Assertion Quotes - Page 6

• The man who has learned that three plus one are four doesn't have to go through a proof of that assertion with coins, or dice, or chess pieces, or pencils. He knows it, and that's that. He cannot conceive a different sum. There are mathematicians who say that three plus one is a tautology for four, a different way of saying "four" ... If three plus one can be two, or fourteen, then reason is madness.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Men, Two, Chess Pieces

  Jorge Luis Borges (2001). “The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory”, Penguin Modern Classics

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• Finally, if nothing can be truly asserted, even the following claim would be false, the claim that there is no true assertion.

  Aristotle

  Would Be, Claims, Following

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• So long as Muslims continue looking towards Western civilization as the only force that could regenerate their own stagnant society, they destroy their self-confidence and, indirectly, support the Western assertion that Islam is a "spent force".

  Muhammad Asad

  Self Confidence, Civilization, Long

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• The anitya doctrine is, again, not quite the simple assertion that the world is impermanent, but rather that the more one grasps at the world, the more it changes.

  Alan Watts

  Simple, Doctrine, World

  Alan W. Watts (2011). “The Way of Zen”, p.58, Vintage

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• Of all false assertions that ever went into the world under the banner of a great name and the mail armor of a well-turned phrase, Locke's comparison of the mind to a blank sheet of paper appears to me among the most untrue.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Names, Mind, Armor

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1831). “Romance and reality, by L.E.L.”, p.241

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• The problem with ideology is if you got an ideology, you already got your mind made up, you know all the answers, and that makes evidence irrelevant and argument a waste of time, so you tend to govern by assertion and attack. The problem with that is that discourages thinking and gives you bad results.

  William J. Clinton

  Thinking, Giving, Mind

  "Bill Clinton talks about common good, challenging GOP". William J. Clinton's speech at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., www.rawstory.com. October 18, 2006.

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• No fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way... To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story-amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.

  Henry Gee

  Mean, Scarcity, Stories

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• The actual assertion that the Census Bureau could behave in such a way as to tilt things one way or the other way in the partisan sense, is, on the face of it, a silly charge. It's the same Census Bureau that's considered to be incompetent by some people, and then some of the same people are saying that this incompetent agency is so clever and so Machiavellian that it can design a census for partisan reasons.

  Kenneth Prewitt

  Clever, Silly, Agency

  "Census, Uncensored". Interview with Stephen Robert Morse, www.motherjones.com. June 26, 2009.

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• Thoughts are created in the act of writing. [It is a myth that] you must have something to say in order to write. Reality: You often need to write in order to have anything to say. Thought comes with writing, and writing may never come if it is postponed until we are satisfied that we have something to say...The assertion of write first, see what you had to say later applies to all manifestations of written language, to letters...as well as to diaries and journals

  Frank Smith

  Writing, Reality, Order

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• Style is effectiveness of assertion.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Effectiveness, Style

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• Throughout the world, half of all children go to bed hungry each night and one in seven of God's children is facing starvation. Before such statistics, believers should never forget Dostoevsky's assertion that the suffering of children is the greatest proof against the existence of God; for without justice, there is no God.

  Thomas Cahill

  Children, Night, Justice

  Thomas Cahill (2010). “The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels”, p.252, Anchor

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• Proof ... was a conclusion built on a pyramid of facts, a broad base of accepted information on which more specific assertions were made.

  Dan Brown

  Pyramids, Information, Facts

  Dan Brown (2006). “Deception Point”, p.265, Simon and Schuster

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• Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

  Sam Harris

  Long, Puppets, Creeds

  Sam Harris (2012). “Free Will”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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• The registering of doubts hath two excellent uses: the one, that it saveth philosophy from errors and falsehoods; when that which is not fully appearing is not collected into assertion, whereby error might draw error, but reserved in doubt: the other, that the entry of doubts are as so many
  suckers or sponges to draw use of knowledge; insomuch as that which, if doubts had not preceded, a man should never have advised, but passed it over without note, by the suggestion and solicitation of doubts, is made to be attended and applied.

  Francis Bacon

  Philosophy, Men, Errors

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• Another error is an impatience of doubt and haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of judgment. For the two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients; the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation; if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

  Francis Bacon

  Men, Errors, Two

  The Advancement of Learning bk. 1, ch. 5, sec. 8 (1605)

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• Christ's whole life on earth was the assertion and example of true manliness — the setting forth in living act and word what man is meant to be, and how he should carry himself in this world of God — one long campaign in which the temptation stands out as the first great battle and victory.

  Thomas Hughes

  Men, Long, Temptation

  Thomas Hughes (2017). “True Manliness”, p.29, Litres

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• Production of identity is a resistance element, an aggressive element. Both a refusal and an affirmation and an assertion, and certainly, we in Jamaica were talking about black art. And the idea that there is a role for art in the civil rights revolution and in the successor to the civil rights revolution.

  Mark McMorris

  Art, Ideas, Rights

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• I stand by my assertions that although you can know what happens to any individual species that you modify, you cannot be certain what will happen to the ecosystem. Also, we have a strange situation where we have malnourished fat people. It's not that we need more food. It's that we need to manage our food system better.

  Bill Nye

  Ecosystems, People, Needs

  "Bill Nye Explains Why he is a GMO Skeptic" by Keith Kloor, blogs.discovermagazine.com. November 6, 2014.

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• Only a law-order which holds to the primacy of God's law can bring forth true freedom, freedom for justice, truth, and godly life. Freedom as an absolute is simply an assertion of man's "right" to be his own god; this means a radical denial of God's law-order. "Freedom" thus is another name for the claim by man to divinity and autonomy. It means that man becomes his own absolute.

  R.J. Rushdoony

  Mean, Godly, Men

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• We disagree with the assertion that great teachers can be replaced by online alternatives. The futuristic claim that technology will triumph over teachers ignores all the social and relational dimensions of teaching and learning.

  Andy Hargreaves

  Teacher, Teaching, Technology

  "The Global Search for Education: What Is the Fourth Way?". Interview with C. M. Rubin, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 28, 2013.

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• Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. Whenever the Westerner hears the word “psychological,” it always sounds to him like “only psychological.

  Carl Jung

  Sound, Psychological, Metaphysical

  Carl Gustav Jung (1989). “The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Psychology and religion”

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• Back of ninety-nine out of one-hundred assertions that a thing cannot be done is nothing, but the unwillingness to do it.

  William Feather

  Ninety Nine, Risk, Done

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• It has been said by a distinguished philosopher that England is "usually the last to enter into the general movement of the European mind." The author of the remark probably meant to assert that a man or a system may have become famous on the continent, while we are almost ignorant of the name of the man and the claims of his system. Perhaps, however, a wider range might be given to the assertion. An exploded theory or a disadvantageous practice, like a rebel or a patriot in distress, seeks refuge on our shores to spend its last days in comfort if not in splendour.

  Isaac Todhunter

  Science, Men, Practice

  Isaac Todhunter (1873). “The Conflict of Studies and Other Essays on Subjects Connected with Education”, p.136, London : Macmillan

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• When on a Sunday morning we hear the old bells ring out, we ask ourselves, "Is it possible! This is done on account of a Jew crucified two thousand years ago who said he was the Son of God. The proof of such an assertion is wanting".

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Morning, Son, Sunday

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche “The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche: Human, all-too-human”

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• While men represent powerful activity as assertion and aggression, women in contrast portray acts of nurturance as acts of strength.

  Carol Gilligan

  Powerful, Men, Feminine

  Carol GILLIGAN (2009). “In a Different Voice”, p.128, Harvard University Press

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