“But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are "on" concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.”
The World's Last Night (1952)
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Clive Staples Lewis 272
Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist 1898–1963Related quotes
“Even more so than when we are awake, we are ourselves when we are asleep. We play all the parts.”
"Más exclusivamente que en la vigilia, en el sueño somos nosotros. Contribuimos con todo el reparto."
Descanso de caminantes, 2001.
Address at Mechanics' Pavilion San Francisco May 13 1903 books.google.de http://books.google.de/books?id=zSJNPOphC_MC&pg=PA98
Quoted in The Audacity of Hope (2006) by Barack Obama, p. 282 as follows: The United States of America has not the option as to whether it will or it will not play a great part in the world … It must play a great part. All that it can decide is whether it will play that part well or badly.
1910s
“We could not guess how different from us they (extraterrestrials) might be.”
Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 3 (p. 48)
Context: We could not guess how different from us they (extraterrestrials) might be. It was hard enough to guess the intentions of our elected representatives in Washington.
Talk To Me Now
Song lyrics
Variant: I was blessed with a birth and a death, and I guess I just want some say in-between.
As quoted in "Roberto Clementeː Pounder from Puerto Rico" by John Devaney, in Baseball Stars of 1964 (1964), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 149
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>
same passage in transcript: video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2NnquxdWFk&t=16m46s
The Character of Physical Law (1965)
Variant: In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.
Morning Constitutions (2007)
Quoted from NYRock Red Hot Chili Peppers Interview http://www.nyrock.com/interviews/rhcp_int.htm
“We have that Indian scene. We can get the Indians from the reservoir.”
Alternately reported as "We can get all the Indians we need at the reservoir", in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 40.
Misattributed