The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.

De Vries’s aphorism turns a familiar metaphor for the universe-as-puzzle into a joke with philosophical bite. A safe implies that reality is orderly and decipherable—there is a correct combination—yet the punchline is that the very means of access is inaccessible, sealed inside what it would unlock. The line satirizes human confidence in ultimate explanations (scientific, religious, or metaphysical) by suggesting a built-in epistemic trap: even if the cosmos is fully intelligible in principle, we may lack any external vantage point or key to reach that intelligibility. It captures the frustration of seeking final answers while being confined within the system one tries to explain.