Assumption And Judgement Quotes

I feel no grief for being called something which I am not; in fact, it's enthralling, somehow, like a good back rub

I say, sir, that you can never make an intelligent judgment without evidence.

Tell me sir if you will, where in the Bible does it state that it’s ok to judge others based purely on assumption? Can you see now who is the lesser evil between the two?

Is your life story the truth? Yes, the chronological events are true. Is it the whole truth? No, you see and judge it through your conditioned eyes and mind - not of all involved - nor do you see the entire overview. Is it nothing but the truth? No, you select, share, delete, distort, subtract, assume and add what you want, need and choose to.

In his grave, we praise him for his decency - but when he walked amongst us, we responded with no decency of our own. When he suggested that all men should have a place in the sun - we put a special sanctity on the right of ownership and the privilege of prejudice by maintaining that to deny homes to Negroes was a democratic right. Now we acknowledge his compassion - but we exercised no compassion of our own. When he asked us to understand that men take to the streets out of anguish and hopelessness and a vision of that dream dying, we bought guns and speculated about roving agitators and subversive conspiracies and demanded law and order. We felt anger at the effects, but did little to acknowledge the causes. We extol all the virtues of the man - but we chose not to call them virtues before his death. And now, belatedly, we talk of this man's worth - but the judgement comes late in the day as part of a eulogy when it should have been made a matter of record while he existed as a living force. If we are to lend credence to our mourning, there are acknowledgements that must be made now, albeit belatedly. We must act on the altogether proper assumption that Martin Luther King asked for nothing but that which was his due... He asked only for equality, and it is that which we denied him. [excerpt from a letter to The Los Angeles Times in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; April 8, 1968

The practice of deep listening is the practice of open inquiry, without assumption or judgement.

Never judge a woman by her age.

One reader of an early draft of this chapter complained at this point, saying that by treating the hypothesis of God as just one more scientific hypothesis, to be evaluated by the standards of science in particular and rational thought in general, Dawkins and I are ignoring the very widespread claim by believers in God that their faith is quite beyond reason, not a matter to which such mundane methods of testing applies. It is not just unsympathetic, he claimed, but strictly unwarranted for me simply to assume that the scientific method continues to apply with full force in this domain of truth. Very well, let's consider the objection. I doubt that the defender of religion will find it attractive, once we explore it carefully. The philosopher Ronaldo de Souza once memorably described philosophical theology as "intellectual tennis without a net," and I readily allow that I have indeed been assuming without comment or question up to now that the net of rational judgement was up. But we can lower it if you really want to. It's your serve. Whatever you serve, suppose I return service rudely as follows: "What you say implies that God is a ham sandwich wrapped in tin foil. That's not much of a God to worship!". If you then volley back, demanding to know how I can logically justify my claim that your serve has such a preposterous implication, I will reply: "oh, do you want the net up for my returns, but not for your serves? Either way the net stays up, or it stays down. If the net is down there are no rules and anybody can say anything, a mug's game if there ever was one. I have been giving you the benefit of the assumption that you would not waste your own time or mine by playing with the net down.

If you are going to judge others it is wisest to do so individually not collectively and on your own direct experience of them personally. But first - and throughout - examine yourself closely. Blurred vision can often occur due to the lens, perspective and perceptions of the viewer projected onto the object that it sees. Be wary of taking to the judges seat. Above all meet at treat yourself and everyone else mindfully, compassionately with humanity.

Women's deference is rooted not only in their social subordination but also in the substance of their moral concern. Sensitivity to the needs of others and the assumption of responsibility for taking care lead women to attend to voices other than their own and to include in their judgement other points of view.

It Hurts To Be Alive and Obsolete: Often when men are attracted to me, they feel ashamed and conceal it. They act as if it were ridiculous. If they do become involved, they are still ashamed and may refuse to appear publicly with me. Their fear of mockery is enormous. There is no prestige attached to having sex with me. Since we are all far more various sexually than we are supposed to be, often, in fact, younger men become aware of me sexually. Their response is similar to what it is when they find themselves feeling attracted to a homosexual: they turn those feelings into hostility and put me down. Listen to me! Think what it is like to have most of your life ahead and be told you are obsolete! Think what it is like to feel attraction, desire, affection towards others, to want to tell them about yourself, to feel that assumption on which self-respect is based, that you are worth something, and that if you like someone, surely he will be pleased to know that. To be, in other words, still a living woman, and to be told that every day that you are not a woman but a tired object that should disappear. That you are not a person but a joke. Well, I am a bitter joke. I am bitter and frustrated and wasted, but don’t you pretend for a minute as you look at me, forty-three, fat, and looking exactly my age, that I am not as alive as you are and that I do not suffer from the category into which you are forcing me.

A judgement results from some kind of consideration of the evidences available and is always better than an assumption!

Perfectionism is a destructive and addictive belief system that is based on the false assumption that if you appear perfect and do everything perfectly then you can avoid judgement or minimize feelings of shame or judgement.

Stop trying to judge us based on what you know, and try judging on what's actually around you. You might be surprised by how many things we don't do the way you'd expect but that turn out to work just fine all the same. Think about it, won't you?

Generosity is not a free pass for people to take advantage of us, treat us unfairly, or be purposefully disrespectful and mean. What I realized is that a generous assumption without boundaries is another recipe for resentment, misunderstanding, and judgement.

I’m not sure that there is value in someone spouting their hate-filled opinions into the world. In fact, I’m sure there is very little value in it. The world is filled with enough anger and judgement, without someone like me making a lot of assumptions and presenting them as facts.

Consider the value of listening and learning versus making assumptions. An assumption, in short, is ‘a thought or statement taken for granted’ while prejudice, in short, ‘is a preconceived judgement or opinion’. Be the difference that makes a difference—always listen and learn first.

They hate me because I am the worst thing possible. I am the bad mother. But here's a secret: in America there are no good mothers. They simply don't exist. Always, there are a thousand ways to fail at this singularly important job. There are failures of the body and failures of the heart. The woman who is unable to breastfeed is a failure. The woman who screams for the epidural is a failure. The woman who picks up her child late knows from the teacher's cutting glance that she is a failure. The woman who shares her bed with her baby has failed. The woman who steels herself and puts on noise-canceling earphones to erase the screaming of her child the next room has failed just as spectacularly. They must all hang their heads in guilt and shame because they haven't done it perfectly, and motherhood is, if anything, the assumption of perfection.

Mill sets out several related arguments for protecting freedom of speech, not just from oppressive government intervention, but also from social pressures. Underlying them all are the assumptions that (a) truth is valuable, and (b) no matter how certain someone is that they know the truth, their judgement is still fallible: they might still be wrong.

take the idea of a spectrum of probabilities seriously, and place human judgements about the existence of God along it, between two extremes of opposite certainty. The spectrum is continuous, but it can be represented by the following seven milestones along the way.   Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C. G. Jung, ‘I do not believe, I know! Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. ‘I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.’ Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. ‘I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.’ Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. ‘God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.’ Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. ‘I don’t know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be sceptical.’ Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. ‘I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.’ Strong atheist. ‘I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung “knows” there is one.

Let us, then, take the idea of a spectrum of probabilities seriously, and place human judgements about the existence of God along it, between two extremes of opposite certainty. The spectrum is continuous, but it can be represented by the following seven milestones along the way.   Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C. G. Jung, ‘I do not believe, I know! Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. ‘I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.’ Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. ‘I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.’ Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. ‘God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.’ Lower than 50 per cent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. ‘I don’t know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be sceptical.’ Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. ‘I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.’ Strong atheist. ‘I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung “knows” there is one.

M.E. affects children, families and adults in so many different ways and you cannot make assumptions or judgements based just on a single experience.

Good move. Start the meeting with a foolish assumption.

You don't know a goddamn thing. You're the smartest and the dumbest fucking person I've ever known.

Yet despite his differences with Barfield, Lewis credits him with bringing about two fundamental changes in his own thinking. The first of these was the demolition of Lewis’s “chronological snobbery,” which Lewis defined as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”[235] The second change related to Lewis’s way of thinking about reality. Lewis, like most of that age, tended to assume that “the universe revealed by the senses” constituted “rock-bottom reality.” For Lewis, this was the most economical and commonsense way of thinking about things, which he took to be thoroughly scientific. “I wanted Nature to be quite independent of our observation; something other, indifferent, self-existing.”[236] But what of human moral judgements? Or feelings of joy? Or the experience of beauty? How did such subjective ways of thinking and experiencing fit into this? It was no idle thought. As an undergraduate at Oxford, Lewis had been influenced by what he styled the “New Look,” a rationalist way of thinking which led him to believe that he must abandon any notion that his fleeting experiences of “Joy” were clues to the deeper meaning of life.[237] Lewis went with the flow, immersing himself in this then-fashionable way of thinking. He came to believe that his boyhood desires, longings, and experience had been exposed as meaningless. Lewis decided that he was “done with all that.” He had “‘seen through’ them.” He was “never going to be taken in again.”[238] Yet Barfield persuaded Lewis that these lines of argument were inconsistent. Lewis was relying on precisely the same inner patterns of thought that he had dismissed in order to secure his knowledge of an allegedly “objective” world. The consistent outcome of believing only in “the universe revealed by the senses” was to adopt “a Behaviouristic theory of logic, ethics, and aesthetics.” Yet Lewis regarded such a theory as unbelievable. There was an alternative, which gave full weight to the importance of human moral and aesthetic intuitions and did not discount or dismiss them. For Lewis, this led to only one conclusion: “Our logic was participation in a cosmic Logos.”[239] And where might that line of thought take him?

As Lewis pointed out, with the rise of the ideologies of the twentieth century in mind, someone who “has lived in many places” is not likely to be taken in by the “local errors of his native village.” The scholar, Lewis declares, has “lived in many times” and can thus challenge the automatic presumption of finality inherent in present judgements and trends: We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.[417]

village.” The scholar, Lewis declares, has “lived in many times” and can thus challenge the automatic presumption of finality inherent in present judgements and trends: We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.58

I wanted to be understood. As a human-being, and as a writer. That meant getting to (truly) know myself- away from the opinions, beliefs, assumptions, criticism, and judgement of others. It meant re-learning language... to speak concisely. It meant learning the language of my heart and soul.

Though they are essential, emotions affect judgement when left unchecked. This then leads to invalid assumptions and flawed perceptions. Facts are misconstrued, correlation is confused with causation and reality begins to depart a path of truth.

Mercier provides an amusing insight into the transactions at a sermon shop in Mont Saint-Hilaire. ‘And what can we do today for your reverence? A Conception? A Nativity? An Assumption? Fifteen Last Judgements going very cheap, a nice lot of “Forgive us our trespasses”, thirty-two Passions–take your choice.’ ‘No,’ says the deacon, ‘It’s an Immaculate Conception I want, and a Mary Magdalene as saint not sinner.’ ‘I can do it for Your Reverence, but I’ve only three copies left. Mary Magdalene without sins nearly as rare as Immaculate Conception: 8 francs a piece, lowest I can do them. But anything on charity I can let you have very reasonably 2 francs 50 a piece.

I do not deny that, to most, homelessness is a curse. Just look at some of the people in this room. The smell of urine, alcohol, and dirt is overwhelming. They have lost their dignity. Winter is on the doorstep. No hygiene will lead to certain disaster! But I suppose that Marduk does not care for them any longer. In a world where life is measured in monetary terms, those with no earnings are at the bottom of the chain. Their life is worth nothing. There is something surreal about it, don’t you think?!” He paused chewing his bottom lip, lost in reflection. “And yet, even those with money are not much better off. This summer I spent my days in a park, watching the same people rush from the station to work every morning. I am certain that they do not notice the flowers bloom in spring and that, to them, most of the world is no more than a shadow. I used to be them once, but not anymore.” “Are you happy?” asked Shane without judgement, not wanting to make any assumptions. “Happy?! I don’t know. But I am free and I am alive. There are those who resent not being seen, and I suppose that our invisibility, compounded by the thousands of people who pass us on the street every day without looking into our eyes, is indeed a symptom of something being wrong with our society. But I do not mind it. I would rather be out of a system designed to enslave me. This is my pilgrimage; like a monk, I have abandoned my old life in search of myself.” He paused and studied Shane. “You are young, the road ahead of you is still long. Certain lessons can only be learned with experience.

I realized early in my critical life that evaluation was a minor and subordinate function of the critical process, at best an incidental by-product, which should never be allowed to take priority over scholarship. It is often said that choosing one poet to talk about rather than another implies a value judgement; this is true, and indicates where value judgments belong: in the ear of tentative working assumptions, where they can be subject to revision. They are not the beginning of the critical operation properly speaking. Accepting the usual value judgment on Shakespeare, and finding that value judgement confirmed by experience, may prompt one to continue studying Shakespeare; but the resulting scholarship will never be founded on the value judgment. Still less are they the end of it; the answer to the question Why is A more rewarding to talk about than B?, so far as there is an answer, can only be found in the further study of A. Further study of A could eventually lead us through literature into the broader question of the social function of words. Evaluation, which stops of necessity with the category of literature, blocks the expansion.

Assumptions are Yes Buts that can cloud our judgement, and our ability to thank creativity.

Our bodies have been created not only by God but also for God..We are driven today by whatever can bring our bodies the most pleasure. What can we eat, touch, watch, do listen to, or engage in to satisfy the cravings of our bodies?..in his love, gives us boundaries for our bodies: he loves us and knows what is best for us..[there are] clear and critical distinctions between different types of laws in Leviticus. Some of the laws are civil in nature, and they specifically pertain to the government of ancient Israel..Other laws are ceremonial..However, various moral laws..are explicitly reiterated in the New Testament..Jesus himself teaches that the only God-honoring alternative to marriage between a man and a woman is singleness..the Bible also prohibits all sexual looking and thinking outside of marriage between a husband and a wife..it is sinful even to look at someone who is not your husband or wife and entertain sexual thoughts about that person..it is also wrong to provoke sexual desires in others outside of marriage..God prohibits any kind of crude speech, humor, or entertainment that remotely revolves around sexual immorality..often watch movies and shows, read books and articles, and visit Internet sites that highlight, display, promote, or make light of sexual immorality..God prohibits sexual worship-- the idolization of sex and infatuation with sexual activity as a fundamental means to personal fulfillment..Don't rationalize it, and don't reason with it-- run from it. Flee it as fast as you can..We all have a sinful tendency to turn aside from God's ways to our wants. This tendency has an inevitable effect on our sexuality..every one of us is born with a bent toward sexual sin. But just because we have that bent doesn't mean we must act upon it. We live in a culture that assumes a natural explanation implies a moral obligation. If you were born with a desire, then it's essential to your nature to carry it out. This is one reason why our contemporary discussion of sexuality is wrongly framed as an issue of civil rights..Ethnic identity is a morally neutral attribute..Sexual activity is a morally chosen behavior..our sexual behavior is a moral decision, and just because we are inclined to certain behaviors does not make such behaviors right. His disposition toward a behavior does not mean justification for that behavior. "That's the way he is" doesn't mean "that's how he should act." Adultery isn't inevitable; it's immoral. This applies to all sexual behavior that deviates from God's design..We do not always choose our temptations. But we do choose our reactions to those temptations..the assumption that God's Word is subject to human judgement..Instead of obeying what God has said, we question whether God has said it..as soon as we advocate homosexual activity, we undercut biblical authority..we are undermining the integrity of the entire gospel..We take this created gift called sex and use it to question the Creator God, who gave us the gift in the first place..[Jesus] was the most fully human, fully complete person who ever lived, and he was never married. He never indulged in any sort of sexual immorality..This was not a resurrection merely of Jesus' spirit or soul but of his body..Repentance like this doesn't mean total perfection, but it does mean a new direction..in a culture that virtually equates identity with sexuality..Naturally this becomes our perception of ourselves, and we subsequently view everything in our lives through this grid..When you turn to Christ, your entire identity is changed. You are in Christ, and Christ is in you. Your identity is no longer as a heterosexual or a homosexual, an addict or an adulterer.

When the same narratives are repeatedly regurgitated, we internalize them, make assumptions and pass judgements based on the thinnest shreds of evidence, which would dissolve if only we subjected them to the lightest of truths.