Premises Quotes - Page 8

• You see, this would be a death by the imagination. And though the imagination feeds on phantoms, it needs a premise in reality to begin with. Then it can go on from there under its own power.

  Cornell Woolrich

  Fear, Reality, Imagination

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• The present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of 'identity.'

  Alfred Korzybski

  Identity, Negative, Fundamentals

  Alfred Korzybski (1958). “Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics”, p.10, Institute of GS

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• This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture... The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call-to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness-idealism. By this we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men.

  Adolf Hitler

  Attitude, Sacrifice, Men

  "Mein Kampf". Book by Adolf Hitler, Chapter 11, Ralph Manheim translation, 1925.

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• People tune in to the Fox News Channel because it was founded on the premise that all sides should be presented fairly. This has upset the 'media establishment' but has made Fox the most powerful name in the news. I'm proud that Hannity & Colmes has contributed to this success, an achievement that has been often dissected by liberal media pundits who argue that Sean is more aggressive than I am and therefore dominates the show.

  Alan Colmes

  Powerful, Media, Names

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• What joins the Americans one to another is not a common ancestry, language or race, but a shared work of the imagination that looks forward to the making of a future, not backward to the insignia of the past. Their enterprise is underwritten by a Constitution that allows for the widest horizons of sight and the broadest range of expression, supports the liberties of the people as opposed to the ambitions of the state, and stands as premise for a narrative rather than plan for an invasion or a monument. The narrative was always plural; not one story, many stories.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Ambition, Past, Race

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• Much of the philosophy of religious education has been based upon a false premise, and perhaps many have missed the essence of Christian experience, having had religious training take its place.

  Billy Graham

  Christian, Religious, Philosophy

  Billy Graham (1966). “The Quotable Billy Graham”

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• Abstract art as it is conceived at present is a game bequeathed to painting and sculpture by art history. One who accepts its premises must consent to limit his imagination to a depressing casuistry regarding the formal requirements of modernism.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Depressing, Art, Games

  Harold Rosenberg (1983). “Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations”, p.71, University of Chicago Press

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• There is a new survey out about the happiest professions. I think the whole premise is flawed. You're supposed to find true happiness outside of work. From friends, family, and YouTube videos of old people falling down.

  Craig Ferguson

  Happiness, Fall, Thinking

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• Contemporary philosophers have exercised themselves with the problem of our knowledge of other minds. Enmeshed in the dogma of the ghost in the machine, they have found it impossible to discover any logically satisfactory evidence warranting one person in believing that there exist minds other than his own. I can witness what your body does, but I cannot witness what your mind does, and my pretensions to infer from what your body does to what your mind does all collapse, since the premises for such inferences are either inadequate or unknowable.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Believe, Mind, Doe

  Gilbert Ryle (2015). “The Concept of Mind”, p.55, Lulu Press, Inc

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• By requiring that an execution be relatively painless, we necessarily protect the inmate from enduring any punishment that is comparable to the suffering inflicted on his victim. This trend, while appropriate and required by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based.

  John Paul Stevens

  Punishment, Suffering, Trends

  Baze v. Rees, 553 U.S. 35, www.law.cornell.edu. 2008.

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• The economic prerequisites for the socialist revolution are fully matured in the US. The political premises are likewise far more advanced than might appear on the surface.

  James P. Cannon

  Political, Might, Revolution

  James P. Cannon (2000). “Fighting for Socialism in the 'American Century'”, p.148, Resistance Books

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• Sometimes, the only way to learn something really well is to revert to the state of mind of a novice and reawaken to the raw observations that you have accumulated instead of relying on the conclusions you have reached from the exogenous premises absorbed through teaching and bookish learning.

  Erik Naggum

  Teaching, Mind, Novices

  Re: Guide to Lisp, v1.20 (Usenet article), groups.google.com. August 28, 2002.

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• The broader unquestioned premises upon which my own culture founded its view of the human condition, such as the one that Unhappiness is as legitimate a part of experience as happiness and necessary in order to render happiness appreciable, or that it is more advantageous to be young than to be old: those still took me a long time to pry loose for reexamination.

  Jean Liedloff

  Order, Views, Long

  Jean Liedloff (1985). “The Continuum Concept: Allowing Human Nature to Work Successfully”, p.18, Da Capo Press

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• The method of exposition which philosophers have adopted leads many to suppose that they are simply inquiries, that they have no interest in the conclusions at which they arrive, and that their primary concern is to follow their premises to their logical conclusions.

  Morris Raphael Cohen

  Inquiry, Philosopher, Logical

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• Where I'm from we don't trust paper. Wealth is what's here on the premises. If I open a cupboard and see, say, thirty cans of tomato sauce and a five-pound bag of rice, I get a little thrill of well-being - much more so than if I take a look at the quarterly dividend report from my mutual fund.

  Garrison Keillor

  Trust, Paper, Littles

  "The Times Book of Quotations". Book by HarperCollins, 2000.

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• Well, what I've said is that the war in Iraq will always be clouded by how it began, which was a wrong premise, that there were in fact no weapons of nuclear - weapons of mass destruction.

  Robert M. Gates

  War, Iraq, Mass Destruction

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• I found, especially with stand-up, that if a premise works, you can make the joke work. If a premise doesn't work, you can't force it to.

  Nick Kroll

  Found, Force, Ifs

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• One of the most important disciplines in journalism is to challenge your working premises.

  Bill Keller

  Discipline, Challenges, Important

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• Originally the premise of killing Hitler was fueled by deep traumatic feelings of wishing and fantasizing that if only things had been different, we could have spared ourselves all kinds of suffering. More recently it's been turned into a comedic trope. As we go forward, tragedy plus time equals comedy...

  Gavriel David Rosenfeld

  Feelings, Suffering, Tragedy

  "Back to the Führer: This Guy Studies Baby Hitler Time Machine Scenarios". Interview with Dave Glison, www.motherjones.com. October 23, 2015.

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• Inferences of Science and Common Sense differ from those of deductive logic and mathematics in a very important respect, namely, when the premises are true and the reasoning correct, the conclusion is only probable.

  Bertrand Russell

  Common Sense, Important, Logic

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• Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago.

  Barack Obama

  Pride, Simple, Years

  2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, delivered 27 July 2004, Fleet Center, Boston

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• That the sight of people attracts still other people, is something that city planners and city architectural designers seem to find incomprehensible. They operate on the premise that city people seek the sight of emptiness, obvious order and quiet. Nothing could be less true. The presences of great numbers of people gathered together in cities should not only be frankly accepted as a physical fact... they should also be enjoyed as an asset and their presence celebrated.

  Jane Jacobs

  Order, Cities, Numbers

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• I don't think you can solve what's going on in Iraq unless you can deal effectively with the region and you can't deal effectively with the region if you start with the premise that you can't talk to people who disagree with you.

  Wesley Clark

  Thinking, Iraq, People

  Source: www.sbs.com.au

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• It's always hard, but it's always fun to attack a premise that you think is interesting. It does take a few drafts for sure.

  Victor Levin

  Fun, Thinking, Interesting

  Source: collider.com

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• Our interpretations through the years and generations have always changed, but the emotions, ideas, and the thoughts of the composers are still with us, and these are the premise of the music. The time factor has little to do with it because, after all, it is about human feeling, the Universe and who we are as people.

  David Finckel

  Ideas, Years, People

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