Propositions Quotes - Page 6

• I think that there is no supernatural dimension. The natural world is quite wonderful enough. The more we know about it, the much more wonderful it is than any supernatural proposition.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Thinking, Dimensions, World

  Source: www.wanliss.com

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• I have no evangelical feelings about art at all. I despise art education. Art doesn't lend itself to education. There is no knowledge there. It's a set of propositions about how things should look.

  Dave Hickey

  Art, Feelings, Looks

  Interview with Sheila Heti, believermag.com. November 2007.

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• You need to simplify the value proposition in the company's metrics for success on a whiteboard.

  Keith Rabois

  Needs, Metrics, Simplify

  "Lecture 14: How to Operate". Keith Rabois' "How To Start a Startup" lecture to the class at Stanford University in Stanford, California, genius.com. November 6, 2014.

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• The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.

  John Adams

  Patriotic, Thinking, People

  "The Life of Thomas Jefferson". Book by Henry S. Randall, p. 587, 1857.

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• The world isn't kept running because it's a paying proposition. (God doesn't make a cent on the deal.) The world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestioningly; they underwrite it with their lives.

  Henry Miller

  Running, Believe, Greatness

  Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-conditioned Nightmare”, p.169, New Directions Publishing

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• [T]he 47th proposition in Euclid might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics; and therefore if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science as much as he hates concrete truth in human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions of the hypotenuse.

  Sydney Smith

  Hate, Science, Ease

  SYDNEY SMITH (1839). “The Works”, p.374

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• Truth then seems to me, in the proper import of the word, to signify nothing but the joining or separating of Signs, as the Things signified by them do agree or disagree one with another. The joining or separating of signs here meant, is what by another name we call proposition. So that truth properly belongs only to propositions: whereof there are two sorts, viz. mental and verbal; as there are two sorts of signs commonly made use of, viz. ideas and words.

  John Locke

  Truth, Agreement, Names

  John Locke (2015). “An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding Volume 2: Top Essays”, p.151, 谷月社

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• Abstract propositions should never be discussed by a legislative body.

  James Buchanan

  Body, Abstract, Should

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• I go out to preach with two propositions in mind. First, every person ought to give his life to Christ. Second, whether or not anyone else gives him his life, I will give him mine.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Christian, Two, Giving

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• Most people fear pain. I've learned that not feeling pain is a much more frightening proposition than feeling it. In fact, there are times when I'm playing when I actually enjoy it.

  Mark Zupan

  Pain, People, Feelings

  Mark Zupan, Tim Swanson (2009). “GIMP: The Story Behind the Star of Murderball”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• Revelation in matters where reason cannot judge, or but probably, ought to be hearkened to. First, Whatever proposition is revealed, of whose truth our mind, by its natural faculties and notions, cannot judge, that is purely matter of faith, and above reason.

  John Locke

  Truth, Judging, Mind

  John Locke (1836). “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, p.530

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• It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.

  Francis Bacon

  Party, Men, Shapes

  Francis Bacon, David Mallet (1740). “The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, Lord High Chancellor of England ...: With Several Additional Pieces, Never Before Printed in Any Edition of His Works. To which is Prefixed, a New Life of the Author”, p.334

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• In short, herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right from them: but idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all.

  John Locke

  Lying, Ideas, Differences

  John Locke (1828). “An essay concerning human understanding ... The twentieth edition, etc”, p.100

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• It's no fun to appreciate to the full the truth of the materialist proposition that I don't have a body, I am a body.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Fun, Appreciate, Body

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.28, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.

  Noam Chomsky

  Philosophical, Issues, Experts

  Noam Chomsky (2010). “The Chomsky Reader”, p.71, Pantheon

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• If your opponent has you by fifty pounds, winning a fight against him is a dubious proposition, at best. If your opponent has you by eight thousand and fifty pounds, you’ve left the realm of combat and enrolled yourself in Road-kill 101. Or possibly in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

  Jim Butcher

  Fighting, Winning, Eight

  Jim Butcher (2009). “Small Favor: A Novel of the Dresden Files”, p.200, Penguin

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• She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder.

  Jeffery Deaver

  Hands, Saving, Gestures

  "Roadside Crosses: A Kathryn Dance Novel". Book by Jeffery Deaver, 2009.

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• My faith in the expertise of physicists like Richard Feynman, for instance, permits me to endorse—and, if it comes to it, bet heavily on the truth of—a proposition that I don't understand. So far, my faith is not unlike religious faith, but I am not in the slightest bit motivated to go to my death rather than recant the formulas of physics. Watch: E doesn't equal mc2, it doesn't, it doesn't! I was lying, so there!

  Daniel Dennett

  Religious, Lying, Richard Feynman

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• A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Impossible, Truth Is, Contradiction

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2016). “Tractatus Logico Philosophicus”, p.15, Clube de Autores

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• You've a pretty good nerve," said Ratchett. "Will twenty thousand dollars tempt you?" It will not." If you're holding out for more, you won't get it. I know what a thing's worth to me." I, also M. Ratchett." What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal - I do not like your face, M. Ratchett," he said.

  Agatha Christie

  Rose, Forgive Me, Forgiving

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• All myth is an enriched pattern, a two-faced proposition, allowing its operator to say one thing and mean another, to lead a double life. Hence the notion found early in ancient thought that all poets are liars. And from the true lies of poetry trickled out a question. What really connects words and things?

  Anne Carson

  Liars, Lying, Mean

  Anne Carson (2009). “The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos”, p.31, Vintage

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• Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember. Lies 2: Time is a straight line. Lies 3: The difference between the past and the futures is that one has happened while the other has not. Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time. Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite' (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...) Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon. Lies 7: Reality is truth.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Lying, Reality, Past

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• Christian faith, as I understand it, is not primarily a matter of signing on for the proposition that there exists a Supreme Being, but the kind of commitment made manifest by a human being at the end of his tether, foundering in darkness, pain, and bewilderment, who nevertheless remains faithful to the promise of a transformative love.

  Terry Eagleton

  Christian, Pain, Commitment

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• It is as true for the writer as for the reader that any novel worth its ink should be an experience first and foremost—not an essay, not a statement, not an orderly rollout of themes and propositions. All of which is to say: stories, too, are wild things.

  David Wroblewski

  Ink, Stories, Firsts

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• I won't close down a business of subnormal profitability merely to add a fraction of a point to our corporate returns. I also feel it inappropriate for even an exceptionally profitable company to fund an operation once it appears to have unending losses in prospect. Adam Smith would disagree with my first proposition and Karl Marx would disagree with my second; the middle ground is the only position that leaves me comfortable.

  Warren Buffett

  Business, Loss, Firsts

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