Assumption Quotes - Page 15

• Most men, if you just tell them what to do in a businesslike fashion, will follow directions without thinking about it. One proceeds on the assumption that they'll do as they're told, and they do.

  Lynne Reid Banks

  Fashion, Men, Thinking

  Lynne Reid Banks (1995). “The Secret of the Indian”

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• Writing is an act of hope. It means carving order out of chaos, of challenging one's own beliefs and assumptions, of facing the world with eyes and heart wide open. Through writing we declare a personal identity amid faceless anonymity. We find purpose and beauty and meaning even when the rational mind argues that none of these exist. Writing therefore, is also an act of courage. How much easier is it to lead an unexamined life than to confront yourself on the page?

  Jack Heffron

  Writing, Heart, Mean

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• I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself.

  Noam Chomsky

  Wisdom, Attitude, Taken

  Institute Professor Department of Linguistics and Philosophy Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, John Junkerman, Takei Masakazu (2015). “Power and Terror: Conflict, Hegemony, and the Rule of Force”, p.5, Routledge

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• [Americans] think that choice, as seen through the American lens, best fulfills an innate and universal desire for choice in all humans. Unfortunately, these beliefs are based on assumptions that don't always hold true in many countries, in many cultures.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Country, Motivation, Inspiration

  "The art of choosing". TED conference, www.ted.com. July, 2010.

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• Human capital analysis starts with the assumption that individuals decide on their education, training, medical care, and other additions to knowledge and health by weighing the benefits and costs. Benefits include cultural and other non-monetary gains along with improvement in earnings and occupations, while costs usually depend mainly on the foregone value of the time spent on these investments.

  Gary Becker

  Training, Analysis, Cost

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• We believe that when we choose anything, judge a stranger and even fall in love, we understand the principal factors that influenced us. Very often nothing could be further from the truth. As a result, many of our most basic assumptions about ourselves, and society, are false.

  Leonard Mlodinow

  Falling In Love, Believe, Judging

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• We all dream; it is a mystery in which all humankind participates.  I realize this is an assumption, but it is one that I have no qualms in asserting as fact: the dream is an experiential universal for humanity.

  Andrew D. Chumbley

  Dream, Humanity, Facts

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• Some of the roots of role-playing games (RPGs) are grounded in clinical and academic role assumption and role-playing exercises.

  Gary Gygax

  Exercise, Playing Games, Rpgs

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• A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundations on which we live and more and have our being.

  James W. Sire

  Heart, Commitment, Reality

  James W. Sire (2015). “Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept”, p.141, InterVarsity Press

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• When you're surrounded by people who share the same set of assumptions as you, you start to think that's reality.

  Emily Levine

  Thinking, Reality, People

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• The assumption that Derrida always knows what he is talking about is not Derridean.

  Timothy Morton

  Talking, Derrida, Knows

  Timothy Morton (2012). “The Ecological Thought”, p.139, Harvard University Press

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• The assumption of Jesus' program for his people on earth was that they would live their lives as his students and co-laborers.

  Dallas Willard

  Jesus, People, Earth

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• A basic assumption shapes most Americans’ mindset about labor: the belief that the death of unions isn’t my problem because I’m not in a union. That assumption is wrong. Even if you aren’t a member, your pay is influenced by the strength or weakness of organized labor. The presence of unions sets off a wage race to the top. Their absence sets off a race to the bottom.

  Eric Liu

  Race, Shapes, Organized Labor

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• People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.

  Sara Sheridan

  Lonely, Inspiration, Clouds

  "What Writers Earn: A Cultural Myth" by Sara Sheridan, www.huffingtonpost.co.uk. April 24, 2013.

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• Your working assumption, when you meet a homophobe, should be that they are gay.

  Johann Hari

  Gay, Should, Homophobes

  Twitter post from Oct 10, 2012

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• The American way of stress is comparable to Freud's 'beloved symptom', his name for the cherished neurosis that a patient cultivates like the rarest of orchids and does not want to be cured of. Stress makes Americans feel busy, important, and in demand, and simultaneously deprived, ignored, and victimized. Stress makes them feel interesting and complex instead of boring and simple, and carries an assumption of sensitivity not unlike the Old World assumption that aristocrats were high-strung. In short, stress has become a status symbol.

  Florence King

  Stress, Simple, Orchids

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• There's this whole assumption that girls like bad boys, but I have to disagree; I think 'nice' will go a long way.

  Brooke Burke

  Girl, Nice, Thinking

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• The history of the welfare state is the history of public enterprise pushing out private organization. The impact was largely unintentional, but natural and inevitable. Higher taxes left individuals with less money to give; government's assumption of responsibility for providing welfare shriveled the perceived duty of individuals to respond to their neighbors' needs; and the availability of public programs gave recipients an alternative to private assistance, one which did not challenge recipients to reform their destructive behavior.

  Doug Bandow

  Responsibility, Availability, Impact

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• Christian apologists who argue that a story about an empty tomb is convincing evidence of a resurrected body are likely unfamiliar with Occam’s razor, which states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected. They assume that the most likely explanation is miraculous resurrection through some unproven divine connection, but more likely scenarios include a stolen body, a mismarked grave, a planned removal, faulty reports, creative storytelling, edited scriptures, etc. No magic required.

  David G. McAfee

  Christian, Convincing Evidence, Creative

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• The difference between a good educator and a great educator is that the former figures out how to work within the constraints of traditional policies and accepted assumptions, whereas the latter figures out how to change whatever gets in the way of doing right by kids. 'But we've always...', 'But the parents will never...', 'But we can't be the only school in the area to...' - all such protestations are unpersuasive to great educators. If research and common sense argue for doing things differently, then the question isn't whether to change course but how to make it happen.

  Alfie Kohn

  School, Kids, Differences

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• SYLLOGISM, n. A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor assumption and an inconsequent.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Science, Logic, Formulas

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2522, Delphi Classics

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• On scientific grounds this big bang assumption is much less the palatable of the two. For it is an irrational process that cannot be described in scientific terms. . . . On philosophical grounds too I cannot see any good reason for preferring the big bang idea. Indeed it seems to me in the philosophical sense to be a distinctly unsatisfactory notion, since it puts the basic assumption out of sight where it can never be challenged by a direct appeal to observation.

  Fred Hoyle

  Philosophical, Sight, Ideas

  Fred Hoyle (1960). “The nature of the universe”

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• If all properly economic problems were solved once for all . . . the social struggle and strife would . . . [not necessarily] be reduced in amount or intensity . . . in the absence of some moral revolution which could by no means be assumed to follow in consequence of this change itself.

  Frank Knight

  Struggle, Mean, Revolution

  Frank Hyneman Knight, Hubert Bonner (1947). “Freedom and reform: essays in economics and social philosophy”

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• In ridiculing a pathetic human fallacy, which seeks explanation where none need be sought and which multiplies unnecessary assumptions, one should not mimic primitive ontology in order to challenge it. Better to dispose of the needless assumption altogether. This holds true for everything from Noah's flood to the Holocaust.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Order, Holocaust

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• Most of us have no idea what we can do because we are totally conditioned by the past. Our memories, beliefs, assumptions, prejudices, and stresses conspire to trap us in one boundary after another. We need to escape from this.

  Deepak Chopra

  Memories, Stress, Past

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