Top 100 Quotes About Propositions
#1. The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions.
Samuel Johnson
#2. Willem, I suspect deep down you know exactly why you're here, exactly what you want, but you're unwilling to the wanting, let alone the having. Because both of those propositions are terrifying.
Gayle Forman
#3. Whenever one or more components of a company's business model changes, new business models are created for supporting companies. The changes might involve niches served, new marketing angles or improved value propositions.
Marc Ostrofsky
#4. I do not put much stock in "believing in God." The grammar of "belief" invites a far too rationalistic account of what it means to be a Christian. "Belief" implies propositions about which you get to make up your mind before you know the work they are meant to do.
Stanley Hauerwas
#5. Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about "any" things or about "some" things, without specifications of definite particular things.
Alfred North Whitehead
#6. She [Nana] listened to his [Steiner's] propositions, turning them down every time with a shake of the head and that provocative laughter which is peculiar to full-bodied blondes.
Emile Zola
#7. Reason is the power or capacity whereby we see or detect logical relationships among propositions.
Alvin Plantinga
#8. It is a good point of cunning for a man to shape the answer he would have in his own words and propositions, for it makes the other party stick the less.
Francis Bacon
#9. Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless ... (They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#10. It is thus necessary to examine all things according to their essence, to infer from every species such true and well established propositions as may assist us in the solution of metaphysical problems.
Maimonides
#11. The central ideas of Christianity, an angry God and vicarious atonement, are contrary to every fact in nature, as also to the better aspirations of the human heart; they are, in our present stage of enlightenment, absurd, preposterous, and blasphemous propositions.
Virchand Gandhi
#12. -Those who never face oppositions always stop at propositions.
-Those who never confront obstacles live with delays and postponements
Ikechukwu Joseph
#13. Propositions on which all men are in agreement are true: if they are not true we have no truth at all.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
#14. A reply to Olbers' attempt in 1816 to entice him to work on Fermat's Theorem. I confess that Fermat's Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for me, because I could easily lay down a multitude of such propositions, which one could neither prove nor dispose of. []
Carl Friedrich Gauss
#15. I think we must attack
wherever we meet it
the nonsensical idea that mutually exclusive propositions about God can both be true.
C.S. Lewis
#16. An example of this is, when the simple propositions are connected by the particle or; as, either A is B or C is D; or by the particle if; as, A is B if C is D. In the former case, the proposition is called disjunctive, in the latter, conditional: the name hypothetical was originally common to both.
John Stuart Mill
#17. All the general propositions favouring freedom I had .. imbibed at my father's knee or acquired by candle-end reading of Burke and Hayek ...
Margaret Thatcher
#18. Either A is B or C is D," means, "if A is not B, C is D; and if C is not D, A is B." All hypothetical propositions, therefore, though disjunctive in form, are conditional in meaning; and the words hypothetical and conditional may be, as indeed they generally are, used synonymously.
John Stuart Mill
#20. The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.
Noam Chomsky
#21. I hold that the propositions embodied in natural science are not derived by any definite rule from the data of experience, and that they can neither be verified nor falsified by experience according to any definite rule.
Michael Polanyi
#22. In the old physics, three times two equals six and two times three equals 6 are reversible propositions. Not in quantum physics. Three times two and two times three are two different matters, distinct and separate propositions.
Paul Auster
#23. It is fairly clear that many of the arguments against proposition testing are really arguments against propositions themselves.
Stephen King
#24. Liberalism is an attitude rather than a set of dogmas - an attitude that insists upon questioning all plausible and self-evident propositions, seeking not to reject them but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives.
Morris Raphael Cohen
#25. It was a needed instrument to spread abroad the truth of a new gospel to woman, and I could not withhold my hand to stay the work I had begun. I saw not the end from the beginning and dreamed where to my propositions to society would lead me,
Amelia Bloomer
#26. The propositions of mathematics are devoid of all factual content; they convey no information whatever on any empirical subject matter.
Carl Gustav Hempel
#27. Until it is clearly proved that the Universe was created, we may reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity. In a case where two propositions are diametrically opposite, the mind believes that which is less incomprehensible:
Christopher Hitchens
#28. Science [is] knowledge of the truth of Propositions and how things are called.
Thomas Hobbes
#30. The foundation of all morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.
Thomas Huxley
#31. ..the poem is made of sequences in which images, figures of speech and rhythm are undivided. One needs to enter this 'undivision'", and what it does, the proposition it issues, in both senses of the word, logical and erotic: "Let us call a sentence a proposition. A poem makes propositions
Michel Deguy
#32. As men get on in life, they acquire a love for sincerity, and somewhat less solicitude to be lulled or amused. In the progress ofthe character, there is an increasing faith in the moral sentiment, and a decreasing faith in propositions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#33. In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions.
Isaac Newton
#34. General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#35. Our propositions are true if they have the same structure as the world. Truth is a correspondence through structure.
Janna Levin
#36. Our faith does more than assent to propositions, such as the historical fact of Christ's resurrection. Persons who believe in the resurrection will live in a manner that reflects that belief.
Kevin Swanson
#37. A priori Logical propositions are such as can be known a priori without study of the actual world.
Bertrand Russell
#38. This country was founded by men and women who were dedicated or came to be dedicated to two propositions; first, a strong religious conviction, and secondly a recognition that this conviction could flourish only under a system of freedom.
John F. Kennedy
#39. The progressive historical role of capitalism may be summed up in two brief propositions: increase in the productive forces of social labour, and the socialisation of that labour. But both these facts manifest themselves in extremely diverse processes in different branches of the national economy.
Vladimir Lenin
#40. One does afford oneself the luxury to come into the studio and all day, every day, spend one's life making aesthetic propositions. What an immense luxury.
Anish Kapoor
#41. While 'Buddhism' suggests another belief system, 'dharma practice' suggests a course of action. The four ennobling truths are not propositions to believe; they are challenges to act.
Stephen Batchelor
#42. One is our tendency to give higher credences to propositions that we want to be true. This can show up at a very personal level, as what's known as self-serving bias:
Sean Carroll
#43. Cooking was not a chore for Tengo. He always used it as a time to think - about everyday problems, about math problems, about his writing, or about metaphysical propositions. He could think in a more orderly fashion while standing in the kitchen and moving his hands than while doing nothing.
Haruki Murakami
#44. Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#45. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling would his results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the processes by which he had arrived at them they might well consider him as a necromancer.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#46. Whoever thinks algebra is a trick in obtaining unknowns has thought it in vain. No attention should be paid to the fact that algebra and geometry are different in appearance. Algebras (jabbre and maqabeleh) are geometric facts which are proved by propositions five and six of Book two of Elements.
Omar Khayyam
#47. Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#48. Beauty is so rare a th
Sing a new song
Real
Music
A busted flush. A pain in the eyebrows. A
Visiting card
- from 15 False Propositions Against God [1958]
Jack Spicer
#49. Applying deep insight and rubber stamping are such counter-propositions.
Pearl Zhu
#50. I am arguing that faith as such, faith as an alleged method of acquiring knowledge, is totally invalid and as a consequence, all propositions of faith, because they lack rational demonstration, must conflict with reason.
George H. Smith
#51. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.
Calvin Coolidge
#52. All proofs inevitably lead to propositions which have no proof! All things are known because we want to believe in them.
Frank Herbert
#53. Among the minor, yet striking characteristics of mathematics, may be mentioned the fleshless and skeletal build of its propositions; the peculiar difficulty, complication, and stress of its reasonings; the perfect exactitude of its results; their broad universality; their practical infallibility.
Charles Sanders Peirce
#54. The twin propositions of this book are that we are at the end of the American project as the founders intended it, but that opportunities are opening for preserving the best qualities of the American project in a new incarnation.
Charles Murray
#55. I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
#56. I have no evangelical feelings about art at all. I despise art education. Art doesn't lend itself to education. There is no knowledge there. It's a set of propositions about how things should look.
Dave Hickey
#57. One or two particulars may suggest hints of enquiry, and they do well who take those hints; but if they turn them into conclusions, and make them presently general rules, they are forward indeed, but it is only to impose on themselves by propositions assumed for truths without sufficient warrant.
John Locke
#58. You cannot begin to deal with terms, propositions, and arguments - the elements of thought - until you can penetrate beneath the surface of language.
Mortimer J. Adler
#59. Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.
William James
#60. One of the most freeing discoveries these past few years in my relationship with God is discovering that God is not a belief system or a fixed set of theological propositions.
Jim Palmer
#61. Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed.
Walt Whitman
#62. I think my films are very English. That certain emotional distance, interest in the world, interest in irony. These are all deeply English propositions.
Peter Greenaway
#63. As far as our propositions are certain, they do not say anything about reality, and as far as they do say anything about reality, they are not
certain"
Albert Einstein (as cited in Schumpeter, 1991)
Albert Einstein
#64. In today's world, working for yourself is actually the safer route, and working for a corporation has become the riskier propositions.
Paul Zane Pilzer
#65. I am a fairly orthodox Christian. Every Sunday, I say and do my best to mean the whole of the Creed, which is a series of propositions. But it is still a mistake to suppose that it is assent to the propositions that makes you a believer. It is the feelings that are primary.
Francis Spufford
#66. I have never had much trouble simultaneously entertaining diametrically opposed propositions, and welcome the possibility that this is not because I have one mind and am out of it, but because I have lots of them, all beavering away on their own.
Alice Thomas Ellis
#67. Buddha was speaking about reality. Reality may be one, in its deepest essence, but Buddha also stated that all propositions about reality are only contingent.
Dalai Lama
#68. A theorem is a proposition which is a strict logical consequence of certain definitions and other propositions
Anatol Rapoport
#69. If the propositions of this Discourse are tenable, the "state of progressive collapse" is precisely that state in which alone we are warranted in considering All Things.
Edgar Allan Poe
#70. Wisdom and understanding are synonymous words; they consist of two propositions, which are not distinct in sense, but one and the same thing variously expressed.
John Tillotson
#71. Don't be a cynic, and bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. Set down nothing that will help somebody.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#72. There is a distinction between belief in a set of propositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them.
Karen Armstrong
#74. We have in our head something called story grammar. We see the world as a series of episodes rather than logical propositions ... In our serious society, storytelling is seen as being soft. But people process the world through story.
Daniel H. Pink
#75. I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.
John Locke
#76. The first, or theoretic branch, that which explains the nature, production, and distribution of wealth, will be found to rest on a very few general propositions, which are the result of observation, or consciousness.
Nassau William Senior
#77. The truth properly means the sum of all true propositions, what omniscience would assert, the whole ideal system of qualities andrelations which the world has exemplified or will exemplify. The truth is all things seen under the form of eternity.
George Santayana
#78. The French are a tremendously verbal race: they kill you with their assurances, their repetitions, their reasons, their platitudes, their formulae, their propositions, their solutions.
Christina Stead
#79. Since it is impossible for the people spontaneously and universally, to move in concert towards their object; and it is therefore essential, that such changes be instituted by some informal and unauthorized propositions, made by some patriotic and respectable citizen or number of citizens.
James Madison
#80. We find . . . in everyday life, where dilemmas are sometimes solved by the most surprising new propositions; many artists, philosophers, and even scientists owe some of their best ideas to inspirations . . . from the unconscious.
C. G. Jung
#81. It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the propositions of a lover.
William Shakespeare
#82. Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are 'shaggy dog' stories; they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.
W. H. Auden
#83. It is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty.
Gottfried Leibniz
#84. The Divine intellect indeed knows infinitely more propositions [than we can ever know]. But with regard to those few which the human intellect does understand, I believe that its knowledge equals the Divine in objective certainty.
Galileo Galilei
#85. Mathematics is purely hypothetical: it produces nothing but conditional propositions.
Charles Sanders Peirce
#86. True science is never speculative; it employs hypotheses as suggesting points for inquiry, but it never adopts the hypotheses as though they were demonstrated propositions.
Cleveland Abbe
#87. It is a mistake to believe that science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand made by those who feel a craving for authority in some form to replace the religious catechism by something else, even a scientific one.
Sigmund Freud
#88. Nature's action is complex: and nothing is gained in the long run by pretending that it is simple, and trying to describe it in a series of elementary propositions.
Alfred Marshall
#90. Often we agree to shady but attractive propositions and as a result we have sorrow
Sunday Adelaja
#91. It makes me hate accepting things that are probable when they are held up before me as infallibly true. I prefer these words which tone down and modify the hastiness of our propositions: "Perhaps, In some sort, Some, They say, I think," and the like.
Michel De Montaigne
#92. In fact, of course, I hold that propositions that contemporary
philosophers would properly count as 'empirical' can be necessary and be known to be such.
Saul Kripke
#93. About this time two new propositions entered Fat's mind, due to this particular conversation. 1) Some of those in power are insane. 2) And they are right.
Anonymous
#94. Many life-affirming questions lead to an endless spool of disconcerting propositions and contradictory conclusions, and even more troubling, some queries prove unanswerable.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#95. Analytic It is clear that the definition of "logic" or "mathematics" must be sought by trying to give a new definition of the old notion of "analytic" propositions.
Bertrand Russell
#96. Now obviously the propositions of the system have reference to matters of empirical fact; if they did not, they could have no claim to be called scientific.
Talcott Parsons
#97. The difference between resemblance nominalism and class nominalism is that the former, but not the latter, brings in resemblance to account for the truthmakers of the propositions in question.
Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra
#98. On the subject of religious belief, we relax standards of reasonableness and evidence that we rely on in every other area of our lives. We relax so totally that people believe the most ludicrous propositions, and are willing to organize their lives around them.
Sam Harris
#99. Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and comercials.
Neil Postman
#100. Any serious reading of the Bible means personal involvement in it, not symbol mental agreement with abstract propositions. And involvement is dangerous, because it leaves one open to unforeseen conclusions.
Megan McKenna
