Propositions Quotes - Page 9

• Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago.

  George Soros

  Marijuana, Years, Matter

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• If you make every game a life and death proposition, you're going to have problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot.

  Dean Smith

  Inspirational, Funny, Basketball

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• Three years ago, this week, a newly elected President Obama faced the American people and he said, look, if I can't turn this economy around in three years, I'll be looking at a one-term proposition, and we're here to collect! You know the results. It's been 35 months of unemployment above 8 percent.

  Mitt Romney

  Years, People, President

  “CNN Newsroom”, www.cnn.com. February 1, 2012.

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• Romney has adopted almost every position conservatives want their candidate to espouse: He's pro-life, he wants to repeal ObamaCare, he wants to cut taxes and cut the federal budget, and he wants an unapologetic foreign policy dedicated to the proposition that this too will be the American century.

  John Podhoretz

  Cutting, Obamacare, Pro Life

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• When I got to college, acting suddenly seemed like a very risky proposition and all my friends were going to law school or med school or Wall Street.

  Wentworth Miller

  Wall, School, College

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

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• Being is a spiritual proposition. Gaining is a material act. Traditionally, American Indians have always attempted to be the best people they could. Part of that spiritual process was and is to give away wealth, to discard wealth in order not to gain.

  Russell Means

  Spiritual, Order, People

  "I Am Not a Leader": Russell Means’ 1980 Mother Jones Cover Story, www.motherjones.com.

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• It is thus necessary to examine all things according to their essence, to infer from every species such true and well established propositions as may assist us in the solution of metaphysical problems.

  Maimonides

  Essence, May, Problem

  Moses Maimonides (2016). “Guide for the perplexed”, p.297, Moses Maimonides

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• Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Freedom, 4th Of July, Learning

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• True science is never speculative; it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry, but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions.

  Cleveland Abbe

  Inquiry, Hypothesis, Suggesting

  Cleveland Abbe (1893). “The Meteorological Work of the U. S. Signal Service, 1870 to 1891”

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• Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies.

  Anne Rice

  Lying, Believe, Purpose

  Anne Rice (2013). “The Wolf Gift”, p.537, Random House

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• Despite all the wonderful advances that have been made, it's still dangerous for an actor to talk about that in our extremely misguided culture. Look at what happened in California with Proposition 8. Please, don't pretend that we're suddenly all wonderfully, blissfully accepted.

  Richard Chamberlain

  California, Actors, Culture

  "Richard Chamberlain Advises Other Gay Actors: Stay in the Closet" by Bryan Alexander, www.hollywoodreporter.com. December 27, 2010.

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• It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true

  Bertrand Russell

  Atheist, Philosophy, Believe

  Sceptical Essays (1928) "On the Value of Scepticism"

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• The validity of mathematical propositions is independent of the actual world-the world of existing subject-matters-is logically prior to it, and would remain unaffected were it to vanish from being. Mathematical propositions, if true, are eternal verities.

  Cassius Jackson Keyser

  Independent, World, Matter

  Cassius Jackson Keyser (1929). “The pastures of wonder: the realm of mathematics and the realm of science”

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• The principles of logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.

  A.J. Ayer

  Self, Principles, Use

  "Language, Truth, and Logic" by A.J. Ayer, (p. 77), 1936.

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• By freethinking I mean the use of the understanding in endeavoring to find out the meaning of any proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature of the evidence for or against, and in judging of it according to the seeming force or weakness of the evidence.

  Anthony Collins

  Mean, Judging, Understanding

  Anthony Collins (1713). “A Discourse of Free-thinking: Occasion'd by the Rise and Growth of a Sect Call'd Free-thinkers ...”, p.10

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• Since it is impossible for the people spontaneously and universally, to move in concert towards their object; and it is therefore essential, that such changes be instituted by some informal and unauthorized propositions, made by some patriotic and respectable citizen or number of citizens.

  James Madison

  Moving, Patriotic, Numbers

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2015). “The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution”, p.196, Coventry House Publishing

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• The nation was founded and "dedicated," to use Lincoln's language in the "Gettysburg Address," to equality as a "self-evident truth." But this very principle of equality, as Lincoln also noted, was a "proposition." To make it a reality remained "the unfinished work" of Americans.

  Ronald Takaki

  Reality, Unfinished Work, Self

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• How can diverse Americans become "one people"? I believe that one path is for us to pursue the study of the past that includes all of us, making all of us feel connected to one another as "we the people," working and living in a nation, founded and "dedicated" (to use Lincoln's language) to the "proposition" that "all men are created equal."

  Ronald Takaki

  Believe, Past, Men

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• I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Thinking, Supposing That

  Sceptical Essays (1928) "On the Value of Scepticism"

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• Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

  Bill Moyers

  Couple, Reality, Religion

  "On Bush, the Dems, Jon Stewart, Hunter Thompson, Bill Moyers, and King (not Don)" by John Cusack, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 11, 2005.

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• Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Moreover, the true believers in each of these faiths are atheists regarding the specific sacred tenets of all other faiths. Christianity rejects the proposition that the Quran contains the infallible words of the creator of the universe. Muslims and Jews reject the divinity of Jesus.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Jesus, Atheist, Miracle

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• I do not wish to be misunderstood upon this subject of slavery in this country. I suppose it may long exist, and perhaps the best way for it to come to an end peaceably is for it to exist for a length of time. But I say that the spread and strengthening and perpetuation of it is an entirely different proposition. There we should in every way resist it as a wrong, treating it as a wrong, with the fixed idea that it must and will come to an end.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Country, Ideas, Long

  Abraham Lincoln (1989). “Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 2: 1859-1865: Library of America #46”, p.17, Library of America

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• Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world. The dragons are all dead and the lance grows rusty in the chimney corner. ... About the only sporting proposition that remains unimpaired by the relentless domestication of a once free-living human species is the war against those ferocious little fellow creatures, which lurk in dark corners and stalk us in the bodies of rats, mice and all kinds of domestic animals; which fly and crawl with the insects, and waylay us in our food and drink and even in our love

  Hans Zinsser

  War, Adventure, Science

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• A great part of its theories derives an additional charm from the peculiarity that important propositions, with the impress of simplicity on them, are often easily discovered by induction, and yet are of so profound a character that we cannot find the demonstrations till after many vain attempts; and even then, when we do succeed, it is often by some tedious and artificial process, while the simple methods may long remain concealed.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Success, Character, Simple

  "Mathematical Circles Adieu". Book by Howard W. Eves, 1977.

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• Our present work sets forth mathematical principles of philosophy. For the basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces. It is to these ends that the general propositions in books 1 and 2 are directed, while in book 3 our explanation of the system of the world illustrates these propositions.

  Isaac Newton

  Nature, Philosophy, Book

  Sir Isaac Newton (2014). “Newton: Philosophical Writings”, p.60, Cambridge University Press

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