Top 100 Quotes About Presumption
#1. [T]his is the strongest encouragement to them in sinning; and we have need to lay all our batteries against this bulwark of presumption (361).
Richard Baxter
#3. My own fault. The equipment had safeties but your primary piece of protective equipment was your brain. There was a presumption that anyone entering this room was intelligent enough to keep away from hot things, sharp things, and things carrying large stores of momentum.
Max Barry
#4. Education is a process by which the individual is developed into something better than he would have been without it ... The very though seems in a way the height of presumption. For one thing, it involves the premise that some human beings can be better than others.
Richard M. Weaver
#5. All writing is presumption, of course, since no one knows what it is like to be another human being.
Cynthia Ozick
#6. She harbored the childhood presumption that the truly scary things could only find her in the night.
Thomm Quackenbush
#7. Adam named every creature in the garden. And we've been paying for his presumption ever since.
Marty Rubin
#8. When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.
Barbara Tuchman
#9. It would be a ridiculous and unwarranted presumption on our part if we imagined that we were more energetic or more intelligent than the men of the past - our material knowledge has increased, but not our intelligence.
C. G. Jung
#10. I had learned to harness ignorance with presumption. I was ready to become an unacknowledged watercolorist.
Henry Miller
#11. You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been produced at different periods.
Robert Schumann
#12. Where only angels tread, he would be a fool to rush in; though perhaps the wise may preserve their dignity if, aware of their presumption, they enter cautiously.
Wilfred Cantwell Smith
#13. Evolution has long been the target of illogical arguments that use presumption.
Marilyn Vos Savant
#14. Pettiness of mind, ignorance and presumption are the cause of stubbornness, because stubborn people only want to believe what they themselves can imagine, and they can imagine very few things.
Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...
#15. That an author takes a bow is not humility but presumption. What does the paleface want on the stage afterwards? But before the performance he had even less business there
and paying him royalties is equivalent to cheating the actors.
Karl Kraus
#16. I write under not only the presumption that everything I write is deeply conditioned by everything I've already written, but that everything I write changes, retroactively, all those things I've already written.
Nam Le
#17. 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.
Abraham Lincoln
#18. Just as lavishness leads easily to presumption, so does frugality to meanness. But meanness is a far less serious fault than presumption.
Confucius
#19. Fortune, to show us her power in all things, and to abate our presumption, seeing she could not make fools wise, has made them fortunate.
Michel De Montaigne
#20. It was modesty that invented the word "philosopher" in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneselfwise to the actors of the spirit
the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#21. Arrogance is the act of the great; presumption that of the little.
George Crabbe
#22. We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.
Tom Stoppard
#23. It is a great presumption to ascribe our successes to our own management, and not to esteem ourselves upon any blessing, rather as it is the bounty of heaven, than the acquisition of our own prudence.
Joseph Addison
#24. But I rather thought
I mean, I heard you'd killed Balder the Fair."
"I never did," snapped Loki crossly. "Well, no one ever proved I did. What happened to the presumption of innocence? Besides, he was supposed to be invulnerable. Was it my fault that he wasn't?
Joanne Harris
#25. Israel knew that there was no greater gift than to be given God's name, but that gift was a frightening reality that threatened to consume her. Israel, who would be tempted by the idolatrous presumption she possessed God's name, rightly never forgot she could not say God's name.
Stanley Hauerwas
#26. Presumption will be easily corrected; but timidity is a disease of the mind more obstinate and fatal.
Samuel Johnson
#27. To lose what we have never owned might seem an eccentric bereavement, but Presumption has its own affliction as well as claim.
Emily Dickinson
#28. Our first love-letter ... There is so much to be said, and which no words seems exactly to say - the dread of saying too much is so nicely balanced by the fear of saying too little. Hope borders on presumption, and fear on reproach.
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
#29. What we have come to, through a combination of popular psychology and expanding technology, is a presumption that all our thoughts and feelings are worth uttering.
Judith Martin
#30. I want to challenge the presumption that the world cannot know it is the world unless there is an alternative to the world.
Stanley Hauerwas
#31. 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.
David Hume
#32. I tend to be a person who starts with the presumption that I should trust you until you abuse the privilege, and then our relationship is forever changed. That's a very big line, and chances are it's not going to work if it's crossed. I warn people that this is how I'm going to deal with it.
Penny Pritzker
#33. Eternity, Presumption
The instant I perceive
That you who were Existence
Yourself forgot to live
Emily Dickinson
#34. Somehow, the greater the public opposition to the health care bill, the more determined they seem to force it on us anyway. Their attitude shows Washington at its very worst - the presumption that they know best, and they're going to get their way whether the American people like it or not.
Scott Brown
#35. The only barrier to truth is the presumption that you already have it.
Chuck Missler
#36. The presumption that any current opinion is not wholly false, gains in strength according to the number of its adherents.
Herbert Spencer
#37. On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative combination lays bare the presumption of a lie; the merciless fact, culminating in the checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite.
Emanuel Lasker
#38. This is a generation weaned on Watergate, and there is no presumption of innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead, there is a presumption that, without relentless scrutiny, the government will misbehave.
Dee Dee Myers
#39. She was used to this, being grabbed by men who walked around in a cloud of cologne-drenched entitlement, with the presumption that, because they were powerful and found her beautiful, they belonged together.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#40. A man who insults the modesty of a woman, as good as tells her that he has seen something in her conduct that warranted his presumption.
Samuel Richardson
#41. Other sink," I said, smiling at his presumption that he would get drawers at my place, too, and his scowl when he couldn't find them.
Sylvia Day
#42. I am indeed willing to acknowledge what I have done, an error and presumption. I will call it an error and presumption because I swerved from the accustomed flowery paths of female delicacy.
Deborah Sampson
#43. The longer you remain silent, the longer you don't turn over documents, a presumption begins to build that you're withholding something. That's human nature. That may not be a legal presumption, but that's a common sense presumption.
Trey Gowdy
#44. I didn't say I understood her. I wouldn't have the presumption to say that of any woman.
Charles Dickens
#45. 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.
Garth Risk Hallberg
#46. We have never considered our brand superior or inferior to any other one, and we have never spoken about our work in comparison to anyone else's. We are ourselves; we have never had the presumption to please everyone, but we believe in the utmost liberty to express oneself.
Domenico Dolce
#47. For a time, people were getting arrested for photographing the Brooklyn Bridge. So to me, what it meant to do photography also changed. There was a new kind of politics to it - something that was very aggressive and dangerous - and a presumption that it would reveal some kind of truth or evidence.
Trevor Paglen
#48. Among the arts of conversation no one pleases more than mutual deference or civility, which leads us to resign our own inclinations to those of our companions, and to curb and conceal that presumption and arrogance so natural to the human mind.
David Hume
#49. You play because you have a guilty attraction to supernatural beasts and harlequin love stories, but you harbour the secret presumption that you could write them way better yourself. Good. This is your opportunity to prove it.
Avery Alder
#50. Being assured of our salvation is no arrogant stoutness. It is faith. It is not presumption. Rather it is confidence in God's promise.
John F. MacArthur Jr.
#51. The soul languishing in obscurity contracts a kind of rust, or abandons itself to the chimera of presumption; for it is natural for it to acquire something, even when separated from any one.
Quintilian
#52. Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life!
Charles Darwin
#53. You've seen one dark, rugged werewolf, you've seen them all. That's what I told myself the first time I laid eyes on Zack Armstrong. I was wrong. Dead wrong. And now that presumption has come back to bite me in the ass.
S.J. Harper
#54. The very notion that a candidate should openly solicit votes violated the principled presumption that such behavior itself represented a confession of unworthiness for national office.
Joseph J. Ellis
#55. Always been, and the safety of the Republic would be assured. This was a presumption buried deep in the soul of every Roman.
Tom Holland
#56. In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expect to find at the end of our errors. Childish presumption which justifies the fact that child-nations, inheriting our follies, are now directing our history.
Albert Camus
#57. 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.
Matt Keller
#58. Presumption should never make us neglect that which appears easy to us, nor despair make us lose courage at the sight of difficulties.
Benjamin Banneker
#59. Every doer of the law and every moral worker is accursed, for he walketh in the presumption of his own righteousness.
Martin Luther
#60. They know, too, that while in history-building a fact is better than a presumption, it doesn't take a presumption long to bloom into a fact when THEY have the handling of it.
Mark Twain
#61. It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. They are themselves, always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.
Adam Smith
#62. Contrary to common belief, the presumption of innocence applies only inside a courtroom. It has no applicability elsewhere, although the media do not seem to be aware of this.
Vincent Bugliosi
#63. Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.
Michel De Montaigne
#64. 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.
Johann Lamont
#65. Our interaction as patients with the NHS should be on the basis that there's a presumption that all information is shared with us.
Andrew Lansley
#66. It was as if God had decreed this characterless engagement of brainless forces as his answer to the human presumption.
E.L. Doctorow
#67. Presumption and despair are opposite deadly sins. We hear a lot about despair, and the need for hope; but what is presumption?
Peter Kreeft
#68. There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
Ernest Hemingway,
#69. The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and
vigorous nutriment.
Blaise Pascal
#70. Prudence is a presumption of the future, contracted from the experience of time past.
Thomas Hobbes
#71. The presumption of innocent until proven guilty has been overshadowed by the presumption of guilty until proven wealthy
Frank Vetro
#72. God does not suffer presumption in anyone but himself.
Herodotus
#74. 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.
Samuel Johnson
#75. Presumption must be quenched even more than a fire.
Heraclitus
#76. People who know math understand what other mortals understand, but other mortals do not understand them. This asymmetry gives them a presumption of superior ability.
Daniel Kahneman
#77. To accept something on mere presumption and, likewise, to fail to investigate it may cover over, blind, and lead astray.
Alfarabi
#78. Protestantism became identified with the republican presumption in liberty as an end in itself. This presumption was then reinforced by an unassailable belief in the common sense of the individual.
Stanley Hauerwas
#79. James warns against the pride of presumption in speaking of
the simplest plans in life without a due submission to the overarching
sovereignty of God over the day's agenda. Man's plans might be interrupted by God's decision to take the life he gave.
John Piper
#80. The only thing that might have annoyed some mathematicians was the presumption of assuming that maybe the axiom of choice could fail, and that we should look into contrary assumptions.
Alonzo Church
#81. 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.
Nick Denton
#82. For one to grasp, whatever be his object, sov'reign power ... is an act of perilous presumption.
Vittorio Alfieri
#83. It is a stupid presumption to go about despising and condemning as false anything that seems to us improbable; this is a common fault in those who think they have more intelligence than the crowd.
Michel De Montaigne
#84. 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.
Ambrose Bierce
#85. I don't live a lie. You have to understand that people who choose not to discuss their personal lives are not living a lie. That is a presumption that people jump to.
Kevin Spacey
#86. The Court made an exception, however, in the case of candidates contributing to their own campaigns because of the rather reasonable presumption that a candidate is incapable of corrupting himself.
James L. Buckley
#87. We are not actually in charge of life, yet behave as if we are the masters of our own destiny. The realization of this fact is quite a hard one. The ridiculousness of our pomposity and presumption can only result in anger or humor.
Billy Childish
#88. I think I have the right to know what Steve Forbes paid in taxes - I don't think there should be a law. I think there should be a presumption. I wouldn't vote for a guy who wouldn't reveal what he paid in taxes. That kind of thing.
Esther Dyson
#89. It is in the light of the unparalleled presumption of respect for religion* that I make my own disclaimer for this book. I shall not go out of my way to offend, but nor shall I don kid gloves to handle religion any more gently than I would handle anything else.
Richard Dawkins
#90. It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
James Thurber
#91. A presumption of any fact is, properly, an inferring of that fact from other facts that are known; it is an act of reasoning; and much of human knowledge on all subjects is derived from this source.
Tony Abbott
#92. I've always maintained that black people and women suffer from a presumption of incompetence. The burdens of proof are different. It just gets so tiresome.
Carol Moseley Braun
#93. Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that's so deep in history that there's no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.
Noam Chomsky
#94. To lose what we never owned might seem an eccentric Bereavement but Presumption has its Affliction as actually as Claim
Emily Dickinson
#95. I never cease to wonder at the amazing presumption of much of white society, assuming that they have the right to bargain with the Negro for his freedom.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#96. I believe I am entitled like any other person to have the presumption of innocence.
Peter Slipper
#97. 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.
Yuval Levin
#98. There is among doctors, in acute hospitals at least, a presumption of stupidity in their patients.
Oliver Sacks
#99. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man;
Thomas Paine
#100. He is a man-beast, carnivore incarnate, motivated by carnal avarice and wearing only the mask of civility.
She could sip from that cup.
It is his presumption that deters her: his belief that he has already caught Maud in his paw.
Emmanuelle De Maupassant
