Impossibility Quotes - Page 16

• Fifty-fifty marriages are an impossibility. They do not work. They cannot work.
  In marriage someone has to be the final decision maker.
  Someone has to delegate responsibility, and God has ordained that this should be the husband.

  Wayne Mack

  Husband, Responsibility, Decision

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• If someone says can't, that shows you what to do.

  John Cage

  Challenges, Possibility, Shows

  John Cage, Richard Kostelanetz (1993). “John Cage, writer: previously uncollected pieces”, Amadeus Press

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• Romance is the truth of imagination and boyhood. Homer's horses clear the world at a bound. The child's eye needs no horizon to its prospect. The oriental tale is not too vast. Pearls dropping from trees are only falling leaves in autumn. The palace that grew up in a night merely awakens a wish to live in it. The impossibilities of fifty years are the commonplaces of five.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Horse, Children, Fall

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.60

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• The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.

  Ruth Benedict

  Community, Culture, Shapes

  Patterns of Culture ch. 1 (1934)

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• It is dangerous to attach probability zero to anything other than a logical impossibility.

  Dennis Lindley

  Zero, Logical, Dangerous

  "Understanding Uncertainty". Book by Dennis Lindley (Chapter 5 "The Rules of Probability", p. 64), 2006.

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• I have always lived with the awareness of the impossibility of living. And what has made existence endurable to me is my curiosity as to how I would get from one minute, one day, one year to the next.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Years, Curiosity, One Day

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• Maybe I was destined to forever fall in love with people I couldn’t have. Maybe there’s a whole assortment of impossible people waiting for me to find them. Waiting to make me feel the same impossibility over and over again.

  Carol Rifka Brunt

  Falling In Love, Unrequited Love, People

  Carol Rifka Brunt (2012). “Tell the Wolves I'm Home”, p.347, Pan Macmillan

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• When does one ever know a human being? Perhaps only after one has realized the impossibility of knowledge and renounced the desire for it and finally ceased to feel even the need of it. But then what one achieves is no longer knowledge, it is simply a kind of co-existence; and this too is one of the guises of love.

  Iris Murdoch

  Desire, Doe, Needs

  Iris Murdoch (1961). “Under the Net: A Novel”

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• When we come to the place of impossibilities, it is the grandest place for us to see the possibilities of God.

  Smith Wigglesworth

  Possibility

  Smith Wigglesworth (2013). “Smith Wigglesworth on Manifesting the Divine Nature: Abiding in Power Every Day of the Year”, p.6, Destiny Image Publishers

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• Anytime you can muster the fury to actually write in the face of the impossibility of writing, that's an achievement.

  John Maus

  Writing, Achievement, Faces

  Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. August 10, 2012.

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• Even from the first it is meek to seek the impossible.

  Sophocles

  Firsts, Impossible, Meek

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• Nelson Mandela said: 'It always seems impossible until it's done.' Peace is possible.

  John Bonifaz

  Motivational, Perseverance, War

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• We are free today substantially, but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. A Republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when the day comes when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nations to the changed conditions.

  James Madison

  Wisdom, Country, Hands

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• Impossibility is more possible than everything which we hold to be possible.

  Karl Barth

  Karl Barth (1968). “The Epistle to the Romans”, p.381, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Accept the difficulty of what you cannot yet change. But do not accept the impossibility of ever changing it.

  Aubrey de Grey

  Accepting, Difficulty

  "You Can Live Forever: Is Immortality Plausible? Or Is It Quack Science?". Interview with Andrew Romano, www.newsweek.com. July 24, 2013.

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• It is the act of a madman to pursue impossibilities .

  Marcus Aurelius

  Madmen, Pursue

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  The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man's determination.

  Tommy Lasorda

  Inspirational, Motivational, Sports

  Twitter post from Aug 24, 2015

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• In my [Impossibility] theorem I'm assuming that the information is a ranking. Each voter can say of any two candidates, I prefer this one to this one. So then we have essentially a ranking. It's a list saying this is my first choice. This is my second choice. Each voter, in principle, could be asked to give that entire piece of information. In the ordinary Plurality Voting, say as used in electing Congressmen, we generally only ask for the first choice. But, in principle, we could ask for more choices.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Two, Giving, Voting

  Source: electology.org

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• There's only one problem that bothers me. And that's something my theorem [ of Impossibility] really doesn't cover. In my theorem I was assuming people vote sincerely. The trouble with methods where you have three or four classes, I think if people vote sincerely they may well be very satisfactory. The problem is the incentive to misrepresent your vote may be high.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Thinking, Class, People

  Source: electology.org

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• You want to hire #‎ entrepreneurs , people who are natural problem solvers -- the ones who see opportunity when most see impossibility.

  Gurbaksh Chahal

  Opportunity, People, Entrepreneur

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• One way of looking at Impossibility Theorem is that we proposed some criteria for what a good system should be: what is it you want from a voting system, and impose some conditions. And then ask: can you have a voting system that guarantees that?

  Kenneth Arrow

  Guarantees That, Voting, Want

  Source: electology.org

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• In the financial markets, hindsight is forever 20/20, but foresight is legally blind. And thus, for most investors, market timing is a practical and emotional impossibility.

  Benjamin Graham

  Emotional, Forever, Investing

  Benjamin Graham (1965). “The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel”, p.23, Prabhat Prakashan

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• An infinite personality is an infinite impossibility.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Personality, Infinite

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.445, Library of Alexandria

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• As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine; methinks there be not impossibilities enough in Religion for an active faith.

  Thomas Browne

  Brain, Atheism, Divinity

  'Religio Medici' (1643) pt. 1, sect. 9

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• The impossibility of keeping Englishmen sober ashore was a constant source of complaint, It was the great weakness of 16th century English infantrymen, whose performance when sober was admired even by the Spaniards. Already it was true, as it was to be for centuries, that many saw and despised the drunken sailor ashore, but few knew and admired him at his work afloat.

  Nicholas Rodger

  Sailor, Saws, Weakness

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