Quotes About Assumptions

I find now that most people forget the immense work done around race and gender and sexuality and prisons and power, and that it was, in fact, work—intellectual labor to reject the assumptions built into language, the forces that lift some of us up and push others down, to understand and describe the past and the present and propose new possibilities for the future.

we need to break the habit of overreacting because of our speedy assumption and judgments

We form opinions and then spend our entire lifetimes validating what we believe to be true.

We live with such easy assumptions, don't we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it's all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it's not convenient--- it's not useful--- to believe this; it doesn't help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it.

Posterity will jump to conclusions: that is its nature.

We live with such easy assumptions, don't we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it's all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it's not convenient—it's not useful—to believe this; it doesn't help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it.

Vivimos con suposiciones muy fáciles, ¿no? Por ejemplo, que la memoria es igual a sucesos más tiempo. Pero es algo mucho más extraño. ¿Quién dijo que la memoria es lo que creíamos que habíamos olvidado? Y debería ser obvio que el tiempo no actúa como un fijador, sino más bien como un disolvente. Pero no conviene —no es útil— creer esto; no nos ayuda a seguir adelante; por lo tanto, lo pasamos por alto.

Tendemos a encasillar en una categoría preexistente cualquier relación nueva que entablamos.

If covering our bodies with clothes represents a cultural step forward, there is no guarantee that in the future masks will not be taken equally for granted.

I'm being careful with here, Harlow told me, apparently irritated by something I hadn't even had the time to say yet. She was making assumptions about my no-fun-at-all-ness. They were good assumptions.

A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor.

Young man, the games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we change make us what we become.

I suppose one gets to know men quickest by the things they take for granted.

I was brought up in a kind of, you know, very hippie, liberal family. And it was just always automatically assumed that men and women were equal and indeed superior.

all women, without in the least meaning it, consider every man they meet as a possible husband for themselves or for their best friend.

Assumptions that racism is more oppressive to black men than black women, then and now ... based on acceptance of patriarchal notions of masculinity.

I think that I was just on the cusp of the generation that was beginning to really challenge some of the assumptions about the role of women and the role of men on campus.

Perfect young men don't get murdered, they don't even get born.

People look at me, and they go, 'You're white, you're smart, you must have went to college. You must have grown up with money.'

They see me as being this Super Mom on TV who also can more than handle a difficult husband, and they assume I'm going to be just full of wisdom as a mother and wife myself.

What annoys the hell out of me is the arrogance of some people. They don't even listen to our music, they decided in advance that they don't like it.

Man lives, not directly or nakedly in nature like the animals, but within a mythological universe, a body of assumptions and beliefs developed from his existential concerns.

If I can give you all of these real answers to the questions you assumed were big unanswerable ones, imagine the depth of the new set of questions awaiting on the other side of resolution.

They gave me a book of checks. They didn't ask for any deposits.