Sorry. Some of us are very literal-minded and while we love hyperbole (“OMIGOD, that’s the BEST sex I ever had!!!”), we don’t like THIS kind of confusing hyperbole.
Yes, yes! I love this one!
It’s impossible to stick a Cadillac up your nose.
My uncle was on that ship; he was a gunners mate. 47 people died that day. Not really funny.
- Sell Cadillac.
- Buy coke.
- Snort
Perhaps, but if Princess Margaret had been with us, we could have saved the Bentley.
I thought that someone had a problem with the phrase “It’s an outrage.” Perhaps because in some sense an outrage isn’t possible or whatever, and I couldn’t think of any reasonable way that could be true.
On behalf of big brothers everywhere I just want to say you were asking for it when we held you down and farted on your head.
Also, I like what Dolly Pardon said about possible. She said they lived in a one room shack and she was the only girl with many brothers at bath time. Her mother told her to wash up as far as possible and down as far as possible and when her brothers left the room to wash possible.
I think that “Anything is possible.” is more of an invitation to unbind the constraints of our creativity that have been placed there by practicality and complacency; not necessaraly reflecting any constraints placed by reality, but only by our perception of reality.
e.g. My father passed away 14 years ago. It is entirely possible for someone to exhume him, rig what’s left of his corpse up like a puppet with wires, strings, pneumatic cylanders and what-not, and have him walk through the door at any time. Heck, the last T-Rex died out what, about 65 million years ago? I could have one of those walk through my door as well, with my reanimated father riding on it’s back singing a Lady Gaga song.
Absurd? Yes.
Possible? Yes.
Probable? No, not really.
One doesn’t need an Infinate Mind to make the impossible, possible. One needs only look at their own mind and find what’s holding them back. And what holds most of us back is fear, not reality.
I suppose, but then anything is…
No. I’m sorry. I just can’t do it and keep a straight face. 
THIS.
How I hate this!
So…all that’s stopping a zombie marionette singing bad pop on an extinct animal from crashing through my door right now is fear? And it’s fear that prevents me from pole vaulting over K2?
Hey man don’t be knocking my favorite set of short stories.
The quotation works because it is applied to the bounds of an already established set of possibilities, in a realistic situation, where what has happened is already understood because it happened, yadda yadda. So it’s more like,
A happened, then B happened, where A and B are pre-defined, plausible, and supported by the evidence, but may convict the wrong man.
or
C happened, then B happened, where C is “mostly” defined, not supported by the evidence, but would be a convenient explanation.
or
D happened, then B happened, where D is improbable, but is plausible, and makes for a more likely set of events after all the information is revealed, like previously unknown motives, or previously unknown possibilities with regard to the states of time, space, and matter (see scientific theories and stuff)
At no point would this be continued into infinity for “possible explanations” because of commonly understood limits to stretching the possibilities. Sherlock just had different limits than most people in his day and age, because fingerprinting was new, there was no DNA evidence, and woo-woo was rampant.
Continue this into a longer set of A, B C, or D and you’ve got yourself a murder mystery. Or a fascinating revelation about the way planets move. Or an “ah ha” moment after a particularly confusing car accident. 
So no, Conan Doyle was not suggesting that flying monkeys could do anything, or that “a wizard did it” is an acceptable explanation for anything. Quite the contrary actually.
It works if you have actually read Sherlock Holmes. It doesn’t work if you are a closed minded skeptic (not that I am calling you one, just saying). If you haven’t read the books I suggest you do. They’re fun, and get the mental gears going.
I can see why you wouldn’t think so.
the semi-good news is that when the truth was finally revealed, a senior admiral personally apologized to the family of the sailor and the admiral in charge of the investigation service was forced out of the navy. And he didn’t go quietly-but he went.
For the record, there was no evidence at all that there was sabatoge, and in fact the explosion was caused by static discharge when the gunpowder was loaded into the barrel. This was conclusively proven when the same explosion occurred at Dalgreen during a routine test. Something the Navy determined could NEVER happen. Then it did.
From the title I thought this was more about telling kids, “You can do ANYTHING you set your minds to. Everyone of you can be President if you jut believe in yourself!”
Which immediately made me think of an exchange from Titus.
Titus: Dad! Teacher said we can be anything we wanted to be.
Papa Titus: She wasn’t talking to you son. Now, go in the backyard and practice digging some holes.
Eh, just goes to show anything’s possible.
Well, yeah.
Fear and a really big stick.