“activists who think they are making changes in their countries are not. the people on the ground are the ones who make that #Syria”

Page 169.
Thinking in systems: A Primer (2008)

facebook

Ch 11 - p.236
Novels, Midwinter Break (2017)

2000

Source: The Character of Physical Law (1965), chapter 7, “Seeking New Laws,” p. 165-166: video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2NnquxdWFk&t=37m21s
Context: It is not unscientific to make a guess, although many people who are not in science think it is. Some years ago I had a conversation with a layman about flying saucers — because I am scientific I know all about flying saucers! I said “I don’t think there are flying saucers”. So my antagonist said, “Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it’s impossible?” “No”, I said, “I can’t prove it’s impossible. It’s just very unlikely”. At that he said, “You are very unscientific. If you can’t prove it impossible then how can you say that it’s unlikely?” But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible. To define what I mean, I might have said to him, "Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence." It is just more likely. That is all.

Interview http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2003/leggett-interview.html 2003 Nobel Laureates in Physics, 9 December 2003 (8:02).

Quoted in Frances Stevenson's diary entry (11 March 1919), A. J. P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary (London: Hutchinson, 1971), p. 171
Prime Minister