Plausible Quotes

• There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.

  H. L. Mencken

  Business, Simple Solutions, Neat And Tidy

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.443, Vintage

  70 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you look at the various strategies available for dealing with a new technology, sticking your head in the sand is not the most plausible strategy.

  Ralph Merkle

  Technology, Decision, Looks

  "Nanotechnology: Designs for the Future". Ubiquity Interview, ubiquity.acm.org. July, 2000.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Integrity, Men

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing". Book edited by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

  76 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you're reading something from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist next to some guy in his underwear writing in his basement, or his mom's basement, on text, it looks like it's equally plausible.

  Barack Obama

  Mom, Reading, Writing

  Source: www.patheos.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

  Hannah Arendt

  Hypocrite, Evil, Hypocrisy

  'On Revolution' (1963) ch. 2

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

  Hannah Arendt

  Hypocrite, Hypocrisy, Rotten

  'On Revolution' (1963) ch. 2

  87 Copy quote

  Show source

• the true and the plausible are rarely the same.

  Helen McCloy

  Truth

  4 Copy quote

• when we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it; we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.

  Mark Twain

  Hunting, Names, Giving

  Mark Twain (2011). “No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger”, p.130, Univ of California Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have not proved that the universe is, in fact, a digital computer and that it's capable of performing universal computation, but it's plausible that it is.

  Seth Lloyd

  Digital, Facts, Computer

  60 Copy quote

• A plausible rumor / Seems a lot more believable / Than the truth itself.

  Kobo Abe

  Rumor, Seems, Believable

  13 Copy quote

• The tragic reality is that there have been occasions when [Mormon] Church leaders, teachers, and writers have not told the truth they knew about difficulties of the Mormon past, but have offered to the Saints instead a mixture of platitudes, half-truths, omissions, and plausible denials.

  D. Michael Quinn

  Teacher, Reality, Past

  6 Copy quote

• The notion that Nature does not proceed by jumps is only one of the budget of plausible lies that we call classical education. Nature always proceeds by jumps. She may spend twenty thousand years making up her mind to jump; but when she makes it up at last, the jump is big enough to take us into a new age.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Nature, Lying, Years

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Plays of George Bernard Shaw (Illustrated): Including Renowned Titles like Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, The Inca Of Perusalem, Macbeth Skit, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.2984, e-artnow

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• SHADOW KNIGHT'S MATE is a compelling story, extremely well-written and alarmingly plausible.  Jay Brandon does for politics what Dan Brown did for religion.

  Sharyn McCrumb

  Knights, Shadow, Doe

  5 Copy quote

• It is very difficult to make a vigorous, plausible, and job-risking defense of an estimate that is derived by no quantitative method, supported by little data, and certified chiefly by the hunches of the managers

  Fred Brooks

  Jobs, Data, Defense

  10 Copy quote

• I just wanted to make sure that yes, that those horror - they worked as a genre. To me, I just wanted to be touched by the film in the way that I saw plausible. Which is the story about compassion - giving and receiving it in those desperate times of need.

  Vera Farmiga

  Compassion, Giving, Receiving

  "Vera Farmiga and Paranormal Investigator Lorraine Warren Talk THE CONJURING, the Nature of Evil, Their Relationship, and More". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintarub, collider.com. July 17, 2013.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The truth has got to appear plausible on the stage

  Edward Bond

  Stage

  5 Copy quote

• These arguments on each side (and many more might be produced) are so plausible, that I am apt to suspect, they may, the one as well as the other, be solid and satisfactory, and that reason and sentiment concur in almost all moral determinations and conclusions.

  David Hume

  Determination, May, Might

  David Hume, J. B. Schneewind (1983). “An Enquiry Concerning The Principles of Morals”, p.15, Hackett Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Text is linear; it is black and white; it doesn't zoom around the page in 3-D; it isn't intelligent by itself; in fact, in terms of immediate reaction it is quite boring. I can't imagine a single preliterate was ever wowed at the first sight of text, and yet text has been the basis of arguably the most fundamental intellectual transformation of the human species. It and its subforms, such as algebra, have made science education for all a plausible goal.

  Andrea diSessa

  Learning, Black And White, Intelligent

  16 Copy quote

• Occam's razor suggests that, if some event is physically plausible, we don't need recourse to more extraordinary claims for its being. Surely the requirement of an all-powerful deity who somehow exists outside of our universe, or multiverse, while at the same time governing what goes on inside it, is one such claim. It should thus be a claim of last, rather than first, resort.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Powerful, Events, Needs

  Lawrence M. Krauss (2012). “A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing”, p.150, Simon and Schuster

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science fiction makes the implausible possible, while science fantasy makes the impossible plausible.

  Rod Serling

  Fiction, Impossible, Fantasy

  4 Copy quote

• Quantum mechanics provides us with an approximate, plausible, conjectural explanation of what actually is, or was, or may be taking place inside a cyclotron during a dark night in February.

  Edward Abbey

  Dark, Night, May

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.49, RosettaBooks

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never trust a man whom you know to have acted like a scoundrel to others, whatever friendliness he may profess to feel towards yourself, however plausible he may be, or however kindly he may behave; be sure that, the moment he has anything to gain by so doing, he will "throw you over."

  Charlie Day

  Trust, Men, May

  24 Copy quote

• The science of constructing a commonwealth or renovating it, or reforming it, is...not to be taught a priori...That which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may rise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions.

  Edmund Burke

  Government, Excellence, May

  4 Copy quote

• Whether or not enlightenment is a plausible goal for us is a vital question for our lives. If it is possible for us to attain such perfect enlightenment ourselves, our whole sense of meaning and our place in the universe immediately changes. To be open to the possibility is to be a spiritual seeker, no matter what our religion. Enlightenment is not meant to be an object of religious faith. It is an evolutionary goal.

  Robert Thurman

  Spiritual, Religious, Perfect

  FaceBook post by Robert Thurman from Feb 23, 2017

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Since all of us desire to be happy, and since we evidently become so on account of our use—that is our good use—of other things, and since knowledge is what provides this goodness of use and also good fortune, every man must, as seems plausible, prepare himself by every means for this: to be as wise as possible. Right?

  Socrates

  Wise, Mean, Men

  7 Copy quote