Quotes About Presuppositions

#1. My mother taught me a lot of things, but they had big presuppositions built in - like her expectation that I'd be a missionary nurse in a religious order.

Faye Wattleton

#2. [W]hen the empirical investigator glories in his refusal to go beyond the specialized observation dictated by the traditions of his discipline, be they ever so inclusive, he is making a virtue out of a defense mechanism which insures him against questioning his presuppositions.

Karl Mannheim

#3. It has become increasingly necessary to abandon the use of biblical historiography as a viable source for our own historical writing .. We must be ready to radically alter and consciously distance ourselves from all presuppositions that have been imposed on us by the biblical account.

Frank Charles Thompson

#4. We see that science also rests on faith; there is simply no science "without presuppositions

Friedrich Nietzsche

#5. The human authors and editors of the Old Testament brought their own experiences and presuppositions to the task of writing. We don't often think about this when we read the Bible.

Adam Hamilton

#6. Critical to the fight against global terrorism is an ability to move beyond presuppositions and stereotypes in our attitudes and policies and to form partnerships that transcend an "us" and "them" view of the world. (p. 135)

John L. Esposito

#7. Classical apologetics operates with a very modern notion of reason; "presuppositional" apologetics, on the other hand, is postmodern (and Augustinian!) insofar as it recognizes the role of presuppositions in both what counts as truth and what is recognized as true.

James K.A. Smith

#8. In the latter case life rests upon a thousand presuppositions which the individual can never trace back to their origins, and verify; but which he must accept upon faith and belief.

Georg Simmel

#9. To admit one's own presuppositions and to point out the presuppositions of others is therefore to maintain that all reasoning is, in the nature of the case, circular reasoning. The starting-point, the method, and the conclusion are always involved in one another.

Cornelius Van Til

#10. Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society, the way that a child catches the measles. But people with understanding realize that their presuppositions should be *chosen* after a careful consideration of which worldview is true.

Francis A. Schaeffer

#11. So long as the spectator has to figure out the meaning of this or that person, or the presuppositions of this or that conflict of inclinations and purposes, he cannot become completely absorbed in the activities and sufferings of the chief characters or feel breathless pity and fear.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#12. An audience that is unwilling to suspend its own presuppositions and biases while considering an opposed (or even unopposed) viewpoint not only frustrates the function of extended argument but effectively denies its own beliefs a rational basis.

Vincent E. Barry

#13. Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.

Gregory Bateson

#14. When we smuggle our conclusions into our investigation by beginning with them as an initial premise, we are likely to beg the question and end up with conclusions that match our presuppositions rather than reflect the truth of the matter.

J. Warner Wallace

#15. Racial reasoning conceals these presuppositions behind a deceptive cloak of racial consensus - yet racial reasoning is seductive because it invokes an undeniable history of racial abuse and racial struggle.

Cornel West

#16. Fear and other emotions are based on assumptions, presuppositions, and expectations; they are constructed in the brain from nonemotional ingredients.

Joseph E. Ledoux

#17. The photograph is an incomplete utterance, a message that depends on some external matrix of conditions and presuppositions for its readability.

Allan Sekula

#18. Our presuppositions shape our perspective, our perspective shapes our priorities, and our priorities shape our practice.

Kenneth Boa

#19. Sometimes the very presence of God is barred by our presuppositions and our intense and constant desire for triumph.

Ravi Zacharias

#20. The fear of being alone is a great obstacle to attracting the relationship that is right for you.

Charles F. Glassman

#21. No doubt the truth is hard to come by for those who do not like the sound of it - dreams and illusions are so much more pleasant.

Anatoli Granovsky

#22. To get wealth and security by guileIs like one who pours water into a pot of unbaked clay.

Thiruvalluvar

#23. Modernist discourse [ ... ] incorporates semantic devices - such as the labeling of theism as 'religion' and naturalism as 'science' - that work to prevent a dangerous debate over fundamental assumptions from breaking out in the open.

Phillip E. Johnson

#24. We all - whether naturalists, atheists, Buddhists, or Christians - see the world through the grid of an interpretive framework - and ultimately this interpretive framework is religious in nature, even if not allied with a particular institutional religion.

James K.A. Smith

#25. I changed the world; the world changed me.
Everything you do comes back to you. When you affect a situation, you are also affected.

Libba Bray

#26. Without trials and tribulation, there would be no hero. Without a hero, there would be no story. Without a story, there is no life as life is made up of vignettes of loving, learning and overcoming.

Gibson, Chrissy

#27. Life is a whoopee cushion, a chair pulled away just as you were taking a seat.

Wally Lamb

#28. For the first time, he looked at her, and she wasn't a stranger, she was Clary - his friend. His family. The girl he'd sworn always to protect. The girl he loved as fiercely as he loved himself.

Cassandra Clare

#29. As we all know, there is no underwear in space.

Carrie Fisher

#30. I wish gravity would go away and just let us all be a big mess.

Jasmine Warga

#31. I want an immediate explanation of the infernal muddle your incompetence has made.

Anthony Powell

#32. So it's tempting to read other people's lives as cautionary fables or repudiations of our own, to covet or denigrate them instead of seeing them for what they are: other people's lives, island universes, unknowable. Not

Tim Kreider

#33. Dimension, Existence, Culture and Identity all splinter and are left behind.
Pink Sound, brothers and sisters. Pinkness. It's dark. It's... flat. It is unexplainable... it is peaceful... it is love...
...it is...

Gus Van Sant

#34. The catchall phrase big data means three things. First, it is a bundle of technologies. Second, it is a potential revolution in measurement. And third, it is a point of view, or philosophy, about how decisions will be-and perhaps should be-made in the future

Steve Lohr

#35. The stories are not autobiographical, but they're personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I've learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

Alice Munro