Presumption Quotes

That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.

Despair ruins some, presumption many.

I feel arrogant trying to give people advice.

Nothing is to be presumed on, or despaired of.

A prediction, in a field where prediction is not possible, is no more than a prejudice.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

It is better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be condemned.

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Your questions are false if you already know the answer.

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.

Presumption must be quenched even more than a fire.

We have to be careful about applying criminal labels to people until we're very sure.

Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.

Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it a numerical presumption.

When we say we are certain so-and-so can't possibly have done it, what we mean is that we think he very likely did.

First we pin the convict's badge on him: then we examine his case.

I am not taking anything for granted.

A man who insults the modesty of a woman, as good as tells her that he has seen something in her conduct that warranted his presumption.

But I rather thought--I mean, I heard you'd killed Balder the Fair." "I never did," snapped Loki crossly. "Well, no one ever proved I did. What happened to the presumption of innocence? Besides, he was supposed to be invulnerable. Was it my fault that he wasn't?

There's a presumption that somehow you calculate beforehand whether something is going to be good politically or not. I simply don't.

Great deservers grow Intolerable presumers.

I knowed a man in Paphlagonia who'd swallow a live snake every morning, when he got up. He used to say, he was certain of one thing, that nothing worse would happen to him all day. 'Course they made him eat a bowlful of hairy centipedes before they hung him, so maybe that claim was a bit presumptive.

The idea you can tell a writer of a specific religion to stop writing about that religion is presumptuous.

WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.

No, liberty is not made for us: we are too ignorant, too vain, too presumptious, too cowardly, too vile, too corrupt, too attached to rest and to pleasure, too much slaves to fortune to ever know the true price of liberty. We boast of being free! To show how much we have become slaves, it is enough just to cast a glance on the capital and examine the morals of its inhabitants.