Quotes About Assumptions

People are qualitatively the same but may differ quantitatively. The quantitative differences are small in biological terms, and they are found to a far greater extent among the individual members of an ethnic group or race than between ethnic groups or races. These are reassuring findings. Any racist ideology that holds that the members of an ethnic group are all alike, or that one ethnic group differs fundamentally from another, is based on false assumptions about our biology.

I love that sometimes we need to go to the opposite side of the world to realize assumptions that we didn't even know we had and realize that the opposite may also be true.

When you are tightly boxed in or cornered—all too often by your own stubborn and fixed adherence to some unconsciously worshipped assumptions—all there is to help you is what you have not yet learned.

Mark Twain dijo en una ocasión: «Lo que nos mete en problemas no es lo que no sabemos, sino lo que creemos que sabemos, pero no sabemos».

We make many assumptions about nature—about the environment—and these have consequences. Mark Twain once said, "It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.

Forty days is a long time in the underworld of dark assumptions, confusion and fear—long enough to journey to the very center, which is Hell itself.

A mathematician is always asking, "What assumptions are you making? And are they justified?

It comes back to his math-trained habits of thought. A mathematician is always asking, "What assumptions are you making?

Improbability, as described here, is a relative notion, not an absolute one; when we say an outcome is improbable, we are always saying, explicitly or not, that it is improbable under some set of hypotheses we've made about the underlying mechanisms of the world.

The only thing that interests the physicist is finding out on what assumptions a framework of things can be constructed which will enable us to know how to use them mechanically. Physics, as I have said on another occasion, is the technique of techniques and the ars combinatoria for fabricating machines. It is a knowledge which has scarcely anything to do with comprehension.

Fear and other emotions are based on assumptions, presuppositions, and expectations; they are constructed in the brain from nonemotional ingredients.

All of us have our own inner fears, beliefs, opinions. These inner assumptions rule and govern our lives. A suggestion has no power in and of itself. its power arises from the fact that you accept it mentally.

You don't love Buck. If you did, you'd have four kids by now. Wouldn't you? Now wouldn't you? A woman like you...

thoughts aren't the problem. Problems only develop when thoughts no longer arise from or refer to actual experience. That's when thoughts start ossifying into their own bureaucratic institutions, becoming assumptions and dogma.

I think facts remove assumptions.

I think if we can educate ourselves and educate our kids and educate guys in the NBA, we can remove assumptions. Once you remove those assumptions, I begin to understand someone else's background.

I'm a strong believer that you can build great companies in time of both greed and fear. But you have to be paying attention and operating under the right assumptions. You don't have to believe history repeats itself, but you should accept that history rhymes.

If black artists can win major commissions and international acclaim, why do we assume that to be black is always to be marginal, or in need of special support? We have to recognize how diversity initiatives can make black artists feel ghettoized and, as some cultural commentators have argued, bear 'the burden of representation.'

The world wants rock bands to be idiots.

Everyone has images in their mind of what to expect from different groups.

I do work a lot on arguing that things which people assume are always wrong are not necessarily so and, indeed, can often be right.

The cost estimate of the prospectus turned out to be a best possible outcome based on the unlikely assumption that everything would go according to plan with no delays, no changes in performance specifications, no management problems, no problems with contractual arrangements or new technologies or geology, no major conflicts, no political promises not kept, and so on.

Projects are often started by jumping straight to a solution, even a specific technology. That's the wrong place to begin. You want to start by asking questions and considering alternatives. At the outset, always assume that there is more to learn. Start with the most basic question of all: Why?

the social scientist who lacks a mathematical mind and regards a mathematical formula as a magic recipe, rather than as the formulation of a supposition, does not hold forth much promise. A mathematical formula is never more than a precise statement. […] The chief merit of mathematization is that it compels us to become conscious of what we are assuming.