Premises Quotes

Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.

We decided … to put an end to illiteracy, and each of the factory representatives made lists of all illiterates at his own factory, found premises for schools, brought pressure to bear on the factory management and raised funds. A superintendent from amongst the workers was appointed to each school for illiterates, and he saw to it that everything necessary was provided - blackboards, chalk, ABC books; others were appointed to ensure that instruction was given correctly and to hear what the workers had to say about the schools. We gave instructions to the superintendents and heard their reports.

Fatalism is a false premise. What will be is not necessarily what must be.

Man's character is the product of his premises.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability.

Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises.

One of the essential and most valid objections against the act of faith is that it is irrational, inasmuch as it offends against the syllogistic rule that the conclusion of an argument shall contain nothing more than the premises.

When your principles seem to be demanding suicide, clearly it's time to check your premises

The juggle of sophistry consists, for the most part, in using a word in one sense in all the premises, and in another sense in the conclusion.

A sane man often reasons from sound premises; an insane man commonly reasons as well, but the premises are unsound.

Truths are known to us in two ways: some are known directly, and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness; the latter, of Inference; the latter of Inference. The truths known by Intuition are the original premisses, from which all others are inferred.

SYLLOGISM, n. A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor assumption and an inconsequent.

Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.

Unless you plan on making academia your life, all you need to know about postmodernism is that its premises are fundamentally wrong.

The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.

What I want you to understand, is the full evil of those who claim to have become convinced that this earth, by its nature, is a realm of malevolence where the good has no chance to win. Let them check their premises. Let them check their standards of value. Let them check - before they grant themselves the unspeakable license of evil-as-necessity - whether they know what is the good and what are the conditions it requires.

The skilful disputant well knows that he never has his enemy at more advantage than when, by allowing the premises, he shows him arguing wrong from his own principles.

One of the most serious problems that our country has inherited an unwillingness to talk to anyone who disagrees with us or who won't accept, before a discussion, all the premises that we demand.