Top 100 Presupposes Quotes
#1. The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike ... Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.
C.S. Lewis
#2. If at the center and so to speak the kernel of Being there is an infinite infinite, every partial being directly or indirectly presupposes it, and is in return really or eminently contained in it. All the relationships we can have to Being must be simultaneously founded upon it.
Maurice Merleau Ponty
#3. Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.
Igor Stravinsky
#4. I don't like the expression "writer's block" because I think it presupposes that you have a problem with your plumbing. I really think it's the other way around.
Etgar Keret
#5. Love, whose power youth feels, is not suitable for the elderly, just as little as anything that presupposes productivity. It is rare that productivity lasts through the years.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#6. The perception of duration itself presupposes a duration of perception.
Edmund Husserl
#7. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moran or a lout, howeverm doesn't stop to think or reason.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#8. The planet's survival has become so uncertain that any effort, any thought that presupposes an assured future amounts to a mad gamble.
Elias Canetti
#9. All of this presupposes that I have set my sights on a single male.'
Susan's eyes bugged out. 'You certainly cannot set your signs on a married man!'
'I meant a particular man,' Elizabeth retorted, swatting her sister on the shoulder.
Julia Quinn
#10. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.
George Washington
#11. The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace.
Ludwig Von Mises
#12. Prayer presupposes faith. No prayer is in vain. Prayer is like any other action.
Mahatma Gandhi
#13. Fearlessness presupposes calmness and peace of mind.
Mahatma Gandhi
#14. Gift of wisdom consisting in the power to do this, the gift actually presupposes our conscious inability to do it,
J.I. Packer
#15. Being is presented as the foundation of all that 'there is', and Life presupposes Being, just like Wisdom or any intellectual activity 20 presupposes Life
Anonymous
#16. The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction - that 'Europe' has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.
George Will
#17. Unionization, as opposed to communism, presupposes the relation of employment; it is based upon the wage system and it recognizes fully and unreservedly the institution of private property and the right to investment profit.
John L. Lewis
#18. Finally, a safer world presupposes the revival of the virtuous circle of non-proliferation of weapons and disarmament.
Jacques Chirac
#19. We all have a tendency to want order in our lives. But order presupposes authority, and authority presupposes, sooner or later, that we'll all need hooves. It's going to happen sooner or later, isn't it? You know it is.
Stephen King
#20. The only shape in which equality is really connected with justice is this - justice presupposes general rules. If these general rules are to be maintained at all, it is obvious that they must be applied equally to every case which satisfies their terms.
James Fitzjames Stephen
#21. A democratic form of government, a democratic way of life, presupposes free public education over a long period; it presupposes also an education for personal responsibility that too often is neglected.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#22. True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joys of others.
Andre Gide
#23. There's a long-standing debate in the media biz over whether the news outlets should give the public what it wants, or what it needs. This debate presupposes that media execs actually know what it wants or needs. And that there actually is a unitary "public.
Brooke Gladstone
#24. On the road halfway between faith and criticism stands the inn of reason. reason is faith in what can be understood without faith, but it's still a faith, since to understand presupposes that there's something understandable.
Fernando Pessoa
#25. Pacifism, not murder, is precedent. To say that war presupposes peace begs the question; it does not explain how violent impulses can be overcome. In
Sarah LaChance Adams
#26. critical pedagogy illuminates how classroom learning embodies selective values, is entangled with relations of power, entails judgments about what knowledge counts, legitimates specific social relations, defines agency in particular ways, and always presupposes a particular notion of the future.
Henry A. Giroux
#27. Human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them
Lev S. Vygotsky
#28. Nonviolence presupposes a level of humanness--however low it may be, in every human being.
Narayan Desai
#29. True prayer presupposes an attitude of humble submission and adoration to the Almighty God.
R.C. Sproul
#31. Path presupposes distance; If He be near, no path needest thou at all. Verily it maketh me smile To hear of a fish in water athirst!
Kabir
#32. The formula for the circuit of capital: M-C...P...C'-M', is the self-evident form of the circuit of capital only on the basis of already developed capitalist production, because it presupposes the availability of the class of wage-labourers in sufficient numbers throughout society.
Karl Marx
#33. What has to be given up is not the I, as most mystics suppose: this I is indispensable for any relationship, including the highest, which always presupposes an I and You.
Martin Buber
#34. Active creation is conceived as a transitive action in which there is always presupposed an object about which the agent is concerned; it is virtually but not formally transitive because it makes, not presupposes, an object.
William Ames
#35. This is the task, I think, of a letter movement. But it should be set up only in states where a significant response can be achieved, for a letter movement necessarily presupposes a strong organization.
Fredrik Bajer
#36. Atheism is really nothing but a sorry litany of non-sequiturs, e.g., if God existed, why do we have all the evil and horrors in the world? But this presupposes that God is all-good, an obvious non-sequitur.
Vincent Bugliosi
#37. Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy, cannot be conducted in an institutional, juridical or political vacuum. On the contrary, it presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services.
Pope John Paul II
#38. The art of acting presupposes three phases: understanding a part, intuiting a part, and contemplating the essence of a part.
Franz Grillparzer
#39. The very first step to a correct understanding of the Christian theology of contemplation is to grasp clearly the unity of God and man in Christ, which of course presupposes the equally crucial unity of man in himself.
Thomas Merton
#40. Exposition presupposes an exegetical process to extract the God-intended meaning of Scripture and an explanation of that meaning in a contemporary way.
John F. MacArthur Jr.
#41. If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#42. Genuine freedom is not based upon the negative psychology of release. Its roots are in positive acts of dedication to ends and values. Freedom presupposes the autonomous existence of values which men wish to be free to follow and measure up to.
Robert A. Nisbet
#44. Pantheism is a self-defeating concept, because the concept of a God presupposes a world different from him as an essential correlate. If, on the other hand, the world is supposed to take over his role, then an absolute world without God remains; hence pantheism is only an euphemism for atheism.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#45. Every other science presupposes intelligence as already existing and complete: the philosopher contemplates it in its growth, and as it were represents its history to the mind from its birth to its maturity.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#46. A love ethic presupposes that everyone has the right to be free, to live fully and well.
Bell Hooks
#47. Nonviolent attainment of self-government presupposes a non-violent control over the violent elements in the country.
Mahatma Gandhi
#48. Stakeholders - meaning workers and community - the CEO could just as well be responsible to them. This presupposes there ought to be management but why does there have to be management? Why not have the stakeholders run the industry?
Noam Chomsky
#49. People are deeply imbedded in philosophical, i.e., grammatical confusions. And to free them presupposes pulling them out of the immensely manifold connections they are caught up in.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#50. Never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink," he said. "Though I guess that presupposes that there is a wine I wouldn't drink.
Lev Grossman
#51. Nonviolent defence presupposes recklessness about one's life and property.
Mahatma Gandhi
#52. All theology represents an intellectual rationalization of the possession of sacred values... Every theology... presupposes that the world must have a meaning, and the question is how to interpret this meaning so that it is intellectually conceivable.
Max Weber
#53. Remorse presupposes enough self-forgetfulness to feel the pain ofothers.
Helen Prejean
#54. The acquisition of will, for one thing exclusively, presupposes entire acquaintance with many others.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
#55. Selfless giving presupposes something - that there is a lumunious reality.
Frederick Lenz
#56. The purchase of a bargain issue presupposes that the market's current appraisal is wrong, or at least that the buyer's idea of value is more likely to be right than the market's. In this process the investor sets his judgement against that of the market. To some this may seem arrogant or foolhardy.
Benjamin Graham
#57. The superman is a premature ideal, one that presupposes man.
Karl Kraus
#58. Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one's eternal peril.
Laurens Van Der Post
#59. The term many presupposes the term one , and the term one presupposes the term many.
Alfred North Whitehead
#60. The struggle against war and its social source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active, unequivocal support to the oppressed colonial peoples in their struggles and wars against imperialism. A 'neutral' position is tantamount to support of imperialism.
Leon Trotsky
#61. The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.
Henri Frederic Amiel
#62. Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is simply a question of subdivision; concealing courage
under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy; masking strength with weakness is to
be effected by tactical dispositions.
Sun Tzu
#63. Presupposes a much more complete agreement on the relative importance of the different ends than actually exists, and that, in consequence, in order to be able to plan, the planning authority must impose upon the people that detailed code of values which is lacking.
Friedrich Hayek
#64. The simplicity that all this presupposes is not easy to attain. I find that my life constantly threatens to become complex and divisive. A life of prayer is basically a very simple life. This simplicity, however, is the result of asceticism and effort: it is not a spontaneous simplicity.
Thomas Merton
#65. Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.
Louis Aragon
#66. There is a difference between happiness, the supreme good, and the final end or goal toward which our actions ought to tend. For happiness is not the supreme good, but presupposes it, being the contentment or satisfaction of the mind which results from possessing it.
Rene Descartes
#67. The question of relevance comes before that of truth, because to ask whether a statement is true or false presupposes that it is relevant (so that to try to assert the truth or falsity of an irrelevant statement is a form of confusion) ...
David Bohm
#68. Civil disobedience presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it civil disobedience would be a cruel joke.
Mahatma Gandhi
#69. Bach is played altogether too fast. Music that presupposes a visual comprehension of lines of sound advancing side by side becomes chaos for the listener; high speed makes comprehension impossible. Yet
Albert Schweitzer
#70. Indeed the presence of outstanding strengths presupposes that energy needed in other areas has been channeled away from them.
Allen Shawn
#71. To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment.
Rollo May
#72. A balanced intellect presupposes a harmonious growth of body, mind and soul.
Mahatma Gandhi
#73. I don't have a set of tenets, but I live an ethical life. I practice a humility that presupposes there's a power greater than myself. And I always believe, don't inflict harm where it's not necessary.
Michael J. Fox
#74. Life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this in turn presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn life's negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of any given situation.
Viktor E. Frankl
#75. The whole nature of man presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. His system is tuned into woman from the start, just as it is prepared for a quite definite world where there is water, light, air, salt, carbohydrates etc..
Carl Jung
#76. Taking responsibility as a co-creator with God presupposes a basic understanding of how creation works.
Carl Johan Calleman
#77. No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes.
Alfred North Whitehead
#78. The unformed is not worse than the over-formed. The former is nothing; the latter is mere appearance. Real form presupposes real life.
Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe
#79. The true eye for talent presupposes the true reverence for it.
Thomas Carlyle
#80. Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.
Denis Diderot
#81. In the life of the individual when love awakens it is older than everything else, because when it exists it seems as if it has existed for a long time; it presupposes itself back into the
distant past until all searching ends in the inexplicable origin.
Soren Kierkegaard
#82. Exchange, fair or unfair,always presupposes and includes the rule of the bourgeoisie.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
#84. A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal that is worth achieving.
Ayn Rand
#85. Our political way of life is by the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God, and of course presupposes the existence of God, the moral ruler of the universe, and a rule of right and wrong, of just and unjust, binding upon man, preceding all institutions of human society and government.
John Quincy Adams
#86. [P]resent misfortune presupposes good luck in the future.
Vincent De Paul
#88. Eroticism differs from animal sexuality in that human sexuality is limited by taboos and the domain of eroticism is that of the transgression of these taboos. Desire in eroticism is the desire that triumphs over the taboo. It presupposes man in conflict with himself.
Georges Bataille
#89. Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.
Johan Huizinga
#90. How have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The law of majority voting is itself something established by convention, and presupposes unanimity, on one occasion at least. 6.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#91. People who have read a good deal rarely make great discoveries. I do not say this in excuse of laziness, but because invention presupposes an extensive independent contemplation of things.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
#92. I want co-operation between nations for the salvaging of civilization, but co-operation presupposes free nations worthy of co-operation.
Mahatma Gandhi
#93. Don't worry. You don't know enough to worry ... Who do you think you are that you should worry, for cryin' out loud. It's a total waste of time. It presupposes such a knowledge of the situation that it is, in fact, a form of hubris.
Terence McKenna
#94. Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences - all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn't feel it.
Albert Camus
#95. Bipartisan democracy presupposes the individual, whose welfare is identical with that of the community in which he lives, the absence of coherent social classes, a basic uniformity of interest throughout.
Learned Hand
#96. The strength required for the vision of the most powerful reality is not only compatible with the most powerful strength for action, for monstrous action, for crime - it even presupposes it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#97. Satire may be mad and anarchic, but it presupposes an admitted superiority in certain things over others; it presupposes a standard.
G.K. Chesterton
#100. My own reasons for favouring talk of natural kinds is just that I believe the best accounts of the success of scientific theories presupposes the existence of natural kinds.
Hilary Kornblith
