Top 100 Not Assuming Quotes
#1. Those who refuse to reform may not make mistakes, but they will be blamed for not assuming their historical responsibility.
Li Keqiang
#2. I don't think there's a conflation between somebody's personal wealth and whether they should run for office or not, assuming that they're not actually pursuing policies that help them make a lot of money.
Julie Roginsky
#3. When you look at the government, when the government collects a buck, it's not free. They have to spend resources, the IRS, audits, all this sort of crap, to collect the dollar. I'm not assuming any Laffer curve effect here at all. There are just transactions costs of collecting that money.
Arthur Laffer
#4. And I'm not assuming and I'm not judging. I'm just being curious.
Ned Vizzini
#5. This approach has enabled Japanese firms to achieve such production efficiency and quality that now many non-Japanese companies are imitating them. By not assuming the worst about their workers, the Japanese companies have got the best out of them.
Ha-Joon Chang
#6. Always assume that a lucky hit will not be repeated.
Mason Cooley
#7. Why do people assume? If I hate you, I'll tell you. In this case, it's not hate. It's hurt. I'll lick my wounds, which only oozed because I gave a damn, and be over it before the sun rises.
Donna Lynn Hope
#8. If you do not give right attention to the one you love, it is a kind of killing. When you are in the car together, if you are lost in your thoughts, assuming you already know everything about her, she will slowly die.
Nhat Hanh
#9. Experience teaches us not to assume that the obvious is clearly understood
Paulo Freire
#10. [The greatest barriers to forming alliances] are not figuring out what would make others want to join with you. Assuming that what excites you excites others. Spend more time assuming people have good reasons for what they do or say and then figure out those good reasons.
John Daly
#11. Assuming China does not become destabilized and continues to grow, it will no doubt develop a military program in proportion to its resources.
Martin Van Creveld
#12. It is the lot of mankind to feel not only insecure but also bored. To combat that experience, people long to be passively entertained, which requires less effort than assuming responsibility for self-improvement.
Thomas Szasz
#13. But what about your own?" he asked. "Assuming, of course, you're interested in having one?"
"I'm not. If I ever get married, I shall elope. That has now become my prime requirement in a husband. Willingness to elope.
Donna Andrews
#14. Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it.
James Madison
#15. The failure of one regional bank, assuming it is following a traditional model, will not threaten the entire system.
Sherrod Brown
#16. Government does not grow by seizing our freedoms, but by assuming our responsibilities.
Mike Cloud
#17. The spirits of the dead are not among us to entertain us ... Assuming the revenants you encounter have simply signed up to play haunted house for the amusement of the living is just plain ignorant.
April Slaughter
#18. It's not that i don't want you. I lied, earlier, when i said i was protecting you. I'm protecting myself. I don't want to be your rebound, Jacqueline."
"Then why are you assuming that role? It's not what i want, either."
"What am i gonna do with you?"
"I can think of a couple things.
Tammara Webber
#19. I'm not going to assume liberals are stupid, as they do with conservatives. No, I'll attribute it instead to more fraud and deceit.
Rush Limbaugh
#20. I don't know what to do about him, Sammy." (Jackie)
"It's not what you do about him. It's what you do with him. Grab him by those big, manly arms that I'm assuming he has, and show him what New York has to offer.
Ali Novak
#21. A physicist looks for causes; that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere; if he finds gold, well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck. The same is true when the physicists look for causes.
Bertrand Russell
#22. New Yorkers are inclined to assume it will never rain, and certainly not on New Yorkers.
Brooks Atkinson
#23. One of the things my parents taught me, and I'll always be grateful as a gift, is to not ever let anybody else define me; that for me to define myself ... and I think that helped me a lot in assuming a leadership position.
Wilma Mankiller
#24. It's not a question of McDonald's vanishing from the face of the earth. It's a question of these companies assuming some more responsibility for what they're selling.
Eric Schlosser
#25. I thought liberation had to do with going out into the world and assuming male duties, not with delegating part of my load. The result was a terrible fatigue, as witnessed today by the millions of women of my generation who question feminist movements.
Isabel Allende
#26. Do not always assume the other fellow has intelligence equal to yours. He may have more.
Terry-Thomas
#27. It's interesting because a lot of my 16-year-old kids' friends know me from 'Wedding Crashers,' and not so much Bond. My kids have a good laugh. I was 20 then. The look I had then was the look that a lot of their friends are assuming now. They think it's cool. What goes around comes around.
Jane Seymour
#28. I'm assuming the widened eyes and squished up mouth are your way of entreating me to take you to the train station and help you question the humans. Either that or you're constipated." "I'm not constipated." I resumed The Look.
Debra Dunbar
#29. True strategy is about placing bets and making hard choices under conditions of uncertainty, not about assuming plans can remove risk.
Will Evans
#30. I would not have used the phrase "I'm selling you" because even though that's exactly what you're doing, when you tell people you're doing it - or worse yet, when you tell people "I'm not here to sell you anything," they automatically assume that that's exactly what you are here to do.
Frank Luntz
#31. ... It is not healing to see your childhood home, but it helps you measure whether you are broken, and how and why, assuming you want to know.
Thomas Harris
#32. Spirituality is not like a water faucet in that it can be turned off or turned on at will. Some make the fatal error of assuming that religion is for others now and perhaps someday for us. Such thinking is not based on fact or experience, for we are daily becoming what we shall be.
Thomas S. Monson
#33. We should not assume; however, that just because something is unexplainable by us, it is unexplainable.
Neal A. Maxwell
#34. A group of adventurers is known as a "party," and not just because they like to celebrate their success together in the end. Your party should be as close to you as your family--assuming your family can cast spells, kill monsters, and bring you back from the edge of death.
Matt Forbeck
#35. I can't blame modern technology for my predilection for distraction, not after all the hours I've spent watching lost balloons disappear into the clouds. I did it before the Internet, and I'll do it after the apocalypse, assuming we still have helium and weak-gripped children.
Colson Whitehead
#36. I assume Obama knows about stop and frisk, so this is not the person that should be the head of homeland security. I had to say something. Kelly's nomination would go against who President Obama is.
Adepero Oduye
#37. Only humans are judgmental, and because you are, you assume that I must be. Yet I am not, and that is the great truth you cannot accept.
Neale Donald Walsch
#38. One can ever assume to be what he is not, and to conceal what he is.
Sallust
#39. Not to sound too deep or weird, but I assume that the occasions once you pretty take pleasure in surfing are the occasions you are extremely kind of getting a single with nature.
Kelly Slater
#40. Stop assuming I don't have any emotions. My inner thoughts might not be easily seen on my face. I do think and feel.
Tina J. Richardson
#41. A filmmaker should never assume he's superior to his subject. I often find that even the simplest topic remains an enigma. The best film portraits not only evoke that enigma but ingest it in a process that renders what's invisible visible.
Damian Pettigrew
#42. The fear that the universe is not what you assume it to be is very basic, especially when you know damn well it isn't what you assume it to be.
John C. Lilly
#43. We must be honest in acknowledging that neither Germany nor the U.S. has the luxury of assuming that we can skate by on half-measures in Afghanistan and Pakistan and not risk suffering the consequences.
Susan Rice
#44. Talent, don't bother about wether or not you have it. Just assume that you do, and forget about it. Talent is a word we use after someone has become accomplished.
Richard Schmid
#45. I heard John Wells say something really smart, many years ago. He said, "Assume your audience is really intelligent. Assume that they are really smart, and tell your story that way." So, for me, it's about never assuming that they will go away because they're not entertained.
Veena Sud
#46. Do not commit the error, common among the young, of assuming that if you cannot save the whole of mankind you have failed.
Jan De Hartog
#47. There is no growth in assuming. For it does not give, it takes away.
E'yen A. Gardner
#48. Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold. Blindly planning for it, envisioning things that weren't the case. This was the working of the will. This was what gave the world purpose and direction. Not what was there but what was not.
Jhumpa Lahiri
#49. I spend most of my time assuming the world is not ready for the technology revolution that will be happening to them soon,
Eric Schmidt
#50. However, the immediacy with which aesthetic judgments arise should not fool us into assuming that their origins are entirely natural or their verdicts unalterable.
Alain De Botton
#51. I know assuming is easy, and sometimes, reality does not go in the direction of the assumption, but at least, it gives us hope that things may go just right.
Aishah Madadiy
#52. Was a female. Isserley wasn't interested in females, at least not in that way. Let them get picked up by someone else. If the hitcher was male, she usually went back for another look, unless he was an obvious weakling. Assuming he'd made a reasonable impression on her,
Michel Faber
#53. When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not measuring the world, we are creating it.
Niels Bohr
#54. I do not assume to speak for anyone. I know I speak in direct opposition to the wishes of many by whom I am surrounded.
Victoria Woodhull
#55. So if Arizona sees the federal government isn't assuming its responsibilities, it creates local laws. But migration and keeping security on the borders is not a local or state issue, it's a federal issue.
Vicente Fox
#56. My mistake was assuming that when I got to college, people would not be such assholes.
Jennifer Echols
#57. How sweet is that? I know I'm no boy expert, but I have heard entire lectures on reading body language, and I have to say that assuming that a person will have forgotten your name is way high on my "indicators of humbleness" list (not that I have one, but I totally have a starting point now).
Ally Carter
#58. I've read in a couple stories that I was raised Episcopalian, but that's not true. I think that's just people assuming things. In some ways, I wish I was raised Episcopalian. I was kind of raised hodgepodge.
Sufjan Stevens
#59. The problem with being linear minded is that you would ask this at all! You assume that you must do one or the other. Plan or not plan. How about planning to walk in a certain direction until the "now" offers you another plan?
Lee Carroll
#60. Christianity does not set faith against thinking. It sets faith against assuming.
Timothy Keller
#61. Assuming that we have trained our imagination to denounce the past, we will not suffer much from unfulfilled wishes.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#62. The one place where I can relax is on the golf course with my teammates and buddies, assuming I'm hitting the golf ball well. If I'm not, well, that is another story.
Carson Palmer
#63. No one has the right to not assume that the business cycle will turn! Every five years or so, you have got to assume that something bad will happen.
Jamie Dimon
#64. As for philosophy, it makes an architect high-minded and not self-assuming, but rather renders him courteous, just, and honest without avariciousness. This is very important, for no work can be rightly done without honesty and incorruptibility.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
#65. People who just had sex had an annoying habit of assuming everyone around them had just had sex. Which was also, coincidentally, what people who were not having sex assumed.
Sloane Crosley
#66. That's stupid." I stopped to look at him. "why would you want everyone assuming something that isn't true?"
"Why should I care?"
"So you can ask someone you're interested in to go to the dance with you," I replied, not expecting his lack of concern.
"I just did.
Rebecca Donovan
#67. Our misconception in viewing the past lies in assuming that doubt and fear, permit, protests, violence and hate were not equally present.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#68. Obviously there are some organizations that go out on the street and say we want an end to the capitalist system. But obviously that is not going to happen as a result of just assuming that stance.
Angela Davis
#69. Mama Mo does not insist. She simply makes things a reality by assuming they are such:
Gillian Flynn
#70. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.
Katharine Jefferts Schori
#71. trust is not the same as assuming everyone is on the same page as you, and that they don't need to be pushed.
Patrick Lencioni
#73. If it winds up earlier, you should have a movie picked out. This is assuming she isn't sending you the 'let's go back to my place' signals. In that case - "
"Don't go there, Bob. Let's just not go there.
Nora Roberts
#74. New Yorkers have a delightfully narcissistic habit of assuming that if they're not conscious of a scene, it doesn't exist.
Sloane Crosley
#75. The absolute heart of loyalty is to value those people who tell you the truth, not just those people who tell you what you want to hear. In fact, you should value them most. Because they have paid you the compliment of leveling with you and assuming you can handle it.
Pat Summitt
#76. Please do not assume that you can change governments. Young people don't understand this
Lee Kuan Yew
#77. If children are apparently unable to learn, we should assume that we have not as yet found the right way to teach them.
Marie Clay
#78. I have not tried to tell the people anything. I have shared my views with the people but I have not tried to lead or correct them, assuming they need correction.
Nikki Giovanni
#79. Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replaced normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions.
Albert Camus
#80. Who-only let him be a man and intent upon honor-is not eager for the honorable ordeal and prompt to assume perilous duties? To what energetic man is not idleness a punishment?
Seneca The Younger
#81. It is worth noticing that those who assume an imposing demeanor and seek to pass themselves off for something beyond what they are, are not unfrequently as much underrated by some as overrated by others.
Richard Whately
#82. The way you lose the gospel is not by denying it, but by assuming it.
D. A. Carson
#83. The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say - because they were too obvious.
Andre Gide
#84. Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead.
David Wong
#85. Just as we would not traditionally assume that someone is literate if they can read but not write, we should not assume that someone possesses media literacy if they can consume but not express themselves
Henry Jenkins
#86. "I seek the meaning of existence," said the stranger. "You are of course assuming," said the Master, "that existence has a meaning." "Doesn't it?" "When you experience existence as it is - not as you think it is you will discover that your question has no meaning," said the Master.
Anthony De Mello
#87. When you're not practicing, someone somewhere is. And when the two of you meet, assuming roughly equal ability, the other person will win.
Bill Bradley
#88. One must not assume that an understanding of science is present in those who borrow the language
Louis Pasteur
#89. It is hideous and coarse to assume that we can do something for others-and it is vile not to endeavor to do it.
Edward Dahlberg
#90. There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.
John Stuart Mill
#91. I assume that a sufficiently skilled will be able to do anything not explicitly forbidden by the hardware.
Bjarne Stroustrup
#92. Never assume the other fellow will not do something you wouldn't do.
Donald Rumsfeld
#93. Assuming that he believes at all, the everyday Christian is a pitiful figure, a man who really cannot count up to three, and who besides, precisely because of his mental incompetence, would not deserve such a punishment as Christianity promises him.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#94. I'm assuming you're as mystified by this as the rest of us, Rasputin.
No. I'm not. I have been planning to destroy the Breakworld since I was a child.
[silence]
This is why I don't make so many jokes. I never know when is good.
Joss Whedon
#95. Assume that your worldview is not borne by the public. More than that: Do not assume that those who think differently are idiots. Before you distrust them, question your own assumptions.
Rolf Dobelli
#96. Do not make the mistake of assuming that because we're women we'll eventually want children. We aren't kangaroos - this internal pouch isn't one we all feel instinctively compelled to fill.
Sylvia D. Lucas
#97. Go let thy less than woman's hand Assume the distaff not the brand.
Lord Byron
#98. Since children from dysfunctional families are so good at judging others, they also judge themselves finding themselves unacceptable when compared to others, always assuming they are second best, not enough. This is a painful realization so often they hide behind righteous arrogance.
David W. Earle
#99. Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#100. You could not buy a house in those days without just assuming that the house was not only a place to live, but it was a good investment, because it was going to keep up with inflation or get ahead of inflation, and it was just - that was America.
Paul A. Volcker
