If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.
Thomas Carlyle

The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
E. O. Wilson

To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.
E. O. Wilson

The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?
Thomas Babington

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.
Thomas Babington

A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.
Vladimir Nabokov

Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends.
Joseph Conrad

To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.
Friedrich August von Hayek

I don't know why I should have to learn Algebra... I'm never likely to go there.
Billy Connolly

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.
Hannah Arendt

Change is not only likely, it's inevitable.
Barbara Sher

Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty.
Angela Davis

Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
Samuel Butler

Likely as not, the child you can do the least with will do the most to make you proud.
Mignon McLaughlin

There is nothing more likely to start disagreement among people or countries than an agreement.
E. B. White

Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.
Simone Weil

Bottom up thinkers try to start from experience and move from experience to understanding. They don't start with certain general principles they think beforehand are likely to be true; they just hope to find out what reality is like.
John Polkinghorne

New York is my Lourdes, where I go for spiritual refreshment... a place where you're least likely to be bitten by a wild goat.
Brendan Behan

Reality is not always probable, or likely.
Jorge Luis Borges

I think my view is that whenever you project into the future you're never likely to be accurate in the details, or the paraphernalia and style.
Stephen Fry