“Johnnie, the nice thing about citing God as an authority is that you can prove anything you set out to prove. It’s just a matter of selecting the proper postulates, then insisting that your postulates are ‘inspired.’ Then no one can possibly prove that you are wrong.”
If This Goes On— (p. 432)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)
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Robert A. Heinlein557
American science fiction author 1907–1988Related quotes
“You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything that you want to prove.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
““How can you prove God’s on your side?” Boyd asked.”
Lester del Rey (1915–1993) Novelist, short story writer, editor
Source: The Eleventh Commandment (1962), Chapter 15 (p. 138)
Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist
Creation seminars (2003-2005), Lies in the textbooks
Karel Čapek (1890–1938) Czech writer
Sgt. Bartosek, in "Šlépeje" ["Footprints"] (1929) as translated by Norma Comrada, in Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Čapek Reader (1990), edited by Peter Kussi, p. 236
Context: Look, justice has to be as unquestioned as the multiplication tables. I don’t know if you could prove that every theft is wrong; but I can prove to you that every theft is against the law, because I can arrest you every time. If you scattered pearls in the street, then a policeman could give you a ticket for littering. But if you started performing miracles, we couldn’t stop you, unless we called it a public nuisance or unlawful public assembly. There must be some kind of breach of order for us to intervene.
“You can prove anything by mentioning another computer language.”
Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl
[199706242038.NAA29853@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997
“… everyone was right about you- prove them wrong.”
Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up
Source: Why We Broke Up
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity