Valcin Presumption Quotes

#1. Democratizing China is not, however, the principal rationale for engaging it; that is the task of the Chinese themselves. But creating a mutually nonthreatening and beneficial relationship is an appropriate,and achievable, goal for the United States. Acting on the presumption of an existing or probable China threat, on the other hand, exaggerates China's intentions and capabilities and opens the door to a new Cold War. #Quote by Melvin Gurtov

#2. Effectively we become the DVD of Elf that you ignore at nine o'clock on a Friday night, on the presumption there will be something better (at least, something more fulfilling, more complex, and that you haven't seen twice before) on the shelves somewhere. And guess what you end up going home with? Well, that's what we are to these beautiful, fantastic women: Elves. #Quote by Nick Hornby

#3. Statistics can't measure equal opportunity, just equal results. The government starts with the assumption that if, say, employment rates diverge from population makeup by more than one-fifth, it's the employer's obligation to disprove the presumption of illegal discrimination. In other words, the feds' message is: Impose quotas upon yourselves or expect to pay a fortune in legal fees. #Quote by Steve Sailer

#4. God has not given us reason and the counsels and help of reason that we should despise them. This is what those men do who are either presumptuous or in a state of despair. When they say: "Whatever I do, I shall not hinder what must necessarily come to pass by a kind of fate," this is the voice of those in despair. But the presumptuous are accustomed to make this boast: "If I have to live, I shall live even if I do not eat. God has promised life, therefore it does not matter whether I eat or do not eat." But since we have God's promises, we must take careful precautions not to tempt God by presumption and not to sin by despair. When you have a ladder, there is no reason for throwing yourself out of a window, nor should you go through the middle of the Elbe when you have a bridge. But each one should do what reason instructs him to do and commend the rest to God. He will grant fitting results. Here #Quote by Martin Luther

#5. Worship without wonder is lifeless and boring. Many have lost their sense of awe and amazement when it comes to God. Having begun with the arrogant presumption of knowing about God all that one can, they reduce Him to manageable terms and confine Him to a tidy theological box, the dimensions of which conform to their predilections of what a god ought to be and do. #Quote by Sam Storms

#6. A person unlearns arrogance when he knows he is always among worthy human beings; being alone fosters presumption. Young people are arrogant because they always associate with their own peers, those who are all really nothing but who would like to be very important. #Quote by Friedrich Nietzsche

#7. All writing is presumption, of course, since no one knows what it is like to be another human being. #Quote by Cynthia Ozick

#8. But most it is presumption in us when the help of heaven we count the act of men. #Quote by William Shakespeare

#9. [T]he idea of treating Mind as an effect rather than as a First Cause is too revolutionary for some–an "awful stretcher" that their own minds cannot acommodate comfortably. This is as true today as it was in 1860, and it has always been as true of some of evolution's best friends as of its foes. For instance, the physicist Paul Davies, in his recent book The Mind of God, proclaims that the reflective power of human minds can be "no trivial detail, no minor by-product of mindless purposeless forces" (Davies 1992, p. 232). This is a most revealing way of expressing a familiar denial, for it betrays an ill-examined prejudice. Why, we might ask Davies, would its being a by-product of mindless, purposeless forces make it trivial? Why couldn't the most important thing of all be something that arose from unimportant things? Why should the importance or excellence of anything have to rain down on it from on high, from something more important, a gift from God? Darwin's inversion suggests that we abandon that presumption and look for sorts of excellence, of worth and purpose, that can emerge, bubbling up out of "mindless, purposeless forces. #Quote by Daniel C. Dennett

#10. The precise ancestry of a black drug dealer or cop killer is irrelevant. His blackness predicts and explains his crime. He reinforces the racist presumption. It is only when that presumption is questioned that a fine analysis of ancestry is invoked. Frederick Douglass was an ordinary nigger while working the fields. But as a famed abolitionist, it was often said that his genius must derive from his white half. #Quote by Ta-Nehisi Coates

#11. Why is the integrity of the literary canon everywhere articulated in terms of its imagined integration to a nation-state as well as a racialized civilization? What would it mean to seek justification for literary studies on the basis of aesthetic value rather than the contestable presumption that literary canons function as the preeminent repositories of national cultures and/or racialized civilizations? #Quote by David Lloyd

#12. Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true sources of superstition. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm indignation, together with ignorance, are the true sources of enthusiasm. #Quote by David Hume

#13. Brethren, understand that the gospel is a gospel which brings a present salvation; and try to feel that it is not presumption, but simply out of the very fundamental principle of it, when you are not afraid to say, I know that my Redeemer is yonder, and I know that He loves me. #Quote by Alexander MacLaren

#14. When pride and presumption walk before, shame and loss follow very closely. #Quote by Louis XI Of France

#15. On the Ridgeway path, aged nine or ten, was where for the first time I realized the power a person might feel by aligning themselves to deep history. Only much later did I understand these intimations of history had their own, darker, history. The chalk country-cult rested on a presumption of organic connections to a landscape, a sense of belonging sanctified through an appeal to your own imagined lineage. That chalk downloads held their national, as well as natural, histories. And it was much later, too, that I realized that these myths hurt. That they work to wipe away other cultures, other histories, other ways of loving, working and being in a landscape. How they tiptoe towards darkness. #Quote by Helen Macdonald

#16. The presumption that an extant mode is efficient if the expected net gain is negative can nevertheless be rebutted by showing that the obstacles to implementing an otherwise superior feasible alternative are 'unfair.' #Quote by Oliver E. Williamson

#17. If the professed convert distinctly and deliberately declares that he knows the Lord's will, but does not mean to attend to it, you are not to pamper his presumptions, but it is your duty to assure him that he is not saved. #Quote by Charles Spurgeon

#18. There are times when the burden of need and our own limitations might tempt us to become discouraged. But precisely then we are helped by the knowledge that, in the end, we are only instruments in the Lord's hands; and this knowledge frees us from the presumption of thinking that we alone are personally responsible for building a better world. In all humility we will do what we can, and in all humility we will entrust the rest to the Lord. It is God who governs the world, not we. We offer him our service only to the extent that we can, and for as long as he grants us the strength. To do all we can with what strength we have, however, is the task which keeps the good servant of Jesus Christ always at work: "The love of Christ urges us on" (2 Cor 5:14). #Quote by Pope Benedict XVI

#19. Men little think how immorally they act in rashly meddling with what they do not understand. Their delusive good intention is no sort of excuse for their presumption. #Quote by Yuval Levin

#20. I think straight couples have a schedule: You're together for two years and then there's the 'where is this going?' question, which wouldn't necessarily be good for everyone, but I think it's pretty healthy for relationships, for there to be a presumption that there is a decision to be made. #Quote by Nick Denton

#21. Presumption of innocence has also been given a new and useful interpretation. As the New York Times later reported, Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent. #Quote by Noam Chomsky

#22. There is a presumption made among nationalists that constitutional change is the answer to all the questions that are problematic in our communities, and my job is to talk about what is happening in the real world. #Quote by Johann Lamont

#23. (From the story The Last Days of a Famous Mime)
He said nothing. He was mildly annoyed at her presumption: that he had not thought this many, many times before.
With perfect misunderstanding she interpreted his passivity as disdain.
Wishing to hurt him, she slapped his face.
Wishing to hurt her, he smiled brilliantly. #Quote by Peter Carey

#24. Six-Foot-One
I've scientifically calculated the height of presumption to be six-foot-one. #Quote by Beryl Dov

#25. Every man carries about him a touchstone, if he will make use of it, to distinguish substantial gold from superficial glitterings, truth from appearances. And indeed the use and benefit of this touchstone, which is natural reason, is spoiled and lost only by assumed prejudices, overweening presumption, and narrowing our minds. #Quote by John Locke

#26. You think of travelers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time. Travel is not merely the business of being bone-idle, but also an elaborate bumming evasion, allowing us to call attention to ourselves with our conspicuous absence while we intrude upon other people's privacy - being actively offensive as fugitive freeloaders. The traveler is the greediest kind of romantic voyeur, and in some well-hidden part of the traveler's personality is an unpickable knot of vanity, presumption, and mythomania bordering on the pathological. This is why a traveler's worst nightmare is not the secret police or the witch doctors or malaria, but rather the prospect of meeting another traveler.

Most writing about travel takes the form of jumping to conclusions, and so most travel books are superfluous, the thinnest, most transparent monologuing. Little better than a license to bore, travel writing is the lowest form of literary self-indulgence: dishonest complaining, creative mendacity, pointless heroics, and chronic posturing, much of it distorted with Munchausen syndrome. #Quote by Paul Theroux

#27. In a word, the Negro youth starts out with the presumption against him. #Quote by Booker T. Washington

#28. Mrs. Clinton, speaking to a black church audience on Martin Luther King Day last year, did describe President George W. Bush as treating the Congress of the United States like 'a plantation,' adding in a significant tone of voice that 'you know what I mean ... '
She did not repeat this trope, for some reason, when addressing the electors of Iowa or New Hampshire. She's willing to ring the other bell, though, if it suits her. But when an actual African-American challenger comes along, she rather tends to pout and wince at his presumption (or did until recently). #Quote by Christopher Hitchens

#29. Such is the uncertainty of human affairs, that security and despair are equal follies; and as it is presumption and arrogance to anticipate triumphs, it is weakness and cowardice to prog-nosticate miscarriages. #Quote by Samuel Johnson

#30. Were I to flatter myself with the possibility of success in such combat, it would indeed be presumption. #Quote by Anna Seward

#31. The end result is that we have shown that special relativity does not require the concept of rigid, objective space to function; if we start with the presumption of a unified field, then it is enough to propose that disturbances in the field provide a self-consistent relationship between its various parts. #Quote by Robert Lanza

#32. I dared not trust the case on the presumption that the court knows everything. In fact, I argued it on the presumption that the court didn't know anything. #Quote by Abraham Lincoln

#33. What galled him most was the presumption of these writer types, as if there weren't actual people in the world, with jobs to do, appointments to keep, wives to appease, but only so much material. #Quote by Garth Risk Hallberg

#34. If we presume that the boundary of the universe is a kind of surrounding wall,
then we think like ancestors who thought there's abyss at the edge of flat earth. #Quote by Toba Beta

#35. Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it a numerical presumption. #Quote by Ambrose Bierce

#36. He waited until she was standing directly across his desk from him before he said quietly, "You've chosen a poor time to apologize,Lauren. I have to leave for a luncheon appointment in five minutes."
Lauren almost choked on his outrageous presumption that she owed him an apology,but she merely favored him with an amused smile. "I hate to bruise your ego, but I didn't come up here to apologize. #Quote by Judith McNaught

#37. Our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. #Quote by C.S. Lewis

#38. Pride will keep us from teachability and will keep us from getting where we want to go. Pride is a major hindrance to everything good in your life because, as we are about to see, pride breeds presumption, and presumption kills teachability. #Quote by Matt Keller

#39. His attentive treatment of her had nothing to do with the presumption that she was weak, and everything to do with the conviction that she was valuable. #Quote by Angela N. Blount