As I mentioned recently, I am reading Adam Fawer’s "Improbable" and having a great time of it. Here is another passage that hits home for me in my quantified risk pursuits:

…That was something he’d always liked about Doc: nothing surprised him.

"Law of Large Numbers," Doc once said to him. "It would only be surprising if something odd happened to everyone on earth at the exact same moment. As I have but one viewpoint, I have to assume that whatever improbable event is happening to me is not happening to everyone else on the planet. Hence, as long as the chance of its happening is more than 1 in 6 billion, then the probability of its happening to someone is almost 100 percent, and what’s surprising about an event with a 100% probability actually occurring?"

Now if I could only find someone who said stuff like this in real life .