Assertion Quotes - Page 7

• If we are honest - and scientists have to be - we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality.

  Paul Dirac

  Reality, Religion, Atheism

  Remarks during the Fifth Solvay International Conference on October 1927. "Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations". Book by Werner Heisenberg, pp. 85-86, 1971.

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• The old saying of the two kinds of truth. To the one kind belongs statements so simple and clear that the opposite assertion obviously could not be defended. The other kind, the so-called 'deep truths', are statements in which the opposite also contains deep truth.

  Niels Bohr

  Truth, Simple, Opposites

  Quoted in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, ed. P. A. Schilpp (1949) SeeWilde 20

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• I could trust a fact and always cross-question an assertion.

  Michael Faraday

  Science, Facts, Crosses

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• While I can make no claim for having introduced the term "rugged individualism," I should be proud to have invented it. It has been used by American leaders for over a half-century in eulogy of those God-fearing men and women of honesty whose stamina and character and fearless assertion of rights led them to make their own way in life.

  Herbert Hoover

  Honesty, Character, Men

  Herbert Hoover (1934). “Challenge Liberty”

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• When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is too complex.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Science, Reality, Ideas

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• Beware, I pray thee, of presuming that thou art saved. If thy heart be renewed, if thou shalt hate the things that thou didst once love, and love the things that thou didst once hate; if thou hast really repented; if there be a thorough change of mind in thee; if thou be born again, then hast thou reason to rejoice: but if there be no vital change, no inward godliness; if there be no love to God, no prayer, no work of the Holy Spirit, then thy saying "I am saved" is but thine own assertion, and it may delude, but it will not deliver thee.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Religious, Art, Prayer

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• Logic is not satisfied with assertion. It cares nothing for the opinions of the great; nothing for the prejudices of the many, and least of all for the superstitions of the dead.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Prejudice, Care, Superstitions

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.1649, Library of Alexandria

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• ... In contrast to the "banality of evil," which posits that ordinary people can be responsible for the most despicable acts of cruelty and degradation of their fellows, I posit the "banality of heroism," which unfurls the banner of the heroic Everyman and Everywoman who heed the call to service to humanity when their time comes to act. When that bell rings, they will know that it rings for them. It sounds a call to uphold what is best in human nature that rises above the powerful pressures of Situation and System as the profound assertion of human dignity opposing evil.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Powerful, Hero, People

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• Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one's own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one's own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.

  Ayn Rand

  Love, Selfish, Self Esteem

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.41, Penguin

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• The assertion that it is the intention of the German Reich to coerce the Austrian State is absurd!

  Adolf Hitler

  War, World, Intention

  Adolf Hitler (1944). “Hitler's Words”

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• One keeps healthy in wartime...by a vigorous assertion of values in which war has no part.

  Randolph Bourne

  Peace, War, Healthy

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• What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.

  Oscar Wilde

  Race, Rejection, Curiosity

  Oscar Wilde (1908). “Intentions”

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• It appears to me that those who rely simply on the weight of authority to prove any assertion, without searching out the arguments to support it, act absurdly. I wish to question freely and to answer freely without any sort of adulation. That well becomes any who are sincere in the search for truth.

  Vincenzo Galilei

  Freedom, Truth, Science

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• Ordinary people do not question the commonly accepted version of reality. They conform to the standard values of subduing enemies and cherishing friends and family. Materialism, ambition and mundane achievements are the worldly hallmarks of success. We experience the phenomenal world and our minds as solid and truly existent. Very few people doubt these assertions and question their solidity. Yet, the process of disbelief is the first step on the spiritual path.

  Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

  Spiritual, Ambition, Reality

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• I am not making spiteful assertions now but merely stating the facts-that, for instance, among Hungarian generals there is such a considerable percentage of men of German origin, who of course had, in most cases, to alter their names if they wanted to get anywhere.

  Heinrich Himmler

  Men, Names, Facts

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• No one is born gay. The idea is ridiculous, but it is symptomatic of our overpoliticized climate that such assertions are given instant credence by gay activists and their media partisans. I think what gay men are remembering is that they were born different.

  Camille Paglia

  Gay, Men, Thinking

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Vamps & Tramps: New Essays”, p.72, Vintage

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• There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Freedom, Science, Men

  "J. Robert Oppenheimer" by L. Barnett in Life Magazine, Volume 7, No. 9, International Edition (p. 58), October 24, 1949.

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• No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion

  Christopher Dawson

  War, Passion, Past

  Christopher Dawson (2010). “The Crisis of Western Education (The Works of Christopher Dawson)”, p.94, CUA Press

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• Unlike other peoples the United States found their origin in a deliberate act of corporate self-assertion, and ever since the Revolution every little American has been taught to associate himself personally with this creative act.

  Christopher Dawson

  Self, Creative, United States

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• Nothing, however, is as ill founded as the assertion of the alleged equality of all members of the human race.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Race, Members, Ill

  Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The free and prosperous commonwealth: an exposition of the ideas of classical liberalism”

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• Let us be cautious in making assertions and critical in examining them, but tolerant in permitting linguistic forms.

  Rudolf Carnap

  Tolerance, Examination, Form

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• There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry... There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Science, Errors, Doubt

  "J. Robert Oppenheimer" by L. Barnett in Life Magazine, Volume 7, No. 9, International Edition (p. 58), October 24, 1949.

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• I never trust people's assertions, I always judge of them by their actions.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Trust, People, Judging

  Ann Radcliffe (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated)”, p.689, Delphi Classics

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• Self-sufficiency at home, self-assertion abroad.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Home, Self, Sufficiency

  Scoop (1938) bk. 1, ch. 1

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• Liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise

  Victor Turner

  Ideas, May, Possibility

  Victor Witter Turner (1967). “The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual”, p.97, Cornell University Press

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