“The CIA asked the courts to stretch that doctrine too far—to give their imprimatur to a fiction of deniability that no reasonable person would regard as plausible.”

— Merrick Garland

[ACLU v. CIA, https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/6471FF102FC611A685257B2F004DEA2A/$file/11-5320-1425559.pdf, March 18, 2016, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, March 15, 2013, Opinion for the Court, Chief Judge Merrick Garland]; quote then excerpted in:
[Mike Scarcella, http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2013/03/dc-circuit-revives-public-records-suit-over-drone-documents.html, March 18, 2016, D.C. Circuit Revives Public Records Suit Over Drone Documents, March 15, 2013, The BLT]; quote then cited from this source subsequently in:
[March 18, 2016, The Quotable Merrick Garland: A Collection of Writings and Remarks, http://www.nationallawjournal.com/home/id=1202752327128/The-Quotable-Merrick-Garland-A-Collection-of-Writings-and-Remarks, Zoe Tillman, The National Law Journal, March 16, 2016, 0162-7325]
Court opinions and media comments

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American judge 1952

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“If the CIA is the emperor, you're asking us to say the emperor has clothes when the emperor's bosses say that the emperor doesn't. I mean, how can you ask the court to say that at this point?”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[2012, ACLU v. CIA, Merrick Garland, Oral arguments, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit]; quote then excerpted in:
[Mike Scarcella, http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2013/03/dc-circuit-revives-public-records-suit-over-drone-documents.html, March 18, 2016, D.C. Circuit Revives Public Records Suit Over Drone Documents, March 15, 2013, The BLT]; quote then cited from this source subsequently in:
[March 18, 2016, The Quotable Merrick Garland: A Collection of Writings and Remarks, http://www.nationallawjournal.com/home/id=1202752327128/The-Quotable-Merrick-Garland-A-Collection-of-Writings-and-Remarks, Zoe Tillman, The National Law Journal, March 16, 2016, 0162-7325]
Court opinions and media comments

“The history of most fictions would be far stranger than the fictions themselves; but it would be a dark and sad chronicle.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

“Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Interview at the World Science Fiction Convention (25 June 1998) http://www.chicon.org/gohs/turtldov.htm

“But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

“Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

“At court, far from regarding ambition as a sin, people regard it as a virtue, or if it passes for a vice, then it is regarded as the vice of great souls, and the vices of great souls are preferred to the virtues of the simple and the small.”

Louis Bourdaloue (1632–1704) French serman writer

as quoted in The Bourgeois: Catholicism vs. Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century France (1927), p. 137

“The phrase "contempt of court" often misleads persons not lawyers, and causes them to misapprehend its meaning, and to suppose that a proceeding for contempt of court amounts to some process taken for the purpose of vindicating the personal dignity of the Judges, and protecting them from personal insults as individuals. Very often it happens that contempt is committed by a personal attack on a Judge or an insult offered to him; but as far as their dignity as individuals is concerned, it is of very subordinate importance compared with the vindication of the dignity of the Court itself; and there would be scarcely a case, I think, in which any Judge would consider that, as far as his personal dignity goes, it would be worth while to take any steps.”

Colin Blackburn, Baron Blackburn (1813–1896) British judge

Skipworth's Case (1873), L. R. 9 Q. B. Ca. 232.

“Science fiction makes the implausible possible, while science fantasy makes the impossible plausible.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

The Twilight Zone, "The Fugitive" (1962).
The Twilight Zone
Variant: Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable.
Context: It is said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable.

“There is no reason to doubt that this Court may fall into error, as may other branches of the Government. Nothing in the history or attitude of this Court should give rise to legislative embarrassment if, in the performance of its duty, a legislative body feels impelled to enact laws which may require the Court to reexamine its previous judgments or doctrine. [Footnote 52] The Court differs, however, from other branches of the Government in its ability to extricate itself from error. It can reconsider.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

Helvering v. Griffiths, 318 U.S. at 400-401 (1943).
Judicial opinions

“The sentences of foreign Courts have always some degree of regard paid to them by the Courts of justice here: and it is very right that an attention should be paid to them, as far as they ought to have weight in the case depending.”

John Eardley Wilmot (1709–1792) English judge

Robinson v. Bland (1760), 2 Burr. Part IV. 1084.

“The CIA asked the courts to stretch that doctrine too far—to give their imprimatur to a fiction of deniability that no reasonable person would regard as plausible.”

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