The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.

Character displays “the weighty impatience of having to explain something that should already be understood.

Oh, yes.” There was no shame in it. Sometimes there wasn’t time to do anything else but take a flying leap. Sometimes you had to trust to experience and intuition and general awareness and take...

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.

True masters deconstruct as well as reconstruct.

A favor is a friendly, gracious, kind, generous or obliging act that is freely granted. It is offered and not solicited.A promise is a declaration assuring that one will or will not do something. It...

Why do people assume? If I hate you, I’ll tell you. In this case, it’s not hate. It’s hurt. I’ll lick my wounds, which only oozed because I gave a damn, and be over it...

It is easy to get faith into our heads. It is hard to get faith into our bloodstream.

As the unexpected becomes ordinary, the spotlight shifts once again to land where your brain thinks it will get more informational bang for the attentional buck.

If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don’t tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear...

That’s the way progress works: the more we build up these vast repertoires of scientific and technological understanding, the more we conceal them.

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

If I had a dollar for every time a random woman walked up to me and tried to seduce me, I’d have 50 cents. That’s assuming drag queens are half price.

They have the unique ability to listen to one story and understand another.

Just remember: If you make unfounded assumptions before choosing a path, you’re blindly sauntering along.

Conventional wisdom won’t provide continual growth.

Intelligence people are no different from anybody else. They have preconceptions, and when they see them in real life, it reinforces how brilliant they think they are.

Words in the head are sticky and social creatures – when you finally pull one out, you’re liable to get lots of bits of meanings that have rubbed onto them as a result of their...

Just because I am queer doesn’t mean I am queer for you

All literature becomes a sacred text.

I know I have this judgmental side that I’m often fighting against. But today I recognized the depths of my assumptions about people. What I envision is nothing remotely similar to the reality. Humility hurts....

Learning to pass, it turns out, is less a matter of acting than not acting. You can become part of a given scene, situation, or people (‘our people,’ as it were), simply by letting yourself...

It has been said already, but bears repeating: no blanket statement can sum up an entire group of people. No book, no chapter, no study, no research report can attempt to do that either. Instead,...

In the general American population, 3.9 percent of adult men are six foot two or taller. Among my CEO sample, almost a third were six foot two or taller.

My point is this — you don’t know. When I was first here, people looked at my hair, noticed apples on my tray, and thought ‘hippie.’ Then, from ‘hippie’ they thought ‘druggie.’ From there it...

Learning to be aware of what you unconsciously know may depend on a line of focused effort and specialized knowledge and even some measure of aptitude, but actually learning it may be effortless, automatic, and...

… always keep in mind that an article of faith is not something that the faithful assume. Faith, for those who have it, is the most certain form of knowledge, not a tentative opinion.

Assumptions are unopened windows that foolish birds fly into, and their broken bodies are evidence gathered too late.

Convention (is) so often a mask for injustice.

Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.

(A middle-class child’s) parents didn’t just give him money. They passed down habits, knowledge, and cognitive traits.

You’re going to listen to me, and for once you’re going to hear what I say and not read between lines that aren’t there.

People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.

The author called us to re-examine assumptions bequeathed to us from Greece and Rome. Just as a bridge built by the Roman Empire might have held up tolerably for centuries under foot traffic but crumble...

You figured that the only way I’d be happy is if I did the things you thought would be best for me.

It makes Brooke feel strange in her stomach. It is like the feeling when she reads a book like the one about the man with the bomb, or thinks a sentence, just any old sentence...

Over time, I discovered that learning new things doesn’t always liberate you. Instead it makes you wonder if your pants are on backward or if the trees are holding the sky up – it makes...

Perhaps, if you weren’t so busy regarding my shortcomings, you’d find that I do possess redeeming qualities, discreet as they may be. I notice when the sky is blue. I smile down at children. I...

It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of...

Who we are is not a question we can ask without seeking to understand the context in which we live. Biblical counselors seek to understand the influences that shape the responses of the human heart.

It will be found that every attack upon religion, or upon characteristic ideas inherited from religion, when its assumptions are laid bare, turns out to be an attack upon mind.

Power of generalizing gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals.

Culture is the sum of the values, beliefs and assumptions of human groups.

Two people don’t see same event as opportunity. When one see it a problem; other look to capitalize it for optimum benefit

It’s as if she assumes everything will go right, and when it doesn’t – which, of course, is pretty often – she is surprised and affronted.

While you judge me by my outward appearance I am silently doing the same to you, even though there’s a ninety-percent chance that in both cases our assumptions are wrong.

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.

It wakes us right up.

Everyone assumes writers spend their time lounging around, writing and occasionally striking a pose whilst having a think.