Axioms Quotes - Page 3

• But if men would give heed to the nature of substance they would doubt less concerning the Proposition that Existence appertains to the nature of substance: rather they would reckon it an axiom above all others, and hold it among common opinions. For then by substance they would understand that which is in itself, and through itself is conceived, or rather that whose knowledge does not depend on the knowledge of any other thing.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Reality, Men, Giving

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• The Iranian issue I don't think has much to do with nuclear weapons frankly. Nobody is saying Iran should have nuclear weapons ­nor should anybody else. But the point in the Middle East, as distinct from North Korea, is that this is center of the world's energy resources. Originally the British and secondarily the French had dominated it, but after the Second World War, it's been a U.S. preserve. That's been an axiom of U.S. foreign policy, that it must control Middle East energy resources.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Thinking, Issues

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Money does not pay for anything, never has, never will. It is an economic axiom as old as the hills that goods and services can be paid for only with goods and services.

  Albert J. Nock

  Money, Doe, Pay

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• In addition, the teaching of theories from axioms, or some close imitation of them such as the basic laws of an algebra, is usually an educational disaster.

  Ivor Grattan-Guinness

  Educational, Teaching, Law

  "The Rainbow of Mathematics: A History of the Mathematical Sciences". Book by Ivor Grattan-Guinness, p. 739, 2000.

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• For hundreds of pages the closely-reasoned arguments unroll, axioms and theorems interlock. And what remains with us in the end? A general sense that the world can be expressed in closely-reasoned arguments, in interlocking axioms and theorems.

  Michael Frayn

  Math, World, Pages

  Michael Frayn (2009). “Constructions: Making Sense of Things”, Faber & Faber

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• We know that there is no absolute knowledge, that there are only theories; but we forget this. The better educated we are, the harder we believe in axioms.

  Lincoln Steffens

  Believe, Atheism, Forget

  Lincoln Steffens (1931). “The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens”, p.816, Heyday

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• It is accepted as an axiom by all Americans that the civil power ought to be not only neutral and impartial as between different forms of faith, but ought to leave these matters entirely on one side, regarding them no more than it regards the artistic or literary pursuits of the citizens.

  James Bryce

  Atheism, Citizens, Matter

  James Bryce “The American Commonwealth: Vol. 4: Illustrations and Reflections & Social Institutions”, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The constructs of the mathematical mind are at the same time free and necessary. The individual mathematician feels free to define his notions and set up his axioms as he pleases. But the question is will he get his fellow mathematician interested in the constructs of his imagination. We cannot help the feeling that certain mathematical structures which have evolved through the combined efforts of the mathematical community bear the stamp of a necessity not affected by the accidents of their historical birth.

  Hermann Weyl

  Math, Imagination, Effort

  Hermann Weyl (1968). “Gesammelte Abhandlungen”

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• Let this serve as an axiom to every lover: A woman who refuses lunch refuses everything.

  Enid Bagnold

  Lunch, Dating, Lovers

  Enid Bagnold (1935). “A diary without dates”

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• For Stirner, the social axiom of conservative, liberal, and socialist schools of political thought alike is in itself repressive: it disguises as potentially redemptive an order whose central function is inhibitory of the individual's interests.

  John Carroll

  School, Order, Political

  John Carroll (2010). “Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky”, p.45, Taylor & Francis

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• ..why is it that in problematic situations almost everyone resorts to axioms and societal remedies that in actuality almost nobody believes in?...ask yourself, have you ever known anyone whose marriage was saved by a marriage counselor, whose drinking was cured by a psychiatrist, whose son was kept out of reform school by a social worker?

  James Lee Burke

  Drinking, Believe, School

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• To be sure an European woman would blush to her fingers' ends at the very idea of appearing publicly stark naked; but education and prejudice are everything, since it is an axiom, that where there is no feeling of self-reproach, there can assuredly be no shame.

  John Gabriel Stedman

  Self, Ideas, Feelings

  John Gabriel Stedman (1806). “Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam: In Guiana ... from the Year 1772 to 1777 ; Elucidating the History of that Country and Describing Its Productions, Viz. Quadrupeds, Birds, [etc.] Trees, Shrubs, [etc.] with an Account of the Indians and Negroes of Guinea”, p.196

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• I am asked if I would not be gratified if my friends would procure me promotion to a brigadier-generalship. My feeling is that I would rather be one of the good colonels than one of the poor generals. The colonel of a regiment has one of the most agreeable positions in the service, and one of the most useful. "A good colonel makes a good regiment," is an axiom.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  War, Feelings, Promotion

  Rutherford B. Hayes (2016). “Conspicuous Gallantry: Civil War Diary and Letters of Rutherford B. Hayes (Abridged)”, p.404, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• Honesty is the best policy, says the familiar axiom; but people who are honest on that principle defraud no one but themselves.

  James A. Garfield

  Honesty, People, Principles

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• A crucial difference between lite libertarians and the right kind is that to the former, the idea of liberty is propositional - a deracinated principle, unmoored from the realities of history, hierarchy, biology, tradition, culture, values. Conversely, the paleolibertarian grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure.

  Ilana Mercer

  Reality, Ideas, Differences

  "Apartheid South Africa: Reality Vs. Libertarian Fantasy". praag.org. December 20, 2013.

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• a straight line is the shortest possible line between any two points - an axiom equally true in morals as in mathematics.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Two, Lines, Morality

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1822). “Works”, p.306

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• A few rules include all that is necessary for the perfection of the definitions, the axioms, and the demonstrations, and consequently of the entire method of the geometrical proofs of the
  art of persuading.

  Blaise Pascal

  Art, Perfection, Definitions

  Blaise Pascal, Henry Rogers, Victor Cousin, Charles Louandre (1859). “The Thoughts, Letters and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal”, p.506

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• The controversy as to whether socialism is possible has been settled by the fact that it exists, and it is a fundamental axiom of my philosophy, at any rate, that anything that exists, is possible.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Philosophy, Fundamentals, Facts

  "Segments of the Economy, 1956, a Symposium". Case Institute of Technology publication, 1957.

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• What we need to do is follow the axiom of World War II which was 'Loose Lips Sink Ships' and the media has really got to follow that.

  David Hackworth

  War, Media, Needs

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the state governments will in all possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Government, Political, Liberty

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2016). “The Federalist Papers and the Constitution of the United States: The Principles of the American Government”, p.151, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• It is an axiom, enforced by all the experience of the ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically.

  Aneurin Bevan

  Political, Age, Politics

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• I do not want to presuppose anything as known. I see in my explanation in section 1 the definition of the concepts point, straight line and plane, if one adds to these all the axioms of groups i-v as characteristics. If one is looking for other definitions of point, perhaps by means of paraphrase in terms of extensionless, etc., then, of course, I would most decidedly have to oppose such an enterprise. One is then looking for something that can never be found, for there is nothing there, and everything gets lost, becomes confused and vague, and degenerates into a game of hide and seek.

  David Hilbert

  Confused, Mean, Games

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• If there are such things as political axioms, the propriety of the judicial power of a government being co-extensive with its legislative, may be ranked among the number.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Government, Numbers, Political

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1852). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in 1788”, p.364

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• It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the sole means of neutralizing the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Mean, Numbers, Political

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• Yet Gotama's Dhamma is more than just a series of axioms. It is to be lived rather than simply adopted and believed in. It entails that one embrace this world in all its contingency and specificity, with all its ambiguity and flaws.

  Stephen Batchelor

  World, Flaws, Embrace

  Stephen Batchelor (2010). “Confession of a Buddhist Atheist”, p.246, Spiegel & Grau

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