Challenging Assumptions Quotes & Sayings

Force yourself to explain it and you create lies. — Haruki Murakami

Writing was something I always liked, but it wasn't a career until I was laid off from my executive position in my 30s. I started a website because I was bored, unemployed and angry. — Jen Lancaster

The wise will hide your follies and help you learn, but the wicked ones will gossip about it with scoundrels. — Aniruddha Sastikar

I like to multitask. I love the process of the storytelling in television. I love the serial. Even my stab at doing a procedural show was still very much serialized. I'm such a serialized storyteller. I feel like the story never ends. I want it to go and go and go. However, with cable and streaming now it's endless. You can do anything. — Kevin D. Williamson

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in. — Alan Alda

My interpreter Sayuri is folding a piece of notebook paper. She is at step 21, where the crane's body is inflated. The directions show a tiny puff besides an arrow pointing at the bird. It makes sense if you already know what to do. Otherwise, it's wonderfully surreal: Put a cloud inside a bird. — Mary Roach

I protect my skin with sunscreen and am religious about keeping my face moisturized and properly protected all day, so I also use a face lotion with SPF 30. — Amanda Beard

Sexism occurs when we assume that some people are less valid or natural than others because of their sex, gender, or sexuality; it occurs when we project our own expectations and assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality onto other people, and police their behaviors accordingly; it occurs when we reduce another person to their sex, gender, or sexuality rather than seeing them as a whole, legitimate person. That is sexism. And a person is a legitimate feminist when they have made a commitment to challenging sexist double standards wherever and whenever they arise. An individual's personal style, mannerisms, identity, consensual sexual partners, and live choices simply shouldn't factor into it. — Julia Serano

The fear that I heard in my father's voice ... when he realized that I really believed I could do, anything a white boy could do, and had every intention of proving it, was not at all like the fear I heard when one of us was ill or had fallen down the stairs or strayed too far from the house. It was another fear, a far that the child, in challenging the white world's assumptions, was putting himself in the path of destruction. — James Baldwin

Let me tell you something. As we were walking around in the store, Marilyn and I were just really impressed by all the novelties and the different types of little things that you could get for Christmas. And all the people that would help you, they were dressed up in things that said 'I believe in Santa Claus.' And the only thing that I could think is that I believe in George Bush. — Dan Quayle

Strange things conspire when one tries to cheat fate — Rick Riordan

Writing is an act of hope. It means carving order out of chaos, of challenging one's own beliefs and assumptions, of facing the world with eyes and heart wide open. Through writing we declare a personal identity amid faceless anonymity. We find purpose and beauty and meaning even when the rational mind argues that none of these exist. Writing therefore, is also an act of courage. How much easier is it to lead an unexamined life than to confront yourself on the page? — Jack Heffron

I think of veganism humbly and holistically. It's about taking personal responsibility in a world so full of needless suffering. It's challenging one's self to open one's eyes and question society's assumptions and habits. It's about critical thinking and compassion and how we would like to see the world evolve. — Michael Greger

Bands like Nirvana had theatrical sensibilities, playing with image, challenging assumptions people were making about them, the apex being Kurt Cobain in a dress to make a point. — Amanda Palmer

I'm about challenging people. Like, properly challenging them and their assumptions. — Steven Rodney McQueen

Be brave. Be angry. Don't trust anyone. — Danielle Paige

With emancipation comes the opening up of new possibilities for challenging assumptions over women's appearance and, more radically, the gender order itself. Ventura (She-Thing) comes not only to accept her new "intragender" status but to see it as advantageous -- for dealing with her misandry, for personal growth, and even for becoming a person capable of giving and accepting love. — Jose Alaniz