There's a presumption that somehow you calculate beforehand whether something is going to be good politically or not. I simply don't.
There is a line that I always loved from Lucretius. He said, "The sublime is the art of exchanging easier for more difficult pleasures. " The presumption of that formulation is that the more difficult pleasures are actually better than the easier pleasures. That is why one makes the exchange.
Etiquette requires the presumption of good until the contrary is proved.
Most of my presumptions about a production are usually wrong.
Just as lavishness leads easily to presumption, so does frugality to meanness. But meanness is a far less serious fault than presumption.
Stay out of the court of self-judgment, for there is no presumption of innocence.
We will not return No one must leave here and so carry to the world, together with the sign impressed on his skin, the evil tidings of what man's presumption made of man in Auschwitz
Ignorance is the mother of presumption
Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.
Weakness, fear, melancholy, together with ignorance, are the true sources of superstition. Hope, pride, presumption, a warm indignation, together with ignorance, are the true sources of enthusiasm.
It is a great presumption to ascribe our successes to our own management, and not to esteem ourselves upon any blessing, rather as it is the bounty of heaven, than the acquisition of our own prudence.
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.
People are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
Every doer of the law and every moral worker is accursed, for he walketh in the presumption of his own righteousness.
I had learned to harness ignorance with presumption. I was ready to become an unacknowledged watercolorist.
The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts. . . Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?
Latent genius is but a presumption. Everything that can be, is bound to come into being, and what never comes into being is nothing.
It is a presumption on the part of man when he demands in words an explanation of God.
Another doctrine repugnant to Civill Society, is that whatsoever a man does against his Conscience, is Sinne ; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of Good and Evill. For a man's Conscience and his Judgement are the same thing, and as the Judgement, so also the Conscience may be erroneous.
Old heads as well as young may sometimes be charged with ignorance and presumption. The natural course of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
