Quotes about possibility
A collection of quotes on the topic of possibility, possible, doing, use.
Quotes about possibility

Source: Original: (ja) たとえばバレエとかミュージカルとかもそうですけれども、芸術というのは、明らかに正しい技術、徹底された基礎によって裏付けされた表現力、芸術であって、それが足りないと芸術にはならないと僕は思っています。
Source: Interview at the Foreign Correspondence Club of Japan from 27 February 2018
https://quotepark.com/authors/yuzuru-hanyu/

Teacher

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
Preface to Transit of Venus: Poems by Harry Crosby (1931)

“If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future?”
Source: A Brief History of Time

As quoted in "Atatürk" in Images of a Divided World (29 October 2006) http://jmilton6000.wordpress.com/2006/10/29/ataturk/
Variant translation: Humankind consists of two sexes, woman and man. Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains and the other half can soar into skies?
Context: Humankind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible for humankind to grow by the improvement of only one part while the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains that the other half can soar into skies?
Source: Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

“Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.”
"Herbert West: Re-Animator" in "Home Brew" Vol. 1, No. 1 (February 1922)
Fiction

“Without deviation, progress is not possible.”
Zen Masters : The Wisdom of Frank Zappa (2003)


“Until you're ready to look foolish, you'll never have the possibility of being great.”

Hellenica Bk. 7, as translated by Rex Warner in A History of My Times (1979) p. 398.

29a–b
Alternate translation: "To fear death, is nothing else but to believe ourselves to be wise, when we are not; and to fancy that we know what we do not know. In effect, no body knows death; no body can tell, but it may be the greatest benefit of mankind; and yet men are afraid of it, as if they knew certainly that it were the greatest of evils."
Plato, Apology

Source: Precepts and Judgments (1919), p. 147

“We consider it a good principle to explain the phenomena by the simplest hypothesis possible.”
Book III, sec 1 (trans. Gerald J. Toomer)
Almagest

Quote in Monet's letter to art-critic and his friend Gustave Geffroy, 22 June 1890; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 129
1890 - 1900

Of The Subject of Certainty p. 31
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho Analysis (1978)

Translation by Lionel Giles
Source: The Art of War, Chapter IV · Disposition of the Army
2007

“Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.”

Source: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning


Source: "The Past, the Present and the Perhaps," http://books.google.com/books?id=mTRaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+future+is+called+perhaps+which+is+the+only+possible+thing+to+call+the+future+And+the+important+thing+is+not+to+allow+that+to+scare+you%22&pg=PA7#v=onepage introduction to Orpheus Descending (1957)


Source: This Just in: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV

“On National-Socialist Germany And Her Contribution Towards Peace.” Speech to the representatives of the international press at Geneva on September 28. 1933. German League of Nations Union News Service, PRO, FO 371/16728. Included within Völkerbund: Journal for International Politics, Ausgaben 1-103, 1933, p.16
1930s

“Only believe, only believe. All things are possible, only believe.”
Page 4
The Complete Story: A New Biography on the Apostle of Faith By Julian Wilson http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=e2RWZpOHfmoC|Wigglesworth:

To Leon Goldensohn (14 June 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Conclusion in Wonders of the Universe - Destiny

Or, comme il y a une infinité d'univers possibles dans les idées de Dieu, et qu'il n'en peut exister qu'un seul, il faut qu'il y ait une raison suffisante du choix de Dieu qui le détermine à l'un plutôt qu'à l'autre. Et cette raison ne peut se trouver que dans la convenance, dans les degrés de perfection que ces mondes contiennent, chaque possible ayant droit de prétendre à l'existence à mesure de la perfection qu'il enveloppe.
La monadologie (53 & 54).
The Monadology (1714)

First Memoir.
The Mechanical Theory of Heat (1867)

Source: Henri Fayol addressed his colleagues in the mineral industry, 1900, p. 909

If Prison Walls Could Speak (1972)

The Problem of Peace (1954)

Other

"On the Method of Theoretical Physics" The Herbert Spencer Lecture, delivered at Oxford (10 June 1933); also published in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1, No. 2 (April 1934), pp. 163-169., p. 165. [thanks to Dr. Techie @ www.wordorigins.org and JSTOR]
There is a quote attributed to Einstein that may have arisen as a paraphrase of the above quote, commonly given as “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler,” "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler", or “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.” See this article from the Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/05/13/einstein-simple/ for a discussion of where these later variants may have arisen.
The original quote is very similar to Occam's razor, which advocates that among all hypotheses compatible with all available observations, the simplest hypothesis is the most plausible one.
The aphorism "everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler" is normally taken to be a warning against too much simplicity and emphasizes that one cannot simplify things to a point where the hypothesis is no more compatible with all observations. The aphorism does not contradict or extend Occam's razor, but rather stresses that both elements of the razor, simplicity and compatibility with the observations, are essential.
The earliest known appearance of Einstein's razor is an essay by Roger Sessions in the New York Times (8 January 1950) http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30615FE3559137A93CAA9178AD85F448585F9, where Sessions appears to be paraphrasing Einstein: “I also remember a remark of Albert Einstein, which certainly applies to music. He said, in effect, that everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler.”
Another early appearance, from Time magazine (14 December 1962) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872923,00.html: “We try to keep in mind a saying attributed to Einstein—that everything must be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler.”
1930s

As quoted in Nuclear Principles in Engineering (2005) by Tatjana Jevremovic, p. 397

Page 138
The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)

Dua Lipa Plays With Boundaries, Interview, 2017-03-29 https://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/dua-lipa,
1983
Source: The New Science of Politics: An Introduction

“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”

Source: The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution

“Peace if possible. Truth at all costs.”

12 September 1848, "Discours prononcé à l'assemblée constituante le 12 Septembre 1848 sur la question du droit au travail", Oeuvres complètes, vol. IX, p. 546 https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Tocqueville_-_%C5%92uvres_compl%C3%A8tes,_%C3%A9dition_1866,_volume_9.djvu/564; Translation (from Hayek, The Road to Serfdom):
Original text:
La démocratie étend la sphère de l'indépendance individuelle, le socialisme la resserre. La démocratie donne toute sa valeur possible à chaque homme, le socialisme fait de chaque homme un agent, un instrument, un chiffre. La démocratie et le socialisme ne se tiennent que par un mot, l'égalité; mais remarquez la différence : la démocratie veut l'égalité dans la liberté, et le socialisme veut l'égalité dans la gêne et dans la servitude.
1840s

The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944)
Source: The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses

“You are where you are in life because of what you believe is possible for yourself.”

Source: Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917

“Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?”
Source: Tears and Saints (1937)

Source: We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change

As quoted in Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and other big government Republicans hijacked the conservative cause (2006) by Richard A Viguerie, p. 46 <!-- similar to statement previously dated (16 September 2003) — but linked page indicates "interview" by John Hawkins dated 25 February 2012 http://www.rightwingnews.com/interviews/friedman.php : I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. … because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. The question is, "How do you hold down government spending?" Government spending now amounts to close to 40% of national income not counting indirect spending through regulation and the like. If you include that, you get up to roughly half. The real danger we face is that number will creep up and up and up. The only effective way I think to hold it down, is to hold down the amount of income the government has. The way to do that is to cut taxes. -->
Context: I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. … because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. I believe our government is too large and intrusive, that we do not get our money's worth for the roughly 40 percent of our income that is spent by government … How can we ever cut government down to size? I believe there is one and only one way: the way parents control spendthrift children, cutting their allowance. For government, that means cutting taxes.

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Six

"A Universe in Your Backyard," in Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (1996) ed. John Brockman.

Moscow to Block Any Bid for Force Against Iran, October 2012 http://en.rian.ru/russia/20121023/176857678.html

Variant translation: Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
As quoted in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1974) edited by Leopold Labedz
Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.