Supposition Quotes - Page 2

• Fear and hope remain the same; therefore the study of the psychology of speculators is as valuable as it ever was. Weapons change, but strategy remains strategy, on the New York Stock Exchange as on the battlefield. I think the clearest summing up of the whole thing was  expressed by Thomas F. Woodlock when he declared: “The principles of successful stock speculation are based on the supposition that people will continue in the future to make the mistakes that they have made in the past.”

  Edwin Lefevre

  New York, Mistake, Successful

  Edwin Lefevre (2013). “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator”, p.388, Lulu Press, Inc

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• There is no cruelty so inexorable and unrelenting as that which proceeds from a bigoted and presumptuous supposition of doing service to God. The victim of the fanatical persecutor will find that the stronger the motives he can urge for mercy are, the weaker will be his chance for obtaining it, for the merit of his destruction will be supposed to rise in value in proportion as it is effected at the expense of every feeling both of justice and of humanity.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Justice, Feelings, Humanity

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.128

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• It was Plato, according to Sosigenes, who set this as a problem for those concerned with these things, through what suppositions of uniform and ordered movements the appearances concerning the movements of the wandering heavenly bodies could be preserved.

  Plato

  Plato, Science, Movement

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• I sometimes compare press officers to riflemen on the Somme -- mowing down wave upon wave of distortion, taking out rank upon rank of supposition, deduction and gossip.

  Bernard Ingham

  Media, Gossip, Mowing

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• Supposition all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes; For treason is but trusted like the fox, Who, ne'er so tame, so cherished and locked up, Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.

  William Shakespeare

  Eye, Foxes, Tricks

  1596-7 Worcester. Henry IV Part One, act 5, sc.2, l.9-11.

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• I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration and falsified data. Show me the research, show me the results, show me the conclusions - and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that.

  Bill Vaughan

  Hate, Data, Peers

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• I do not mind at all that Newton is not a Cartesian provided he does not offer us suppositions like that of attraction.

  Christiaan Huygens

  Mind, Doe, Newton

  Letter to Fatio de Duillier, quoted in "René Dugas, Mechanics in the seventeenth century" (1958), p. 440, July 11, 1687.

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• What I affirm is the intuition that where God's presence is no longer a tenable supposition and where His absence is no longer a felt, indeed overwhelming weight, certain dimensions of thought and creativity are no longer attainable. And I would vary Yeats's axiom so as to say: no man can read fully, can answer answeringly to the aesthetic, whose "nerve and blood" are at peace in sceptical rationality, are now at home in immanence and verification. We must read as if.

  George Steiner

  Home, Creativity, Men

  George Steiner (2010). “Real Presences: Is There Anything in What We Say?”, p.264, Faber & Faber

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• Thus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law. Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Passion, Views, Law

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• I start from the supposition that the world is topsyturvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth. I start from the supposition that we don't have to say too much about this because all we have to do is think about the state of the world today and realize that things are all upside down.

  Howard Zinn

  Country, Thinking, Jail

  Howard Zinn (1997). “The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy”, p.404, Seven Stories Press

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• it is, in truth, the most absurd of all suppositions, that a human being can be educated, or even nourished and brought up, without imbibing numberless prejudices from every thing which passes around him.

  Anna Letitia Barbauld

  Imbibing, Prejudice, Absurd

  Anna Letitia Barbauld (2001). “Anna Letitia Barbauld: Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.337, Broadview Press

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• Every president, Democratic or Republican, simply works on the supposition that it's better to keep jobs in America than let them go to Mexico.

  Paul Bloom

  Jobs, America, President

  "Paul Bloom: The Trouble With Empathy". Interview with Allyson Kirkpatrick, www.guernicamag.com. February 1, 2016.

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• The poem is a process, a way for me to discover questions, to ask them clearly or to discover the results of certain suppositions. Suppositions are a form of questioning.

  Pattiann Rogers

  Way, Form, Process

  Interview with Carolyn Perry, Wayne Zade, poems.com. 2009.

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• What triggers a poem for me is not the same as what triggers an essay. My mind is geared now to looking for, or to watching out for, the image that attracts my attention or the phrase or the strange juxtaposition that strikes me bodily, or an odd question or supposition.

  Pattiann Rogers

  Mind, Juxtaposition, Attention

  "A Conversation with Pattiann Rogers". Interview with Carolyn Perry, Wayne Zade, poems.com. 2009.

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• More philosophically-minded critics regarded Einstein's argument for relativity as little more than a logical bait-and-switch ploy: "[T]he supposition of most expounders of the Special Theory, that Einstein has proved the relativity of simultaneity in general - or that his 'simultaneity' is something more than a logical artefact - must manifestly be given up.

  Arthur Oncken Lovejoy

  Special, Bait, Littles

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• Science sometimes improves hypotheses and sometimes disproves them. But proof would be another matter and perhaps never occurs except in the realms of totally abstract tautology. We can sometimes say that if such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such abstract suppositions or postulates are given, then such and such must follow absolutely. But the truth about what can be perceived or arrived at by induction from perception is something else again.

  Gregory Bateson

  Perception, Would Be, Matter

  "Mind and Nature - a Necessary Unity". Book by Gregory Bateson, new edition, 1988.

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• When you read a history or biography you are entitled to imagine that it is as accurate as the authors can make it. That research has gone into it and we say "This is a history of the civil war, this is a biography of Lincoln" whatever. But you don't make any such supposition when you say "This is a historical novel."

  Nicholas Meyer

  War, Historical Novels, Gone

  Source: collider.com

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• A prevalent fallacy is the assumption that a proof of an afterlife would also be a proof of the existence of a deity. This is far from being the case. If, as I hold, there is no good reason to believe that a god either created or presides over this world, there is equally no good reason to believe that a god created or presides over the next world, on the unlikely supposition that such a thing exists.

  A.J. Ayer

  Believe, Afterlife, World

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• The supposition that it was possible for any woman to be so mean-spirited as not at least to wish to tear out her rival's eyes was too hard for the digestion of the Cry.

  Sarah Fielding

  Eye, Mean, Wish

  Sarah Fielding, Jane Collier (1754). “The Cry: A New Dramatic Fable”, p.33

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• Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his neighbors believe all that they profess, and act up to all that they believe!

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Believe, Men, Acting

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• Give us more and more of real Christianity, and we shall need less of its evidences. Act upon the supposition that Christ is a Divine Teacher, and you will soon have a demonstration of its truth.

  Edward Thomson

  Teacher, Real, Giving

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• I couldn't possibly tell you. But I would say be very careful with your suppositions. People are so quick to jump. That's what I love about playing the character. People are so quick to draw conclusions about who he is. The whole thing about Loki is that he's dancing on this liminal line between redemption and destruction. Just be very careful about drawing conclusions based on what you see.

  Tom Hiddleston

  Character, Drawing, People

  "Tom Hiddleston on The Hollow Crown, Loki's return in Thor: The Dark World and his take on Joss Whedon's much ado about nothing". Interview with Roth Cornet, www.ign.com. September 19, 2013.

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• Divorce also entails the beginning of a supposition that that familial reality might have obstructed one's ability to perceive others.

  Rachel Cusk

  Divorce, Reality, Might

  "Go Forth (Vol. 34)". Interview with Alice Whitwham, logger.believermag.com. June 17, 2015.

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• Most People are wretched more by the Fears of what may come, than what they endure at present. ... a manifest Contradiction to good Sense; for who, with the right use of that, wou'd lose the Enjoyment of a present Comfort, to lament a Misfortune only in Supposition; which ten to one never comes to pass.

  Eliza Haywood

  Fear, People, Live In The Moment

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• All of the civil rights problems during the past years have created a situation where America right now is moving toward a police state. You can't have anything otherwise. So that's your supposition.

  Malcolm X

  Moving, Past, Rights

  Source: nyx.uky.edu

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