The Proposition Quotes

#1. If your opponent has you by fifty pounds, winning a fight against him is a dubious proposition, at best. If your opponent has you by eight thousand and fifty pounds, you've left the realm of combat and enrolled yourself in Road-kill 101. Or possibly in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Jim Butcher

#2. From a rational standpoint, it might be expected that man should be far more willing to express financial confidence in his skills rather than risking his earnings on the mindless meanderings of chance. Experience, however, has strongly indicated the reverse proposition to hold true.

Richard Arnold Epstein

#3. There is no controversy within science over the core proposition of evolutionary theory.

Kenneth R. Miller

#4. I've always favoured proposition over opposition. But we will oppose the government when it's off track.We'll support positive suggestions that we'll bring forward and support the government when it's making progress.

Jack Layton

#5. I firmly believe that life is an 'and' proposition and not an 'or' one. If you really love something, you just have to try it. The worse that can happen is that you'll be told 'no.'

Bryan Batt

#6. That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise.

David Hume

#7. [In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting.

Alfred North Whitehead

#8. It goes without saying that the Jewish people can have no other goal than Palestine and that, whatever the fate of the proposition may be, our attitude toward the land of our fathers is and shall remain unchangeable.

Theodor Herzl

#9. The nation was founded and "dedicated," to use Lincoln's language in the "Gettysburg Address," to equality as a "self-evident truth." But this very principle of equality, as Lincoln also noted, was a "proposition." To make it a reality remained "the unfinished work" of Americans.

Ronald Takaki

#10. It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.

Soren Kierkegaard

#11. She was almost in love with him. No, that's impossible, she thought: either you are or you aren't. Love's the only thing in this world that is unequivocal. There are different kinds of love, certainly, but it's a you-do or you-don't proposition with them all.

Harper Lee

#12. Whenever I've had to make a major decision as a doctor, cop or for a company I've worked for, I ask myself: What is the value proposition here? Will my decision bring added value to the population I have the privilege to serve?

Richard Carmona

#13. During the few minutes that Lewis was away, Morse was acutely conscious of the truth of the proposition that the wider the circle of knowledge the greater the circumference of ignorance.

Colin Dexter

#14. To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side.

John Stuart Mill

#15. All democracies are based on the proposition that power is very dangerous and that it is extremely important not to let any one person or small group have too much power for too long a time

Aldous Huxley

#16. (R)eality TV (is) a medium dedicated to the proposition that with the help of judicious editing, carefully chosen half-wits can hold the attention of millions of their fellow half-wits for weeks on end.

Terry Teachout

#17. Because of my own experience with market fluctuation, I recognize the great risks one takes on investments. This converts the Social Security safety net into a risky proposition many cannot afford to take.

Grace Napolitano

#18. Communism starts with the proposition that there are no universal truths or general truths of human nature.

Richard M. Nixon

#19. Of course with John McCain out of the race, George W. Bush has to pick a running mate. Which is kind of a scary proposition when you think about it. I mean his dad picked Dan Quayle, an he isn't as smart as his dad.

Jay Leno

#20. Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made this century, to the proposition that" - he had gone formal, but now he reverted to plain language - "race has no place in American life or law.

Ken Follett

#21. Before you can pick a social-media strategy, you have to think of your customer and what the value proposition is for them. Social media is a way to engage customers, not to give your business a 'shout out.'

Carol Roth

#22. Our value proposition to consumers is so much more about completeness than freshness. Having the complete season is so much more valuable, in our business model, than having last night's episode.

Ted Sarandos

#23. ...to imitate Western civilization in its spirit, its mode of life and its social organization is impossible without dealing a fatal blow to the very existence of Islam as an ideological proposition.

Muhammad Asad

#24. Actually, science has determined that a flipped coin is not strictly a fifty-fifty proposition," said Ajay. "Surprisingly, the coin will return to whichever side you're holding faceup in your hand before it is flipped, exactly fifty-one percent of the time.

Mark Frost

#25. There is no other proposition in economics that has more solid empirical evidence supporting it than the Efficient Market Hypothesis ... In the literature of finance, accounting, and the economics of uncertainty, the EMH is accepted as a fact of life.

Michael Jensen

#26. That's right, but it's not a mathematical proposition. It's a sociological observation
and there is always the possibility of exceptions to such observations. - Dr. Mandamus to Dr. Kelden Amadiro

Isaac Asimov

#27. We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express.

A.J. Ayer

#28. A scholar like myself who is not a Sinologist and yet ventures the proposition that Chinese languages should be rewritten in the Greek alphabet (or "Romanized", to use the current term) is treading on uncharted territory (for him) and does so at his peril.

Eric A. Havelock

#29. The proposition that the principal articles of the Apostles' Creed did not have the same meaning for the Christians of the earliest times as they have for Christians of our time is hereby condemned and proscribed as erroneous.

Pope Pius X

#30. Well, because I have twin seven-year-old boys, I enjoy the gift giving stuff a great deal. We do both Hanukkah and Christmas, so it is a costly, though extremely pleasing proposition.

Fred Melamed

#31. When it comes to Jewish sensitivity, I don't find the proposition compelling that non-Jews have no right to comment. We all have the right to comment about each other. And I object when people say that these comments are motivated by anti-Semitism.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

#32. It follows at once from the last proposition that the centre of gravity of any triangle is at the intersection of the lines drawn from any two angles to the middle points of the opposite
sides respectively.

Archimedes

#33. It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.

Thomas Henry Huxley

#34. The graphic emphasis placed on those first lines is rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference.

John Paul Stevens

#35. You make an open-ended proposition and the audience completes it somehow. That's what you hope an artwork to be-a constantly living thing.

Cornelia Parker

#36. I profoundly believe in - and teach - the proposition that photography is inherently a fiction-making process. Don't speak to me of the document; I don't really believe in it particularly now. A picture is not the world, but a new thing.

Tod Papageorge

#37. Love is nothing but Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause (Ethics, part III, proposition 13, scholium).

Baruch Spinoza

#38. First, you must have entrepreneurs who fully grasp their customers. They understand their product so well because they themselves are customers. The second thing is having an awesome value proposition.

Craig Sherman

#39. My proposition is that music is at the heart of what 'The Magic Flute' means: that it's Mozart's music, not the words, we should be attending to. Music expresses what can't be expressed otherwise.

Simon McBurney

#40. The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.

Robert A. Heinlein

#41. I personally think the best ideas for TV shows - at least comedies - are very low-fi ideas. High concepts often sell pitches in movies and TV, but, especially in TV when you're talking about hopefully a 100 or 150 episode proposition, those concepts just burn off, and then you're stuck with nothing.

Michael Schur

#42. Privilege encased them, surrounded them like armor. In the cast of their faces was the assumption that they would never have to take anything very seriously. For the first time in my life I saw the truth in the old proposition that the rich were better-looking.

Peter Straub

#43. Cultivating your value proposition in life is the way to move forward. You are the raw material of your own destiny.

Bryant McGill

#44. The evidence of history speaks with a single voice. I do not know any exception to the proposition that if you compare like with like, the freer the system, the better off the ordinary poor people have been.

Milton Friedman

#45. Faith is the assent to any proposition not made out by the deduction of reason but upon the credit of the proposer.

John Locke

#46. 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

#47. If the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted.

A.J. Ayer

#48. Life never tires of testing the proposition that life must go on.

Robert Breault

#49. Finally, it follows from the preceding proposition that the joy by which the drunkard is enslaved is altogether different from the joy which is the portion of the philosopher,
a think I wished just to hint in passing.

Baruch Spinoza

#50. Existentialism does not offer to the reader the consolations of an abstract evasion: existentialism proposes no evasion. On the contrary, its ethics is experienced in the truth of life, and it then appears as the only proposition of salvation which one can address to men.

Simone De Beauvoir

#51. We're talking about in the Proposition 8 case fundamental rights, civil rights. I offer no apology for the position I took in Prop. 8.

Kamala Harris

#52. Indeed, that the Second Amendment poses no barrier to strong gun laws is perhaps the most well-settled proposition in American constitutional law.

Erwin Griswold

#53. The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.

John Adams

#54. Of course, there is no conceivable way of getting by reason from the proposition "I am losing interest in this" to the proposition "This is false.

C.S. Lewis

#55. Conceived in mistrust, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created evil.

Harper Lee

#56. I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.

Henry Adams

#57. The Use of the Understanding, in endeavouring to find out the Meaning of any Proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature and Evidence for or against it, and in judging of it according to the seeming Force or Weakness of the Evidence.

Anthony Collins

#58. I believe that the fundamental proposition is that we must recognize that the hostilities in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia are all parts of a single world conflict. We must, consequently, recognize that our interests are menaced both in Europe and in the Far East.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#59. What you have said, Mr. President, fully satisfies me that you have given to every proposition which has been made, a kind and candid consideration. And you have now expressed the conclusion to which you have arrived, clearly and distinctly.

Salmon P. Chase

#60. Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources - and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on in the future.

Alberto Moravia

#61. Definitely beats my first kiss. Seventh grade, Andrea Williams, behind the gym after school. She came over to my table at lunch, whispered the proposition in my ear, and I had a hard-on for the rest of the day.

Jay Asher

#62. A lot of issues were on the ballots. In New York City there was Proposition 14. That would put a ceiling on the number of late-night talk shows. And California passed Proposition 21. That would change guacamole officially to guac.

David Letterman

#63. An eating disorder epidemic suggests that love and disgust are being jointly marketed, as it were; that wherever the proposition might first have come from, the unacceptability of the female body has been disseminated culturally.

Rachel Cusk

#64. When my father began his work in the 1970s it was a very different EU. I pay tribute to what he did. But it has now become a very different proposition: the United States of Europe.

Boris Johnson

#65. There's nothing attractive about doing a documentary. Nothing. It's hard, hard work, and I find having all the attention of the day on me a very unattractive proposition.

Elaine Stritch

#66. But nearly all of the people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure.

G.K. Chesterton

#67. It is fairly clear that many of the arguments against proposition testing are really arguments against propositions themselves.

Stephen King

#68. Your customers are the judge, jury, and executioner of your value proposition. They will be merciless if you don't find fit!

Alexander Osterwalder

#69. Surely the experience of all good men confirms the proposition that without a due measure of private devotions the soul will grow lean.

William Wilberforce

#70. It has been pointed out already that no knowledge of probabilities, less in degree than certainty, helps us to know what conclusions are true, and that there is no direct relation between the truth of a proposition and its probability. Probability begins and ends with probability.

John Maynard Keynes

#71. Woman suffrage is an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality. It is a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition. It is a half-fledged, unmusical, Promethean abomination. It is a quack bolus to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity.

John Boyle O'Reilly

#72. ...[I]f I know that it is only by this process that the intended operation can be performed, then to say that if I fully will the operation, I also will the action required for it, is an analytical proposition...

Immanuel Kant

#73. Passing Proposition 8 did not stop LGBTQ couples from going to sleep that night with their partners. What it did accomplish, however, was remind the gay community once again that they are not looked at as equals, that the God of so many does not love them.

Timothy Kurek

#74. It's a simple proposition to us: Everyone is entitled to adequate medical health care. If you call that a 'redistribution of income'
well, so be it. I don't call it that. I call it just being fair
giving the middle class taxpayers an even break that the wealthy have been getting.

Joe Biden

#75. To fear the examination of any proposition apears to me an intellectual and a moral palsy that will ever hinder the firm grasping of any substance whatever.

George Eliot

#76. We must live a genuine life in order to discover personal happiness and self-fulfillment. Understanding that a person is living a lie is the first step into realizing what is possible. No matter how frightful such a proposition is, we must dare to be an original self.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#77. There is something precious in our being mysteries to ourselves, in our being unable ever to see through even the person who is closest to our heart and to reckon with him as though he were a logical proposition or a problem in accounting.

Rudolf Bultmann

#78. You can shove such a proposition a d'yeabl aep arse.' The devil demonstrated his knowledge of the Old Language.

Andrzej Sapkowski

#79. Despite all the wonderful advances that have been made, it's still dangerous for an actor to talk about that in our extremely misguided culture. Look at what happened in California with Proposition 8. Please, don't pretend that we're suddenly all wonderfully, blissfully accepted.

Richard Chamberlain

#80. Only if we accept the proposition that the state of Israel is the exclusive and legitimate representative of the Jewish people would a movement calling for divestment, sanctions and boycott against that state be understood as directed against the Jewish people as a whole.

Judith Butler

#81. If someone were to put a proposition before men bidding them choose, after examination, the best customs in the world, each nation would certainly select its own.

Herodotus

#82. ..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

#83. The utter absence of proof for a proposition is proof of a successful conspiracy to destroy all proof.

George F. Will

#84. Consistent alignment of capabilities and internal processes with the customer value proposition is the core of any strategy execution.

Robert S. Kaplan

#85. A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism; it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will.

Jonathan Rauch

#86. I wanted to get to that aesthetic proposition that comes out of learning the human elements of a world, so that those notes and rhythms mean something to you besides just the academic way in which they fall in place.

Stanley Crouch

#87. If history is really relevant in today's world, the proposition doesn't command much respect. Perhaps the past is a different country, but if so no one much wants to travel there.

Elizabeth Janeway

#88. The Broad research center represents the highest quality model of what Proposition 71 should be funding.

Robert Klein

#89. There are some men who in a fifty-fifty proposition insist on getting the hyphen too.

Laurence J. Peter

#90. Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

#91. Fighting newspaper editors for the last word was a losing proposition.

Harold Holzer

#92. I acted all the way up until Princeton. It was just one of my favorite extracurricular activities. Then I got to Princeton and had a really conservative vibe. All my friends were planning on law school, med school, or Wall Street, and suddenly acting seem like a really risky proposition.

Wentworth Miller

#93. Once you attach your personality to a proposition, people start reacting to the personality and stop reacting to the proposition.

Harvey MacKay

#94. If you ask Americans whether they've been successful at sealing the border with Mexico, they'll tell you that it's a very difficult proposition.

Bashar Al-Assad

#95. It is almost always the unhappiness of a victorious disputant to destroy his own authority by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing his proposition to an indefensible extent.

Samuel Johnson

#96. Although these examples only scratch the surface, they illustrate the fundamental proposition that freedom is one whole, that anything that reduces freedom in one part of our lives is likely to affect freedom in the other parts.

Milton Friedman

#97. Lola Montes is, in my unhumble opinion, the greatest film of all time, and I am willing to stake my critical reputation, such as it is, on this one proposition above all others.

Andrew Sarris

#98. The proposition that Muslims are welcome in Britain if, and only if, they stop behaving like Muslims is a doctrine which is incompatible with the principles that guide a free society.

Roy Hattersley

#99. The California proposition [Prop. 187] is one I would agree with. That's the easiest way to put it.

Bob Dole

#100. Marriage isn't a 50-50 proposition very often. It's more like 100-0 one moment and 0-100 the next.

Billie Jean King