An impossibility does not disturb us until its accomplishment shows what fools we were.

The remark targets a common psychological blind spot: we often dismiss something as “impossible” with little emotional cost, because we assume it will never be tested. The real disturbance arrives only when someone achieves the supposedly impossible, exposing how complacent, incurious, or unimaginative our earlier certainty was. The quote thus critiques premature skepticism and the social habit of policing ambition by labeling it unrealistic. It also suggests that “impossibility” is frequently a judgment about current limits—of knowledge, technology, or will—rather than a fixed fact. Its sting lies in the retrospective shame of having mistaken our assumptions for reality.