Quotes about assumption
page 7

“In other words, gurus generalize from their own experience. Some gurus are inclined to believe that all humanity should accept their vision: others allege that, when the last trump sounds, their own followers will be saved, whilst the majority of mankind will remain unredeemed. This apparently arrogant assumption is closely connected with certain features of personality displayed by a variety of gurus.”

Anthony Storr (1920–2001) English psychiatrist

Introduction (p. XII–XIII)
Feet of Clay; Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus (1996, 1997)

“An important assumption underlying our commitment to freedom of expression is that truth is a process, not a product.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

Source: Shouting Fire: Civil liberties in a Turbulent Age (2002), p. 149

“The assumption that government must be neutral among conceptions of the good generally appears in cases in which the Court protects speech that government would restrict. But the force of this assumption can also be seen where the Court has upheld restrictions on speech, most notably, in obscenity cases. Although the Court has been reluctant to protect obscenity under the First Amendment, its reasoning in recent obscenity cases displays the powerful influence of neutrality assumptions on constitutional law.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

Chap. 3. Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech
Democracy's Discontent (1996)

Law, Appearance

“From a young age, we pick up many false assumptions about the world, about life, and about exactly who we are living life.”

Mooji (1954) Jamaican spiritual teacher

Greater than Sky, Vaster than Space, (2018), Part I

Life, Age, World, Falseness

“We all start out looking at life from the particular perspective of our upbringing, which provides us with assumptions about who we are. For most of us, this culturally imparted point of view simply remains our perspective as we move through life.”

Mooji (1954) Jamaican spiritual teacher

Greater than Sky, Vaster than Space, (2018), Part I

“Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?” But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Hays translation
Source: Meditations (c. AD 121–180), Book IV, 24

“We may lay it down as a rule that the older the exercise of any power, the more benign it will appear, and the more recent its assumption, the more unnatural and even dangerous it will seem.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter V, Section 4, p. 58 (1985)

Exercises, Appearance

“Pragmatism starts from assumptions similar to those of empiriocriticism, but differs from the latter by its striking formulations, loose aphorisms, and analytical unscrupulousness.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: The Alienation of Reason (1966), Chapter Seven, Pragmatism and Positivism, p. 166