything, there have to be wrong – or at least unlikely – answers.
The idea that somebody else is going to swoop down and play the fairy godmother role is pretty unlikely, so why not take care of yourself?
The whole secret to our success is being able to con ourselves into believing that we’re going to change the world because statistically we are unlikely to do it.
As a curator, I’ve met endless people who feel a ‘special connection’ with Anne Boleyn, or Victorian prostitutes, or various other unlikely candidates.
The conflict in the Middle East is complex, multi-faceted, and unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, though it seemed an unlikely outcome since I showed no real talent. But I persevered and eventually found my own row to hoe. Ignorance of other writers’ work keeps me from discouragement and I am less well-read than the average bus driver.
