Plausible Quotes - Page 6

• There is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or other. It becomes evident that such violations are not accidental events, they are not results of insufficient knowledge or of inattention which might have been avoided. On the contrary, we see that they are necessary for progress.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Science, Progress, Events

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.14, Verso

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• Faith prefers the absurd to the plausible.

  Mason Cooley

  Faith, Absurd

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• With each passing year the difficulty of meeting any fixed quantitative target increases progressively. Moreover, plausible estimates of when the Protocol would go into effect leave such a small window of time before the first commitment period that achievement of the Kyoto targets will eventually pass out of reach.

  Henry Sylvester Jacoby

  Commitment, Years, Kyoto Protocol

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• The trauma of 9/11 stimulated infinite possibilities for worry - some quite plausible, but most inspired by remote what-if fantasies. A society bingeing on fear makes itself vulnerable to far more profound forms of destruction than terror attacks. The "terrorism war", like a nostalgic echo of the cold war, is using these popular fears to advance a different agenda - the re-engineering of American life through permanent mobilization.

  William Greider

  War, Echoes, Engineering

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• Judges ought to be more learned, than witty, more reverend, than plausible, and more advised, than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.

  Francis Bacon

  Witty, Integrity, Judging

  "Essays: Or Counsels, Civil and Moral".

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• Page after page of professional economic journals are filled with mathematical formulas leading the reader from sets of more or less plausible but entirely arbitrary assumptions to precisely stated but irrelevant theoretical conclusions.

  Wassily Leontief

  Arbitrary, Pages, Assumption

  Wassily Leontief (1966). “Essays in Economics: Theories, Theorizing, Facts, and Policies”, p.10, Transaction Publishers

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• We move from more or less plausible but really arbitrary assumptions, to elegantly demonstrated but irrelevant conclusions.

  Wassily Leontief

  Moving, Arbitrary, Assumption

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• It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Philosophy, Men, Errors

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.14, Crown Business

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• What could me more plausible than a line of reasoning which argues that the explanation of the origin of a system was to achieve an end that has in fact been achieved?

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Lines, Facts, Arguing

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.41, Verso

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• The people of the U.S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprized in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching agst every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings.

  James Madison

  Growing Up, People, Evil

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• To trade a childhood wonder for a plausible explanation - is there a worst trade one makes in life?

  Robert Breault

  Children, Childhood, Wonder

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• The latest indication we have is that Amado is experiencing some delay in getting his visa. We understand that and we can accept that as a plausible reason for him not to be here.

  Alexi Lalas

  Delay, Reason, Accepting

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• It's good to get your hands dirty a bit and to test how you see things at a given point. And it's very pleasing after writing something like 'Atonement' or 'On Chesil Beach,' which are historical, to get involved in some plausible re-enactment of the here and now.

  Ian Mcewan

  Beach, Dirty, Writing

  "Ian McEwan: 'It's good to get your hands dirty a bit'" by Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. March 5, 2010.

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• If we are concerned about our great appetite for materials, it is plausible to decrease waste, to make better use of stocks available, and to develop substitutes. But what about the appetite itself? The major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialised countries

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Country, Deterioration, Use

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• Fact is often stranger than fiction because most writers of fiction try to make their stories plausible.

  Richard Posner

  Inspirational, Trying, Fiction

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• The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.

  William Hazlitt

  Thinker, Talkers, Fluent

  William Hazlitt (1839). “Sketches and Essays by W. H. Now first collected [and edited] by his son”, p.95

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• In Hollywood, imitation is the most profitable form of flattery. That is the only plausible explanation.

  Desson Thomson

  Hollywood, Flattery, Imitation

  "'101 Dalmatians': A Little Spotty" by Desson Howe, www.washingtonpost.com. November 27, 1996.

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• The idea of a method that contains firm, unchanging, and absolutely binding principles for conducting the business of science meets considerable difficulty when confronted with the results of historical research. We find, then, that there is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or another.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Science, Ideas, Historical

  Paul Feyerabend (1975). “Against method: outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge”, Verso

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• I've never written a fiction before about real people. . . . I read everything that I could find by people who met them and tried to get some impression of them, but as always when you write fiction, even if you have completely fictitious characters, you start by thinking of what is plausible, what would they say, what would they be likely to do, what would they be likely to think. At some point, if it is every going to come to life, the characters seem to take over and start speaking themselves, and it happened with [COPENHAGEN].

  Michael Frayn

  Real, Writing, Character

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• The doctrine of transmigration… was a means of constructing a plausible vindication of the ways of the cosmos to man; … none but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the grounds of inherent absurdity.

  Thomas Huxley

  Mean, Men, Way

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• I mean come on. Do you know how easy it is to be famous these days? Do you have any idea? The web has made it plausible to have your very own platform to stand and spew nonsense from on an hourly basis. There's an old saying: when everyone is special, no one will be. These days, everybody thinks they're special, so no one really does anything to be special anymore.

  Corey Taylor

  Mean, Memorable, Thinking

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• . . . the upsurge of Spirit is the only plausible way to stop the ecological destruction of our planet. Even people who have no interest in a communal solution to the distortions in our lives will have to face up [to] this ecological reality. Unless we transform our relationship with nature, we will destroy the preconditions for human life on this planet.

  Michael Lerner

  Reality, People, Way

  Michael Lerner (2000). “Spirit Matters”, Hampton Roads Publishing Company Incorporated

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• Now '90210' is returning with an all-new cast of slightly more plausible teens. I'll be honest: I wish the old cast was back. Ideally, this spin-off would be an Ice Storm-esque exploration of the West Beverly gang's bleak adult lives.

  Diablo Cody

  Ice, Wish, Storm

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• Liberalism is an attitude rather than a set of dogmas - an attitude that insists upon questioning all plausible and self-evident propositions, seeking not to reject them but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Attitude, Self, Support

  Morris Raphael Cohen (1993). “The Faith of a Liberal”, p.437, Transaction Publishers

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• A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.

  Max Eastman

  Land, Play, Goal

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