Presumption Quotes - Page 4

• But if it’s true that the only true life I had was the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for eight hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that, at the end of the day, they will give it back in an unmutilated condition? Fat chance!

  Utah Phillips

  Eight, Hands, Giving

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• We are not actually in charge of life, yet we behave as if we are the masters of our own destiny. The realization of this fact is quite a hard one. The ridiculousness of our pomposity and presumption can only result in anger or humor.

  Billy Childish

  Destiny, Realization, Facts

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• A lot of these ideas are built under wrong presumptions which officials have that chess players are lazy bastards whose sole idea is to deceive (the) public and to make short draws and go home. It's not true. It's a lie.

  Boris Gelfand

  Lying, Home, Player

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• We start from the presumption that our people are talented and want to contribute. We accept that, without meaning to, our company is stifling that talent in myriad unseen ways. Finally, we try to identify those impediments and fix them.

  Edwin Catmull

  People, Trying, Unseen

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• My god, people are selling their work and people are reading it! The horror! That MFA programs have to advertise that they'll let you write YA or fantasy or what-have-you is just absurd, but we do, because the presumption is that they're closed to that sort of thing. You're offering an MFA in creative writing? Teach people how to write well, worry about that part, let the writers come up with the stories.

  Tod Goldberg

  Reading, Writing, Offering

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Fortunately, however, birds don't understand pep talks. Not even St. Francis'. Just imagine, he went on, preaching sermons to perfectly good thrushes and goldfinches and chiff-chaffs! What presumption! Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut and let the birds preach to him?

  Aldous Huxley

  Perfectly Good, Bird, Mouths

  Aldous Huxley (2010). “Island”, p.18, Harper Collins

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• We dress them [children] in the presumptions of the world. They are the bright small face of hope. They are the last belief we have, the belief in making them believe.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Children, Believe, Dresses

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• Knowing what we must do is neither fundamental nor difficult, but to comprehend which presumptions and vain prejudices we must rid ourselves of in order to be able to educate our children is most difficult.

  Maria Montessori

  Children, Knowing, Order

  Maria Montessori (1970). “The child in the family”, Contemporary Books

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• During the first period of our lives the greatest danger is not to take the risk. When once the risk has been taken, then the greatest danger is to risk too much. By not risking at first one turns aside and serves trivialities; in the second case, by risking too much, one turns aside to the fantastic and perhaps to presumption.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Taken, Risk, Too Much

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• An important and fundamental premise of the American judicial system is the presumption of innocence, that is until proven guilty.

  DMX

  Presumption Of Innocence, Important, Fundamentals

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Choices, Solitude, World

  Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “Prodigal Summer”, p.353, Faber & Faber

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• If we are to have a culture as resilient and competent in the face of necessity as it needs to be, then it must somehow involve within itself a ceremonious generosity toward the wilderness of natural force and instinct. The farm must yield a place to the forest, not as a wood lot, or even as a necessary agricultural principle but as a sacred grove - a place where the Creation is let alone, to serve as instruction, example, refuge; a place for people to go, free of work and presumption, to let themselves alone. (pg. 125, The Body and the Earth)

  Wendell Berry

  Yield, People, Generosity

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• I am weak, I say with no presumptions. I have no merit, I note it, that is all. There are times that I feel so weak there most be a mistake, and as I don't know what I mean with this, I am not going to say anything else

  Romain Gary

  Mistake, Mean, Say Anything

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• Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life!

  Charles Darwin

  Ignorance, Law, Profound

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)”, p.3445, Delphi Classics

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• Active liberty is particularly at risk when law restricts speech directly related to the shaping of public opinion, for example, speech that takes place in areas related to politics and policy-making by elected officials. That special risk justifies especially strong pro-speech judicial presumptions. It also justifies careful review whenever the speech in question seeks to shape public opinion, particularly if that opinion in turn will affect the political process and the kind of society in which we live.

  Stephen Breyer

  Strong, Policy Making, Law

  "Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution". Book by Stephen Breyer, 2008.

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• But I rather thought--I mean, I heard you'd killed Balder the Fair." "I never did," snapped Loki crossly. "Well, no one ever proved I did. What happened to the presumption of innocence? Besides, he was supposed to be invulnerable. Was it my fault that he wasn't?

  Joanne Harris

  Mean, Presumption Of Innocence, Faults

  Joanne Harris (2008). “Runemarks”, p.105, Random House

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• When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Reason, Heard

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• When pride and presumption walk before, shame and loss follow very closely.

  Louis XI of France

  Pride, Loss, Haughtiness

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• Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or "surrender" as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing-absolutely nothing-in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Teaching, Arrogance, Islam

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.129, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Even at legal brothels, sex workers have very little power and control over their workplace. They might have power with their customers on a case-by-case basis in terms of what they want to do and not do, but they don't necessarily have a lot of power in how that business operates. There's this presumption that sex workers are broken people, so how could they engage in something like workplace democracy? How could they even have demands?

  Melissa Gira Grant

  People, Broken, Democracy

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The birth of a new fact is always a wonderful thing to experience. It's dualistically called a "discovery" because of the presumption that it has an existence independent of anyone's awareness of it. When it comes along, it always has, at first, a low value. Then, depending on the value-looseness of the observer and the potential quality of the fact, its value increases, either slowly or rapidly, or the value wanes and the fact disappears.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Independent, Discovery, Quality

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• Principle II: The presumptions of the law are creative presumptions:;: they are aimed at conditions to be brought about, and only for that reason ignore conditions which exist.

  William Ernest Hocking

  Law, Creative, Principles

  "Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights". Book by William Ernest Hocking, Ch. VI : Presumptive Rights, § 24, p. 62, 1926.

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• I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong. They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favour of the people.

  Edmund Burke

  Country, Thinking, People

  'Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents' (1770) p. 7

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• A cold-blooded, calculation, unprincipled, usurper, without a virtue, no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Ignorance, Knowing Nothing, Government

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1859). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence”, p.352

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• Arrogance is the act of the great; presumption that of the little.

  George Crabbe

  Arrogance, Littles

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