Presumption Quotes - Page 2

• I've always maintained that black people and women suffer from a presumption of incompetence. The burdens of proof are different. It just gets so tiresome.

  Carol Moseley Braun

  Burden Of Proof, People, Suffering

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• Such is the uncertainty of human affairs, that security and despair are equal follies; and as it is presumption and arrogance to anticipate triumphs, it is weakness and cowardice to prog-nosticate miscarriages.

  Samuel Johnson

  Miscarriage, Arrogance, Despair

  Samuel Johnson (1793). “The rambler”, p.263

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• There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.

  Richard Dawkins

  Meaningful, Atheist, Responsibility

  "The God Delusion". Book by Richard Dawkins, October 2, 2006.

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• There's a presumption that somehow you calculate beforehand whether something is going to be good politically or not. I simply don't.

  Bob Brown

  Be Good

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The plants look up to heaven, from whence they have their nourishment.

  William Shakespeare

  Flower, Heaven, Looks

  William Shakespeare, Joseph Dennie, Samuel Johnson, George Steevens (1809). “The Plays of William Shakespeare ...: With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators”, p.139

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• Their vain presumption of knowing all can take beginning solely from their never having known anything; for if one has but once experienced the perfect knowledge of one thing, and truly tasted what it is to know, he shall perceive that of infinite other conclusions he understands not so much as one.

  Galileo Galilei

  Knowledge, Science, Knowing

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• I think I have the right to know what Steve Forbes paid in taxes - I don't think there should be a law. I think there should be a presumption. I wouldn't vote for a guy who wouldn't reveal what he paid in taxes. That kind of thing.

  Esther Dyson

  Thinking, Law, Guy

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• Your primary presumption that The Bridge was proffered as an epic has no substantial foundation. You know quite well that I doubt that our present stage of cultural development is so ordered yet as to provide the means or method for such an organic manifestation as that.

  Hart Crane

  Mean, Epic, Bridges

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• 

  Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

  Lord Acton

  Inspirational, Leadership, Work

  Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 3 April 1887, in Louise Creighton 'Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton' (1904) vol. 1, ch. 13.

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• So the people will pay the penalty for their kings' presumption, who, by devising evil, turn justice from her path with tortuous speech.

  Hesiod

  Kings, People, Evil

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• If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the Lord's will, but does not mean to attend to it, you are not to pamper his presumptions, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Mean, Doe, Lord

  Charles Spurgeon (1989). “The Soul Winner”, p.38, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• Suddenly the whole imagination of writing and editorial and newspaper and all these presumptions about who am I reading this, and who else other people may be, and all that, it's so grimly brutal!

  Robert Creeley

  Reading, Writing, Imagination

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• The only thing that might have annoyed some mathematicians was the presumption of assuming that maybe the axiom of choice could fail, and that we should look into contrary assumptions.

  Alonzo Church

  Choices, Annoyed, Looks

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• If you want to enter a state of grace,
  question the assumption you’re defending right now.

  Byron Katie

  Grace, Want, Assumption

  Twitter post from Dec 09, 2012

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• To lose what we have never owned might seem an eccentric bereavement, but Presumption has its own affliction as well as claim.

  Emily Dickinson

  Bereavement, Might, Eccentric

  Emily Dickinson, Martha Dickinson Bianchi (1971). “The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson”, p.62, Biblo & Tannen Publishers

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• Our sun is one of a 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living thing in that enormous immensity.

  Wernher von Braun

  Stars, Thinking, Would Be

  1960 In the NewYork Times, 29 Apr.

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• In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expect to find at the end of our errors. Childish presumption which justifies the fact that child-nations, inheriting our follies, are now directing our history.

  Albert Camus

  Dream, Children, Errors

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.188, Vintage

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• There is among doctors, in acute hospitals at least, a presumption of stupidity in their patients.

  Oliver Sacks

  Doctors, Stupidity, Patient

  Oliver Sacks (2011). “A Leg to Stand On”, p.96, Pan Macmillan

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• Pettiness of mind, ignorance and presumption are the cause of stubbornness, because stubborn people only want to believe what they themselves can imagine, and they can imagine very few things.

  Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

  Believe, Ignorance, People

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• A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture

  Susan Sontag

  May, Photograph, Proof

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.7, Macmillan

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• One of the great weaknesses of standard libertarian theory is that it tends to push too hard by elevating presumptions into absolutes.

  Richard Allen Epstein

  Weakness, Libertarian, Theory

  "Skepticism and Freedom". Book by Richard Epstein, 2003.

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• There's another weight of us being in the public eye, which is this presumption that, because your work and your promotion work is very public, your private life should be, too.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  Eye, Weight, Promotion

  "Tom Hiddleston". Interview with Benedict Cumberbatch, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2016.

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• ...the very notion that a candidate should openly solicit votes violated the principled presumption that such behavior itself represented a confession of unworthiness for national office.

  Joseph J. Ellis

  Office, Vote, Behavior

  Joseph J. Ellis (2003). “Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation”, p.162, Vintage

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• Throughout most of our history, nothing - not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons - has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed.

  Tom Robbins

  Self, Greed, Humanity

  "The Syntax of Sorcery". Interview with Tony Vigorito, realitysandwich.com. June 6, 2012.

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• There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

  C. S. Lewis

  Art, Taken, Mean

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “Christian Reflections”, p.11, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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