Assumption Quotes - Page 4

• A theory is only as good as its assumptions. If the premises are false, the theory has no real scientific value. The only scientific criterion for judging the validity of a scientific theory is a confrontation with the data of experience.

  Maurice Allais

  Real, Data, Judging

  "L'anisotropie de l'espace. La nécessaire révision de certains postulats des théories contemporaines. Les données de l'expérience" by Maurice Allais, Clément Juglar, Paris, (p. 591), 1997.

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• Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third.

  Thomas Huxley

  Chemistry, Sometimes, Physics

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2011). “Collected Essays”, p.60, Cambridge University Press

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• There can be no assumption that today's majority is "right" and the Amish or others like them are "wrong." A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no right or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different.

  Warren E. Burger

  Equality, Racism, Majority

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• All transformation begins with an intense, burning desire to be transformed. The first step in the 'renewing of the mind' is desire. You must want to be different [and intend to be] before you can begin to change yourself. Then you must make your future dream a present fact. You do this by assuming the feeling of your wish fulfilled. By desiring to be other than what you are, you can create an ideal of the person you want to be and assume that you are already that person. If this assumption is persisted in until it becomes your dominant feeling, the attainment of your ideal is inevitable.

  Neville Goddard

  Dream, Feelings, Mind

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• My practise as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world. And I should be a coward if I did not state my theoretical views in public.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Success, Angel, Views

  Preface to "Fact and Faith", 1934.

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• People take things at face value on social media. Earnestness is the assumption.

  Mindy Kaling

  Media, People, Faces

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• No engineer can go upon a new work and not find something peculiar, that will demand his careful reflection, and the deliberate consideration of any advice that he may receive; and nothing so fully reveals his incapacity as a pretentious assumption of knowledge, claiming to understand everything.

  John B. Jervis

  Hard Work, Knowledge, Science

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• Mathematics is not arithmetic. Though mathematics may have arisen from the practices of counting and measuring it really deals with logical reasoning in which theorems-general and specific statements-can be deduced from the starting assumptions. It is, perhaps, the purest and most rigorous of intellectual activities, and is often thought of as queen of the sciences.

  Christopher Zeeman

  Queens, Science, Logical Reasoning

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• The inquiries of the jurist are in truth prosecuted much as inquiry in physic and physiology was prosecuted before observation had taken the place of assumption.

  Henry James Sumner Maine

  Taken, Inquiry, Observation

  Henry Sumner Maine, Sir, J. H. Morgan (2000). “Ancient Law”, p.2, Beard Books

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• [Science] is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. ... The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Self, Two

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.362, Ballantine Books

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• Feynman's cryptic remark, "no one is that much smarter ...," to me, implies something Feynman kept emphasizing: that the key to his achievements was not anything "magical" but the right attitude, the focus on nature's reality, the focus on asking the right questions, the willingness to try (and to discard) unconventional answers, the sensitive ear for phoniness, self-deception, bombast, and conventional but unproven assumptions.

  Philip Warren Anderson

  Nature, Attitude, Science

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• I undertake my scientific research with the confident assumption that the earth follows the laws of nature which God established at creation. ... My studies are performed with the confidence that God will not capriciously confound scientific results by "slipping in" a miracle.

  James W. Skehan

  God, Nature, Science

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• My "thinking" time was devoted mainly to activities that were essentially clerical or mechanical: searching, calculating, plotting, transforming, determining the logical or dynamic consequences of a set of assumptions or hypotheses, preparing the way for a decision or an insight.

  J. C. R. Licklider

  Science, Men, Thinking

  "In memoriam, J.C.R. Licklider, 1915-1990".

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• He who dictates and formulates the words and phrases we use, he who is master of the press and radio, is master of the mind. Repeat mechanically your assumptions and suggestions, diminish the opportunity for communicating dissent and opposition. This is the formula for political conditioning of the masses.

  Joost Meerloo

  Opportunity, Political, Mind

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• In the Life of Darwin by his son, there is related an incident of how the great naturalist once studied long as to just what a certain spore was. Finally he said, "It is this, for if it isn't, then what is it?" And all during his life he was never able to forget that he had been guilty of this unscientific attitude, for science is founded on certitude, not assumption.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Attitude, Son, Long

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• Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.

  E. O. Wilson

  Science, Religion, Tests

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• Assume a virtue if you have it not.

  William Shakespeare

  Memorable, Assuming, Virtue

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 4, l. 160

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• A self-fulfilling prophecy is an assumption or prediction that, purely as a result of having been made, cause the expected or predicted event to occur and thus confirms its own 'accuracy.'

  Paul Watzlawick

  Self, Events, Causes

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• The validity of all the Inductive Methods depends on the assumption that every event, or the beginning of every phenomenon, must have some cause; some antecedent, upon the existence of which it is invariably and unconditionally consequent.

  John Stuart Mill

  Science, Events, Causes

  John Stuart Mill (1846). “A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation”, p.337

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• You must stick to your conviction, but be ready to abandon your assumptions.

  Denis Waitley

  Inspirational, Commitment, Sticks

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• We can invent as many theories we like, and any one of them can be made to fit the facts. But that theory is always preferred which makes the fewest number of assumptions.

  Albert Einstein

  Science, Numbers, Facts

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• And the Russians certainly don't have it. If a woman shows up in a fur coat, I just assume she's a crook. And that's me, the nice American. The assumption that you can't make money honestly is a killer.

  Esther Dyson

  Nice, Eyebrows, Killers

  "On the Frontier". Interview with Virginia Postrel, reason.com. October, 1996.

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• Friends never make assumptions about you. They never expect a reason to go out with you. In fact friends only expect you to be you.

  Russell Lynes

  Wise, Facts, Reason

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• The course hitherto pursued in musical aesthetics has nearly always been hampered by the false assumption that the object was not so much to inquire into what is beautiful in music as to describe the feelings which music awakens.

  Eduard Hanslick

  Beautiful, Feelings, Musical

  Eduard Hanslick (1957). “Vom Musikalisch-Schönen”, Bobbs-Merrill Company

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• If the assumptions used in calculating energy are changed, then this seriously affects the final result, even though the same body of data might be used.

  Charles Francis Richter

  Data, Body, Might

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