Quotes About Plausibility

They're all true. They all could have happened.

That's how science works. We don't "prove" results like we can in mathematics or logic; we simply add to their plausibility by accumulating more and more evidence.

The difference between nonfiction and fiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.

When the impossible has been eliminated, all that remains no matter how improbable is possible.

It is perhaps, plausible that a man in this situation, impressed with the unconcern of the universe, should see the innumerable flaws of his life and have them taste wickedly in his mind and wish for another chance.

But that outcome looked more and more unlikely.

The open view of the future is the most plausible view because it squares with our everyday life. Whatever philosophy we might embrace, we all live as though the open view were true. With every decision we make we assume that much of our immediate future is settled (e.g., we take for granted the ongoing reality of our world and the laws of physics) but that some of it is up to us to decide. The open view simply says that this common-sense assumption is accurate. Responding

The entire economy relies on the suspension of disbelief. So does a fairy story or an animated cartoon. This means that no matter how soberly the financial experts dress, no matter how dry their language, the economy they worship can only ever be as plausible as an episode of 'SpongeBob SquarePants.'

Alas, for me, a belief is not something you are born into or that you simply choose to adopt one day. Belief, for me, calls for plausibility. And so I continue my wanderings.

as afirmações dos cínicos parecem sempre mais plausíveis do que as dos optimistas incorrigíveis.

Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate. Its justification loses in plausibility the farther its intended end recedes into the future. No one questions the use of violence in self-defense, because the danger is not only clear but also present, and the end justifying the means is immediate.

the true and the plausible are rarely the same.

Novels must have verisimilitude, and truth has little enough of that.

VERISIMILITUDE (the appearance or semblance of truth)

Hyperbolic myths of origin have from the earliest times served to lend a paradoxical plausibility to the biographies of heroes.

It took over twenty-five years for our model of DNA to go from being only rather plausible, to being very plausible (as a result of the detailed work on DNA fibers), and from there to being virtually certainly correct. Even then it was correct only in outline, not in

Hallucinations aren't always out of the ordinary. How do we know we're not hallucinating if everything seems plausible?

Because we were stranded together and because I stuttered, we read. there is no refuge so private, no asylum more sane. There is no facility of voices captured elsewhere so entire and so marvellous. My tongue was lumpish and fixed, but in reading, silent reading, there was a release, a flight, a wheeling off into the blue spaces of exclamatory experience, diffuse and improbable, gloriously homeless. All that was solid melted into air, all that was air reshaped, and gained plausibility. (p. 43)

I was a born empiricist. I believed that writers were paid to pretend, and where appropriate should make use of the real world, the one we all shared, to give plausibility to whatever they had made up.

Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.

When it comes to lying, what one must consider is not the plausibility of the fib but the greed, fear, and stupidity of the receiver. One never lies to people; they lie to themselves. A good liar gives fools what they want to hear and allows them to free themselves from the facts at hand and choose the level of self-delusion that fits their foolishness and moral turpitude.

A la hora de mentir lo que hay que tener en cuenta no es la plausibilidad del embuste, sino la codicia, vanidad y estupidez del destinatario. Uno nunca miente a la gente; se mienten a ellos mismos. Un buen mentiroso les da a los bobos lo que quieren oír. Ese es el secreto. —Eso

A la hora de mentir lo que hay que tener en cuenta no es la plausibilidad del embuste, sino la codicia, vanidad y estupidez del destinatario. Uno nunca miente a la gente; se mienten a ellos mismos. Un buen mentiroso les da a los bobos lo que quieren oír. Ese es el secreto

We humans seem to be extremely good at generating ideas, theories, and explanations that have the ring of plausibility. We may be relatively deficient, however, in evaluating and testing our ideas once they are formed