Assertion Quotes - Page 6

• However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion, that, until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly.

  Frances Wright

  Women, House, Feelings

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures; with 3 addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789”, p.24

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• As presidential authority expands, and the role of Congress diminishes, the American people continue to lose control over their government. Today's assertions of executive power are indeed a nightmare and Peter Shane's extremely readable and well-informed book describes this disturbing transformation in frightening detail. For anybody who cares about our constitutional system of protected liberties, this book is indispensable. I couldn't put it down and grew angrier, and more concerned, with every page.

  Mickey Edwards

  Book, Government, People

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• Incidentally, when we're faced with a "prove or disprove," we're usually better off trying first to disprove with a counterexample, for two reasons: A disproof is potentially easier (we need just one counterexample); and nitpicking arouses our creative juices. Even if the given assertion is true, our search for a counterexample often leads to a proof, as soon as we see why a counterexample is impossible. Besides, it's healthy to be skeptical.

  Ronald Graham

  Learning, Creative Juices, Two

  Ronald L. Graham, Donald Ervin Knuth, Oren Patashnik (1989). “Concrete mathematics: a foundation for computer science”, Addison Wesley Publishing Company

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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• It is highly probable that the bulk of the Jew's ancestors 'never' lived in Palestine 'at all,' which witnesses the power of historical assertion over fact.

  H. G. Wells

  Historical, Facts, Palestine

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• A hundred years ago, when Richard Strauss, who has already been quoted and already been heard today, and other creative people, laid the foundation stone for the joint assertion of their rights and interests, they had pioneering work ahead of them in Germany.

  Johannes Rau

  Rights, Years, People

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• The blanket assertion that corporations are people obfuscates the complex issues at play in the changing business world. Corporation are institutions. People are people.

  Don Tapscott

  Play, Issues, People

  "Are Corporations People (Redux)? Why Jack Welch Is Wrong" by Don Tapscott, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 16, 2012.

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• Her professors were astonished by her leaps of thought, by the finesse and elegance of her insights. She arrived at hypotheses by sheer intuition and with what eventually one of her mentors described as an almost alarming speed; she was like a dancer, he said, out in the cosmos springing weightlessly from star to star. Drones, merely brilliant, crawled along behind with laborious proofs that supported her assertions.

  Deborah Eisenberg

  Stars, Dancer, Intuition

  Deborah Eisenberg (2016). “Twilight of the Superheroes”, p.36, Pan Macmillan

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• I do not espouse the unitarian position. President Clinton's assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan's assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions.

  Elena Kagan

  President, Administration, Serious

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• If man puts his honor first in relying upon himself, knowing himself and applying himself, this in self-reliance, self-assertion, and freedom, he then strives to rid himself of the ignorance which makes a strange impenetrable object a barrier and a hindrance to his self-knowledge.

  Max Stirner

  Fall, Ignorance, Men

  "The False Principle of our Education". Book by Max Stirner, p. 23, 1842.

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• Like most people of my generation, I fell in love with the philosophy of existentialism. There is no particular religious tradition in my work. There is only one psychological assertion that I would insist upon. That is: the SELF takes precedence.

  Stanley Elkin

  Religious, Philosophy, Self

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• To the human mind there is something almost illogical in the assertion that God became a man. It is like speaking about a square circle. Yet this is what Christmas says - and we take refuge from our bewilderment not in explanation but in adoration.

  Ralph P. Martin

  Men, Squares, Circles

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• Unless a woman asks men out (the first time) as often as men ask her out, then the assertion 'He asked me out, therefore he pays' is just a double jeopardy of the male role: he must not only do the asking, he must pay extra for risking extra rejection.

  Warren Farrell

  Men, Rejection, Pay

  "Why Men Are the Way They Are". Book by Warren Farrell, 1986.

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• Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen - the census taker - and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Million.

  O. Henry

  New York, Men, Long Ago

  O. Henry (2015). “The Complete Poetry of O. Henry (Including a Biography of the Author): From the American writer, a master of short stories, known for The Gift of the Magi, Cabbages and Kings, The Cop and the Anthem, Options, Roads of Destiny, The Four Million…”, p.146, e-artnow

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• It is sweet to see how soon a spring becomes a rill, and a rill runs on into a rivulet, and a rivulet swells into a brook; and before one has time to say 'what are you at?' - before the first tree it ever spoke to is a dummy, or the first hill it ever ran down has turned blue, here we all have airs and graces, demands and assertions of a full grown river.

  R.D. Blackmore

  Running, Sweet, Spring

  R. D. Blackmore (2015). “Crocker's Hole: From "Slain by the Doones"”, p.4, The Floating Press

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