— Through the Looking-Glass (1871), Chapter 5
About this quote
हिन्दी में
अरे, कभी-कभी तो मैंने नाश्ते से पहले ही छह-छह असंभव बातों पर विश्वास कर लिया है।
What it means
Notice that the Queen never withdraws the word impossible. She is not reporting that six things turned out to be possible after all; she is reporting that she believed six things she still classifies as impossible. The boast is about capacity and speed, counted like press-ups and timed against breakfast, not about any of the six beliefs being right.
That is what makes the line worth keeping rather than just charming. It names a real and slightly alarming human ability, the ability to hold what you know to be false, and it treats that ability as a quantity. Quoted as a cheer for open-mindedness, the line loses exactly the word that gives it teeth.
What it teaches you
Keep two things apart that this quotation is usually used to blur: I have revised my estimate, and now think this is possible, and I still think this is impossible and I am proceeding as though it were not. The second is sometimes the right call, but it should be said out loud, because it commits you to no evidence and predicts nothing. When someone offers this line in defence of a plan, the useful question is which of those two sentences they would actually sign.
अर्थ और सीख
रानी यह नहीं कह रही कि वे बातें असल में संभव थीं — वह उन्हें असंभव ही मानती है और फिर भी उन पर विश्वास कर लेती है, और गिनकर बताती है: छह, और नाश्ते से पहले। यहाँ विश्वास कोई समझ नहीं, एक कसरत है जिसे संख्या में नापा जा रहा है। पढ़ने वाले के लिए सीख यह है कि ‘मैंने अपनी राय बदल ली’ और ‘मैं जानते-बूझते मान रहा हूँ’ — इन दोनों बातों को अलग-अलग रखें।
Where it comes from
The White Queen, from the sequel rather than Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which is where it is usually filed. She offers it as practice — she says she did it for half an hour a day.
It has been adopted as a slogan for imagination and innovation. Carroll’s Queen is describing something closer to a discipline of believing nonsense on demand, and the book does not obviously approve.
