Truism Quotes - Page 3

• It is a truism to say that a good experiment is precisely that which spares us the exertion of thinking: the better it is, the less we have to worry about its interpretation, about what it really means.

  Peter Medawar

  Mean, Thinking, Worry

  Peter Brian Medawar (1969). “Induction and intuition in scientific thought”

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• It is a truism throughout the civilized galaxy that when you go to the police, your troubles really begin.

  Robert Sheckley

  Police, Trouble, Civilized

  Robert Sheckley (2006). “Mindswap”, p.22, Macmillan

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• I suppose the pleasure of the country life lies really in the eternally renewed evidences of the determination to live. That is a truism when said, but anything but a truism when daily observed. Nothing shows up the difference between the thing said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Life, Country, Determination

  Vita Sackville-West (2015). “Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings”, Macmillan

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• Absolute truisms rot brains absolutely.[...]'Power corrupts' is useless as a tool for understanding the past, and gives us nothing as a guide to action.

  Steven Brust

  Past, Giving, Understanding

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• It is a truism that the structure of a society is basically determined by its technology. Not in an absolute sense-there may be totally different cultures using identical tools-but the tools settle the possibilities; you can't have interstellar trade without spaceships. A race limited to a single planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with its basic machines of industry and war requiring a large capital investment, will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free enterprise needs elbow room.

  Poul Anderson

  War, Technology, Names

  Poul Anderson (2011). “Trader to the Stars: Polesotechnic League”, p.26, Hachette UK

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• A more appropriate expansion is the statement "it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies" a transcript of a talk to a writers conference in Australia in 1996, where I had been asked to talk on "writers and intellectual responsibility" - a question that I said I found "puzzling," because I knew of nothing to say about it beyond truisms, though these were perhaps worth affirming because they are "so commonly denied, if not in words, then in consistent practice."

  Noam Chomsky

  Lying, Responsibility, Practice

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• I don't suggest that the observations are surprising or profound. Rather, they seem to me the merest truisms. I was not aware that [ Michel] Foucault had used the phrase "speaking truth to power." I had thought it was an old Quaker phrase.

  Noam Chomsky

  Profound, Phrases, Quaker

  Source: www.publicanthropology.org

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• It is a Mormon truism that is current among us and we all accept it, that as man is God once was and as God is man may become. That does not signify that man will become God. I am sorry to say, and yet it is a truth, that not many men will become what God is, simply because they will not pay the price, because they are not willing to live up to the requirements; and still all men may, if they will, become what God is, but only those who are heirs of the celestial glory shall ever be possible candidates, to become what God is.

  Melvin J. Ballard

  Sorry, Men, Pay The Price

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• Occasionally the impossible happens; this is a truism that accounts for much of what we call good luck; and also, bad.

  Faith Baldwin

  Good Luck, Impossible, Accounts

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• It is, of course, the merest truism to say a party is of use only so far as it serves the nation.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Party, Use, Politics

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• It is a truism to say that the dog is largely what his master makes of him: he can be savage and dangerous, untrustworthy, cringing and fearful; or he can be faithful and loyal, courageous and the best of companions and allies.

  Ranulph Fiennes

  Dog, Faithful, Allies

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• It is the merest truism, evident at once to unsophisticated observation, that mathematics is a human invention.

  Percy Williams Bridgman

  Math, Invention, Observation

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• The question is not whether we wish to see everybody as well off as possible. Among men of good will such an aim can be taken for granted. The real question concerns the proper means of achieving it. And in trying to answer this we must never lose sight of a few elementary truisms. We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Running, Real, Taken

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.146, Crown Business

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• India is more than a sum of its contradictions, any truism about India can be contradicted with another truism. There is no fixed stereotype. But even thinking about India makes clear the immensity of the nation-building challenge.

  Shashi Tharoor

  Thinking, Challenges, India

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• Decide on some imperfect Somebody and you will win, because the truest truism in politics is: You can't beat Somebody with Nobody.

  William Safire

  Winning, Political, Politics

  "The Quotable Politician". Book by William Whitman, p. 60, 2003.

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• Excellence does not come easily or quickly-- an excellent education does not, a successful mission does not, a strong, loving marriage does not, rewarding personal relationships do not. It is simply a truism that nothing very valuable can come without significant sacrifice, effort, and patience on our part.

  Jeffrey R. Holland

  Strong, Successful, Sacrifice

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• She refused to accept the simple truism that the better you were, the bigger threat you were to those at the top.

  Michael Connelly

  Simple, Accepting, Bigger

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• cliches are truisms and all truisms are true

  Jack Kerouac

  Cliche

  Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1995). “The portable Jack Kerouac”, Penguin Group USA

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• Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Inspirational, Funny, Leadership

  Time Enough for Love "Prelude II" (1973)

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• It ain't over 'til it's over.

  Yogi Berra

  Motivational, Sports, Baseball

  Quoted in Wash. Post, 26 Sept. 1977. Berra notes in The Yogi Book (1998): "That was my answer to a reporter when I was managing the New York Mets in July 1973.We were about nine games out of first place.We went on to win the division." Berra was quoted using the similar expression "You're not out of it until you're out of it" in N.Y. Times, 30 June 1974. See Ralph Carpenter 1

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• Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Technology, Thinking, Civilization

  An Introduction to Mathematics ch. 5 (1911)

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• Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, and all flock to their aid.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hope, Learning, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1136, Delphi Classics

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• Medicine deals with the states of health and disease in the human body. It is a truism of philosophy that a complete knowledge of a thing can only be obtained by elucidating its causes and antecedents, provided, of course, such causes exist. In medicine it is, therefore, necessary that causes of both health and disease should be determined.

  Avicenna

  Philosophy, Science, Medicine

  Avicenna (1999). “The Canon of Medicine (al-Qānūn Fī'l-ṭibb)”, Abjad Book Designers & Builders

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• Never utter the truism but live it among men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred R. Ferguson (1965). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume V: 1835-1838”, p.21, Harvard University Press

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• Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism.

  Charles Lamb

  Observation, Commonplace

  Charles Lamb (2008). “The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb”, p.159, Cosimo, Inc.

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