The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that both chance and destiny play roles in shaping our reality.
Tom Stoppard's quote highlights the interplay between unpredictability and predetermined outcomes in life. It implies that while some events are beyond our control, others are set in motion by choices and circumstances, creating the complex tapestry of existence as we know it. This duality invites contemplation on the nature of fate and free will, encouraging us to consider how both elements contribute to our experiences.
In practice
In a speech about overcoming challenges, one could use this quote to illustrate the balance between unpredictability and planning.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
Truth will have no gods before it.- The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.
To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation's sweetest dreams of itself.
A rational man acting in the real world may be defined as one who decides where he will strike a balance between what he desires and what can be done.
When life is victorious, there is birth; when it is thwarted, there is death. A warrior is always engaged in a life-and-death struggle for Peace.
Reality is like a doughnut: Everything that is good and funny and juicy is outside the center, which is just emptiness.
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.
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