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Comment by jxf | Hacker News Reader

"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."

-- Thomas Jefferson (apocryphal; see [0])

[0]: http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/i-am...

  Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
  – Seneca

  Fools wait for a lucky day but every day is a lucky day for an industrious man.
  – Buddha

Critics said he won many battles simply because of luck; Napoleon responded, "Give me lucky generals," aware that "luck" comes to leaders who recognize opportunity, and seize it.

(wikipedia - Napoleon)

It takes both. luck is a constant that can range between 0 -> inf, and work is the multiplier 0 -> 1.

His slaves worked pretty hard too though. Just saying.

Chance favors the prepared mind.

--Louis Pasteur

Bizarre - the last link I was on was a random ESPN quiz with UVa star Joe Harris in which that quote was one of the questions. (I realize this is a pretty meaningless and useless comment, but seeing this quote 2 times in less than 10 seconds was too much not to mention).

I'm unable to find a definitive reference, but Gary Player (golfing legend) is also attributed with the quote: "The harder I practice, the luckier I get." Perhaps that's why it was on ESPN.

Pretty sure George Simmons has this quote of Player's on one of the chapter pages in his "Precalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell" book.

Quote Investigator has tackled this one:

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/14/luck/

The upshot is that its origin is unknown, but goes back at least to a Walter Winchell column from 1949. Gary Player used it and became associated with it. The attribution to Jefferson is nonsense, of course.

Jefferson and Einstein, never trust a quote attributed to them!

It was just because Thomas Jefferson said it and Joe Harris goes to the University he founded, it's just bizarre that I saw it 2 times in less than 10 seconds.

Is it bizarre? Given the number of people on HN, the number of things you're likely to read -- it seems inevitable that "bizarre" coincidences will certainly happen.

Presumably it's still bizarre for him to experience the phenomenon.

And buying more lottery tickets increases the chances of winning the lottery.

LUCK is also defined as 'Labor Under Correct Knowledge'

"The results of hard work and dedication always look like luck to saps."

-- leveling up in Morrowind (no idea who to attribute this quote to)

They wait for IT to come. I became IT.

You turned into a Segway?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segway_PT#Early_history_and_pre...

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