Inferred Quotes & Sayings

Also, the high standard held up to the public mind by the College of which which gave its peculiar sanction to the expensive and highly rarefied medical instruction obtained by graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, did not hinder quackery from having an excellent time of it; for since professional practice chiefly consisted in giving a great many drugs, the public inferred that it might be better off with more drugs still, if they could only be got cheaply, and hence swallowed large cubic measures of physic prescribed by unscrupulous ignorance which had taken no degrees. — George Eliot

The gross domestic product (GDP) was created in the 1930s to measure the value of the sum total of economic goods and services generated over a single year. The problem with the index is that it counts negative as well as positive economic activity. If a country invests large sums of money in armaments, builds prisons, expands police security, and has to clean up polluted environments and the like, it's included in the GDP. Simon Kuznets, an American who invented the GDP measurement tool, pointed out early on that "[t]he welfare of a nation can . . . scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income."28 Later in life, Kuznets became even more emphatic about the drawbacks of relying on the GDP as a gauge of economic prosperity. He warned that "[d]istinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth . . . . Goals for 'more' growth should specify more growth of what and for what."29 — Jeremy Rifkin

No deliberation made by a single person will be successful; the nature of the work which a sovereign has to do is to be inferred from the consideration of both the visible and invisible causes. The clearance of doubts as to whatever is susceptible of two opinions, and the inference of the whole when only a part is seen is possible of decision only by ministers. Hence the king shall sit at deliberation with persons of wide intellect. — Chanakya

The possible truths, hazily perceived in the world of abstraction, like those inferred from observation and experiment in the world of matter, are forced upon the profane multitudes, too busy to think for themselves, under the form of Divine revelation and scientific authority. But the same question stands open from the days of Socrates and Pilate down to our own age of wholesale negation: is there such a thing as absolute truth in the hands of any one party or man? — H. P. Blavatsky

But that the reasoning from these facts, the drawing from them correct conclusions, is a matter of great difficulty, may be inferred from the imperfect state in which the Science is now found after it has been so long and so intensely studied. — Nassau William Senior

Bigger stories are made out of longer acquaintance with fact and character, but I also love the tiny stories in which almost everything has to be inferred and imagined. — Lauren Groff

The very foundation of our science is only an inference; far the whole of it rests an the unprovable assumption that, all through the inferred lapse of time which the inferred performance of inferred geological processes involves, they have been going on in a manner consistent with the laws of nature as we know them now. — William Morris Davis

Design must be proved before a designer can be inferred. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Faith is a decision.It is not a deduction from the facts around us. We would not look at the world of today and logically conclude that God loves us. It doesn't always look as though He does.Faith is not an instinct. It certainly is not a feeling - feelings don't help much when you're in the lion's den or hanging on a wooden Cross. Faith is not inferred from the happy way things always work. It is an act of the will, a choice, based on the Unbreakable Word of a God who cannot lie, and who showed us what love and obedience and sacrifice mean, in the person of Jesus Christ. — Elisabeth Elliot

If there is seeing without perceiving, there is also perceiving without seeing. If Ruby B were invisible we could infer her presence from your anomalous wobbling. Brown dwarfs and super-Jupiters and black holes, though hidden from sight, can be inferred from the anomalies they cause in their seeable neighbors. Much divergent behavior, in fact, is caused by invisible companions, although implied existence is not certain existence. Not everyone who stumbles stumbles on an invisible bandicoot. — Amy Leach

The duty of holding a Neutral conduct may be inferred, without any thing more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of Peace and amity toward other Nations. — George Washington

That mental states can be inferred from actions. That's in history - Henry VIII and all that. Whereas in the private life, I think the converse is true: that you can infer past actions from current mental states. — Julian Barnes

From this new point of view, the universe I had inhabited became an object I could perceive in its entirety. It was a hypersphere embedded in a cloud of alternative states the sum of all possible quantum trajectories from the big bang to the decay of matter. "Reality" history as we had known or inferred it was only the most likely of these possible trajectories. There were countless others, real in a different sense: a vast but finite set of paths not taken, a ghostly forest of quantum alternatives, the shores of an unknown sea. — Robert Charles Wilson

Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Therefore it must be inferred that good counsels, whencesoever they come, are born of the wisdom of the prince, and not the wisdom of the prince from good counsels. — Niccolo Machiavelli

In philosophy, when we make use of false principles, we depart the farther from the knowledge of truth and wisdom exactly in proportion to the care with which we cultivate them, and apply ourselves to the deduction of diverse consequences from them, thinking that we are philosophizing well, while we are only departing the farther from the truth; from which it must be inferred that they who have learned the least of all that has been hitherto distinguished by the name of philosophy are the most fitted for the apprehension of truth. — Rene Descartes

In experimental philosophy, we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur by which they may either be made more accurate or liable to exceptions. — Isaac Newton

Neuroscientists talk a lot about brain circuits. In fact, the word 'circuit' is probably misleading. We do not know where most circuits begin and end. And unlike an electrical circuit, brain connections are heavily reciprocal and recursive, so that a direction of information flow can be inferred but sometimes not proven. — Thomas R. Insel

Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties. — John Stuart Mill

where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom*
*Made it up
and extrapolated from associated sources** **had read a lot of stuff that other people had made up, too. — Terry Pratchett

As there is not in human observation proper means for measuring the waste of land upon the globe, it is hence inferred, that we cannot estimate the duration of what we see at present, nor calculate the period at which it had begun; so that, with respect to human observation, this world has neither a beginning nor an end. — James Hutton

Some read for style, and some for argument: one has little care about the sentiment, he observes only how it is expressed; another regards not the conclusion, but is diligent to mark how it is inferred; they read for other purposes than the attainment of practical knowledge; and are no more likely to grow wise by an examination of a treatise of moral prudence, than an architect to inflame his devotion by considering attentively the proportions of a temple. — Samuel Johnson

No African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks who are now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen. — Alexis De Tocqueville

There are respectable individuals, who from a just aversion to an accumulation of Public debt, are unwilling to concede to it any kind of utility, who can discern no good to alleviate the ill with which they suppose it pregnant; who cannot be persuaded that it ought in any sense to be viewed as an increase of capital lest it should be inferred, that the more debt the more capital, the greater the burthens the greater the blessings of the community. — Alexander Hamilton

Invitations to speak upon public occasions are among my most grievous embarrassments. Why is it inferred that one is or can be a public speaker because she has written a book? Writing is a very private business. I do not know any other occupation which requires so much privacy unless it is a life of prayer or a life of crime. — Corra May Harris

Like gravity, beauty is a force whose existence is inferred from its apparent effects. — Robert Grudin

My education, in other words, was a test of my willpower; and I accepted the challenge - to such an extent, indeed, that I think at some level of my teenage consciousness I truly believed that the whole point of going to school was to learn how to focus attention on subject matter that was of no consequence to me. The message I received at Clifton was: education is not primarily about understanding the world; its real purpose is character-building. As a corollary, I inferred that to study anything in which you had a real interest was, if not exactly cheating, certainly missing the point. — John Cleese

To teach students any psychology they did not know before, you must surprise them. But which surprise will do? Nisbett and Borgida found that when they presented their students with a surprising statistical fact, the students managed to learn nothing at all. But when the students were surprised by individual cases - two nice people who had not helped - they immediately made the generalization and inferred that helping is more difficult than they had thought. — Daniel Kahneman

If about a dozen genera of birds had become extinct or were unknown, who would have ventured to have surmised that birds might have existed which used their wings solely as flappers, like the logger-headed duck (Micropterus of Eyton); as fins in the water and front legs on the land, like the penguin; as sails, like the ostrich; and functionally for no purpose, like the Apteryx. Yet the structure of each of these birds is good for it, under the conditions of life to which it is exposed, for each has to live by a struggle; but it is not necessarily the best possible under all possible conditions. It must not be inferred from these remarks that any of the grades of wing-structure here alluded to, which perhaps may all have resulted from disuse, indicate the natural steps by which birds have acquired their perfect power of flight; but they serve, at least, to show what diversified means of transition are possible. — Charles Darwin

My mother sent me lithograph years ago at the height of my television success. It said, 'When your cup runneth over, watcheth out.' I never got over it. There's something so cosmic to be inferred in that. Not necessarily anything bad, and not necessarily anything good. — Peter Scolari

No one will deny that the soul of Pythagoras was sent to mankind from Apollo's domain, having either been one of his attendants, or more intimate associates, which may be inferred both from his birth, and his versatile wisdom. — Iamblichus

According to physiological law, all natural, normal functions of the body are achieved without peril or pain. Birth is a natural, normal physiological function for normal, healthy women and their healthy babies. It can, therefore, be inferred that healthy women, carrying healthy babies, can safely birth without peril or pain. — John Dye

If our highly pointed triangles of the soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our women. For if a soldier is a wedge, a women is a needle; being, so to speak, all point, at least at the two extremities. Add to this the power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a female, in Flatland, is a creature by no means to be trifled with. — Edwin A. Abbott

Education, especially business education will only give you tools. What you do with these tools is all that matters. Life and business isn't paint by numbers. You have to think for yourself. You have to invent yourself. You have an inferred fiduciary mandate to yourself, and that means, it's your responsibility to learn people skills, and language skills, in order to increase your chances of success. You also have to be at the right place, at the right time, with the right thing. Mostly and invariably, the real product you're going to be selling is ... .you. — Gene Simmons

There's always a latent or inferred image in my writing. And I can almost always assume if I do a drawing that it will eventually have text. — Raymond Pettibon

Will the adoption of this new plan pay our debts! This, Sir, is a plain question. It is inferred, that our grievances are to be redressed, and the evils of the existing system to be removed by the new Constitution. Let me inform the Honorable Gentleman, that no nation ever paid its debts by a change of Government, without the aid of in- dustry. You never will pay your debts but by a radical change of domestic economy ... The evils that attend us, lie in extravagance and want of industry and can only be removed by assiduity and economy. — Patrick Henry

The more clearly the immensely speculative nature of geological science is recognized, the easier it becomes to remodel our concepts of any inferred terrestrial conditions and processes in order to make outrages upon them not outrageous. — William Morris Davis

Reasonings on this subject can only be drawn from effects to causes; and that every argument, deducted from causes to effects, must of necessity be a gross sophism; since it is impossible for you to know anything of the cause, but what you have antecedently, not inferred, but discovered to the full, in the effect. — David Hume

Most of our failures in understanding one another have less to do with what is heard than with what is intended and what is inferred. — George Armitage Miller

The conceptions which any nation or individual entertains of the God of its popular worship may be inferred from their own actions and opinions, which are the subjects of their approbation among their fellow-men. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The elegant Lord Shaftesbury somewhere objects to telling too much truth: by which it may be fairly inferred, that, in some cases, to lie is not only excusable but commendable. And — Henry Fielding

The doctrine called Philosophical Necessity is simply this: that, given the motives which are present to an individual's mind, and given likewise the character and disposition of the individual, the manner in which he will act might be unerringly inferred: that if we knew the person thoroughly, and knew all the inducements which are acting upon him, we could foretell his conduct with as much certainty as we can predict any physical event. — John Stuart Mill

Men lived among mighty mountains and eternal forests for ages before they realized that they were poetical; it may reasonably be inferred that some of our descendants may see the chimney-pots as rich a purple as the mountain-peaks, and find the lamp-posts as old and natural as the trees. — G.K. Chesterton

When a man says he is building a house for himself and his posterity, he does not mean to be understood as saying that he has any thought of binding them, nor is it to be inferred that he is so foolish as to imagine that he has any right or power to bind them, to live in it. — Lysander Spooner

The inferred is always more effective than the obvious. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Science is a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomenon, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation. — Michael Shermer

Process can not be inferred from product any more than a pig can be inferred from a sausage. — Don Murray

Organs, faculties, powers, capacities, or whatever else we call them; grow by use and diminish from disuse, it is inferred that they will continue to do so. And if this inference is unquestionable, then is the one above deduced from it-that humanity must in the end become completely adapted to its conditions-unquestionable also. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. — Herbert Spencer

And mental states may be inferred from actions. The tyrant rarely sends a handwritten note requesting the elimination of an enemy. — Julian Barnes

Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one. — Alexander Hamilton

The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this: wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities. — Bertrand Russell

If one sat up as long as an hour past bedtime, except on Christmas and birthdays, one would be ill. Laurie, who had had this explained to him many times and accepted it as incontrovertible fact, inferred from it that after three hours one would probably die. — Mary Renault

Demands for equal financing of sewers, streets, and garbage collection would make more sense than proposals for equal financing of the schools, since some plausible connection may be inferred between the amount of money expended, e.g., for roads, and the quality of service resulting to the taxpayer. — M. Stanton Evans

From the apparent usefulness of the social virtues, it has readily been inferred by sceptics, both ancient and modern, that all moral distinctions arise from education, and were, at first, invented, and afterwards encouraged ... in order to render men tractable, and subdue their natural ferocity and selfishness, which incapacitated them for society. — David Hume

Everything and anything about a culture can be inferred from the shape of its language - and — Robert A. Heinlein

Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy; knowledge is not always present. — Samuel Johnson

Sometimes the character of the mistress is inferred from the dress of her maids. — St. Jerome

Tragedy's language stresses that whatever is within us is obscure, many faceted, impossible to see. Performance gave this question of what is within a physical force. The spectators were far away from the performers, on that hill above the theatre. At the centre of their vision was a small hut, into which they could not see. The physical action presented to their attention was violent but mostly unseen. They inferred it, as they inferred inner movement, from words spoken by figures whose entrances and exits into and out of the visible space patterned the play. They saw its results when that facade opened to reveal a dead body. This genre, with its dialectics of seen and unseen, inside and outside, exit and entrance, was a simultaneously internal and external, intellectual and somatic expression of contemporary questions about the inward sources of harm, knowledge, power, and darkness. — Ruth Padel

Whenever a man is known to seek promotion by intrigue, by temporizing, or by resorting to the haunts of vulgarity and vice for support, it may be inferred, with moral certainty, that he is not a man of real respectability, nor is he entitled to public confidence. — Noah Webster

In most collectivist cultures, direct confrontation of another person is considered rude and undesirable. The word no is seldom used, because saying "no" is a confrontation; "you may be right" and "we will think about it" are examples of polite ways of turning down a request. In the same vein, the word yes should not necessarily be inferred as an approval, since it is used to maintain the line of communication: "yes, I heard you" is the meaning it has in Japan. — Geert Hofstede

Women, you have all this power, I'm telling you. In business, you have something called an inferred fiduciary duty to yourself. Look at the other hugely successful women in industry, commerce, science and everywhere else and you'll see women who are feminine, beautiful but also do not rely on men for their self-empowerment. — Gene Simmons

Thought is what we start from: the simple, intimate, immediate datum. Matter is the inferred thing, the mystery. — C.S. Lewis

inferred by the pattern to either side, the small pyramidal bumps rising from the flat steel with their crisp edges and flecks of paint. Holston lifted an old boot to an old step, pressed down, — Hugh Howey

We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know. — William Kingdon Clifford

That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Some people do indeed say that Eratosthenes could not have inferred the true measure of the earth. Whether true or untrue, it cannot affect the truth of what I have written on the fixing of the quarters from which the different winds blow. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

In both jokes and dreams, Freud observed, meanings are condensed and displaced, things are represented indirectly or by their opposites, fallacious reasoning trumps logic. Jokes often arise involuntarily, like dreams, and tend to be swiftly forgotten. From these similarities Freud inferred that jokes and dreams share a common origin in the unconscious. Both are essentially means of outwitting our inner censor. — Jim Holt

I was struck by the way in which meanings are historically attached to words: it is so accidental, so remote, so twisted. A word is like a schoolgirl's room
a complete mess
so the great thing is to make out a way of seeing it all as ordered, as right, as inferred and following. — William H Gass

I don't need your permission to search your locker. The headmaster's tone drew my attention back in his direction. This, I inferred from the rise in volume, was supposed to be the voice of authority. If you didn't need my permission, I thought, then why did you ask for it? — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it. — Herman Melville

Nobody ever inferred from the multiple infirmities of Windows that Bill Gates was infinitely benevolent, omniscient, and able to fix everything. — Simon Blackburn

Among many morals which press upon us from the poor minister's miserable experience, we put only this into sentence: Be True! Be True! Be True! Show freely to the world if not the worst, yet some trait whereby the worst can be inferred. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

People are much more likely to act on their self-percepts of efficacy inferred from many sources of information rather than rely primarily on visceral cues. This is not surprising because self knowledge based on information about one's coping skills, past accomplishments, and social comparison is considerably more indicative of capability than the indefinite stirrings of the viscera — Albert Bandura

The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined by the GDP. — Simon Kuznets

It may be that I might have inferred from the pages that life teaches us to diminish the value of what we read, and shows us that the things which the writer commends to us were never worth very much; yet I might equally well have come to the opposite conclusion, that reading teaches us to place a higher value on life, a value which we did not know how to appreciate, and the true extent of which we come to realize only through the book. — Marcel Proust

In spite of the evidence for the disorder-induced M-I transition as inferred from the transport and optical measurements, the metallic state of conjugated polymers has been a subject of controversy. — Alan J. Heeger

People have told me that everything about me, every facet of my life, psyche, experiences, dreams, and fears, are laid out explicitly in my writing, that from the corpus of my work I can be absolutely and precisely inferred. This is true. — Philip K. Dick

What we firmly believe, if it is true, is called knowledge, provided it is either intuitive or inferred (logically or psychologically) from intuitive knowledge from which it follows logically. What we firmly believe, if it is not true, is called error. What we firmly believe, if it is neither knowledge nor error, and also what we believe hesitatingly, because it is, or is derived from, something which has not the highest degree of self-evidence, may be called probable opinion. Thus the greater part of what would commonly pass as knowledge is more or less probable opinion. — Bertrand Russell

Skepticism is like a microscope whose magnification is constantly increased: the sharp image that one begins with finally dissolves, because it is not possible to see ultimate things: their existence is only to be inferred. — Stanislaw Lem

I have yet to see a successful prediction about the physical world that was inferred or extrapolated from the content of any religions document. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Two demons: one who insists that what is to be inferred by verbal processes must correspond to experience; and one who 'insists that what cannot be arrived at by verbal processes cannot correspond to experience. — Nanamoli Thera

For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, "Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions." But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Organizing facts in terms of principles and ideas from which they may be inferred is the only known way of reducing the quick rate of loss of human memory. — Jerome Bruner

I didn't realize he was a drunk driver,' I said. 'The other superheroes inferred it was just a regular, random guy you were trying to force a taco onto. But still' - I indicate the nearby crack dealers - 'the Taco Incident surely demonstrates how things can inadvertently spiral. — Jon Ronson

Few people would engage in extended activity if they believed that there were a random connection between what they did and the rewards they received,"15 Lerner concluded that "for the sake of their own sanity," people overestimate the degree to which ability can be inferred from success. — Leonard Mlodinow

I have expressed - whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed. I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you. Moreover, — Plato

Then he reflected that reality does not usually coincide with our anticipation of it; with a logic of his own he inferred that to forsee a circumstantial detail is to prevent its happening. Trusting in this weak magic, he invented, so that they would not happen, the most gruesome details. — Jorge Luis Borges