Prima Facie Quotes

The true function of logic ... as applied to matters of experience ... is analytic rather than constructive; taken a priori, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed prima facie possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world is

A good part of what appears to us - prima facie - as objective reality is, instead, just a consequence of our conventions to discover it.

If the tradition which claims that war may be justified does not also admit that it could be unjustified, the affirmation is not morally serious. A Christian who prepares the case for a justified war without being equally prepared for hte negative case has not soberly weighted the prima facie presumption that any violence is wrong until the case for an exception has been made.

But I will tell you what I have lost; I have lost my dignity and my sense of self I have lost my career path, friends, peace of mind, my safety, the sense of joy in my sexuality. But most of all, I have lost my faith in this, the law, the system I believed would protect me.

All I know is that somewhere. Some time. Somehow. Something has to change.

He’s being nice to me now, and like every victim I have cross-examined before I fall for it. I ache for nice-ness.

MY THESIS, in simplest terms, is: Let anyone do anything he pleases, so long as it is peaceful; the role of government, then, is to keep the peace...Keeping the peace means no more than prohibiting persons from unpeaceful actions...When government goes beyond this, that is, when government prohibits peaceful actions, such prohibitions themselves are, prima facie, unpeaceful.

Giraldus claimed that he had heard about Eleanor's adultery with Geoffrey from the saintly Bishop Hugh of Lincoln, who had learned of it from Henry II of England, Geoffrey's son and Eleanor's second husband. Eleanor was estranged from Henry at the time Giraldus was writing, and the king was trying to secure an annulment of their marriage from the Pope. It would have been to his advantage to declare her an adulterous wife who had had carnal relations with his father, for that in itself would have rendered their marriage incestuous and would have provided prima facie grounds for its dissolution.

And the system I’ve dedicated my life to is called upon, by me, to find the truth. To provide justice.

It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.

In the era of security clearances, to be an Irish Catholic became prima facie evidence of loyalty. Harvard men were to be checked; Fordham men would do the checking.

Vulgar economy actually does no more than interpret, systematise and defend in doctrinaire fashion the conceptions of the agents of bourgeois production who are entrapped in bourgeois production relations. It should not astonish us, then, that vulgar economy feels particularly at home in the estranged outward appearances of economic relations in which these prima facie absurd and perfect contradictions appear and that these relations seem the more self-evident the more their internal relationships are concealed from it, although they are understandable to the popular mind. But all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.

Augustine captured the two ideas in two Latin coinages, which prima facie cut against each other: imago dei and peccatum originis. The former says that humans are unique as a species in our having been created in the image and likeness of God, while the latter says that all humans are born having inherited the legacy of Adam’s error, “original sin.”61

The law is an organic thing. Defined by us. Constructed by us, in light of our experiences. All of ours, and so, there are no excuses any more. It must change.

It’s not emotional for me. It’s the game. The game of law.

Yet significantly, research has shown that women giving evidence in sexual assault cases are just not believed! Even by other women.

Cross-Examination aka The Silencing

Don’t trust your gut instincts only your legal instincts.

The Romans may be known for many things, but humor isn't one of them. As usual, this interpretation relies on a prima facie reading of Jesus as a man with no political ambitions whatsoever. That is nonsense. All criminals sentenced to execution received a titulus so that everyone know the crime for which they were being punished and thus be deterred from taking part in similar activity. That the wording on Jesus's titulus was likely genuine is demonstrated by Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, who notes that "if [the titulus] were invented by Christians, they would have used Christos, for early Christians would scarcely have called their Lord 'King of the Jews'."[..] the notion that a no-name Jewish peasant would have received a personal audience with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, who had probably signed a dozen execution orders that day alone, is so outlandish that it cannot be taken seriously.

A good lawyer just tells the best version of their client’s story. Nothing more. Nothing else. Just the storyteller, the voice piece. Never judge, never ever judge. Never decide! The minute you do that, you’re fucked You have lost, you are lost.

What reason have we, except our desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, 'good'? Doesn't all the prima facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite? What have we to set against it? We set Christ against it. But how if He were mistaken? Almost His last words may have a perfectly clear meaning. He had found that the Being He called Father was horribly and infinitely different from what He had supposed. The trap, so long and carefully prepared and so subtly baited, was at last sprung, on the cross. The vile practical joke had succeeded.

Viaţa omului n-ar trebui să fie scrisă pe atatea petice de hartie risipite. Viaţa e un jurnal legat, iar uneori înţelegi o carte de la prima pagină. Nu poţi fi silit să-ţi faci datoria pentru o pagină care n-are legătură cu cele dinainte. Nu poţi fi implicat ori de cîte ori cineva e gata să moară de foame

Richard Lewontin describes it like this . . . Much of the uncertainty of evolution arises from the existence of multiple possible pathways even when external conditions are fixed. It is a prejudice of evolutionists who give adaptive explanations of the features of organisms that every difference between species must be a consequence of different selective forces that operated on them. . . . Populations subject to identical selective conditions may arrive at quite different evolutionary endpoints, so that the observation that two species differ is not prima facie evidence that they were adaptively differentiated.

When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere. A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld. The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race’s most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must—never for sport. A zygote is a gamete’s way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe. There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who “love Nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled ‘Nature.’ ” The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of “Nature”—but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the “Naturist” reveals his hatred for his own race—i.e., his own self-hatred. In the case of “Naturists” such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate. As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women—it strikes me as a fine arrangement and perfectly “natural.” Believe it or not, there were “Naturists” who opposed the first flight to old Earth’s Moon as being “unnatural” and a “despoiling of Nature.

Prima porunca: Sa astepti oricat. A doua porunca: Sa astepti orice. A treia porunca: Sa nu-ti amintesti, in schimb, orice. Nu sunt bune decat amintirile care te ajuta sa traiesti in prezent. A patra porunca: Sa nu numeri zilele. A cincea porunca: Sa nu uiti ca orice asteptare e provizorie, chiar daca dureaza toata viata. A sasea porunca: Repeta ca nu exista pustiu. Exista doar incapacitatea noastra de a umple golul in care traim. A saptea porunca: Nu pune in aceeasi oala si rugaciunea si pe Dumnezeu. Rugaciunea este uneori o forma de a spera a celui ce nu indrazneste sa spere singur. A opta porunca: Daca gandul asta te ajuta, nu evita sa recunosti ca speri neavand altceva mai bun de facut sau chiar pentru a te feri de urmarile faptului ca nu faci nimic. A noua porunca: Binecuvanteaza ocazia de a-ti apartine in intregime. Singuratatea e o tarfa care nu te invinuieste ca esti egoist. A zecea porunca: Aminteste-ti ca paradisul a fost, aproape sigur, intr-o grota.

La cuestión es complicada, porque - como ya se ha dicho - los acontecimientos políticos son concebidos por Maquiavelo como productos humanos ínsitos en el estrato inmanente y natural del mundo e independientes del trascendente y sobrenatural, circunstancia que descarta como carente de sentido la posibilidad de que la legitimidad de los sistemas políticos la otorgue Dios. Fuera de esta solución tan querida por el pensamiento político cristiano, la cualidad de legítimo sólo puede provenir del colectivo social afectado, cosa que para el florentino sucede cuando la virtú del príncipe produce los efectos deseados: la estabilidad y la paz social que se manifiesta en la aceptación del sistema de poder. Para ello son decisivas las buenas instituciones políticas y las buenas leyes. Ahora bien, muchas veces el príncipe ha de tomar decisiones impopulares que parecen vicio aunque sean virtud, de ahí que precise controlar su imagen pública y «ser un gran simulador y disimulador» capaz de evitar ser despreciado y odiado24. Aquí se encuentra una de las principales aportaciones de Maquiavelo a la filosofía política moderna, pues esta idea es el núcleo de la teoría de la legitimación indirecta. Desde la perspectiva inmanente aquí adoptada, el problema no es si una dominación es en sí misma legítima o no, sino por qué medios una dominación puede legitimarse y así autoconservarse. La legitimación, pues, no es prima facie una cuestión de racionalidad sustantiva, sino de racionalidad instrumental.

Richard Millhouse Nixon, or as I like to think of him, the prima facie case against popular democracy.

It cannot be too clearly understood that this is NOT a free country, and it will be an evil day for the legal profession when it is. The citizens of London must realize that there is almost nothing they are allowed to do. Prima facie all actions are illegal, if not by Act of Parliament, by Order in Council; and if not by Order in Council, by Departmental or Police regulation, or By-laws. They may not eat where they like, drive where they like, sing where they like, or sleep where they like. "Is It a Free Country?

It is an integral part of the American myth that anyone who sets his mind to it can succeed, that diligence eventually pays off. It seems to follow, then, that people who do not succeed can be held responsible for their failure. Failure, after all, is prima facie evidence of not having tried hard enough. This doctrine has special appeal for those who are doing well, first because it allows them to think their blessings are deserved, and second because it spares them from having to feel too guilty about (or take any responsibility for) those who have much less.

Defenders of hell must overcome the prima facie absurdity of the following conjunction: God loves every one of His creatures with a profound and unwavering benevolence; and He wills upon some of these creatures the very worst kind of evil conceivable, and He wills that they suffer it for all eternity, even though it cannot possibly do them any good, since it never culminates in anything but more of the same. Defenders of [another] version of the doctrine of hell face different challenges. Because they hold that damnation originates in the creature’s own rejection of God, they must accept that some creatures freely reject God forever, and that God cannot legitimately overcome this free rejection of Him (despite potentially infinite time in which to work on their intransigence). That someone created in the divine image, and hence naturally ordered towards the good, should eternally reject the perfect good strikes us as prima facie unlikely, especially if God continues unremittingly to seek the creature’s repentance. Furthermore, that an omnipotent and omniscient God should eternally fail to find a morally legitimate way to transform an unwilling creature’s heart strikes us as prima facie dubious.

Dezacordul cel mai grav nu este cel dintre ideal și real, dintre „unicul” visat și ce-ți oferă realitatea, ci dintre real și imaginea pe care ți-ai făcut-o despre acest real. Cunoști un om și-ți dai seama de la prima vedere că n-are nimic de-a face cu visul tău. Dar îți faci o imagine despre acel om - o imagine care de cele mai multe ori îl înfrumusețează, îl „flatează”, fiindcă-n sufletul fiecăruia dintre noi rămâne toată viața o aspirație spre bine, spre frumos, și speranța, chiar nemărturisită, în fericire - iar omul păcătuiește și față de această imagine. Mama zicea că dacă vrei să păstrezi indiferent ce relație cu un om, trebuie să-l consideri ca pe-o rudă apropiată și să-i ierți, să-i tot ierți, cum le ierți copiilor, părinților, fraților tăi. Dacă ai orgolii, nici o relație nu e posibilă.

But here is the dark little secret in all of this, and it sounds very odd to say it: glucose is toxic. It is poison, and the body regards it just that way. We have spent generations now in a search for toxins that sponsor the diseases that ail us, the industrial chemicals, pesticides, and pollutants that may kill us, and yes, these may be killing us. But the supreme irony in all of this is that the obvious toxin hides in plain sight. It’s difficult to accuse the very substance on which all of civilization depends. People who consider these matters often refer to the “omnivore’s dilemma,” but it gets more and more difficult to claim to be omnivores, creatures that eat both plants and animals. The prima facie case is we have become carbovores as a result of our domestication by grain. This is the carbovore’s dilemma: we exist for the most part on a substance that our bloodstream treats as a toxin.

By early May 1959, it became clear that the Chinese could not stem the tide of refugees, nor would they passively accept that India was offering sanctuary to the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetan refugees. It was then that Nehru, for the first time as prime minister, candidly asserted that India had to adhere to its basic values and beliefs “even though the Chinese do not like it.”7 With this assertion, and in the face of China’s virulent anti-Indian rhetoric, Nehru assented to providing accommodation and material relief to the Tibetan refugees who had begun to find their way into India. Within the month, the Indian government had begun to issue “Indian Registration Certificates” to the more than 15,000 Tibetans who had entered the country. By the end of 1962, when the Chinese had effectively sealed the Indo-Tibetan border, no fewer than 80,000 Tibetans had traveled by foot from Tibet, with most of them settling as resident refugees in India.8 China regarded India’s actions in providing asylum for the Dalai Lama and the multitude of refugees who flowed into India in the months and years following the March Uprising as prima facie evidence of India promoting Tibetan independence.

This tendency to focus too heavily on the occasional success is helped along by an asymmetry in the way we evaluate success and failure. A single success generally does more to confirm a strategy’s effectiveness than a single failure does to disconfirm it. Indeed, successes tend to be taken as prima facie evidence that the strategy is effective.

Quantum theory “allows for mind—pure conscious experience—to interact with the ‘physical’ aspect of nature…. [I] t is [therefore] completely in line with contemporary science to hold our thoughts to be causally efficacious,” Stapp argued. He ended his JCS paper with a discussion of my OCD therapy, calling it “in line with the quantum-mechanical understanding of mind-brain dynamics.” According to that understanding, mental events influence brain activity through effort and intentions that in turn affect attention. “The presumption about the mind-brain that is the basis of Schwartz’s successful clinical treatment,” Stapp concluded, “is that willful redirection of attention is efficacious. His success constitute[ s] prima facie evidence” that “will is efficacious.

It is this epic of globalization that we should have in mind when we turn to the analysis of National Socialism and in particular its agrarian politics. Too often the preoccupation of Hitler and his followers with problems of Lebensraum, food and agriculture is seen as prima facie evidence of their atavism and backwardness. This could not be more wrong. The search for greater territory and natural resources was not the outlandish obsession of racist ideologues. These had been common European preoccupations for at least the last two hundred years.

Elisabeth își imaginase că vrăjitoria se produce pe loc, ca atunci când scoți o sabie din teacă. Acum, văzând expresia imobilă de concentrare așternută pe fața lui Nathaniel, s-a întrebat, pentru prima dată, cum o fi să faci o vrajă. Efortul pe care îl cerea - nu al trupului, ci al minții

I was always admonished by my English teachers in their heavily accented, Viennese-inflected English not to speak this abomination of an “American dialect” or “American slang” and never to use “American spelling” with its simplifications that testified prima facie to the uncultured and simpleton nature of Americans.

Notoriously, there are disputed territories – for example, border areas and regions occupied by groups which are not independent nations, but many of whose members wish that they were. Again, there are territories like that which used to be called Palestine; here the principles which in the case of Norway point univocally to one national group as that to which the area belongs diverge, some supporting the claims of the Israelis and others the claims of the Palestinian Arabs. Cyprus and Northern Ireland are two other obvious examples of conflicting prima facie rights of distinguishable national groups. In such cases the appeal, by both parties to a dispute, to supposedly absolute rights is disastrous. It reduces the readiness to negotiate and compromise, and it seems to justify any atrocities against the enemy, and any resulting losses and suffering for one's own side, that are needed to vindicate those rights.

The only approach to these intractable problems that is at all hopeful is to acknowledge the reality and the probable persistence of the conflict of aims, to try to get both parties to recognize their conflicting prima facie rights as such, and to look for a solution which can be seen as a reasonable compromise between these prima facie rights, and which can therefore be defended morally, not merely politically, in the court of international opinion in terms of principles which are already recognized and confidently relied upon in uncontroversial cases.

It is better to see morality on a continuum, with absolutism at one extreme and relativism at the other. One can hold to objective moral principles and not be a complete absolutist, that is, one can be what is called a “prima facie” absolutist, literally, “at first appearance.” While recognizing the importance of unchanging, objective, moral principles, the prima facie absolutist allows for periodic exceptions to general principles. On selected issues, most people who hold to the importance of principles would admit exceptions.

In scores of cities all over the United States, when the Communists were simultaneously meeting at their various headquarters on New Year’s Day of 1920, Mr. Palmer’s agents and police and voluntary aides fell upon them—fell upon everybody, in fact, who was in the hall, regardless of whether he was a Communist or not (how could one tell?)—and bundled them off to jail, with or without warrant. Every conceivable bit of evidence—literature, membership lists, books, papers, pictures on the wall, everything—was seized, with or without a search warrant. On this and succeeding nights other Communists and suspected Communists were seized in their homes. Over six thousand men were arrested in all, and thrust summarily behind the bars for days or weeks—often without any chance to learn what was the explicit charge against them. At least one American citizen, not a Communist, was jailed for days through some mistake—probably a confusion of names—and barely escaped deportation. In Detroit, over a hundred men were herded into a bull-pen measuring twenty-four by thirty feet and kept there for a week under conditions which the mayor of the city called intolerable. In Hartford, while the suspects were in jail the authorities took the further precaution of arresting and incarcerating all visitors who came to see them, a friendly call being regarded as prima facie evidence of affiliation with the Communist party. Ultimately a considerable proportion of the prisoners were released for want of sufficient evidence that they were Communists. Ultimately, too, it was divulged that in the whole country-wide raid upon these dangerous men—supposedly armed to the teeth—exactly three pistols were found, and no explosives at all. But at the time the newspapers were full of reports from Mr. Palmer’s office that new evidence of a gigantic plot against the safety of the country had been unearthed; and although the steel strike was failing, the coal strike was failing, and any danger of a socialist régime, to say nothing of a revolution, was daily fading, nevertheless to the great mass of the American people the Bolshevist bogey became more terrifying than ever. Mr. Palmer was in full cry. In public statements he was reminding the twenty million owners of Liberty bonds and the nine million farm-owners and the eleven million owners of savings accounts, that the Reds proposed to take away all they had. He was distributing boilerplate propaganda to the press, containing pictures of horrid-looking Bolsheviks with bristling beards, and asking if such as these should rule over America. Politicians were quoting the suggestion of Guy Empey that the proper implements for dealing with the Reds could be “found in any hardware store,” or proclaiming, “My motto for the Reds is S. O. S.—ship or shoot. I believe we should place them all on a ship of stone, with sails of lead, and that their first stopping-place should be hell.” College graduates were calling for the dismissal of professors suspected of radicalism; school-teachers were being made to sign oaths of allegiance; business men with unorthodox political or economic ideas were learning to hold their tongues if they wanted to hold their jobs. Hysteria had reached its height.

But for Christians, Jesus is the norm of the Bible. And he repudiated violence, even in his historical context of violence and injustice. Given that he is the norm of the Bible, he is the standard by which its divergent views of violence, war, nonviolence, and peace must be judged. His status as the norm, and the fact that his followers for three centuries understood him to be an advocate of nonviolence, create a prima facie case for Christians to be passionate about God’s dream of a world of justice and peace. Borg, Marcus J.. Convictions: How I Learned What Matters Most (p. 202). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

All right, then: Taking the ipso facto as prima facie, it stood to reason that if I was not a pedophile, I was also not a murderer. Quad erat demonstrandum.

prima facie

„Oni koji izvršavaju na različite načine organizovanu moć u državi neće se nikada moći uveriti u to da opasna razmišljanja ne treba na neki način potčinjavati. Tamo gde pravo govora nije otvoreno sprečavano, jedinstvo mnenja se postiže moralnim terorom sa kojim su poštovani u društvu izričito saglasni. Slediti mišljenje vladajućih znači ići stazom mira. Neka su skretanja dopuštena, druga koja važe kao nesigurna, zabranjena. Ona su različita u različitim zemljama i različitim epohama, ali ma gde bio: ako je poznato da pripadaš tabuisanoj veri možeš biti siguran da će s tobom postupati s okrutnošću koja je manje brutalna, ali rafinovanija od lova na vuka. Najveći duhovni dobročinitelji čovečanstva nikada se nisu usudili a i danas se ne usuđuju da iznesu svoje misli. Senka sumnje prima facie pada na svako razmišljanje koje se čini važnim za sigurnost društva. Po pravilu proganjanje dolazi samo spolja: čovek se sam razdire i često je preplašen time što zastupa stavove protiv kojih su ga njegovog mišljenja autoritetu učili da se bori. Mirnom i dobronamernom karakteru stoga teško pada da se suprotstavi pokušaju potčinjavanja.

I see our scientific theories as human inventions–nets designed by us to catch the world. [...] What we aim at is truth: we test our theories in the hope of eliminating those which are not true. In this way we may succeed in improving our theories–even as instruments: in making nets which are better and better adapted to catch our fish, the real world. Yet they will never be perfect instruments for this purpose. They are rational nets of our own making, and should not be mistaken for a complete representation of the real world in all its aspects; not even if they are highly successful ; not even if they appear to yield excellent approximations to reality. If we keep clearly before our minds that our theories are our own work; that we are fallible; and that our theories reflect our fallibility, then we shall doubt whether general features of our theories, such as their simplicity, or their prima facie deterministic character, correspond to features of the real world. [...] The world, as we know it, is highly complex; and although it may possess structural aspects which are simple in some sense or other, the simplicity of some of our theories–which is of our own making–does not entail the intrinsic simplicity of the world. The situation with regard to determinism is similar. Newton’s theory, consisting of the law of inertia, the law of gravity, etc., may be true, or very approximately true, i.e., the world may be as the theory asserts it is. But there is no statement of determinism in this theory; the theory nowhere asserts that the world is determined; rather it is the theory itself which as that character which I called ‘prima facie deterministic’. Now the prima facie deterministic character of a theory is closely related to its simplicity; prima facie deterministic theories are comparatively easily testable, and the tests may be made more and more precise and severe. [...] At the same time, it seems no more justifiable to infer from their success that the world has an intrinsically deterministic character than to infer that the world is intrinsically simple.

Not every idea to which some persecutor appeals is, of course, automatically suspect. But when a religious doctrine appears consistently (and over a long period of time) to have destructive effects in the lives of those who accept it, then we have a prima facie reason, surely, to question its soundness. For as Jesus said, “A sound tree cannot [consistently and over a long period of time] bear evil fruit.

Am mai aflat că habar nu am ce-mi doresc şi că nu ştiu deloc să-mi programez prorităţile, că sunt suficient de lipsit de simţ de conservare, încât să preiau stările joase şi proaste ale mediului cu care vin în contact. Nu încerc să vorbesc despre vreo iluminare şi nici nu vreau să îţi vând vreo metodă rapidă de a scăpa de riduri, de kilograme în plus şi de alte forme de distragere a atenţiei. Dar pentru că inevitabil sufăr şi mă revolt la vederea acestui uriaş ghişeu închis la care ne cocoşăm cu toţii, mi se pare necesar să contrabalansez cumva neîntrerupta predică despre cât e de rău să fii în viaţă. Şi pentru că am grijă să mai merg din când în când cu metroul, pentru că uneori ajung în locuri sau instituţii atât de sordide şi de triste, pe lângă care jurnalul de la ora cinci e o transmisiune din Bahamas, cred că e bine să vorbim despre cum ne îmbolnăvim (aproape singuri) de tristeţe şi de nemulţumire. Ca de obicei, unele soluţii vin din direcţii complet nepotrivite cu logica omului strivit de neputinţa de a ridica ochii din ligheanul cu mânie şi lacrimi. La primele lecţii de snowboarding, am aflat cu surprindere că, pentru a te îndrepta (exact) în direcţia în care vrei să mergi, trebuie să întinzi o mână într-acolo. Pare o tâmpenie, dar la fel te învaţă şi artele marţiale, să te uiţi întotdeauna la ceea ce faci, să-ţi urmăreşti gesturile, pentru că faci parte din ele şi pentru că numai aşa le duci corect până la capăt. Şi mi-am dat seama că de multe ori întind mâna, mâinile, în toate direcţiile în acelaşi timp. Vreau să slăbesc, să mănânc, să văd un film şi să merg la muntele Athos fix în acelaşi timp, ceea ce ţi se întâmplă cu siguranţă şi ţie. Vrei să fii fericit taman când eşti ocupat să te asiguri că eşti foarte fericit. Să avansezi în timp ce îţi pui piedică şi să faci planuri luminoase fără pic de încredere. Totul e relativ, bineînţeles, dar intenţia e singura care contează şi moare - sau prima, sau ultima.

Schopenhauer’s misanthropic honesty is useful here, not primarily because I think it is correct but more importantly because it is exceptional. The unfounded moral optimism of many persons, including philosophers, deserves to be challenged. It is commonly said that most people are good and that this or that person means well. We often seek to excuse wrongful actions by appealing to extraneous factors that might explain those actions, such as someone’s psychological state or economic conditions. Is this optimism justified? Perhaps there is a good argument to that effect, but I have not encountered it. Instead, moral optimism seems to be a default assumption of many, a position that is held without justification. Is it true that, in general, human beings tend to be morally good and that our vices and misdeeds are exceptions to the rule? When I look to the atrocities of history, the injustices of the present, and the indifference of most persons to all of these, I find the opposite view to be more plausible. Perhaps I am mistaken, and a more optimistic view is the better one, but this requires a serious justification. As Schopenhauer indicates, there is a strong prima facie case to be made for a kind of moral pessimism, so we cannot simply dismiss that possibility. Because more optimistic views are typically adopted without any argument, I cannot proceed by attempting to refute arguments of that nature—for the most part, they do not exist.

The unity on the right is in fact prima facie evidence of its duplicity.

I honestly, perhaps guilelessly believe that the doctrine of eternal hell is prima facie nonsensical, for the simple reason that it cannot even be stated in Christian theological terms without a descent into equivocity so precipitous and total that nothing but edifying gibberish remains.

Defeaters of course, are themselves prima facie defeaters, for the defeater can be defeated. Perhaps I spot a fallacy in the initially convincing argument; perhaps I discover a convincing argument for the denial of one of its premises; perhaps I learn on reliable authority that someone else has done one of those things. Then the defeater is defeated, and I am once again within my rights in accepting p. Of course a similar remark must be made about defeater-defeaters: they are subject to defeat by defeater-defeater-defeaters and so on.

The notion seems to be that the more diverse we become, the more silencing we need for diverse views, even and especially ones with which we disagree. Hence the expansion of hate-speech laws, first in Europe and then in the US, which will increasingly entangle the church because already in Europe any Roman Catholic opposition to abortion is prima facie “hate speech.” But more diversity of culture, religion, and ethnicity ought to lead to more expressions of cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity in all aspects of life. In other words, more diversity of opinion, not less diversity of speech.

Consider this excerpt from a speech delivered in 1940 to the Association for the Advancement of Science by the legendary political philosopher and journalist, Walter Lippmann: ...during the past forty or fifty years those who are responsible for education have progressively removed from the curriculum the Western culture which produced the modern democratic state...the schools and colleges have therefore been sending out into the world men who no longer understand the creative principle of the society in which they must live...deprived of their cultural tradition, the newly educated Western men no longer possess in the form and substance of their own minds and spirits and ideas, the premises, the rationale, the logic, the method, the values of the deposited wisdom which are the genius of the development of Western civilization...the prevailing education is destined, if it continues, to destroy Western civilization and is in fact destroying it. I realize quite well that this thesis constitutes a sweeping indictment of modern education. But I believe the indictment is justified and there is a prima facie case for entering this indictment.

The general line seemed to be the same one that the government used against gun owners, with whom I began to sympathize for the first time. The argument ran like this: nobody needs these big powerful computers unless he or she intends to do something wrong. Sure, stockbrokers, accountants, and suits from Microsoft and Sun might have some reason to own them, but a kid from Wyoming? That kid has no reason to own anything more powerful than a Game Boy . . . Powerful computers are prima-facie evidence that they’re doing something wrong and un-American.

It’s an interesting case though’, two defence lawyers fighting it out was an interesting concept for the Crown Prosecution Service.

Day one law school. Only trust your legal instincts.

Voir Dire

I am here in a unique position. Usually I stand at the bar, but now I am in this courtroom as a witness, a complainant, a victim.

The message is that if we do not deliver our evidence neatly in a clear linear story, with consistency in recall, then we are lying. Yet before this, I would point out inconsistencies as proof of doubt. Would tell the jury they couldn’t possibly be “sure”.

Cross-examination. It’s the best part. All instinct.

Society tells us that law school means you’re important.

There is no real truth, only legal truth.

Prosecutors work with the police. Say they’re fighting for justice – but they’re fighting for jail time!

Universalists thus have to reinterpret the hell texts. But they are in a situation no different from Calvinists or Arminians in this respect. “Every reflective Christian who takes a stand with respect to our three propositions must reject a proposition for which there is at least some prima facie biblical support.

have tried to make at least a prima facie case that transhumanism promises the safest passage through 21st century technologies.

There is, in fact, an essential irony to Bultmann’s analysis of the material in the gospels. He was right to see apocalyptic language as essentially ‘mythological’, in that it borrows imagery from ancient near eastern mythology to clothe its hopes and assertions, its warnings and fears, in the robes of ultimacy, seeing the action of the creator and redeemer god at work in ‘ordinary’ events. But he was wrong to imagine that Jesus and his contemporaries took such language literally, as referring to the actual end of the space-time universe, and that it is only we who can see through it and discover its ‘real’ meaning. This is the mirror-image of the mistaken idea that the stories about Jesus, which are prima facie ‘about’ Jesus himself, were really, in the sense described above, ‘foundation myths’ and nothing more. Bultmann and his followers have read metaphorical language as literal and literal language as metaphorical.

have tried to make at least a prima facie case that transhumanism promises the safest passage through twenty-first-century technologies.[61]

Există forme de doliu care, la prima vedere, par să se deosebească de celelalte. Este vorba despre durerea pe care o simt cei care, nutrind fantezia de a ajunge să aibă ceva, se trezesc într-o bună zi la realitate cu conștiința că nu vor reuși niciodată să aibă acel lucru. În aceste cazuri, nu există nici o pierdere, pentru că nu poți pierde ceea ce nu ai avut. Și atunci... cum s-ar putea resimți acest lucru ca o pierdere? Pare a fi o excepție. Pare a fi doliul pricinuit de faptul de a nu avea ceea ce nu ai avut niciodată. Îmi spun că trebuie să fi avut ceva, ca să se justifice existența pierderii. Îmi răspund că există, desigur, ceva ce am avut cu adevărat. Am avut speranța. Am avut fantezia. Am avut visul. Iar ceea ce pierzi când suferi este acea speranță, acea fantezie, iar dacă îți dai seama, va trebui să gestionezi doliul pentru a te despărți de acest lucru care nu mai este. Un vis de-al meu nu este ceva care este posibil să fi fost, un vis al meu există în sine. Există în acest moment. Iluziile mele, fanteziile și visurile mele, dacă sunt simțite și sunt conștiente, pur și simplu există. Și mă pot agăța de visurile mele așa cum mă agăț de realitățile mele, așa cum mă agăț de relațiile mele. Când realitatea îmi arată că acest lucru nu se va întâmpla, este ca și cum ar muri ceva și, așa cum se întâmplă și în cazul persoanelor, am tendința de a rămâne agățat de această fantezie. Ca și în cazul realităților, ca și în cazul lucrurilor, trebuie să mă desprind. Dar ăn acest scop trebuie să accept că lumea nu este așa cum vreau să fie, iar acest lucru implică un doliu care trebuie gestionat. Trebuie să accept că lumea este așa cum este și că trebuie să mă împac cu faptul că este astfel. Trebuie să accept că drumul meu drept nu presupune să am tot ceea ce visez. Poate trece pe unde nici măcar nu mi-am imaginat. Dar dacă nu îmi fac curaj să dau drumul frânghiei unui vis, nu voi putea să-mi continui traseul către mine însumi.

„Într-o zi, căutându-te cu ardoare ca pentru prima oară, am te găsesc într-o prăpastie cu toate versurile tale – bolnav, beat, bătut, fumându-ţi propria viaţă probabil fascinat de ideea că mângâi molii și se vor transforma în fluturi pentru viitoarele prințese. Azi nu se mai contopesc poezii cu ochi orbi, nu o să aduci bani în casă cu ele, nu o să mă mai cucerești recitându-mi, iar dacă ai impresia că o să le cânte cineva pe o scenă la cine știe ce concert jalnic, ești doar un visător avid în vid, opreşte-te din scris odată! Pentru ce faci asta? eşti prins în propria ta lume, pus pe gânduri rele aşternute în rânduri grele, bag de seamă şi totuși, pari atât de liniştit. Ce te inspiră pe tine, o frunză veştedă, două frunze, dragostea? Ai spune cocoțat pe vreo mănăstire, că eşti mai bogat decât ce se află sub tălpile tale, chiar dacă mulțimea te-ar cataloga drept un dus cu pluta, sărac şi indiferent la propria soartă”. Am luat-o în brațe, i-am sărutat ardoarea frunții și i-am șoptit: „—Pășești pe urmele mele care se îndreaptă spre tărâmuri fără de legi și credințe, iar asta nu e bine; căci eu fusesem condamnat să scriu. Rup din mine, nesfântă născătoare de păcat, să ofer altora și nu aștept nimic în schimb, nici măcar moartea pe care mi-o prevestești poetic, deoarece nu mi-e datoare cu nimic. Fii tu fericită, îmi e de-ajuns…

Ai ținut vreodată un ficat de vacă în mână? E doar o halcă de carne care, atunci când tragi de ea, se frânge, se rupe în bucăți, se sfâșie, iar pe mâini ești plin de sânge și miroase a sfârșit. Așa îți simți sufletul când sufletul celuilalt urmează să te topească în el și când îți dai seama că este singurul moment în care ai șansa să te salvezi. Cu cât aștepți mai mult să te ajute celălalt și să provoace el desprinderea, cu atât îi dai timp să se lege mai profund. Atâta cât îi este bine, nu înțelege de ce-ar trebui să iasă din tine. Mai mult decât atât, când i-ai permis să te locuiască atâta timp fără mari pretenții, de ce te miră când reacționează la tăierea gazelor, a curentului, a apei? Omul, prin natura lui, are instinct de supraviețuire. Am existat în nevoia de a mă dărui necondiționat, fără întreruperi, fără oboseală, fără rutină, nevoia de a escalada noi și noi taine... Numai iubirea este capabilă să te facă să-ți dorești doar infinitul dintr-un singur om, să nu abdici când nu primești ceea ce aștepți, să ai răbdare să descoperi că nu există limită în suflet, să fii atent, să fii viu. Când o rană a făcut coajă și nu mai ai răbdare să se vindece și să cadă singură, începi să tragi și doare. Când e vorba despre suflet, durerea nu încape în cuvinte. Simți că te sfărâmi, că devii lichid, că nu te mai definești. Sunt secunde în care te întrebi dacă mai trăiești sau nu mai trăiești, dacă ești în plan real sau deja ai trecut dincolo, secunde de delir în care dorul de celălalt, iubirea de celălalt, amintirea te copleșesc. Reușeam cu greu și doar uneori să ies din starea asta și numai prin rugăciune. Începeam să spun toate rugăciunile pe care le știam, fără ordine, haotic, cu patimă și cu dorința de a-mi opri gândul în care celălalt mă invada. Făceam des astfel de crize și mă prindeau în cele mai ingrate ipostaze. De multe ori eram în public și trebuia să-mi iau instant un zâmbet de plastic, comandat special pentru păpușa pe care o interpretam. Reușeam să trec cu durerea neobservată. Zâmbetul era de calitate, iar oamenii din jur neatenți sau preocupați de sine. Intensitatea măcelului desprinderii de celălalt scade cu timpul, cu cât insiști în rugăciunea eliberării. Dacă ai suficienți pereți în care să lovești, așternuturi pe care să le rozi, parcări în care să pui mașina pe avarii și să plângi în hohote sau colțuri cu icoane în care să urli până îl asurzești pe Dumnezeu: „De ce? De ce? De ce?”... Ești unu la unu cu durerea și la un moment dat lași loc lucidității să se instaleze, te dai jos din tine, te cațări pe acoperișul sufletului tău și te privești. Când reușești să faci prima dată asta, îți dai seama că ești foarte departe de ceea ce credeai tu că trăiești, că suferința ta nu e nici pe departe marea suferință a lumii, că problema ta nu e nici pe departe cea mai mare problemă a universului și că, indiferent cât doare, trebuie să doară, căci este întârzierea ta, e un timp mort, fără viață, pe care ți l-ai permis să-l trăiești în non-acțiune și pe care acum vrei să-l extirpi.

Dar "minţirea vieţii" nu reprezintă o viziune. Este o orbire voluntară. Este cel mai rău tip de minciună. Este subtilă. Se foloseşte de raţionalizări facile. Orbirea voluntară este refuzul de a şti ceva ce poate fi ştiut. Este refuzul de a recunoaşte că ciocănitul înseamnă că este cineva la uşă. Este refuzul de a recunoaşte gorila de 360 kg din încăpere, elefantul de sub covor, scheletul din dulap. Este refuzul de a recunoaşte greşeala făcută în drumul spre destinaţia dorită. Fiecare joc are reguli. Unele dintre regulile cele mai importante sunt implicite. Le accepţi prin simplul fapt că hotărăşti să intri în joc. Prima dintre aceste reguli este că jocul este important. Nu l-ai juca dacă nu ar fi important. Faptul că joci un joc îl defineşte ca fiind important. A doua este că mişcările din timpul jocului sunt valide dacă te ajută să câştigi. Dacă faci o mişcare şi nu te ajută să câştigi, atunci, prin definiţie, este o mişcare proastă. Trebuie să încerci ceva diferit.

But when a religious doctrine appears consistently (and over a long period of time) to have destructive effects in the lives of those who accept it, then we have a prima facie reason, surely, to question its soundness.

Gottfredson, Linda S. (1994). "The science and politics of race-norming". American Psychologist. 49 (11): 955–963 Disparate impact (racial imbalance) in employee selection constitutes prima facie evidence of unlawful discrimination. Research in personnel psychology has shown, however, that valid and unbiased selection procedures often guarantee disparate impact and that they will continue to do so as long as there remain large racial disparities in job-related skills and abilities. Employers are in a legal bind because often they can avoid disparate impact only by engaging in unlawful disparate treatment (racial preferences).

But it is not just the aesthetic appreciation of the ordinary that simple living can encourage. Ancient philosophers also pointed out that just about any segment of the natural world, from the starry heavens above one’s fields to the spiderweb in the corner of one’s prison cell, offers abundant material worthy of close observation and poses innumerable fascinating questions to the naturally curious mind. Moreover, the contemplation of nature is recommended not just as a pleasurable activity but also as a source of spiritual refreshment readily available to everyone regardless of rank or fortune since, as Seneca points out, “from any spot whatever eyes can be raised to heaven equally well”50—an attitude that seems to have helped him deal with his own misfortune when he was exiled to Corsica. Once again, there is no reason to assume that the connection being asserted—in this case between a simple lifestyle and a heightened appreciation of the commonplace or the wonders of nature—is universal or inevitable. But prima facie it is plausible to suppose that such appreciation is more likely when we are subjected to fewer exotic and expensive diversions.

When Schelling says that “to philosophize about nature means to create nature,” it should not be collapsed into the prima facie quite similar statement by Kant, that “He who would know the world must first manufacture it—in his own self, indeed.” Kant’s approach to the study of nature is grounded in subjective voluntarism, wherein the philosopher fabricates “nature” as his own object according to the transcendentally deduced categories delimiting his experience. Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, on the contrary, re-interprets the epistemic position of the natural scientist: where the post-Kantian scientist can only grasp himself as thinking about nature from beyond nature, Schelling’s scientific method involves awakening to oneself as “nature itself philosophizing (autophusis philosophia)” As Grant describes it, “What thinks in me is what is outside me.” If the Naturphilosoph is able to think as nature, she becomes “a new species equipped with new organs of thought.

What if he did it ? I got him off. Shit. Can't think like that, the prosecutor should have done a better job! My job is just to point out holes in the prosecution's story. Find a reasonable doubt by cross-examining the alleged victim.

But there's always that fucking question, every dinner party; "How do you act for someone you KNOW did it!?" But, a lawyer's job is not that grand - uh uh - the job is not to KNOW. It's to NOT know. The only way the system works is because we all play our roles. My role is defence, the prosecutor, prosecutes; we each tell a story and the jury DECIDE which story is the one they believe. They take the responsibility. A good lawyer just tells the best version of their client's story. Nothing more. Nothing else. Just the storyteller, the voice piece. Never judge, never ever judge.

And then he says, "The Crown Prosecution Service will decide if the case is good enough to go to trial." I know this, of course I know it. But it's like a slap. I don't get to decide. My life is in the hands of the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the court system. I have no control.

Mum's face. I can't help thinking she knows what it is to be violated somehow. I'll never ask.

The January 17, 1984 letter to his fellow USFL team owners did encapsulate what became Donald Trump’s three-step rhetorical style, a pattern so predictable and unique it could be branded “Trump Logic.” First, he confidently makes an assertion that often oversimplifies or ignores the truth of the matter. He builds upon that soft foundation with an act of clairvoyance, claiming to know what large groups of people fear, or at whom they laugh, as proof that his original assertion was true. Finally, he closes the deal by making clear that disagreeing with his un-facts or his psychic vision is prima facie evidence of stupidity.