Assertion Quotes - Page 10

• If the pilots were in charge, Columbus would still be in port. They believe the assertion that the world is flat.

  Robert Crandall

  Believe, World, Pilots

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• Wisdom... is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Life, Reality, Men

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2009). “The Great Crash 1929”, p.93, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There is one thing to be remembered: that the assertion 'I am God' cannot be made with regard to the sense-world.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Inspirational, Motivational, World

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.2245, Manonmani Publishers

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• Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.

  Samuel Johnson

  Opponents, Belief, Argument

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• Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it-that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life-that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.

  Ayn Rand

  Responsibility, Acceptance, Men

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.225, Penguin

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• In a city where most of the wealth is controlled by a small few, certain things are overlooked, particularly when it comes to the assertion of privilege.

  Ellen Kushner

  Cities, Privilege, Wealth

  Ellen Kushner (2016). “The Privilege of the Sword”, p.255, Hachette UK

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• Look at your hand. Its structure does not match the structure of assertions, the structure of facts. Your hand is continuous. Assertions and facts are discontinuous.... You lift your index finger half an inch; it passes through a million facts. Look at the way your hand goes on and on, while the clock ticks, and the sun moves a little further across the sky.

  Michael Frayn

  Moving, Hands, Sky

  Michael Frayn (2013). “Constructions”, p.69, Faber & Faber

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• Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that God or Christ founded anything like what churchmen understand by the Church.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Church, Christ

  Leo Tolstoy (2009). “The Kingdom of God Is Within You: Easyread Edition”, p.68, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language.

  William Strunk, Jr.

  Language, Colorless, Definite

  William Strunk Jr. (2015). “Elements of Style”, p.20, Lulu.com

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• The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses.

  Milan Kundera

  Writing, Play, Doe

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• How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives

  Samuel Johnson

  Children, Eye, Parent

  Samuel Johnson (1846). “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia: A Tale”, p.85

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• To love is to see myself in you and to wish to celebrate myself with you. What I love is the embodiment of my values in another person. Love is an act of self-assertion, self-expression and a celebration of being alive.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Love Is, Self, Expression

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• We will no longer be led only by that half of the population whose socialization, through toys, games, values and expectations, sanctions violence as the final assertion of manhood, synonymous with nationhood.

  Wilma Scott Heide

  Leadership, Women, Games

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• Intercourse is an assertion of mastery, one that announces his own higher caste and proves it upon a victim who is expected to surrender, serve, and be satisfied.

  Kate Millett

  Sex, Mastery, Surrender

  Kate Millett (2016). “Sexual Politics”, p.20, Columbia University Press

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• What is still more to our shame as civilized Christians, we debauch their morals already too prone to vice, and we introduce among them wants and perhaps disease which they never before knew and which serve only to disturb that happy tranquility which they and their forefathers enjoyed. If anyone denies the truth of this assertion, let him tell me what the natives of the whole extent of America have gained by the commerce they have had with Europeans.

  James Cook

  Christian, America, History

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• There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts--obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Betrayal, Philosophy, War

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

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• What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of therules and no involvement in decision-making. . . . Involving the adolescent in decisions doesn't mean that you are giving up your authority. It means acknowledging that the teenager is growing up and has the right to participate in decisions that affect his or her life.

  Laurence Steinberg

  Giving Up, Growing Up, Teenager

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• A central tenet of modern feminist thought has been the assertion that "all women are oppressed." This assertion implies that women share a common lot, that factors like class, race, religion, sexual preference, etc. do not create a diversity of experience that determines the extent to which sexism will be an oppressive force in the lives of individual women.

  Bell Hooks

  Race, Class, Diversity

  bell hooks (2014). “Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center”, p.5, Routledge

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• I know not whether it would be too bold an assertion to say that candor makes capacity.... But in order to try the truth of any observation relating to the mind, the easiest method is to illustrate it by outward objects. If, for instance, a man was to sweat and labor all the days of his life to fill a chest which was already full, the absurdity of his vain endeavor would be glaring. In the same manner, when the human mind is filled and stuffed with notions brought thither by fallacious inclinations, there is no room for truth to enter: candor being banished, passions alone bear the sway.

  Sarah Fielding

  Education, Passion, Men

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• Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in his assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Intelligent, Doe

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• This is emphatically an age of discoveries; but I will venture the assertion, that none but an American slaveholder could have discovered that a man born in a country was not a citizen of it.

  William Wells Brown

  Country, Men, Discovery

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• Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then suchand such another proposition is true of that thing.... Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

  Bertrand Russell

  Knowledge, Talking, May

  "Mathematics and Metaphysicians" (1901)

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• Let there be no mincing of comparisons in this assertion. Not Turner, not Monet, painted so directly blinding shafts of sunlight as has this Spaniard.

  James Huneker

  Light, Monet, Turner

  James Huneker (1910). “Promenades of an Impressionist”

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• To have peace in the world, men & nations must embrace the nonviolent assertion that ends and means must cohere.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Mean, Men, World

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• Each pursues his private interest and only his private interest; and thereby serves the private interests of all, the general interest, without willing it or knowing it. The real point is not that each individual's pursuit of his private interest promotes the totality of private interests, the general interest. One could just as well deduce from this abstract phrase that each individual reciprocally blocks the assertion of the others' interests, so that, instead of a general affirmation, this war of all against all produces a general negation.

  Karl Marx

  Block, Real, War

  "Grundrisse". Book by Karl Marx, Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 76, 1857-1858.

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