Plausible Quotes - Page 7

• First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible.

  Robert Harris

  Character, Ideas, People

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• There's a very good reason for why economics developed the way it did, and that is that in many situations, the assumption that people will exploit the opportunities available to them is very plausible, and it simplifies the analysis of how markets will behave.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Opportunity, People, Analysis

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• Tricks you need to transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable into something plausible, credible, those I learned from journalism. The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Country, Keys, Needs

  Interview with Marlise Simons, archive.nytimes.com. December 5, 1982.

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• Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

  H. L. Mencken

  Witty, Powerful, Humorous

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• I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Clever, Lying, People

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1896). “Recollections”, p.230, Library of Alexandria

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• Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.

  Luigi Pirandello

  Life, Needs, Strange

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• The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That's not true with non-fiction.

  Tom Wolfe

  Writing, Fiction, Problem

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• It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.

  H. G. Wells

  Morning, Common Sense, Waiting

  H. G. Wells (2016). “The Time Machine”, p.10, Xist Publishing

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• Implausible truth can serve one better than plausible fiction

  David Mitchell

  Fiction

  David Mitchell (2012). “Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel”, p.53, Random House Group

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• As witnesses not of our intentions but of our conduct, we can be true or false, and the hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. 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

  Integrity, Hypocrite, Evil

  'On Revolution' (1963) ch. 2

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• Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means.

  Charles Dickens

  Courage, Integrity, Mean

  Charles Dickens (1868). “Barnaby Rudge: And Hard Times”, p.374

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

  Will Rogers

  Inspiration, People, Ideals

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The denial of any distinction between foreseen and intended consequences, as far as responsibility is concerned, was not made by Sidgwick in developing any one 'method of ethics'; he made this important move on behalf of everybody and just on its own account; and I think it plausible to suggest that this move on the part of Sidgwick explains the difference between old-fashioned Utilitarianism and the consequentialism, as I name it, which marks him and every English academic moral philosopher since him.

  G. E. M. Anscombe

  Moving, Responsibility, Thinking

  G.E.M. Anscombe (2011). “Human Life, Action and Ethics: Essays by G.E.M. Anscombe”, p.190, Andrews UK Limited

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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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• The emergence of a unified cognitive moment relies on the coordination of scattered mosaics of functionally specialized brain regions. Here we review the mechanisms of large-scale integration that counterbalance the distributed anatomical and functional organization of brain activity to enable the emergence of coherent behaviour and cognition. Although the mechanisms involved in large-scale integration are still largely unknown, we argue that the most plausible candidate is the formation of dynamic links mediated by synchrony over multiple frequency bands.

  Francisco Varela

  Organization, Brain, Behaviour

  "The brainweb: phase synchronization and large-scale integration", Nature Rviews Vol 2, p. 229, 2001.

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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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