Assumption Quotes - Page 22

• In former days, everyone found the assumption of innocence so easy; today we find fatally easy the assumption of guilt.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Justice, Guilt, Today

  Poetic Justice ch. 2 (1970).

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• Today the manliest man would be ashamed to look into the eyes of the woman by his side and tell her that he is the master because he could knock her down with perfect ease, and break her bones with much greater facility than she could his. And yet, out of man's brute nature, out of that most ignoble in himself, has come his loudest assumption of superiority, his longest and lowest tyranny.

  Mary C. Ames

  Eye, Men, Perfect

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• If the world is an aggregate of relatively independent regions, then any assumption of universal laws is false and a demand for universal norms tyrannical: only brute force (or seductive deception) can then bend the different moralities so that they fit the prescriptions of a single ethical system. And indeed, the idea of universal laws of nature and society arose in connection with a life-and-death battle: the battle that gave Zeus the power over the Titans and all other gods and thus turned his laws into the laws of the universe.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Independent, Ideas, Law

  "Farewell to Reason". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1987.

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• Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Together, Arise, Theory

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.149, Verso

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• Any utterance is a major assumption of responsibility, and the assumption that one can avoid that responsibility by doing something to language itself is one of the chief considerations of the Phaedrus.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Responsibility, Utterance, Language

  Richard M. Weaver (1985). “The Ethics of Rhetoric”, p.6, Psychology Press

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• Design bugs are often subtle and occur by evolution with early assumptions being forgotten as new features or uses are added to systems.

  Fernando J. Corbato

  Design, Use, Bugs

  "On Building Systems That Will Fail". Communications of the ACM, Volume 34 Issue 9, dl.acm.org. September 1991.

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• As editor of the largest newspaper in West Virginia, I scan hundreds of reports daily . . . and I am amazed by the frequency with which religion causes people to kill each other. It is a nearly universal pattern, undercutting the common assumption that religion makes people kind and tolerant.

  James A. Haught

  Hate, Editors, Virginia

  James A. Haught (1995). “Holy Hatred: Religious Conflicts of the '90s”

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• History has shown that there are very few mechanisms as effective at maintaining the status quo as a set of institutionalized regulations. Once set in regulatory concrete, reconsideration of the basic underlying assumptions is very difficult. While it will be an uphill fight to re-examine the basic underlying assumptions of any law or administrative rule, it is clearly not impossible. It will just take longer than if not so well institutionalized.

  Paul Baran

  Fighting, Maintaining The Status Quo, Law

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• A frame of references consisting of learning patterns of behaviours, values, assumptions and meaning which are shared to varying degrees of interest, importance and awareness with members of one group.

  H. Ned Seelye

  Groups, Degrees, Culture

  H. Ned Seelye (1995). “Experiential Activities for Intercultural Learning”, p.16, Hachette UK

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• If you believe certain words, you believe their hidden arguments. When you believe something is right or wrong, true or false, you believe the assumptions in the words which express the arguments. Such assumptions are often full of holes, but remain most precious to the convinced.

  Frank Herbert

  Believe, True Or False, Argument

  Frank Herbert (1984). “Children of Dune”, Berkley

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• It is historical continuity that maintains most assumptions, 
  not repeated assessment of their validity.

  Edward de Bono

  Assessment, Historical, Continuity

  Edward De Bono (1970). “Lateral Thinking: creativity step by step COTF MGT”

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• Assumptions that racism is more oppressive to black men than black women, then and now ... based on acceptance of patriarchal notions of masculinity.

  Bell Hooks

  Acceptance, Men, Racism

  bell hooks (2014). “Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics”, p.89, Routledge

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• Anytime new insight replaces an old assumption or a fossilized perception is the spring. New understandings sprout, new tolerances appear, and new curiosity draws you to previously dark places. Just as the sun shines earlier and longer in the spring, changes that seemed impossible appear to be possible with each new insight into your own health.

  Gary Zukav

  Spring, Dark, Shining

  "Gary Zukav On Spiritual Spring Cleaning" by Gary Zukav, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 18, 2012.

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• If I were a man, I would strenuously object to the assumption that women have any moral or spiritual superiority as a class.

  Betty Friedan

  Spiritual, Men, Class

  "It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement". Book by Betty Friedan, 1998.

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• The assumption is that the inevitability of a solution's realization is inherent in the interaction of human intellect and the constantly transformative evolution of physical universe.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Realization, Evolution, Intellect

  R. Buckminster Fuller “World Design Science Decade: Phase 1 Document 3”, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• What has not been clear is that the potential of this emergency-born technology has always accrued to human's prewar individual initiatives taken in a humble but irrepressible progression
  of assumptions, measurements, deductions, and codifications of pure science.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Taken, Humble, Technology

  R. Buckminster Fuller (1973). “Earth, Inc.”, p.20, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• Your assumption, to be effective, cannot be a single isolated act, it must be a maintained attitude of the wish fulfilled.

  Neville Goddard

  Attitude, Wish, Isolated

  Neville Goddard “Neville's Spiritual Classics”, Lulu.com

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• The assumption is that people so ignorant and thoughtless and silly and greedy may simply call upon the Army Corps of Engineers in order to receive a clean and abundant supply of water from reservoirs in the mountains. A much likelier outcome is that they will be drinking an ever stronger mixture of sewage and mine acid and mud and cropspray and various other defecations of the industrial paradise.

  Wendell Berry

  Drinking, Silly, Army

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• The dialogue about sustainability is about a change in the human trajectory that will require us to rethink old assumptions and engage the large questions of the human condition that some presume to have been solved once and for all.

  David W. Orr

  Environmental, Sustainability, Human Condition

  David W. Orr (2012). “The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics, and the Environment in an Age of Terror”, p.58, Island Press

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• The Lockean assumption that if we put our labor to it then it becomes our own is totally fallacious. We have to figure out how to leave things alone, and build an economic system that's not built on a linear model, but instead on a cyclical model, because that's the natural world - it's cyclical and not linear. That is going to take a lot of transformation.

  Winona LaDuke

  Environmental, World, Transformation

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• Before devising any blueprint that includes the assumption of Having It All, we need to ask ... Why do we need Everything?

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Needs, Blueprints, Devising

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• When someone new walks into a room, the first thing we notice about that person is probably their gender. And the second things is what they're wearing. And based on what they're wearing, we start making certain assumptions about them.

  Tim Gunn

  Rooms, Firsts, Gender

  "Project Runway’s Top Gunn". Interview with Elizabeth Gettelman, www.motherjones.com. January/February, 2012.

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• People don't know what Kabbalah is, and so they jump to conclusions. For me, studying Kabbalah is studying - is just - is asking questions. And I encourage all of my children to be that way, and I think people don't understand that. And so they make assumptions and they judge.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Children, Thinking, Asking Questions

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

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• Don't accept excuses; totally deny the status quo.

  Hiroyuki Hirano

  Excuse, Accepting, Deny

  Hiroyuki Hirano (2016). “JIT Implementation Manual -- The Complete Guide to Just-In-Time Manufacturing: Volume 2 -- Waste and the 5S's”, p.205, CRC Press

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• The basic idea that the purpose of life is to be happy or is to experience the most favorable ratio of pleasure to suffering or productivity to work or gratification to sacrifice or any of that stuff, which, you know, a couple generations ago, to say that kind of stuff would have made you, you know, a freak - a freak and an Epicurean - and now seems to be so much - simply an unquestioned assumption of the culture that we don't really even talk about it anymore.

  David Foster Wallace

  Couple, Sacrifice, Ideas

  Source: news.stlpublicradio.org

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