Assuming Quotes - Page 37

• I tell my students that when you write, you should pretend you’re writing the best letter you ever wrote to the smartest friend you have. That way, you’ll never dumb things down. You won’t have to explain things that don’t need explaining. You’ll assume an intimacy and a natural shorthand, which is good because readers are smart and don’t wish to be condescended to.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Smart, Writing, Dumb

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• Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are. Some people are slow to take offense, which may make you misjudge the thickness of their skin, and fail to worry about insulting them. But should you offend their honor and their pride, they will overwhelm you with a violence that seems sudden and extreme given their slowness to anger. If you want to turn people down, it is best to do so politely and respectfully, even if you feel their request is impudent or their offer ridiculous.

  Robert Greene

  Pride, Worry, People

  Robert Greene (2010). “The 48 Laws Of Power”, p.140, Profile Books

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• People around you, constantly under the pull of their emotions, change their ideas by the day or by the hour, depending on their mood. You must never assume that what people say or do in a particular moment is a statement of their permanent desires.

  Robert Greene

  Ideas, People, Desire

  Robert Greene (2012). “Mastery”, p.146, Profile Books

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• France now has a new president and he must be respected. I assume full responsibility for this defeat.

  Nicolas Sarkozy

  Responsibility, President, France

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• Those who assume hypotheses as first principles of their speculations.....may indeed form an ingenious romance, but a romance it will still be.

  Roger Cotes

  Romance, Principles, May

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• I fear that much of the Christianity that surrounds us assumes our task is to save appearances by protecting God from Job-like anguish. But if God is the God of Jesus Christ, then God does not need our protection. What God demands is not protection, but truth.

  Stanley Hauerwas

  Jesus, Jobs, Doe

  Stanley Hauerwas (2012). “Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir”, p.73, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die.

  Umberto Eco

  Escaping, Want, Way

  "'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die'". Interview with Susanne Beyer and Lothar Gorris, www.spiegel.de. November 11, 2009.

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• But it will depend on young people like you being open to new ideas and new possibilities. And it will require young people like you never to stereotype or assume the worst about other people.

  Barack Obama

  Ideas, People, Empathy

  "Obama Holds a Town Hall in Istanbul". Speech in a Town Hall, Istanbul, Turkey, www.washingtonpost.com. April 7, 2009.

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• Empathic listening is so powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with. Instead of projecting your own autobiography and assuming thoughts, feelings, motives and interpretation, you're dealing with the reality inside another person's head and heart. You're listening to understand. You're focused on receiving the deep communication of another human soul.

  Stephen Covey

  Powerful, Communication, Heart

  Stephen R. Covey (2016). “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change”, p.301, Mango Media Inc.

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• Every collectivist assumes a different source for the collective will, according to his own political, religious and national convictions.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Religious, Political, Different

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist”, p.43, VM eBooks

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• We are tasked to rebuild not just a damaged economy, and a debt-ridden balance sheet, but to do so by drawing forth the best that is in our fellow citizens. If we would summon the best from Americans, we must assume the best about them. If we don't believe in Americans, who will?

  Mitch Daniels

  Believe, Drawing, Balance

  Keynote Speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee, delivered 11 February 2011, Ronald Reagan Centennial Dinner, Washington, D.C.

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• There's no obvious reason to assume that the very same rare properties that allow for our existence would also provide the best overall setting to make discoveries about the world around us. We don't think this is merely coincidental. It cries out for another explanation, an explanation that... points to purpose and intelligent design in the cosmos.

  Guillermo Gonzalez

  Intelligent, Thinking, Discovery

  Guillermo Gonzalez, Jay Wesley Richards (2004). “The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery”, p.15, Regnery Publishing

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• Ask me if Christianity (my version of it, yours, the Pope's, whoever's) is orthodox, meaning true, and here's my honest answer: a little, but not yet. Assuming by Christianity you mean the Christian understanding of the world and God, Christian opinions on soul, text, and culture I'd have to say that we probably have a couple of things right, but a lot of things wrong, and even more spreads before us unseen and unimagined. But at least our eyes are open! To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall.

  Brian D. McLaren

  Christian, Wall, Couple

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• When a woman extends her hand for you to shake it, then you shake her hand. You do not turn it up and kiss it. And it is just so creepy. Because, you know, I handed it at this angle. I handed it at the handshake angle and so I'm not giving it to you to do whatever you want with it. I'm not loaning it to you. It's like if somebody borrowed your lawnmower and you're assuming they're going to use it to mow their lawn. You don't want to find out later they put it in the ocean!

  Paula Poundstone

  Ocean, Kissing, Hands

  "Who's Bill This Time". "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" with Peter Sagal, www.npr.org. August 2, 2014.

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• Well, I myself am a 100% atheist. And I am increasingly worried that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, which dominates our entire life, is assuming a more and more religious character.

  Uri Avnery

  Religious, Atheist, Struggle

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• Let us assume that the Turks in whose ranks Europeans were fighting as well, even in high positions, would have conquered Vienna and Europe in 1683 instead of having been forced to withdraw. If the Mohammedans would have gained the victory at the time and Islam would have swept victoriously over Europe, then the Christian churches would have been depoliticized. (...) For the Turks were religiously tolerant, they allowed each religion to continue to exist, provided it was no longer involved in politics - otherwise it was finished.

  Heinrich Himmler

  Christian, Fighting, Europe

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• But if we establish the working hypothesis that the UFOs are machines, we also have to assume the following:
  a) They are not built by human beings..
  b) They are flying by means of artificial fields of gravity..
  c) They produce high-tension electric charges in order to push the air out of their paths, so it does not start glowing, and strong magnetic fields to influence the ionized air at higher altitudes.

  Hermann Oberth

  Strong, Mean, Air

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• A good rule of thumb is to assume that everything matters.

  Richard Thaler

  Risk, Thumbs, Matter

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• Nothing is so dangerous to the progress of the human mind than to assume that our views of science are ultimate, that there are no mysteries in nature, that our triumphs are complete and that there are no new worlds to conquer.

  Humphry Davy

  Views, Mind, Progress

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• My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Faith, Believe, Thinking

  Robert Anton Wilson (1977). “Cosmic trigger: final secret of the illuminati”, New Falcon Pubns

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• Here is my challenge. Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first - I have been asking it for some time - awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Faith, Religious, Thinking

  "An Atheist Responds" by Christopher Hitchens, www.washingtonpost.com. July 14, 2007.

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• If the consequences are the same it is always better to assume the more limited antecedent, since in things of nature the limited, as being better, is sure to be found, wherever possible, rather than the unlimited.

  Aristotle

  Statistics, Found, Unlimited

  Aristotle (1960). “Aristotle, the Physics”

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• Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister - corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used.

  Richard Rorty

  Civilization, Intellectual, Foundation

  "Philosophical Convictions". The Nation, June 14, 2004.

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• The very act of writing assumes, to begin with, that someone cares to hear what you have to say. It assumes that people share, that people can be reached, that people can be touched and even in some cases changed. So many of the things in our world lead us to despair. It seems to me that the final symptom of despair is silence, and that storytelling is one of the sustaining arts; it’s one of the affirming arts. A writer may have a certain pessimism in his outlook, but the very act of being a writer seems to me to be an optimistic act.

  Tobias Wolff

  Art, Writing, Optimistic

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• Every facet, every department of your mind, is to be programmed by you. And unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you.

  Jack Kornfield

  Responsibility, Mind, World

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