Plausible Quotes - Page 5

• I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, no matter whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterwards whether he told the truth or not. When starting and waging war it is not right that matters, but victory.

  Adolf Hitler

  War, Giving, Victory

  9 Copy quote

• What could be more foolish than to base one's entire view of life on ideas that, however plausible at the time, now appear to be quite erroneous? And what would be more important than to find our true place in the universe by removing one by one these unfortunate vestiges of earlier beliefs?

  Francis Crick

  Views, Ideas, Religion

  6 Copy quote

• Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man has a voice, brutal laws are impossible

  Mark Twain

  Witty, Writing, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines the purpose and accounts for the immense wealth of American sports. It is the ceremony of innocence that the fans pay to see - not the game or the match or the bout, but the ritual portrayal of a world in which time stops and all hope remains plausible, in which everybody present can recover the blameless expectations of a child, where the forces of light always triumph over the powers of darkness.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Sports, Business, Children

  7 Copy quote

• As agonizing a disease as cancer is, I do not think it can be said that our civilization is threatened by it. ... But a very plausible case can be made that our civilization is fundamentally threatened by the lack of adequate fertility control. Exponential increases of population will dominate any arithmetic increases, even those brought about by heroic technological initiatives, in the availability of food and resources, as Malthus long ago realized.

  Carl Sagan

  Cancer, Science, Thinking

  10 Copy quote

• I think a lot of the reason people are attracted to the Keystone pipeline is because at least we're doing something. There's a fear that society will collapse if it's not acting. To contrast those actions with other actions is important in making it feel plausible. Maybe we must have the size of the dream meet the size of the threat.

  Zephyr Teachout

  Dream, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I could imagine that a character could do almost anything at any time, and that was the freedom of the whole thing. But keeping track of what was plausible for certain characters [was the challenge].

  Steven Amsterdam

  Character, Track, Challenges

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of course, there remains the question of why we should find mind-brain identities so persistently counter-intuitive, if they are true. But this is a simple psychological question, and there are a number of plausible explanations. Indeed this is a topic that is quite extensively discussed outside philosophy, by developmental psychologists and theorists of religion among others, under the heading of 'intuitive dualism'. It is rather shocking that so few of the many philosophers working on 'the explanatory gap' are familiar with this empirical literature.

  David Papineau

  Philosophy, Simple, Numbers

  "Physical". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 8, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most important to any fake story is a plausible, realistic edge with a satirical twist that is topical.

  Joey Skaggs

  Fake People, Important, Twists

  11 Copy quote

• The Catholic clergy seldom bother to make their arguments plausible; it is plain that they have little respect for human intelligence, and indeed little belief in its existence.

  H. L. Mencken

  Catholic, Littles, Superstitions

  4 Copy quote

• That so many of us find it entirely plausible that a vast network of researchers and health officials and doctors worldwide would willfully harm children for money is evidence of what capitalism is really taking from us. Capitalism has already impoverished the working people who generate wealth for others. And capitalism has already impoverished us culturally, robbing unmarketable art of its value. But when we begin to see the pressures of capitalism as innate laws of human motivation, when we begin to believe that everyone is owned, then we are truly impoverished.

  Eula Biss

  Art, Children, Motivation

  7 Copy quote

• The Pixar people continuously amaze me. They come up with something that actually looks as though it takes place in this happy, real-world. Every plot line is not just plausible, but oddly authentic. The stories are full of adventure, humor and love. The characters are written with great human dimension. I don't know how they do it but they astound me.

  Tom Hanks

  Real, Adventure, Character

  4 Copy quote

• Now, if the cooperation of some thousands of millions of cells in our brain can produce our consciousness, a true singularity, the idea becomes vastly more plausible that the cooperation of humanity, or some sections of it, may determine what Comte calls a Great Being.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Cells, Ideas, Humanity

  4 Copy quote

• He must be able to hear them [the counter arguments] from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty.

  John Stuart Mill

  Believe, Views, Atheism

  4 Copy quote

• The Devil is a spiritual lunatic, but, like many lunatics, he is extremely plausible and cunning.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Spiritual, Devil, Cunning

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2006). “The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement: On Dante and Other Writers”, p.231, Wipf and Stock Publishers

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm focused on solving the problem that would make it plausible for gov't to get back to solving real problems.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Real, Problem, Get Back

  4 Copy quote

• When confronted with a demand that the universe have a cause, infidels have usually pointed out that God was not much of an explanation. This is true enough, but not really a positive argument. After mechanistic explanation became popular, infidels liked to restrict causality to the chain of causes in an eternal material universe, pointing out that no supernatural cause was then necessary. Plausible, but still rather defensive. Today's skeptic can do better. In all likelihood, the universe is uncaused. It is random. It just is.

  Taner Edis

  Religion, Demand, Causality

  4 Copy quote

• Hitler had a plausible case to argue when he claimed that the Anschluss was only the application of the Wilsonian principle of self-determination.

  Alan Bullock

  Determination, Self, Principles

  Alan Bullock (1964). “Hitler, a study in tyranny”, Harpercollins College Div

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.

  William Hazlitt

  Country, Scotch, Giving

  William Hazlitt, James Thornton (1967). “Miscellaneous writings”

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• We certainly have to have a view about knowledge in order to decide whether some version of foreknowledge is necessary for inquiry or whether some philosopher or other thinks it is. Roughly, the more demanding our conception of knowledge is, the less plausible foreknowledge is; the weaker our conception of knowledge is, the more plausible foreknowledge is.

  Gail Fine

  Thinking, Views, Order

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• With a novel, you have the reader with you a lot longer, and you owe him a lot more. Obviously you have to have a plot - I say "obviously," although I think a lot of fiction doesn't, and nothing seems to happen. But to me, there should be something that happens, and it should be at least vaguely plausible. And because the readers are going to be with these characters for a long time, you have to get to know them and like them and want to know what happens to them.

  Dave Barry

  Character, Thinking, Long

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Lapses, Answers, Tongue

  Charlotte Brontë “Jane Eyre”, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The novelist, unlike many of his colleagues, makes up a number of word-masses roughly describing himself (roughly: niceties shallcome later), gives them names and sex, assigns them plausible gestures, and causes them to speak by the use of inverted commas, and perhaps to behave consistently.

  E. M. Forster

  Sex, Character, Names

  4 Copy quote

• I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US... But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

  Gideon Rachman

  Thinking, World Government, Secret

  "And now for a world government" by Gideon Rachman, www.ft.com. December 9, 2008.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The result of the mathematician's creative work is demonstrative reasoning, a proof; but the proof is discovered by plausible reasoning, by guessing.

  George Polya

  Science, Creative, Guessing

  "Induction and Analogy in Mathematics". Book by George Polya, 1954.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source