Propositions Quotes - Page 10

• The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.

  John Adams

  Patriotic, Thinking, People

  "The Life of Thomas Jefferson". Book by Henry S. Randall, p. 587, 1857.

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• Revelation in matters where reason cannot judge, or but probably, ought to be hearkened to. First, Whatever proposition is revealed, of whose truth our mind, by its natural faculties and notions, cannot judge, that is purely matter of faith, and above reason.

  John Locke

  Truth, Judging, Mind

  John Locke (1836). “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, p.530

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• It has often been argued that absolute scepticism is self-contradictory; but this is a mistake: and even if it were not so, it would be no argument against the absolute sceptic, inasmuch as he does not admit that no contradictory propositions are true. Indeed, it would be impossible to move such a man, for his scepticism consists in considering every argument and never deciding upon its validity; he would, therefore, act in this way in reference to the arguments brought against him.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Mistake, Moving, Men

  Charles Sanders Peirce, Nathan Houser, Christian J.W. J. W. Kloesel (1992). “The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings? (1867–1893)”, p.56, Indiana University Press

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• I go out to preach with two propositions in mind. First, every person ought to give his life to Christ. Second, whether or not anyone else gives him his life, I will give him mine.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Christian, Two, Giving

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• Faith is the assent to any proposition not made out by the deduction of reason but upon the credit of the proposer.

  John Locke

  Atheism, Credit, Reason

  John Locke (1825). “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding: An analysis of Mr. Locke's Doctrine of ideas .... A defense of Mr. Locke's Opinion concerning personal identity .... A treatise on the conduct of the understanding. Some thoughts concerning reading and study for a gentleman. Elements of natural philosophy. A new method of a common place book. Extracted from the author's works. With a life of the author”

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• Truth then seems to me, in the proper import of the word, to signify nothing but the joining or separating of Signs, as the Things signified by them do agree or disagree one with another. The joining or separating of signs here meant, is what by another name we call proposition. So that truth properly belongs only to propositions: whereof there are two sorts, viz. mental and verbal; as there are two sorts of signs commonly made use of, viz. ideas and words.

  John Locke

  Truth, Agreement, Names

  John Locke (2015). “An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding Volume 2: Top Essays”, p.151, 谷月社

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• In short, herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right from them: but idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all.

  John Locke

  Lying, Ideas, Differences

  John Locke (1828). “An essay concerning human understanding ... The twentieth edition, etc”, p.100

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• I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

  John Locke

  Self, Doubt, Might

  John Locke (1836). “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, p.421

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• [T]he 47th proposition in Euclid might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics; and therefore if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science as much as he hates concrete truth in human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions of the hypotenuse.

  Sydney Smith

  Hate, Science, Ease

  SYDNEY SMITH (1839). “The Works”, p.374

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• If you ask Americans whether they've been successful at sealing the border with Mexico, they'll tell you that it's a very difficult proposition.

  Bashar al-Assad

  Successful, Borders, Mexico

  ""Poverty Is a Greater Concern for Most than a Democratic Constitution"". Interview with Martin Doerry, www.spiegel.de. August 29, 2005.

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• When it comes to Jewish sensitivity, I don't find the proposition compelling that non-Jews have no right to comment. We all have the right to comment about each other. And I object when people say that these comments are motivated by anti-Semitism.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  People, Motivated, Sensitivity

  "The World According to Zbig". Interview with Charles Gati, www.politico.com. November 27, 2013.

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• The theologians also should not be irritated. For if they find that this opinion is false, then they would be free to condemn it; and if they discover that it is true, they ought to thank those who have opened the way to finding the true sense of the Scriptures and who have prevented them from falling into the grave scandal of condemning a true proposition.

  Galileo Galilei

  Fall, Would Be, Scandal

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• Abstract propositions should never be discussed by a legislative body.

  James Buchanan

  Body, Abstract, Should

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• Geometry in every proposition speaks a language which experience never dares to utter; and indeed of which she but halfway comprehends the meaning.

  William Whewell

  Language, Speak, Dare

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• Most people fear pain. I've learned that not feeling pain is a much more frightening proposition than feeling it. In fact, there are times when I'm playing when I actually enjoy it.

  Mark Zupan

  Pain, People, Feelings

  Mark Zupan, Tim Swanson (2009). “GIMP: The Story Behind the Star of Murderball”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• There is no other proposition in economics that has more solid empirical evidence supporting it than the Efficient Market Hypothesis... In the literature of finance, accounting, and the economics of uncertainty, the EMH is accepted as a fact of life.

  Michael Jensen

  Investing, Literature, Facts

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• In the beginning, we made the usual mistake of looking at houses we could afford. I am working on a proposition, hereafter to be known as Kerr's law, which states in essence: All the houses you can afford to buy are depressing.

  Jean Kerr

  Depressing, Mistake, Law

  Jean Kerr (1959). “Please Don't Eat the Daisies”

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• The one good thing to be said about announcing yourself as a writer in the colonial Canadian fifties is that nobody told me I couldn't do it because I was a girl. They simply found the entire proposition ridiculous. Writers were dead and English, or else extremely elderly and American; they were not sixteen years old and Canadian.

  Margaret Atwood

  Girl, Elderly, Years

  "Writing Philosophy". Waterstone's Poetry Lecture, Delivered at Hay on Wye. Wales, canpoetry.library.utoronto.ca. June 1995.

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• I always said marriage should be a fifty-fifty proposition. He should be at least fifty years old, and have at least fifty-million dollars.

  Zsa Zsa Gabor

  Years, Fifty Year Olds, Dollars

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• I am convinced that an electronic machine, no matter how smart and intelligent, being still a mere spatial structure in concept, can neither innovate nor even understand the self-evident proposition: 'No spatial structure can be a representation of any feeling'. Such innovation can only be a work of a non-spatial mind, like a human being, and only such innovation, it should be acknowledged, can pave the way for further scientific achievements.

  Kedar Joshi

  Smart, Intelligent, Self

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• And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation.

  Umberto Eco

  Believe, Analogies, Matter

  Umberto Eco (1994). “The Name of the Rose”, p.143, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If an opinion can eventually go to the determination of a practical belief, it, in so far, becomes itself a practical belief; and every proposition that is not pure metaphysical jargon and chatter must have some possible bearing upon practice.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Determination, Practice, Jargon

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1974). “Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce”, p.377, Harvard University Press

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• When an idea, a proposition, a cause is presented to me in terms that leave me no alternative but to be for it, because it's all pros and no cons, then I know I'm being conned.

  Jean-Louis Gassee

  Ideas, Alternatives, Causes

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• (R)eality TV (is) a medium dedicated to the proposition that with the help of judicious editing, carefully chosen half-wits can hold the attention of millions of their fellow half-wits for weeks on end.

  Terry Teachout

  Editing, Attention, Half

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• I've never been to the Oscars, but if I was ever invited to the Oscars, I would have this weird paranoia of terrorism. It just feels like The Poseidon Adventure, everyone in their tuxes. Somehow, I feel like the whole time I would be looking for where the nearest exit was, and in a cold sweat about some kind of man-made disaster, like a terrorist strike or something. It seems like such a scary, claustrophobic proposition.

  Mike White

  Adventure, Men, Sweat

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