Once you've ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right. There was also the curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that by eliminating the impossible, we uncover the truth, even if it seems unlikely.
This quote highlights a logical approach to problem-solving and understanding reality. It emphasizes the importance of discerning what can be deemed impossible before considering what remains, no matter how improbable it might be. The mention of the 'curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time' adds a layer of curiosity and complexity to pondering the unexpected and seemingly absurd elements that can hold truth.
In practice
In a debate about conspiracy theories, one might use this quote to emphasize the need for critical thinking.
And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.
They've got something they do it with, I think it's called a mocracy, and it means everyone in the whole country can say who the new Tyrant is. One man ... one vet. ... Everyone has ... the vet. Except for women, of course. And children. And criminals. And slaves. And stupid people. And people of foreign extraction. And people disapproved of for, er, various reasons. And lots of other people. But everyone apart from them. It's a very enlightened civilization.
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it.
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
Any fool could be a witch with a runic knife, but it took skill to be one with an apple corer.
People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they're standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don't look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity. And summer isn't a time. It's a place as well. Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.
When you are fully present, you are truly living; the rest of the time, you are merely existing
Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.
There is a fear of voluptuousness that is itself voluptuous, just as a certain fear of death can itself be deadly.
Certainly the determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and novel impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.
I have no doubt that the nation has suffered more from undue secrecy than from undue disclosure. The government takes good care of itself.
The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night
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