Assertion Quotes - Page 11

• The liberals of the eighteenth century, guided by the ideas of natural law and of the Enlightenment, demanded for everyone equality of political and civil rights... Nothing, however, is as ill-founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Rights, Race, Law

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Liberalism: The Classical Tradition: The Economist”, p.14, VM eBooks

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• Truth is one of the realities covered in the eclectic religion of our fathers by the idea of God. Awe very properly hangs about it, since it is the immovable standard and silent witness of all our memories and assertions; and the past and the future, which in our anxious life are so differently interesting and so differently dark, are one seamless garment for the truth, shining like the sun.

  George Santayana

  Truth, Memories, Father

  George Santayana (2013). “Scepticism and Animal Faith”, p.268, Courier Corporation

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• Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle headedness - and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all, that is what I was at nineteen and twenty.

  Mark Twain

  Ignorance, Self, Perception

  Mark Twain (1929). “Mark Twain's Letters”, p.156, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The grand assertion is that you must see the world through probability and that probability is the only guide you need.

  Dennis Lindley

  Needs, World, Guides

  "Understanding Uncertainty". Book by Dennis Lindley (Chapter 5 "The Rules of Probability", p. 66), 2006.

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• ...contemporary physicists come in two varieties. Type 1 physicists are bothered by EPR and Bell's Theorem. Type 2 (the majority) are not, but one has to distinguish two subvarieties. Type 2a physicists explain why they are not bothered. Their explanations tend either to miss the point entirely (like Born's to Einstein) or to contain physical assertions that can be shown to be false. Type 2b are not bothered and refuse to explain why.

  David Mermin

  Science, Two, Missing

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• Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion.

  Samuel Johnson

  Together, Faults, Six

  Samuel Johnson, Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (1959). “Johnson on Shakespeare: Essays and Notes”

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• The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one's own human failing.

  Ralph Ellison

  Music, Art, Failing

  Ralph Ellison (2003). “The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison”, Random House LLC

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• I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal you can think of I am, however young, writing at random straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin?

  John Keats

  Writing, Animal, Thinking

  John Keats (1820). “The Complete Works of John Keats”, p.38

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• Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission and slavery.

  Emma Goldman

  Expression, Broken, Slavery

  Emma Goldman, Candace Falk (2008). “Emma Goldman”, p.178, University of Illinois Press

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• All our thoughts and concepts are called up by sense-experiences and have a meaning only in reference to these sense-experiences. On the other hand, however, they are products of the spontaneous activity of our minds; they are thus in no wise logical consequences of the contents of these sense-experiences. If, therefore, we wish to grasp the essence of a complex of abstract notions we must for the one part investigate the mutual relationships between the concepts and the assertions made about them; for the other, we must investigate how they are related to the experiences.

  Albert Einstein

  Wise, Hope, Wisdom

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• The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Thinking, Order, People

  graf Leo Tolstoy (1915). “Social Evils and Their Remedy”

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• The motive for criticizing myth, that is, its objectifying representations, is present in myth itself, insofar as its real intention to talk about a transcendent power to which both we and the world are subject is hampered and obscured by the objectifying character of its assertions.

  Rudolf Bultmann

  Real, Character, World

  "New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings". Book by Rudolf Bultmann, pp. 10, 1984.

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• I realized that the only possible response was to go to my wonderful local café, Maison Bertaux, check everyone was well, eat a little cake and then make art. To me, making art, and in particular public art, is always an assertion of our humanity and our strength.

  Martin Firrell

  Art, Cake, Humanity

  International Herald Tribune, September 19, 2005.

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• But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible without breach of duty and sin, so are they more galling.

  Anthony Trollope

  Answers, Sin, Duty

  Anthony Trollope (2016). “Anthony Trollope: The Chronicles of Barsetshire & The Palliser Novels (Unabridged): The Warden + The Barchester Towers + Doctor Thorne + Framley Parsonage + The Small House at Allington + The Last Chronicle of Barset + Can You Forgive Her? + The Prime Minister + Eustace Diamonds...”, p.4527, e-artnow (Open Publishing)

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• For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so effective as the assertion that in their case no consolation is possible: it implies so great a degree of distinction that they at once hold up their heads again.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mean, Degrees, Needs

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter (1997). “Nietzsche: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality”, p.171, Cambridge University Press

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• Like 'real', 'free' is only used to rule out the suggestion of some or all of its recognized antitheses. As 'truth' is not a name of a characteristic of assertions, so 'freedom' is not a name for a characteristic of actions, but the name of a dimension in which actions are assessed.

  J. L. Austin

  Real, Names, Dimensions

  "Philosophical Papers". Book by J. L. Austin, edited by James Opie Urmson, Geoffrey James Warnock, p. 180, 1979.

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• Molecular evolution is not based on scientific authority. . . . There are assertions that such evolution occurred, but absolutely none are supported by pertinent experiments or calculations. Since no one knows molecular evolution by direct experience, and since there is no authority on which to base claims of knowledge, it can truly be said that . . . the assertion of Darwinian molecular evolution is merely bluster.

  Michael Behe

  Evolution, Authority, Bluster

  "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution". Book by Michael Behe, 1996.

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• Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.

  Eric Hoffer

  Self, People, Silence

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

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• The assertion that men are objectively equal is so absurd that it does not even merit being refuted.

  Vilfredo Pareto

  Men, Doe, Merit

  Vilfredo Pareto (1971). “Manual of political economy”, Augustus m Kelley Pubs

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• Faith is the final triumph over incongruity, the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Triumph, Finals, Existence

  Reinhold Niebuhr, (2013). “Discerning the Signs of the Times - Sermons for Today and Tomorrow”, p.83, Read Books Ltd

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• Weak logic, inconsistencies and alienation from the people are common features of authoritarianism. The relentless attempts of totalitarian regimes to prevent free thought and new ideas and the persistent assertion of their own rightness bring on them an intellectual stasis which they project on to the nation at large. Intimidation and propaganda work in a duet of oppression, while the people, lapped in fear and distrust, learn to dissemble and to keep silent.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Ideas, People, Intellectual

  "In Quest of Democracy". Essay by Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991.

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• The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the ideas of their opponents.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Biblical, Order, Years

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• We venture to make the assertion that there is but one sin: IGNORANCE, and but one salvation: APPLIED KNOWLEDGE.

  Max Heindel

  Ignorance, Venture, Sin

  Max Heindel (2003). “The Rosicrucian Mysteries”, p.17, Lulu.com

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• My prescription for women entering the war zone of the professions: study football. . . . Women who want to remake the future should look for guidance not to substitute parent figures but to the brash assertions of pagan sport.

  Camille Paglia

  Sports, Football, War

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Vamps & Tramps: New Essays”, p.56, Vintage

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• Beware of the manipulativeness of rich students who were neglected by their parents. They love to turn the campus into hysterical psychodramas of sexual transgression, followed by assertions of parental authority and concern. And don't look for sexual enlightenment from academe, which spews out mountains of books but never looks at life directly.

  Camille Paglia

  Book, Parent, Enlightenment

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays”, p.50, Vintage

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