Quotes About Assumptions

We're facing a danger that economics is rigorous deduction based upon faulty assumptions. Science after science gets that way from time to time. When it does, we're in real trouble.

What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble, it's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

Unlike the poet, the novelist (see Auden's lustrous sonnet of that name) assumes that his or her reactions to the main events (in life, in history) are utterly median, average—predictably and dependably human.

Why did people assume that the beautiful among them needed nothing but their beauty to bring them happiness? That behind the beauty there was nothing but an empty shell, insensitive shell?

Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.

Reflective meditation is a way of translating thoughts into the language of feeling. It explores the relation between the way we think about and perceive things and the way we feel about them. We find that even the strongest, seemingly self-evident intuitions about ourselves are based on equally deep-seated assumptions. Gradually learning to see our life in another way through reflective meditation leads to feeling different about it as well.

The emptiness of self, for instance, is not the denial of individual uniqueness but the denial of any permanent, partless, and transcendent basis for individuality. The anguish and uncertainty of human existence are only exacerbated by the preconceptual, spasm-like grip in which such assumptions of transcendence hold us.

I greatly enjoyed these studies. Geshe Rabten communicated the ideas clearly and succinctly, then had us divide into pairs to pick apart in debate the details of what he had just taught. This was an excellent intellectual discipline. It made me aware of how much of my thinking was muddled. Without subjecting one's ideas to such scrutiny, it is easy and reassuring to cherish opinions that, in the end, are found to rest on the sloppiest of unexamined assumptions. This

Love chooses to believe the best about people. It gives them the benefit of the doubt. It refuses to fill in the unknowns with negative assumptions. And when our worst hopes are proven to be true, love makes every effort to deal with them and move forward. As much as possible, love focuses on the positive.

People assume any twentieth-century white male writer must be an alcoholic.

Assumptions made by others indicates clearly how much people envy your blessings.

Always assume your assumptions about others are wrong. Because often, they are

I love to start characters in a place where you think you know them. We can make all kinds of assumptions about them and think they have no redeeming qualities, but like everyone, they're complex.

Much of the environmental movement is a Trojan Horse for socialist assumptions and ambitions (the British like to call environmentalists "watermelons"—green on the outside, red on the inside).

but it was death that changed. People are still people. Some good, some bad. Death changed, and we don't know what death really means anymore. Maybe that was the point. Maybe this is an object lesson about the arrogance of our assumptions. Hard to say. But the world? She didn't change. She healed. We stopped hurting her and she began to heal. You can see it all around. The whole world is a forest now. The air is fresher. More trees, more oxygen.

No one is really who people think they are. It's unfair. When they give us nicknames and create a story for us, everyone expects us to be that person and to live up to that legend.

I'm not funny. People assume that because my books are funny, I'll be funny in real life. It's the inevitable disappointment of meeting me.

She was so pure and so brave and so singular in her faith and obedience to God that, perhaps like Francis of Assisi or even like Jesus himself, she challenges many of our deepest assumptions about what a life can be.

The two most important assumptions entrepreneurs make are what I call the value hypothesis and the growth hypothesis.

too many startup business plans look more like they are planning to launch a rocket ship than drive a car. They prescribe the steps to take and the results to expect in excruciating detail, and as in planning to launch a rocket, they are set up in such a way that even tiny errors in assumptions can lead to catastrophic outcomes.

The next few months are where the true story of IMVU begins, not with our brilliant assumptions and strategies and whiteboard gamesmanship but with the hard work of discovering what customers really wanted and adjusting our product and strategy to meet those desires. We adopted the view that our job was to find a synthesis between our vision and what customers would accept; it wasn't to capitulate to what customers thought they wanted or to tell customers what they ought to want.

For one thing, everyone would insist that assumptions be stated explicitly and tested rigorously not as a stalling tactic or a form of make-work but out of a genuine desire to discover the truth that underlies every project's vision.

The first step would be to break down the grand vision into its component parts. The two most important assumptions entrepreneurs make are what I call the value hypothesis and the growth hypothesis. The value hypothesis tests whether a product or service really delivers value to customers once they are using it.