Discounting Quotes & Sayings

A seeker of truth will never begin by discounting his opponent's statement as unworthy of trust. — Mahatma Gandhi

Although many things can be said in criticism of religious faith, there is no discounting its power. Millions among us, even now, are quite willing to die for our unjustified beliefs, and millions more, it seems, are willing to kill for them. — Sam Harris

The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered. — Thomas Jefferson

We could think or feel as we wished toward the characters, or as the poet, discounting history, invited us to; we were the poet's guest, his world was his own kingdom, reached, as one of the poems told us, through the 'Ring of Words' ... — Janet Frame

Are ordinary people really populations of interests rather than something more solid? It's disturbing to think of yourself as so fluid, so potentially unstable, held together only by the shifting influence of available rewards. It's like being told that atoms are mostly empty and wondering how they can bear weight. Yet the bargaining of interests in a society can produce highly stable institutions; perhaps that's also true of the internal interests created by a person's rewards. — George Ainslie

There's no discounting the antagonism the average woman feels for the eldest daughter. The infuriating thing is that most mothers blame the daughters for their hatred when it's just what makes the mother pig eat her first batch of young. Of course one can't tell them that. — Mari Sandoz

The intuitions developed over centuries will be true no longer. No longer will greed, scarcity, the quantification and commoditization of all things, the "time preference" for immediate consumption, the discounting of the future for the sake of the present, the fundamental opposition between financial interest and the common good, or the equation of security with accumulation be axiomatic. — Charles Eisenstein

Sexism is discounting the female experience of powerlessness; the new sexism is discounting the male experience of powerlessness. — Warren Farrell

Meanings can indeed be forgotten, but only if we have chosen to bring to bear upon the text a singular scrutiny. Yet reading does not consist in stopping the chain of systems, in establishing a truth, a legality of the text, and consequently in leading its reader into "errors"; it consists in coupling these systems, not according to their finite quantity, but according to their plurality (which is a being, not a discounting): I pass, I intersect, I articulate, I release, I do not count. Forgetting meanings is not a matter for excuses, an unfortunate defect in performance; it is an affirmative value, a way of asserting the irresponsibility of the text, the pluralism of systems (if I closed their list, I would inevitably reconstitute a singular, theological meaning): it is precisely because I forget that I read. — Roland Barthes

Worry is discounting possible future sorrows so that the individual may have present misery. — William George Jordan

The problem with most people," Dad said once, not necessarily implying that I counted as most people, but not discounting the possibility either, "is that they want to be alive for as long as possible without having any idea whatsoever how to live. — Alexandra Fuller

Staying loyal to your journey means you never abandon yourself by compromising your integrity or discounting your intuition or the signals that come from your body - the knot in the gut, emotional detachment, or loss of energy that signals something is amiss. — Charlotte Kasl

Is it just me or does the fact that you live in the same building you were abducted into seem a bit morbid?"
"Pffft. It's just you," I said, discounting the entire bizarre ghoulish thing. — Darynda Jones

Increasingly, its discount rate was seen as the minimum short-term interest rate in the so-called money market (for short-term credit, mostly through the discounting of commercial bills). — Niall Ferguson

Although the sufferings of children are the worst, being inextinguishable
children themselves seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives, humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world. [p. 13] — Shirley Hazzard

If we separate our mundane needs (doing) from God's best gift, his loving presence (being), then we are overspiritualizing prayer. If we ask nothing of God, we are left adrift in an evil world. Such a position may feel spiritual because it seems unselfish, but it is unbiblical because it separates the real world of our desires from God's world. The kingdom can't come because it is floating. By discounting the spiritual and physical worlds, Neoplatonism did exactly what the Enlightenment did. The only difference was Neoplatonism valued the spiritual while the Enlightenment valued the physical. So the church is influenced by Neoplatonism (the physical isn't important), and the world is shaped by the Enlightenment (the spiritual isn't important). Both perspectives stifled honest, person-to-person praying in the church. — Paul E. Miller

I am discounting reports of UFOs. Why would they appear only to cranks and weirdos? — Stephen Hawking

An extremely competitive retail market is pushing extensive discounting and large volumes of wine at low prices, and New World competitors from South America and South Africa are also impacting on the market. — Trevor O'Hoy

In a dazzling vote of confidence for form over substance, our culture fawns over the fleetingness of being "in love" while discounting the importance of loving. (206) — Thomas Lewis

There is an optimum rate of discounting the future - mathematically, an optimum interest rate - which depends on how long you expect to live, how likely you will get back what you saved, how long you can stretch out the value of a resource, and how much you would enjoy it at different points in your life (for example, when you're vigorous or frail). "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die" is a completely rational allocation if we are sure we are going to die tomorrow. What is not rational is to eat and drink as if there's no tomorrow when there really is a tomorrow. To be overly self-indulgent, to lack self-control, is to devalue our future selves too much, or equivalently, to demand too high an interest rate before we deprive our current selves for the benefit of our future selves. No plausible interest rate would make the pleasure in smoking for a twenty-year-old self outweigh the pain of cancer for her fifty-year-old self. — Steven Pinker

The Central Bank should have a permanent window for discounting high quality securities where banks could go and discount these. It gives peace of mind to the banks. In the absence of this facility, what banks tend to do is to keep a liquidity cushion for emergency requirements. This is a very expensive way of managing liquidity. — Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair

Children seldom have a proper sense of their own tragedy, discounting and keeping hidden the true horrors of their short lives, humbly imagining real calamity to be some prestigious drama of the grown-up world. — Shirley Hazzard

Books about colonization in early America more typically dwell on themes of politics, trade, religion, demography, and warfare. Without discounting the importance of these topics (for each has a place here) and with no intention of offering a monocausal explanation for complex events, this book argues that sometimes mundane decisions about how to feed pigs or whether or not to build a fence also could affect the course of history. — Virginia DeJohn Anderson

I know no way of discounting the doctrine that when you take something you want, and damn the consequences, then you had better be ready to accept whatever consequences ensue. — Wallace Stegner

I have found that to tell the truth is the hardest thing on earth. Harder than fighting in a war, harder than taking part in a revolution.
"If you try it, you will find that at times sweat will break upon you. You will find that even if you succeed in discounting the attitudes of others to you and your life, you must wrestle with yourself most of all. Fight with yourself. Because there will surge up in you a strong desire to alter facts, to dress up your feelings.
"You'll find that there are many things you don't want to admit about yourself and others.
"As your record shapes itself, an awed wonder haunts you. And yet there is no more exciting an adventure than trying to be honest in this way. The clean, strong feeling that sweeps you when you've done it makes you know that. — Richard Wright

It's for survival. You need to be prepared for novel experiences because often they signal danger. If you live in a jungle full of fragrant flowers, you have to stop being so overwhelmed by the lovely smell because otherwise you couldn't smell a predator. That's why your brain is considered a discounting mechanism. It's literally a matter of survival." "That's cool. — Maria Semple

Suppose someone tells you that he just flipped a coin 10 times and all 10 were heads? What is the probability that the next flip will be heads too? If you think 50%, then you are discounting the very high probability that the game is rigged. And this makes you a sucker. — Dmitry Orlov

To many of my liberal and atheist friends and colleagues, an explanation for religious beliefs such as what I have presented in this book is tantamount to discounting both its internal validity and its external reality. Many of my conservative and theist friends and colleagues take it this way as well and therefore bristle at the thought that explaining a belief explains it away. This is not necessarily so. Explaining why someone believes in democracy does not explain away democracy; explaining why someone who holds liberal or conservative values within a democracy does not explain away those values. — Michael Shermer

We are used to discounting the river-gods and dryads of the Greeks as poetical fancies, and even the chief figures in the classical Pantheon-Venus, Minerva, Mars, and the rest-as allegories. But, forgetting that they once carried as much sanctity as our saints and divinities, we refrain from applying the same reasoning to our own objects of worship. — Julian Huxley

Nurturing words show that you believe in the other party's capacity to learn, change and grow. One's mind is like a computer. Every message you send goes into one of two files: discounting or nurturing. The file with the most data will direct how one sees and feels about himself or herself. Messages that nurture are based on unconditional love which must be worked at, especially if you come from a discounting family. You will need to rely on Jesus to fill the void in your life with His presence and help you learn how to love unconditionall like He loves us. — H. Norman Wright

To be able to look ahead while also celebrating now is a delicate kind of art, to imagine what could be without discounting what is. — Emily P. Freeman

Wanting to get out of pain is the pain; it is not the "reaction" of an "I" distinct from the pain. When you discover this, the desire to escape "merges" into the pain itself and vanishes. Discounting aspirin for the moment, you cannot remove your head from a headache as you can remove your hand from a flame. "You" equals "head" equals "ache." When you actually see that you are the pain, pain ceases to be a motive, for there is no one to be moved. It becomes, in the true sense, of no consequence. It hurts - period. — Alan W. Watts

Your manifesting results comprise a chain with a zillion tiny links - moments, experiences, conversations, physical objects, and coinciding events - all leading up to what you'd consider "the finished product" or the goal achieved. Be open to recognizing and appreciating every link. Normally the mind glosses, or even steamrollers, over them, discounting them as stupid, unimportant, too-little-too-late, irrelevant or uninteresting. — Debbianne DeRose

Not surprisingly, the father if market efficiency, Gene Farma, has a very clever way to avoid the pitfalls of hyperbolic discounting. When he's invited to talk or engage in sone business activity, he has a . simple rule for deciding whether to accept: no matter how far in the future it's scheduled, he ask himself whether it's something he would want to do if the event were next week; if the answer is yes, he accepts, otherwise, he politely declines. This simple rule of thumb ensures that he uses the same discount rate across all decision horizons. — Andrew W. Lo

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected. — George Soros

The discounting presumably is to be done for each period of time at that rate of interest which represents the alternative cost of employing capital in the occupation in question; that is, at the rate which the entrepreneur could obtain in other investments — Kenneth E. Boulding

I make it a rule never to weigh or measure a fish I've caught, but simply to estimate its dimensions as accurately as possible, and then, when telling about it, to improve these figures by roughly a fifth, or twenty percent. I do this mainly because most people believe all fishermen exaggerate by at least twenty percent, and so I allow for the discounting my audience is almost certain to apply. — Ed Zern

You," I said, "have this whole tall, dark stranger thing going on. Not to mention the tortured artist bit."
"Bit?"
"You know what I mean."
He shook his head, clearly discounting this description. "And you," he said, "have that whole blonde, cool and collected, perfect smart girl thing going on."
"You're the boy all the girls want to rebel with," I said.
"You," he replied, "are the unattainable girl in the homeroom who never gives a guy the time of the day."
There was a blast of music from inside, a thump of bass beat, then quiet again.
"I'm not perfect," I said. "Not even close."
"I'm not tortured. Unless you count this conversation. — Sarah Dessen

Have you ever heard that the brain is a discounting mechanism? — Maria Semple

Religious pluralism is a popular belief in Western culture. At first it sounds very inclusive, but it is really just as exclusive as any other claims. Religious pluralists are those who argue that the "real God" is actually a mix of the gods of all the religions combined (ie. the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Jehovah's Witness; and we can even throw in ancient Greek gods). By mixing all the major religions, they are discounting the exclusive truth claims to which religions strictly adhere. — Jon Morrison

Of course, the discounting of future earnings should hurt all stocks. But it should hurt technology stocks more than others, because so many of them are valued at extremely high levels relative to their current earnings. — Alex Berenson