Plausible Quotes - Page 6

• 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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• ..I sought a world philosophy-or an integral philosophy-that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details-that is finitely impossible; but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world really is one, undivided, whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos, a plausible Theory of Everything.

  Ken Wilber

  Philosophy, Together, World

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• The question of the origin of life is essentially speculative. We have to construct, by straightforward thinking on the basis of very few factual observations, a plausible and self-consistent picture of a process which must have occurred before any of the forms which are known to us in the fossil record could have existed.

  John Desmond Bernal

  Thinking, Origin Of Life, Self

  John Desmond Bernal (1967). “The origin of life”

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• It is in applied psychology, if anywhere, that today we should be modest and grant validity to a number of apparently contradictory opinions; for we are still far from having anything like a thorough knowledge of the human psyche, that most challenging field of scientific enquiry. For the present we have merely more or less plausible opinions that defy reconciliation.

  Carl Jung

  Knowledge, Numbers, Psychology

  "Modern Man in Search of a Soul". Book by Carl Jung, p. 57, 1933.

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• We'll look for almost any reason not to change our attitudes; the inertia of the established order is powerful. If we can think of a plausible, or even implausible, reason to discount environmental warnings, we will.

  Bill McKibben

  Powerful, Attitude, Thinking

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• The plausible outcomes range from the gradual and benign to the more precipitous and damaging.

  Timothy Geithner

  Outcomes, Range, Benign

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• Perhaps first and foremost is the challenge of taking what I find as a reader and making it into a poem that, primarily, has to be a plausible poem in English.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Challenges, Firsts, Reader

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• The more we learn about life, the less plausible is any evolutionary theory that relies on blind, undirected, piece-by-piece change.

  Nancy Pearcey

  Pieces, Blind, Theory

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• I plot as I go. Many novelists write an outline that has almost as many pages as their ultimate book. Others knock out a brief synopsis... Do what is comfortable. If you have to plot out every move your characters make, so be it. Just make sure there is a plausible purpose behind their machinations. A good reader can smell a phony plot a block away.

  Clive Cussler

  Block, Moving, Book

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• I'm attracted to how fraught the parent-child relationship is, swerving so easily between love and hostility, with almost no plausible way to end, unless someone dies.

  Ben Marcus

  Children, Parent, Way

  "This week in fiction:Ben Marcus" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. May 11, 2013.

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• When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Heads Or Tails, People, Going Away

  "Nausea". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, Diary entry of Tuesday, 30 January, 1938.

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• As far as how important the real-life resonance of the stories is, I think it must play at least a small role in the show's success, because it gives the show this sense of suspense from the fact that it seems at least plausible.

  Michael Loceff

  Real, Thinking, Play

  "The Worst Day Ever". Interview with James Surowiecki, www.slate.com. January 17, 2006.

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• It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Character, Yield, Harmony

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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• People love high ideals, but they got to be about 33-percent plausible

  Will Rogers

  Inspiration, People, Ideals

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• America is a country that is now utterly divided when it comes to its society, its economy, its politics. There are definitely two Americas. I live in one, on one block in Baltimore that is part of the viable America, the America that is connected to its own economy, where there is a plausible future for the people born into it.

  David Simon

  Country, Block, Two

  "David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'". www.theguardian.com. December 07, 2013.

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• Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people's blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Men, Blood, People

  Kurt Vonnegut (2007). “The Sirens of Titan”, p.176, Dial Press

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• All "if" statements about the past are as dubious as prophecies of the future are. It seems fairly plausible that if Alexander or Ghengis Khan had never been born, some other individual would have filled his place and executed the design of the Hellenic or Mongolic expansion; but the Alexanders of philosophy and religion, of science and art, seem less expendable; their impact seems less determined by economic challenges and social pressures; and they seem to have a much wider range of possibilities to influence the direction, shape and texture of civilizations.

  Arthur Koestler

  Art, Philosophy, Past

  "The Sleepwalkeers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe". Book by Arthur Koestler, 1959.

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• I loved Molly. Or at least I told myself I did. Or, if what I felt for her was not love, it was at least a plausible imitation, a convincing substitute.

  Robert Charles Wilson

  Imitation, Substitutes, Convincing

  Robert Charles Wilson (2010). “Spin”, p.238, Tor Books

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