Presumptuous Quotes

• It's most presumptuous to believe we already know all the answers and will never get any more big surprises.

  Stanley Schmidt

  Believe, Answers, Surprise

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• I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Literature, Facts, Shows

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• We are so presumptuous that we think we can separate our personal interest from that of humanity, and slander mankind without compromising ourselves.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Thinking, Humanity, Compromise

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

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• You may think it's very presumptuous, but I really hope that my movies are going to turn people into better people.

  Patrice Leconte

  Thinking, People, May

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• Anyone who writes an autobiographical work at the age of 34 is, at best, presumptuous. It occurred to me that it was time to set the record straight.

  Jessica Savitch

  Birthday, Writing, Age

  Jessica Savitch (1982). “Anchorwoman”, Putnam Publishing Group

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• I don't mean to be presumptuous that men don't feel this, I don't mean this, but I found that when my child was born, my first child, it felt like my heart broke.

  Tea Leoni

  Children, Heart, Mean

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

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• It would be incredibly presumptuous and self-serving of me to believe that Facebook was the end of history. The only way it could possibly be the end of history is if it becomes some sort of artificial super intelligence that takes over the world.

  Sean Parker

  Believe, Self, Would Be

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• To say that I have found the answer to all riddles of the soul would be inaccurate and presumptuous. But in the knowledge I have developed there must lie the answers to that riddle, to that enigma, to that problem - the human soul - for under my hands and others, was seen the best in man rehabilitated. I discovered that a human being is not his body and demonstrated that through Scientology an individual can attain certainty of his identity apart from that of the body. We cannot deal in the realm of the human soul and ignore the fact.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Lying, Men, Hands

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• Presumptuous for me to say, but at least - at a minimum - I've been able to influence the direction of the Democratic Party on foreign policy. And I've been relatively - presumptuous to say - relatively successful legislatively in the Senate, being able to win a lot of Republican friends, and being able to cross the aisle.

  Joe Biden

  Party, Successful, Winning

  "Biden's Brief" by Ryan Lizza, www.newyorker.com. October 20, 2008.

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• A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Humble, Men, Vain

  Mary Wollstonecraft (1796). “A vindication of the rights of woman: with strictures on political and moral subjects”, p.275

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• The command to judge not is not a requirement to be blind, but rather a plea to be generous. Jesus does not tell us to cease to be men... but to renounce the presumptuous ambition to be God.

  John Stott

  Jesus, Ambition, Men

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• It is presumptuous to draw conclusions about a person from what one has heard

  Jude Morgan

  Conclusion, Heard, Draws

  Jude Morgan (2011). “Indiscretion”, p.115, Hachette UK

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• Among these things, one thing seems certain - that nothing certain exists and that there is nothing more pitiful or more presumptuous than man.

  Pliny the Elder

  Men, Certain, Seems

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• Never for a moment have I had one doubt about my religious beliefs. There are people who believe only so far as they can understand--that seems to me presumptuous and sets their understanding as the standard of the universe.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Faith, Religious, Believe

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1980). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• But, actually, so many of the clerics that I've met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society.

  Rowan Atkinson

  People, Arrogance, Church

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• A photograph is just a tiny slice of a subject. A piece of them in a moment. It seems presumptuous to think you can get more than that.

  Annie Leibovitz

  Thinking, Pieces, Tiny

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• I am a private detective. I am paid to be inquisitive and presumptuous.

  Douglas Adams

  Detectives, Inquisitive, Paid

  Douglas Adams (2014). “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

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• That politeness which we put on, in order to keep the assuming and the presumptuous at a proper distance will generally succeed. But it sometimes happens that these obtrusive characters are on such excellent terms with themselves that they put down this very politeness to the score of their own great merits and high pretensions, meeting the coldness of our reserve with a ridiculous condescension of familiarity, in order to set us at ease with ourselves.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Distance, Character, Order

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.79

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• Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.

  Richard Dawkins

  Death, Spiritual, Religious

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• There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and, what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgement of the ignorant upon their designs.

  Edmund Burke

  Disappointment, Design, Judgement

  "The Works of Edmund Burke in Nine Volumes", Vol. IX, Boston: Little, Brown, 1839.

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• It's too presumptuous and naïve to think you can change society by a photograph or anything else... I equate that with propaganda; I think that's a lower rank of purpose.

  Walker Evans

  Photography, Thinking, Purpose

  Thomas Southall, Walker Evans, James Agee, Friends of Photography, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art (1990). “Of time & place: Walker Evans and William Christenberry”, Friends of Photography Bookstore

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• Often even a whole city suffers for a bad man who sins and contrives presumptuous deeds.

  Hesiod

  Men, Cities, Suffering

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• It's presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

  Joe Biden

  Feels, Know How, Knows

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• Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who are from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts, but brothers, not rivals, but fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence...The difference... is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging.

  Demosthenes

  Brother, Ideas, Differences

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• There are people who are so presumptuous that they know no other way to praise a greatness that they publicly admire than by representing it as a preliminary stage and bridge leading to themselves.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Greatness, Bridges, People

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