Propositions Quotes - Page 7

• It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.

  Thomas Huxley

  Men, Objective Truth, Produce

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2012). “Lectures and Essays”, p.247, tredition

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• another tradition to politics, a tradition (of politics) that stretched from the days of the country’s founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done.

  Barack Obama

  Meaningful, Country, Believe

  Barack Obama (2007). “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, p.2, Canongate Books

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• You can't quantify love, and if you try, you can end up focusing on misleading factors. Stuff that really has more to do with personality-the fact that some people are simply more expressive or emotional or needy in a relationship. But beyond such smokescreens, the answer is there. Love is seldom-almost never-an even proposition.

  Emily Giffin

  Love Is, Emotional, People

  Emily Giffin (2006). “Baby Proof”

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• Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Jesus, Men, Ideas

  Thomas Jefferson (1964). “The Jefferson Bible: With the Annotated Commentaries on Religion of Thomas Jefferson”

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• If God existed (a question concerning which Jubal maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped (a proposition which Jubal found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to Jubal to the point of reductio ad absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed by the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as "worship.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Ignorance, Light, Intellectual

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• What's wrong with my proposition?" Poirot rose. "If you will forgive me for being personal-I do not like your face, M. Ratchett.

  Agatha Christie

  Rose, Forgive Me, Forgiving

  Agatha Christie (1984). “Five complete Hercule Poirot novels”, Random House Value Pub

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• He broke up with me." "Because you weren't in love with him. That's an iffy proposition, and I think he's handling with grace. A lot of teenage boys would sulk, or lurk around under your window with a boom box." "No one has a boom box anymore. That was the eighties.

  Cassandra Clare

  Teenage, Boys, Thinking

  Cassandra Clare (2009). “Sample of the CITYs”, p.67, Simon and Schuster

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• Grace abounds in contemporary movies, books, novels, films and music. If God is not in the whirlwind, He may be in a Woody Allen film, or a Bruce Springsteen concert. Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. Images touch hearts and awaken imaginations. One theologian suggested that Springsteen's 'Tunnel of Love' album, in which he symbolically sings of sin, death, despair and redemption, is more important for Catholics than the Pope's last visit when he spoke of morality only in doctrinal propositions.

  Brennan Manning

  Love, Book, Heart

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• It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Life, Wisdom, Philosopher

  Journal entry (translated by Alexander Dru, 1938).

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• Love is seldom—almost never—an even proposition. Someone always loves more.

  Emily Giffin

  Love Is

  Emily Giffin (2010). “Baby Proof: A Novel”, p.48, Macmillan

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• This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: At the time, no one knew what was coming.

  Haruki Murakami

  Important, May

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• Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.

  Joseph J. Ellis

  Mean, America, Argument

  Joseph J. Ellis (2003). “Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation”, p.16, Vintage

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• The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time

  Bob Dylan

  Sleep, Past, Men

  Bob Dylan (2011). “Chronicles”, p.157, Simon and Schuster

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• Never accept the proposition that just because a solution satisfies a problem, that it must be the only solution.

  Raymond E. Feist

  Problem, Accepting, Solutions

  "Magician". Book by Raymond E. Feist, October 1982.

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• Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.

  Bertrand Russell

  Attitude, Believe, Mind

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Why I Am Not a Christian”, p.55, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Many women to whom I have preached the doctrine of freedom have weakly replied, 'But who is to support the children?' It seems to me that if the marriage ceremony is needed as a protection to insure the enforced support of children, then you are marrying a man who, you suspect, would under certain conditions, refuse to support his children, and it is a pretty low-down proposition. For you are marrying a man whom you already suspect of being a villain. But I have not so poor an opinion of men that I believe the greater percentage of them to be such low specimens of humanity.

  Isadora Duncan

  Children, Believe, Men

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• In deference to such spectacular carnage it is perhaps perverse to dwell upon one person's death, but we are creatures so constituted that the passing of one friend or one acquaintance has a profounder effect that that of 100,000 strangers. If there is any metaphorical truth in the Jewish proverb that he who saves one life saves the whole world, then there is equal metaphorical truth in the proposition that when one person dies, the whole world dies with them.

  Louis de Bernieres

  World, Stranger, Passing

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• The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really this proposition: that nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover she is a step-mother.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Mother, Essence, Steps

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.84, Simon and Schuster

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• Certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to ideoologues, dogmatists, and bullies--people who think that their rigtness justifies them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to suscribe to their particular ideology, dogma or notion of turf. If the conviction of rightness is powerful enough, resistance to it will be met, sooner or later by force. There are people like this in every sphere of life, and it is natural to feel that the world would be a better place without them!

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Powerful, Thinking, People

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• Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.

  Karen Armstrong

  Life, Change, Truth

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• Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religion, Atheism, Libertarian

  Thomas Jefferson (1939). “Democracy”

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• You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.” “A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting.” “You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Simple, Doctors, Views

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2007). “The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased Edition) (Vol. 1) (The Annotated Books)”, p.42, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Children, Men, Evil

  Kurt Vonnegut (2013). “If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young”, p.64, RosettaBooks

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• By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Confusion, May, Modern

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• When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies.

  Sam Harris

  Integrity, Logical Arguments, People

  Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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