Assertion Quotes - Page 2

• The assertion fallacy is the fallacy of confusing the conditions for the performance of the speech act of assertion with the analysis of the meaning of particular words occurring in certain assertions.

  John Searle

  Confusing, Analysis, Speech

  "Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language". Book by John Searle, 1969.

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• Complexity assertions have to be part of the interface

  Alexander Stepanov

  Complexity, Interfaces

  "C Programming". Interview with Al Stevens, collaboration.cmc.ec.gc.ca. 1995.

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• History is no longer just a chronicle of kings and statesmen, of people who wielded power, but of ordinary women and men engaged in manifold tasks. Women's history is an assertion that women have a history.

  Toshiko Kishida

  Kings, Men, People

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• No matter how improbable an assertion is, if it is made with enough assurance it has an affect.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Matter, Enough, Made

  Erich Maria Remarque (2013). “The Black Obelisk: A Novel”, p.197, Random House

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• Emphatic and reiterated assertion, especially during childhood, produces in most people a belief so firm as to have a hold even over the unconscious.

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Childhood, Belief

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.35, Routledge

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• It was from Handel that I learned that style consists in force of assertion.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Style, Force, Handel

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• We can refute assertions, but who can refute silence?

  Charles Dickens

  Silence

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• If man puts his honor first in relying upon himself, knowing himself and applying himself, this in self-reliance, self-assertion, and freedom, he then strives to rid himself of the ignorance which makes a strange impenetrable object a barrier and a hindrance to his self-knowledge.

  Max Stirner

  Fall, Ignorance, Men

  "The False Principle of our Education". Book by Max Stirner, p. 23, 1842.

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• Like most people of my generation, I fell in love with the philosophy of existentialism. There is no particular religious tradition in my work. There is only one psychological assertion that I would insist upon. That is: the SELF takes precedence.

  Stanley Elkin

  Religious, Philosophy, Self

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• Passionate expression and vehement assertion are no arguments, unless it be of the weakness of the cause that is defended by them, or of the man that defends it.

  William Chillingworth

  Men, Expression, Causes

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• Upon the profound discontent of the young in every country do I set my faith. I beg you, the young, to be discontented. I pray that you may rebel against what is wrong, not with feeble negative complaining but with strong positive assertion of what is right for all humanity.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Country, Strong, Profound

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• To the human mind there is something almost illogical in the assertion that God became a man. It is like speaking about a square circle. Yet this is what Christmas says - and we take refuge from our bewilderment not in explanation but in adoration.

  Ralph P. Martin

  Men, Squares, Circles

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• Dogmas of every kind put assertion in the place of reason and give rise to more contention, bitterness, and want of charity than any other influence in human affairs.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Giving, Atheism, Charity

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1986). “Letters to the press: the unknown Conan Doyle”, Harvill Secker

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• If the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted.

  A.J. Ayer

  Atheist, Atheism, Nonsensical

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• A letter is not a dialogue or even an omniscient exposition. It is a fabric of surfaces, a mask, a form as well suited to affectations as to the affections. The letter is, by its natural shape, self-justifying; it is one's own evidence, deposition, a self-serving testimony. In a letter the writer holds all the cards, controls everything about himself and about those assertions he wishes to make concerning events or the worth of others. For completely self-centered characters, the letter form is a complex and rewarding activity.

  Elizabeth Hardwick

  Character, Self, Wish

  Elizabeth Hardwick (2011). “Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature”, p.195, New York Review of Books

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• The real spiritual journey is work. You can make a naïve assertion that you trust in Jesus, but until it is tested a good, oh, 200 times, I doubt very much that it's true.

  Richard Rohr

  Spiritual, Jesus, Real

  Source: ryanthomasneace.com

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• I do not espouse the unitarian position. President Clinton's assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan's assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions.

  Elena Kagan

  President, Administration, Serious

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• At length weariness succeeds to labor, and the mind lies at ease in the contemplation of her own attainments without any desire of new conquests or excursions. This is the age of recollection and narrative; the opinions are settled, and the avenues of apprehension shut against any new intelligence; the days that are to follow must pass in the inculcation of precepts already collected, and assertion of tenets already received; nothing is henceforward so odious as opposition, so insolent as doubt, or so dangerous as novelty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Lying, Doubt, Mind

  Samuel Johnson (2003). “Selected Essays”, p.380, Penguin UK

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• If reading becomes a bore, mental death is on the way. Children taught to read by tedious mechanical means rapidly learn to skim over the dull text without bothering to delve into its implications -- which in time will make them prey to propaganda and to assertions based on scanty evidence, or none.

  Joan Aiken

  Children, Reading, Mean

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• Assertion of truths known and felt, promulgation of truth from the high platform of truth itself, declaration of faith by the mouth of moral conviction--this is the New Testament method, and the true one.

  J. G. Holland

  Mouths, Moral, Conviction

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 290, 1895.

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• Network news accustoms audiences to assertion not argument. Over time, it reinforces the notion that politics is about visceral identification and apposition, not complex problems and their solutions. ... sound bites aren't very helpful. They can tell a voter what a candidate believes, but not why. And many issues are too complex to be freeze dried into a slogan and a smile. ... What's lost in a world in which everything's an ad? Perhaps the country that created the assembly line has simply found a more efficient way to do politics.

  Kathleen Hall Jamieson

  Country, Believe, Issues

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• Except two breeds - the stupid and the narrowly feline - all women have a touch of the Lesbian: an assertion all good non-analytic creatures refute with horror, but quite true: there is always the poignant intensive personal taste, the flair of inner-sex, in the tenderest friendships of women.

  Mary MacLane

  Sex, Stupid, Two

  Mary MacLane (2014). “Human Days: A Mary MacLane Reader”, p.514, Petrarca Press

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• Ladies and gentlemen, these are not assertions. These are facts, corroborated by many sources, some of them sources of the intelligence services of other countries.

  Colin Powell

  Country, Stupid, Intelligence Services

  Address to the United Nations Security Council, delivered 5 February 2003

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• Manliness has been defined as assertion of the self. Womanliness has been defined as the nurturing of selves other than our own - even if we quite lose our own in the process. (Women are supposed to find in this loss their true fulfillment.) But every individual person is born both to assert herself or himself and to act out a sympathy for others trying to find themselves - in Christian terms, meant to love one's self as one loves others ... Jesus never taught that we should split up that commandment - assigning 'love yourself' to men, 'love others' to women. But society has tried to.

  Barbara Deming

  Christian, Jesus, Love You

  Barbara Deming (1984). “We Are All Part of One Another: A Barbara Deming Reader”

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• Nonviolent actions are by their nature androgynous. In them the two impulses that have long been treated as distinct, 'masculine' and 'feminine,' the impulse of self-assertion and the impulse of sympathy, are clearly joined; the very genius of nonviolence, in fact, is that it demonstrates them to be indivisible, and so restores human community.

  Barbara Deming

  Self, Masculine And Feminine, Two

  Barbara Deming (1974). “We cannot live without our lives”

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