Plausible Quotes - Page 3

• The future depicted in a good SF story ought to be in fact possible, or at least plausible. That means that the writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true... and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you.

  Frederik Pohl

  Mean, Looks, Stories

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• What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but only what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

  Carl Sagan

  Believe, Two, Sound

  "Cosmos/ Encyclopaedia Galactica". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 1980.

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• It's easy to imagine ways the future can be ugly and depressing. It's harder, but more worthwhile, to imagine plausible ways we can make it better.

  Stanley Schmidt

  Depressing, Way, Ugly

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• Three explanations dominate speculation about what Obama is up to. The first is that he's trying to lay the groundwork for his successor, presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton. The second is that he's trying to pad his legacy. The third is that he's trying to 'troll' or bait the GOP into debating his agenda rather than pursuing its own. All are plausible, and none necessarily contradicts the others.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Trying, Bait, Legacy

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• The word happiness exists in every language; it is plausible the thing itself exists.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Language

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• Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'

  Garrett Hardin

  Policy

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• Despotism, which we regard with abhorrence, is rather too plausible in decaying feudal, agrarian, pastoral societies. That's why we must expect to have many a defeat before we'll have an ultimate victory in this contest with Communism.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Victory, Defeat, Communism

  "The Mike Wallace Interview". www.hrc.utexas.edu. April 27, 1958.

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• Sci-fi uses the images that sf - starting with H.G. Wells - made familiar: space travel, aliens, galactic wars and federations, time machines, et cetera, taking them literally, not caring if they are possible or even plausible. It has no interest in or relation to real science or technology. It's fantasy in space suits. Spectacle. Wizards with lasers. Kids with ray guns. I've written both, but I have to say I respect science fiction enough that I wince when people call it sci-fi.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Real, War, Kids

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• The important thing is that we maintain plausible deniability.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Important, Important Things

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• Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

  Francis Bacon

  Truth, Needs, Fiction

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• The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.

  Paul Johnson

  Powerful, Earth Day, Arrogance

  Paul Johnson (1980). “The Things that are Not Caesar's”

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• As is so often the case with a legend, every incident has two possible interpretations, the plausible and the one that is molded to suit the making of the myth. Man is a romantic at heart and will always put aside dull, plodding reason for the excitement of an enigma. As Doc had pointed out, mystery, not logic, is what gives us hope and keeps us believing in a force greater than our own insignificance.

  Bryce Courtenay

  Believe, Heart, Men

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• Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.

  Salman Rushdie

  Time, Past, Reality

  Salman Rushdie (2010). “Midnight's Children”, p.229, Random House

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• What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don't know know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree.

  John Brunner

  People, Want, Way

  John Brunner (2014). “The Jagged Orbit”, p.18, Open Road Media

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• The man assumes the role of the loner, the thinker and the searching spirit who calls the privileged and the powerful to task. The power of one was the courage to remain separate, th think through the truth and not be beguiled by convention or the plausible arguments of those who expect to maintain power, whatever the cost.

  Bryce Courtenay

  Powerful, Thinking, Men

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• I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centred, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.

  Haruki Murakami

  Hurt, Ideas, Self

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• My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  People, Done, Truth Is

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• Jim Stavridis is the former NATO commander who is sometimes on people's lists, also very plausible, self-possessed, someone with sobriety.

  David Brooks

  Self, People, Sobriety

  "Shields and Brooks on the Hillary Clinton veepstakes, the latest Trump-Cruz dustup". Interview with Judy Woodruff, www.pbs.org. July 22, 2016.

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• Tim Kaine has been obviously a governor. He's been a senator. He's one of the smartest rising stars in the Democratic Party. He is very plausible as someone who could sit in and be president.

  David Brooks

  Stars, Party, President

  "Shields and Brooks on the Hillary Clinton veepstakes, the latest Trump-Cruz dustup". "PBS NewsHour" with Judy Woodruff, www.pbs.org. July 22, 2016.

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• Great works - and I think Star Wars is a great work - are easily susceptible to multiple plausible interpretations. Some of them are pretty nutty, but the idea that we should see it as profoundly feminist, or as a deeply Christian tale, or as a Freudian exercise... I think all of those have some truth.

  Cass Sunstein

  Christian, Stars, War

  "Cass Sunstein explains why Star Wars is like America". Interview with Alex McLevy, film.avclub.com. June 2, 2016.

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• Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius." The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up. But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible--villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word

  Brenda Ueland

  Believe, Hero, Ordinary

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

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• Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough---as most wrong theories are!

  H. G. Wells

  Simple, Enough, Theory

  H. G. Wells (2015). “The Time Machine: H. G. Wells Collections”, p.25, 谷月社

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• The cost of oblivius daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realigment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse. Her reverie, once rich in plausible details, had become a passing silliness before the hard mass of the actual. It was difficult to come back.

  Ian Mcewan

  Littles, Return, Details

  Ian McEwan (2010). “Atonement”, p.76, Random House

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• The real news has gotten more surreal and absurd, and my fake news, if you want to call it that, has gotten more plausible. And at some point, those two trend lines crossed.

  Andy Borowitz

  Real, Two, Fake

  Source: www.npr.org

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• The moral law is a reason to think of God as plausible - not just a God who sets the universe in motion but a God who cares about human beings, because we seem uniquely amongst creatures on the planet to have this far-developed sense of morality.

  Richard Dawkins

  Thinking, Law, Who Cares

  Source: inters.org

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