Quotes About Assumptions

Staying conscious means overcoming the auto-pilot mode and paying attention to everything that may relate to potential solutions, particularly those things that we take for granted or that we have come to accept as the way we do things around here. Always challenge current assumptions and beliefs in an effort to break through to a new level of thinking that may take you out of your comfort zone.

The letters between the two philosophers were cordial, although Spinoza at first distrusted Leibniz, who in turn referred to him privately as 'a Jew expelled from the synagogue for his monstrous opinions'. Since the fundamental assumptions behind their two systems are profoundly similar, it is perhaps not surprising that the two philosophers – whose conclusions are wholly opposed – should have treated each other with a certain caution.

Text of bliss: the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts (perhaps to the point of a certain boredom), unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language.

Al-Qaeda was conceived in the marriage of these assumptions: Faith is stronger than weapons or nations, and the ticket to enter the sacred zone where such miracles occur is the willingness to die.

Especially about how hard it was for ex-military people. They entered the civilian world with all the wrong assumptions. They expected the same kind of certainties they had known before. The straightforwardness, the transparency, the honesty, the shared sacrifice.

So the first issue of a proper method is always set the proper context. What are you counting on? What do you already know by the time you get to this point? What are you taking for granted that enables you to study this particular topic?

More exists among human beings than can be answered by the simplistic question I'm hit with every day of my life: Are you a man or a woman?

Why couldn't you have told me so Three quarters of an hour ago, You prince of all the asses?

The liberal judgment of Dreiser and James goes back of politics, goes back to the cultural assumptions that make politics. We are still haunted by a kind of political fear of the intellect which Tocqueville observed in us more than a century ago.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was not a lazy man, but it was remarkable to reflect how most men imagined that things like tea and food would simply appear if they waited long enough. There would always be a woman in the background--a mother, a girlfriend, a wife--who would ensure that those needs would be met.

It was reasonable enough, of course, for people to wish to speak to a man, if that is what they wanted, but that did not mean that a man would be better.

Remember, always, that everything you know, and everything everyone knows, is only a model. Get your model out there where it can be viewed. Invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own.

One of the strangest assumptions of present-day mental models is the idea that world of moderation must be a world of strict, centralized government control. For a sustainable economy, that kind of control is not possible, desirable, or necessary.

When someone tells you they've just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality. You can immediately assume so many things: that they're locked into jobs they hate; that they're broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that they're fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas. It's profoundly depressing.

What is trans? Who is trans? What makes someone trans? Are we sure that it exists as a category? And if so, are we certain that attempting to turn somebody physically from one sex to another is always possible? Or even the best way to deal with the conundrum this presents? Among all the subjects in this book and all the complex issues of our age, none is so radical in the confusion and assumptions it elicits, and so virulent in the demands it makes, as the subject of trans.

The truth is, intentions are invisible. We assume them from other people's behavior. In other words, we make them up, we invent them. But

Our Assumptions About Intentions Are Often Wrong

Nonbelievers can teach the truth in any given area only on the basis of common grace—that is, if they borrow Christian categories on the sly in order to do so. But when nonbelievers grow increasingly aware of their epistemological assumptions, they begin rejecting the very concept of truth—every manifestation of it—and they embrace the absurd. And this is why the only place where academic integrity can flourish over time is in a Christian school. The

The independence of art from worldview and worldview concerns is a myth. Every work of art is produced within a framework of worldview assumptions.

The more I work with the body, keeping my assumptions in a temporary state of reservation, the more I appreciate and sympathize with a given "disease." The body no longer appears as a sick or irrational demon, but as a process with its own inner logic and wisdom.

just because I was born in a stable does not make me a horse

when we challenge our assumptions about the world—or even more important, when we realize we're making an assumption that we didn't even know we were making—we may or may not change our views. But even if we don't, the exercise of challenging them should at least force us to notice our own stubbornness, which in turn should give us pause.

Plans fail, in other words, not because planners ignore common sense, but rather because they rely on their own common sense to reason about the behavior of people who are different from them.

scenario planners attempt to sketch out a wide range of these hypothetical futures, where the main aim is not so much to decide which of these scenarios is most likely as to challenge possibly unstated assumptions that underpin existing strategies.18