Assuming Quotes - Page 29

• Maybe the social value of truth is as a destination - so long as we do not assume we have arrived there.

  Edward de Bono

  Honesty, Social Values, Long

  Edward De Bono (1991). “I Am Right, You are Wrong: From this to the New Renaissance : from Rock Logic to Water Logic”, Penguin Group USA

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• I think people assume I'm perfect. I'm not. I make mistakes. I do things I regret. I'm stubborn.

  Hilary Duff

  Regret, Mistake, Life Lesson

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• History has taught us: never underestimate the amount of money, time, and effort someone will expend to thwart a security system. It's always better to assume the worst. Assume your adversaries are better than they are. Assume science and technology will soon be able to do things they cannot yet. Give yourself a margin for error. Give yourself more security than you need today. When the unexpected happens, you'll be glad you did.

  Bruce Schneier

  Technology, Errors, Security Systems

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• English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.

  James Anthony Froude

  Character, Thinking, Self

  James Anthony Froude (1875). “Short Studies on Great Subjects: Second series”, p.446

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• All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as the wisest.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Wisdom, Political, Ignorant

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Part I: "The Value of Freedom". Chapter 2: "The Creative Power of a Free Civilization", 1960.

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• If we see you smoking we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action.

  Douglas Adams

  Fire, Cigarette Smoke, Smoking

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• [On common water.] Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of air. It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea.

  Loren Eiseley

  Moving, Future, Science

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• There are agencies who are good losers, places where losing is not only accepted, it becomes part of the culture, it is expected. That is debilitating. Don't let that happen to you. At Deutsch we go into every pitch assuming we are the Yankees. It's amazing what happens when you go into a room of smart, hungry people and say, "Failure is not an option." People are galvanized.

  Donny Deutsch

  Inspirational, Smart, Failure

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• America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She well knows that by enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom.

  John Quincy Adams

  War, Ambition, Color

  Speech on Independence Day at the United States House of Representatives, teachingamericanhistory.org. July 04, 1821.

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• On entering a temple we assume all signs of reverence. How much more reverent then should we be before the heavenly bodies, the stars, the very nature of God!

  Seneca the Younger

  God, Nature, Stars

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• According to this view of the matter, there is nothing casual in the formation of Metamorphic Rocks. All strata, once buried deep enough, (and due TIME allowed!!!) must assume that state,-none can escape. All records of former worlds must ultimately perish.

  John Herschel

  Science, Rocks, Views

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• I therefore took this opportunity and also began to consider the possibility that the Earth moved. Although it seemed an absurd opinion, nevertheless, because I knew that others before me had been granted the liberty of imagining whatever circles they wished to represent the phenomena of the stars, I thought that I likewise would readily be allowed to test whether, by assuming some motion of the Earth's, more dependable representations than theirs could be found for the revolutions of the heavenly spheres.

  Nicolaus Copernicus

  Stars, Science, Opportunity

  Nicolaus Copernicus (1976). “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres”, David & Charles Publishers

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• I have always sought to be understood and, while I was taken to task by critics or colleagues, I thought they were right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be understood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole life without hatred and even without bitterness toward criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

  Henri Matisse

  Art, Taken, Expression

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• Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects in a cruel experiment whereby we are created sick and commanded to be well.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Sick, Religion, Atheism

  "Connect The World" with Becky Anderson, www.cnn.com. December 16, 2011.

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• Some theists, observing that all 'effects' need a cause, assert that God is a cause but not an effect. But no one has ever observed an uncaused cause and simply inventing one merely assumes what the argument wishes to prove.

  Dan Barker

  Religion, Wish, Atheism

  Dan Barker (2009). “Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists”, p.108, Ulysses Press

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• Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Exercise, Government

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.104

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• Now it seems that everything in the world stems from sources other than God, since the products of nature have their source in nature; deliberate effects can be traced back to human reason or will as their source. There is no need then to assume that God exists.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Religion, Atheism, Needs

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• Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless.

  Bertrand Russell

  Religion, Atheism, Purpose

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• I believe in God. It makes no sense to me to assume that the Universe and our existence is just a cosmic accident, that life emerged due to random physical processes in an environment which simply happened to have the right properties. As a Christian I begin to comprehend what life is all about through belief in a Creator, some of whose nature was revealed by a man born about 2000 years ago.

  Antony Hewish

  Christian, Believe, Men

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• Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction.

  John Cage

  Food, Cooking, Delay

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.164, Wesleyan University Press

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• The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Law, Civil Rights

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private”, p.257

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• May [our Declaration of Independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government... All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Believe, Eye, Ignorance

  Thomas Jefferson (1943). “Thomas Jefferson: selections from his writings edited, with an introduction”

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• What we experience in dreams - assuming that we experience it often - belongs in the end just as much to the over-all economy of our soul as anything experienced "actually": we are richer or poorer on account of it.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Dream, Evil, Soul

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.296, Modern Library

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• Our ancestors were eating meat over 2.5 million years ago. We mainly ate meat, fish, fruits, vegetables and nuts. We have to assume our physiology evolved in association with this diet. The balanced diet for our species was what we could acquire then, not what the government and doctors tell us to eat now.

  Lionel Tiger

  Doctors, Government, Vegetables

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• Senator, we are groping for understanding, the knowledge you assume I possess doesn't exist' - 'The only effective regulation lies in the propensity of customers to choose alternatives, of investors to move their funds elsewhere and of labour to acquire technical skills' - 'Senator, if I seem clear to you, you must have misunderstood me' - 'Unfortunately, Senator, nobody knows where the next innovative idea is coming from. Political decisions are never random and will always lose out to innovative alternatives

  Alan Greenspan

  Lying, Moving, Ignorance

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