How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions? - Robert A. Heinlein

“Johnnie, the nice thing about citing God as an authority is that you can prove anything you set out to prove. It’s just a matter of selecting the proper postulates, then insisting that your postulates are ‘inspired.’ Then no one can possibly prove that you are wrong.”

She grabbed him by both ears and kissed him quickly, then ran away.
Don stared after her, rubbing his mouth. Girls, he reflected, were much odder than dragons. Probably another race entirely.

Quantum mechanics and Schrödinger’s cat tossed out the clockwork world of 1890 and replaced it with a fog of probability in which anything could happen. Of course the intellectual class did not notice this for many decades, as an intellectual is a highly educated man who can’t do arithmetic with his shoes on, and is proud of the lack.