Axioms Quotes

• The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

  Albert Einstein

  Education, Science, Numbers

  1970 Quoted in Life Magazine, 9 Jan.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.

  John Keats

  Philosophy, Experience, Pulse

  Letter to J. H. Reynolds, 3 May 1818, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 279

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.

  John Keats

  Book, Experience, Gone

  Letter to J. H. Reynolds, 3 May 1818, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 279

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• A science is something which is constructed from truth on workable axioms. There are 55 axioms in scientology which are very demonstrably true, and on these can be constructed a great deal.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Deals, Scientology

  0 Copy quote

• Fanon calls his ideology a new humanism, not only in contrast to the elite humanism of the West, but also on the axiom that the wretched of the earth, understood socially, think and thus must be a basis of a new politics. This, of course, is not achieved immediately, but it must become an explicit element of the struggle for liberation.

  Nigel Gibson

  Struggle, Thinking, Elements

  "Frantz Fanon and the Arab Uprisings: An Interview with Nigel Gibson". Interview with Yasser Munif, www.middleeastdigest.com. August 17, 2012.

  1 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can "prove" anything on the verbal level, just be accepting the necessary axioms at the beginning.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Levels, Accepting, Prove

  Source: theanarchistlibrary.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Sarcasm, Misunderstood, Want

  Edgar Allan Poe (2014). “Complete Collection of Edgar Allan Poe - 170+ eBooks (Complete Tales, Poems, Novels, Essays, Miscellaneous, Play)”, p.1206, Ageless Reads

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The two basic maxims of the so-called historical criticism are the postulate of the common and the axiom of the ordinary. Postulate of the common: everything really great, good, and beautiful, is improbable, since it is extraordinary and therefore at least suspect. Axiom of the ordinary: our conditions and environment must have existed everywhere, for they are really so natural.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Beautiful, Two, History

  0 Copy quote

• Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.

  John Searle

  Existence

  "Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language". Book by John Searle, 1969.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Axioms are delightful in theory, but impossible in practice.

  Antoine Rivarol

  Practice, Impossible, Theory

  2 Copy quote

• To choose one sock from each of infinitely many pairs of socks requires the Axiom of Choice, but for shoes the Axiom is not needed.

  Bertrand Russell

  Shoes, Choices, Pairs

  "Weighing the Odds: A Course in Probability and Statistics". Book by David Williams, p. 498, 2001.

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• Words are really powerful. I don't believe that axiom at all - words can absolutely hurt you. Words can wound. They can do a lot of damage. I think they can do way more damage than sticks and stones. I'll take sticks and stones.

  Mary-Louise Parker

  Hurt, Powerful, Believe

  Interview with Kyle Ryan, www.avclub.com. June 17, 2009.

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• The eye of understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or levels, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.

  Francis Bacon

  Nature, Eye, Understanding

  Francis Bacon (1854). “The Works of Lord Bacon: Philosophical works”, p.96

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• Talk can neither be verified nor falsified in any rigorous sense. This is an open secret which hermeneutics and aesthetics, from Aristotle to Croce, have laboured to exorcise or to conceal from themselves and their clients. This ontological, which is to say both primordial and essential axiom (or platitude) of ineradicable undecidability needs, none the less, to be closely argued.

  George Steiner

  Secret, Essentials, Needs

  "Real Presences". Book by George Steiner, 1986.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Independent, Government, Should

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.379, Cambridge University Press

  2 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fundamental axiom, then, for the study of man is the existence of individual consciousness

  Murray Rothbard

  Men, Liberty, Study

  Murray N. Rothbard (2011). “Economic Controversies”, p.17, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  1 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a self-evident axiom, that she who is born a beauty is half married.

  Ouida

  Beauty, Self, Half

  3 Copy quote

• I've made movies that were adaptations and I've been kind of frustrated by the process because, you know that old axiom, 'It's never as good as the book'? It's often true because nothing competes with your own imagination. When you're reading a book and you imagine something in your head, nothing's going to compete with that.

  Amber Heard

  Book, Reading, Imagination

  0 Copy quote

• For Stirner, the social axiom of conservative, liberal, and socialist schools of political thought alike is in itself repressive: it disguises as potentially redemptive an order whose central function is inhibitory of the individual's interests.

  John Carroll

  School, Order, Political

  John Carroll (2010). “Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky”, p.45, Taylor & Francis

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a social injunction implied in the positivist and analyst methods. This social axiom is that :;:;:;:;:;:; We OUGHT to act in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Way, Social, Analysts

  Jacob Bronowski (1965). “Science and Human Values”, HarperCollins Publishers

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• A crucial difference between lite libertarians and the right kind is that to the former, the idea of liberty is propositional - a deracinated principle, unmoored from the realities of history, hierarchy, biology, tradition, culture, values. Conversely, the paleolibertarian grasps that ordered liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure.

  Ilana Mercer

  Reality, Ideas, Differences

  "Apartheid South Africa: Reality Vs. Libertarian Fantasy". praag.org. December 20, 2013.

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• Axiom : Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.

  E. M. Forster

  Character, Perfect, Patterns

  E. M. Forster (1987). “Commonplace Book”, p.6, Stanford University Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are two principles on which all men of intellectual integrity and good will can agree, as a 'basic minimum,' as a precondition of any discussion, co-operation or movement toward an intellectual Renaissance. . . . They are not axioms, but until a man has proved them to himself and has accepted them, he is not fit for an intellectual discussion. These two principles are: a. that emotions are not tools of cognition; b. that no man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others.

  Ayn Rand

  Integrity, Men, Two

  11 Copy quote

• It may safely be received as an axiom in our political system, that the state governments will in all possible contingencies afford complete security against invasions of the public liberty by the national authority.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Government, Political, Liberty

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2016). “The Federalist Papers and the Constitution of the United States: The Principles of the American Government”, p.151, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

  2 Copy quote

  Show source