"Nothing is improbable until it moves into past tense"
About this Quote
George Ade, the Indiana humorist, slyly exposes how probability becomes a story we tell after the fact. While events are unfolding, the imagination keeps every door ajar. A long-shot horse can win, the underdog might surge, the risky venture could pay off. Hope and fear suspend disbelief. Only when an outcome is settled do we lean back and declare that it was improbable all along, as if the odds had been etched in stone. The shift from present uncertainty to past tense turns flexible possibilities into tidy explanations.
That pivot captures hindsight bias in plain clothes. Once we know what happened, we shape a narrative that flatters our judgment or protects our pride. The losing bet becomes something no sensible person should have made. The upset victory, alternatively, is recast as inevitable, with signs that were there for anyone clever enough to see. Ade mocks the way probability is retrofitted to match a result, rather than assessed honestly when the dice were still in the air.
He knew the terrain well. Writing at the turn of the 20th century, famous for his Fables in Slang, Ade lampooned speculators, boosters, and get-rich-quick dreamers in a booming America. The line reads like a wink at gamblers and promoters who declare every scheme plausible up to the moment it collapses, then call the success they missed or the failure they backed wildly unlikely. Grammar becomes a metaphor: tense governs not only verbs but our moral and mental posture toward chance.
The lesson is not cynicism but humility. Before outcomes, acknowledge uncertainty and assign real odds. After outcomes, resist the comforting rewrite that hindsight invites. The world is stochastic; stories are tidy. Ade reminds us to keep that difference in view, to remember how easily the past tense turns possibilities into pronouncements, and how quickly probability becomes a mask for regret, vanity, or self-defense.
That pivot captures hindsight bias in plain clothes. Once we know what happened, we shape a narrative that flatters our judgment or protects our pride. The losing bet becomes something no sensible person should have made. The upset victory, alternatively, is recast as inevitable, with signs that were there for anyone clever enough to see. Ade mocks the way probability is retrofitted to match a result, rather than assessed honestly when the dice were still in the air.
He knew the terrain well. Writing at the turn of the 20th century, famous for his Fables in Slang, Ade lampooned speculators, boosters, and get-rich-quick dreamers in a booming America. The line reads like a wink at gamblers and promoters who declare every scheme plausible up to the moment it collapses, then call the success they missed or the failure they backed wildly unlikely. Grammar becomes a metaphor: tense governs not only verbs but our moral and mental posture toward chance.
The lesson is not cynicism but humility. Before outcomes, acknowledge uncertainty and assign real odds. After outcomes, resist the comforting rewrite that hindsight invites. The world is stochastic; stories are tidy. Ade reminds us to keep that difference in view, to remember how easily the past tense turns possibilities into pronouncements, and how quickly probability becomes a mask for regret, vanity, or self-defense.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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