“It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened”

“Greatness happens when we commit to excellence and make the impossible possible.”

“It was in a way a comforting idea; if there was all the time in the world, then the happenings of a given moment became less important.”

“All our rulers have said that war is unthinkable, and then we think about it almost all the time. We’ve got to make it unthinkable.”

“That was what happened to laughter when you caged it. It became unbearably sad. It was worse than crying.”

“A very merry, dancing, drinking,
Laughing, quaffing, and unthinkable time.”

“Human beings, as I know better than most, can get used to anything. Over time, even the unthinkable gradually wears a little niche for itself in your mind and becomes just something that happened.”

“There was a time when evilness did not exist, and there will be a time when it will no more exist, whereas there was no time when virtue did not exist, and there will be no time when it will not exist. For the germs of virtue are impossible to destroy.”

“Sam Treiman… has quoted something he called Treiman's theorem… Impossible things usually don't happen…. With the discovery of radioactivity… it suddenly became apparent that the "impossible" was happening all the time. Uranium, thorium, radium… fit all the requirements of chemical elements. They could not be broken down by any of the standard methods… But occasionally… atoms of these elements spontaneously changed into other kinds of atoms…. So what is left of the doctrine of the elements? Is alchemy reinstated? Not at all. The point is that the doctrine fails only under rare or special conditions…. We can isolate the conditions in which they do, and retain a more restricted but still useful concept of the "impossible."”

“The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”