Historians whose profession is to study the past, are as wary as scientists of the idea that events unfold in a manner that can be predicted. In fact… - Leonard Mlodinow

It might seem daunting to think that effort and chance, as much as innate talent, are what counts. But I find it encouraging because, while our genetic makeup is out of our control, our degree of effort is up to us. And the effects of chance, too, can be controlled to the extent that by committing ourselves to repeated attempts, we can increase our odds of success.

The fact that human intuition is ill suited to situations involving uncertainty was known as early as the 1930's, when researchers noted that people could neither make up a sequence of numbers that passed mathematical tests for randomness nor recognize reliably whether a given string was randomly generated.

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