Propositions Quotes - Page 5

• I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing--for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it's impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Life, Boxing, Goes On

  Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “On Boxing”, p.4, Harper Collins

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• In fact, of course, I hold that propositions that contemporary
  philosophers would properly count as 'empirical' can be necessary and be known to be such.

  Saul Kripke

  Facts, Philosopher, Contemporary

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• When two terms belong to the same category, it is proper to construct conjunctive propositions embodying them. Thus a purchaser may say that he bought a left-hand glove and a right- hand glove, but not that he bought a left-hand glove, a right- hand glove, and a pair of gloves. 'She came home in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair' is a well known joke based on the absurdity of conjoining terms of different types. Now the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine does just this. It maintains that there exist both bodies and minds.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Home, Hands, Two

  Gilbert Ryle (2015). “The Concept of Mind”, p.15, Lulu Press, Inc

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• A fact is a proposition of which the verification by an appeal to the primary sources of our knowledge or to experience is directand simple. A theory, on the other hand, if true, has all the characteristics of a fact except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and difficult means.

  Chauncey Wright

  Mean, Simple, Hands

  Chauncey Wright (2003). “Philosphical Discussions”, p.44, A&C Black

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• It makes me hate accepting things that are probable when they are held up before me as infallibly true. I prefer these words which tone down and modify the hastiness of our propositions: "Perhaps, In some sort, Some, They say, I think," and the like.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Hate, Thinking, Down And

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• Buddha was speaking about reality. Reality may be one, in its deepest essence, but Buddha also stated that all propositions about reality are only contingent. Reality is devoid of any intrinsic identity that can be captured by any one single proposition - that is what Buddha meant by "voidness." Therefore, Buddhism strongly discourages blind faith and fanaticism.

  Dalai Lama

  Buddhism, Reality, Essence

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Everyone wants to get out of living where they're living now, because life is a pretty tough proposition and not much fun. But when you think back to earlier times, you only extrapolate the nice things.

  Woody Allen

  Fun, Nice, Thinking

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• When it comes to Jewish sensitivity, I don't find the proposition compelling that non-Jews have no right to comment. We all have the right to comment about each other. And I object when people say that these comments are motivated by anti-Semitism.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  People, Motivated, Sensitivity

  "The World According to Zbig". Interview with Charles Gati, www.politico.com. November 27, 2013.

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• If you ask Americans whether they've been successful at sealing the border with Mexico, they'll tell you that it's a very difficult proposition.

  Bashar al-Assad

  Successful, Borders, Mexico

  ""Poverty Is a Greater Concern for Most than a Democratic Constitution"". Interview with Martin Doerry, www.spiegel.de. August 29, 2005.

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• Geometry in every proposition speaks a language which experience never dares to utter; and indeed of which she but halfway comprehends the meaning.

  William Whewell

  Language, Speak, Dare

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• The one good thing to be said about announcing yourself as a writer in the colonial Canadian fifties is that nobody told me I couldn't do it because I was a girl. They simply found the entire proposition ridiculous. Writers were dead and English, or else extremely elderly and American; they were not sixteen years old and Canadian.

  Margaret Atwood

  Girl, Elderly, Years

  "Writing Philosophy". Waterstone's Poetry Lecture, Delivered at Hay on Wye. Wales, canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca. June 1995.

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• I always said marriage should be a fifty-fifty proposition. He should be at least fifty years old, and have at least fifty-million dollars.

  Zsa Zsa Gabor

  Years, Fifty Year Olds, Dollars

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• In the beginning, we made the usual mistake of looking at houses we could afford. I am working on a proposition, hereafter to be known as Kerr's law, which states in essence: All the houses you can afford to buy are depressing.

  Jean Kerr

  Depressing, Mistake, Law

  Jean Kerr (1959). “Please Don't Eat the Daisies”

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• I am convinced that an electronic machine, no matter how smart and intelligent, being still a mere spatial structure in concept, can neither innovate nor even understand the self-evident proposition: 'No spatial structure can be a representation of any feeling'. Such innovation can only be a work of a non-spatial mind, like a human being, and only such innovation, it should be acknowledged, can pave the way for further scientific achievements.

  Kedar Joshi

  Smart, Intelligent, Self

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• And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation.

  Umberto Eco

  Believe, Analogies, Matter

  Umberto Eco (1994). “The Name of the Rose”, p.143, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When an idea, a proposition, a cause is presented to me in terms that leave me no alternative but to be for it, because it's all pros and no cons, then I know I'm being conned.

  Jean-Louis Gassee

  Ideas, Alternatives, Causes

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• (R)eality TV (is) a medium dedicated to the proposition that with the help of judicious editing, carefully chosen half-wits can hold the attention of millions of their fellow half-wits for weeks on end.

  Terry Teachout

  Editing, Attention, Half

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• I've never been to the Oscars, but if I was ever invited to the Oscars, I would have this weird paranoia of terrorism. It just feels like The Poseidon Adventure, everyone in their tuxes. Somehow, I feel like the whole time I would be looking for where the nearest exit was, and in a cold sweat about some kind of man-made disaster, like a terrorist strike or something. It seems like such a scary, claustrophobic proposition.

  Mike White

  Adventure, Men, Sweat

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• The gospel of Jesus Christ has the answers to all of our problems. The gospel is not a secret. It is not complicated or hidden. It can unlock the door to true happiness. It is not someone's theory or proposition. It does not come from man at all. It springs from the pure and everlasting waters of the Creator of the universe, who knows truths we cannot even begin to comprehend. And with that knowledge, He has given us the gospel-a divine gift, the ultimate formula for happiness and success.

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf

  Jesus, Spring, Men

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• Nature's action is complex: and nothing is gained in the long run by pretending that it is simple, and trying to describe it in a series of elementary propositions.

  Alfred Marshall

  Running, Simple, Long

  Alfred Marshall (2009). “Principles of Economics: Unabridged Eighth Edition”, p.8, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from the psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply that there is such a thing as religious knowledge...Unless he can formulate this 'knowledge' in propositions that are empirically verifiable, we may be sure that he is deceiving himself.

  A.J. Ayer

  Religious, Views, People

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• The theologians also should not be irritated. For if they find that this opinion is false, then they would be free to condemn it; and if they discover that it is true, they ought to thank those who have opened the way to finding the true sense of the Scriptures and who have prevented them from falling into the grave scandal of condemning a true proposition.

  Galileo Galilei

  Fall, Would Be, Scandal

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• Faith is the assent to any proposition not made out by the deduction of reason but upon the credit of the proposer.

  John Locke

  Atheism, Credit, Reason

  John Locke (1825). “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: An analysis of Mr. Locke's Doctrine of ideas .... A defense of Mr. Locke's Opinion concerning personal identity .... A treatise on the conduct of the understanding. Some thoughts concerning reading and study for a gentleman. Elements of natural philosophy. A new method of a common place book. Extracted from the author's works. With a life of the author”

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• I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

  John Locke

  Self, Doubt, Might

  John Locke (1836). “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, p.421

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• No central banker would disagree with the proposition that inflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon. Not one of them will disagree that every inflation has been accompanied by a rapid increase in the quantity of money and every deflation by a decline in the quantity of money.

  Milton Friedman

  Bankers, Rapids, Increase

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