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
I have not proved that the universe is, in fact, a digital computer and that it's capable of performing universal computation, but it's plausible that it is. Seth Lloyd
If nothing is to be done in the given situation, he must invent plausible reasons for doing nothing; and if something must be done, he must suggest the something. The unpardonable sin is to propose nothing, when action is imperative. Charles Edward Merriam
If there be any plausible reason for supposing that we have the right to legislate on the slave interests of the District, you cannot put down the investigation of the subject out of doors, by refusing to receive petitions. Caleb Cushing
If you look at the various strategies available for dealing with a new technology, sticking your head in the sand is not the most plausible strategy. Ralph Merkle
It's easy to imagine ways the future can be ugly and depressing. It's harder, but more worthwhile, to imagine plausible ways we can make it better. Stanley Schmidt
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
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
The idea that information can be stored in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation of its value is false. It is scarcely less false than the more plausible claim that after a war we may take our existing weapons, fill their barrels with information. Norbert Wiener
There is simply no plausible construction of the known evidence that leaves out Novak either providing a proffer through his lawyer of what he would say if he testified or having testified directly. Michael Isikoff
This is actually a very important principle that science is learning about large systems like evolution and that futurists are learning about anticipating human society: just because a future scenario is plausible doesn't mean we can get there from here. Kevin Kelly
