Propositions Quotes - Page 17

• Truth is disputable; not taste: what exists in the nature of things is the standard of our judgement; what each man feels within himself is the standard of sentiment. Propositions in geometry may be proved, systems in physics may be controverted; but the harmony of verse, the tenderness of passion, the brilliancy of wit, must give immediate pleasure. No man reasons concerning another's beauty; but frequently concerning the justice or injustice of his actions.

  David Hume

  Passion, Men, Giving

  David Hume (2016). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: Revision of Great Book”, p.131, VM eBooks

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• Pope has elegantly said a perfect woman's but a softer man. And if we take in the consideration, that there can be but one rule of moral excellence for beings made of the same materials, organized after the same manner, and subjected to similar laws of Nature, we must either agree with Mr. Pope, or we must reverse the proposition, and say, that a perfect man is a woman formed after a coarser mold.

  Catharine Macaulay

  Men, Law, Perfect

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• Comparing how you feel on the inside (bad) to the way someone else looks on the outside (great) is a losing proposition. It's an impossible standard.

  Maria Shriver

  Looks, How You Feel, Way

  Maria Shriver (2000). “Ten Things I Wish I'd Known: Before I Went Out Into the Real World”, Wheeler Pub Incorporated

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• For is it not the common experience of all of us - you and I - that we do no incorporate the truth of these propositions in our lives? We say we know, but we do not do as we know. We say we believe, but we do not act like it.

  James W. Sire

  Believe, Common Experience, Knows

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• ...it would be a simple way of solving the goiter problem. And in addition to that it would be the biggest thing in a medical proposition to be carried out in the state of Michigan, and Michigan is a large place. And as I thought of the thing the more convinced I became that this oughtn't to be a personal thing, This ought to be something done by the Michigan State Medical Society as a body. Recommending the addition of a trace of iodine to table salt.

  David Murray Cowie

  Simple, Iodine, Would Be

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• Every work of art reaches man in his inner powers. It reaches him more profoundly and insidiously than any rational proposition, either cogent demonstration or sophistry. For it strikes him with two terrible weapons, Intuition and Beauty, and at the single root in him of all his energies... Art and Poetry awaken the dreams of man, and his longings, and reveal to him some of the abysses he has in himself.

  Jacques Maritain

  Dream, Art, Men

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• Existentialism does not offer to the reader the consolations of an abstract evasion: existentialism proposes no evasion. On the contrary, its ethics is experienced in the truth of life, and it then appears as the only proposition of salvation which one can address to men.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Men, Doe, Addresses

  Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.134, Open Road Media

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• In other words, the propositions of philosophy are not factual, but linguistic in character - that is, they do not describe the behaviour of physical, or even mental, objects; they express definitions, or the formal consequences of definitions. Accordingly we may say that philosophy is a department of logic. For we will see that the characteristic mark of a purely logical enquiry, is that it is concerned with the formal consequences of our definitions and not with questions of empirical fact.

  A.J. Ayer

  Philosophy, Character, Enquiry

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• The human being is an unequal creature. That is a fact. And we start off with the proposition. All the great religions, all the great movements, all the great political ideology, say let us make the human being as equal as possible. In fact, he is not equal, never will be.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Political, Facts, Movement

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• The atheist proposition is the following - most of the time - it may not be said that there is no god; it may be said that there is no reason to think that there is one.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Thinking, May

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• In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of decent living.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Country, Mean, Simple

  Franklin D. Roosevelt's statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act, June 16, 1933.

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• Because no one has the right to deny another their life, even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8.

  Brad Pitt

  Live Life, America, Desire

  "Brad Pitt comes out against gay marriage ban proposal" by Kevin Anderson, www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

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• California’s Proposition 37, which would require that genetically modified (G.M.) foods carry a label, has the potential to do just that - to change the politics of food not just in California but nationally too.

  Michael Pollan

  California, Labels, Genetically Modified

  "Vote for the Dinner Party". www.nytimes.com. October 10, 2012.

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• The mathematician starts with a few propositions, the proof of which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of his work consists of subtle deductions from them. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practiced, is of the same general nature authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental operations are deductive.

  Thomas Huxley

  Nature, Work, Teaching

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1872). “Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews”, p.66

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• True Christianity is not merely believing a certain set of dry abstract propositions: it is to live in daily personal communication with an actual living person - Jesus Christ.

  J. C. Ryle

  Jesus, Believe, Communication

  J.C Ryle, Rev Terry Kulakowski, Editor “PRACTICAL RELIGION”, Lulu.com

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• We must be willing to be guided of God, not merely now and then, but as a life proposition.

  E. Stanley Jones

  Now And Then, Willing

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• Let me tell you the following words as if I were showing you the rungs of a ladder leading upward and upward: Herzl; the Zionist Congress; the English Uganda proposition; the future world war; the peace conference where with the help of England a free and Jewish Palestine will be created.

  Max Nordau

  War, Uganda, Ladders

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• A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism; it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will.

  Jonathan Rauch

  Mean, Errors, Ideas

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• I think my films are very English. That certain emotional distance, interest in the world, interest in irony. These are all deeply English propositions.

  Peter Greenaway

  Distance, Emotional, Thinking

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• There is absolutely no reason to suspect that prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying and refusing to recognize their out-of-state marriages will cause same-sex couples to raise fewer children or impel married opposite-sex couples to raise more children. The Virginia Marriage Laws therefore do not further Virginia's interest in channeling children into optimal families, even if we were to accept the dubious proposition that same-sex couples are less capable parents.

  Henry Franklin Floyd

  Sex, Couple, Children

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• The anceints devoted a lifetime to the study of arithmetic; it required days to extract a square root or to multiply two numbers together. Is there any harm in skipping all that, in letting the school boy learn multiplication sums, and in starting his more abstract reasoning at a more advanced point. Where would be the harm in letting the boy assume the truth of many propositions of the first four books of Euclid, letting him assume their truth partly by faith, partly by trial?

  John Perry

  Book, School, Boys

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• A theorem is a proposition which is a strict logical consequence of certain definitions and other propositions.

  Anatol Rapoport

  Definitions, Logical, Certain

  "Various meanings of 'theory'". American Political Science Review, 52.04, 1958.

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• There's a dark side to each and every human soul. We wish we were Obi-Wan Kenobi, and for the most part we are, but there's a little Darth Vader in all of us. Thing is, this ain't no either or proposition. We're talking about dialectics, the good and the bad merging into us. You can run but you can't hide. My experience? Face the darkness, stare it down. Own it. As brother Nietzsche said, being human is a complicated gig. Give that old dark night of the soul a hug! Howl the eternal yes!

  Stuart Stevens

  Running, Brother, Dark

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• Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgements; ... But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Real, Interesting, Judgement

  Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.259, Simon and Schuster

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• The cabinet has no propositions to make, but orders to give.

  Charles de Gaulle

  Order, Giving, Cabinets

  "Mémoires de Guerre". Book by Charles de Gaulle, 1954.

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