Luck or chance is fortune (whether bad or good) which occurs beyond one's control, without regard to one's will, intention, or desired result. There are at least two senses people usually mean when they use the term, the prescriptive sense and the descriptive sense. In the prescriptive sense, luck is a supernatural and deterministic concept that there are forces (e.g. gods or spirits) which prescribe that certain events occur very much the way laws of physics will prescribe that certain events occur. It is the prescriptive sense that people mean when they say they "do not believe in luck". In the descriptive sense, luck is a word people give after the occurrence of events which they find to be fortuitous or unfortuitous, and maybe improbable.
Cultural views of luck vary from perceiving luck as a matter of random chance to attributing to such explanations of faith or superstition. For example, the Romans believed in the embodiment of luck as the goddess Fortuna, while the philosopher Daniel Dennett believes that "luck is mere luck" rather than a property of a person or thing.
Lucky symbols are popular worldwide and take many forms.
Read more about Luck: Etymology and Definition
Famous quotes containing the word luck:
“Good luck is the gayest of all gay girls;
Long in one place, she will not stay:”
—John Milton Hay (1838–1905)
“What the hell is nostalgia doing in a science-fiction film? With the whole universe and all the future to play in, Lucas took his marvelous toys and crawled under the fringed cloth on the parlor table, back into a nice safe hideyhole, along with Flash Gordon and the Cowardly Lion and Luck Skywalker and the Flying Aces and the Hitler Jugend. If there’s a message there, I don’t think I want to hear it.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)
“He was just a coward and that was the worst luck any man could have.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)