Never Presume Quotes & Sayings

I always have to presume that each movie is my last movie because I never know if I'll get money again. — Todd Solondz

Never presume that just because you disagree with an idea that you must be correct. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Some urge we do nothing because we can't be certain how bad the (climate) problem might become or they presume the worst effects are most likely to occur in our grandchildren's lifetime. I'm a proud conservative, and I reject that kind of live-for-today, 'me generation,' attitude. It is unworthy of us and incompatible with our reputation as visionaries and problem solvers. Americans have never feared change. We make change work for us. — John McCain

He screamed. Mmm?' inquired the gentleman. I ... I would never presume to interrupt you, sir. But the ground appears to be swallowing me up.' It is a bog,' said the gentleman, helpfully. It is certainly a most terrifying substance. — Susanna Clarke

Never presume to know the mind of God. -Inescapable — Amy A. Bartol

It is my rule never to take a side in any part in the quarrels of others, nor to inquire into them. I generally presume them to flow from the indulgence of too much passion on both sides, & always find that each party thinks all the wrong was in his adversary. These bickerings, which are always useless, embitter human life more than any other cause ... — Thomas Jefferson

I always loved movies, but I never thought I would presume to be a screenwriter and definitely not a director. — Cameron Crowe

The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by
their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to
have been cared for. According to Evelyn, "the wise Solomon prescribed
ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman praetors have
decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the
acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that
neighbor." Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our
nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor
longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have
exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's
capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can
do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy
failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to
thee what thou hast left undone? — Henry David Thoreau

When a parliamentary or social majority decrees that it is legal, at least under certain conditions, to kill unborn human life, is it not really making a tyrannical decision with regard to the weakest and most defenseless of human beings? ... While public authority can sometimes choose not to put a stop to something which were it prohibited would cause more serious harm, it can never presume to legitimize as a right of individuals even if they are the majority of the members of society an offense against other persons caused by the disregard of so fundamental a right as the right to life. — Pope John Paul II

In the silence I heard Bastet, who had retreated under the bed, carrying on a mumbling, profane monologue. (If you ask how I knew it was profane, I presume you have never owned a cat.) — Elizabeth Peters

If you decide to become a dancer on Broadway, never say who your favorite dance partner is, because members of the media will presume you never want to dance with anybody else. — Bill Nye

I would never presume to give anyone advice. — Anne Meara

When we cast our bread upon the waters we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from the grantor's gift. — Maya Angelou

You learn it when you become a doctor. Not in school - that isn't where you learn, in any case - but when you lay your hands on people and presume to heal them. There are so many there, beyond your reach. So many you can never touch, so many whose essence you can't find, so many who slip through your fingers. But you can't think about them. The only thing you can do - the only thing - is to try for the one who's in front of you. Act as though this one patient is the only person in the world - because to do otherwise is to lose that one, too. One at a time, that's all you can do. And you learn not to despair over all the ones you can't help, but only to do what you can." She — Diana Gabaldon

Always keep mint on your windowsill in August, to ensure that buzzing flies will stay outside, where they belong. Don't think the summer is over, even when roses droop and turn brown and the stars shift position in the sky. Never presume August is a safe or reliable time of the year. — Alice Hoffman

For years afterward, I had dreams in which my mother appeared in strange forms, her features sewn onto other beings in combinations that seemed both grotesque and profound: as a slippery white fish at the end of my hook, with a trout's gaping, sorrowful mouth and her dark, shuttered eyes; as the elm tree at the edge of our property, its ragged clumps of tarnished gold leaves replaced by knotted skeins of her black hair; as the lame gray dog that lived on the Mueller's property, whose mouth, her mouth, opened and closed in yearning and who never made a sound. As I grew older, I came to realize that death had been easy for my mother; to fear death, you must first have something to tether you to life. But she had not. It was as if she had been preparing for her death the entire time I knew her. One day she was alive; the next, not.
And as Sybil said, she was lucky. For what more could we presume to ask from death - but kindness? — Hanya Yanagihara

Abraham Lincoln suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words. — Sarah Palin

As man is never strong enough to take unmixed delight in good, so may we presume also that he cannot be quite so weak as to find perfect satisfaction in evil. — Anthony Trollope

Do not judge. Never presume to judge another human being anyway. That's up to heaven. — Rita Mae Brown

I am very fortunate. I am a glass-half-full eternal optimist type to the point of being a moron. But I would never presume to know how hard it goes for others. How, for some people, just getting though the day is an incredible effort that can hardly be borne. — John Niven

This is a fault incident to all those who presume to translate books of verse into another language. For, however much care they take and however much ability they employ, they can never equal the quality of the original. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Now, if children were considered to be capable of admission into the Church by an ordinance in the Old Testament, it is difficult to see why they cannot be admitted in the New. The general tendency of the Gospel is to increase men's spiritual privileges and not to diminish them. Nothing, I believe, would astonish a Jewish convert so much as to tell him his children could not be baptized! "If they are fit to receive circumcision," he would reply, "why are they not fit to receive baptism?" And my own firm conviction has long been that no Baptist could give him an answer. In fact I never heard of a converted Jew becoming a Baptist, and I never saw an argument against infant baptism that might not have been equally directed against infant circumcision. No man, I suppose, in his sober senses, would presume to say that infant circumcision was wrong. — J.C. Ryle

Do not settle for labels that presume you will never heal. Believe in yourself. Find a tribe who understands and believes in you too. Don't ever give up. — Vironika Tugaleva

Never presume that I will not act on my worst instincts. — Cesare Borgia

The essence of peace is to merge two opposites. Therefore your notions should not scare you if you see another, who absolutely opposes you, and you presume that there is no chance for peace between you two. On the same token when you see two individuals who are exactly two opposites, never say it would be impossible for them to reconcile. On the contrary, and this is the perfection of peace to make it between two opposites. — Nachman Of Breslov

Reporters are not scientific. They do not follow scientific methods. They write to sell, not to educate. The scientist is not concerned with what sells. He is concerned with the truth. He undertakes years of painstaking study to arrive at an understanding of intricate natural processes that most people could never presume to comprehend . You would do well to listen to science and ignore the nonsense that is printed in the newspapers. Because I can tell you right now - radium has nothing to do with what's ailing you. — D.W. Gregory

She enetered the room and the entire crowd stopped, who was she? even in a million moons; you will never understand her, for she is to mysterious to presume and too wise to share her light to everyone. I wanted to love her, but i could tell, i wasnt the only one. — Nikki Rowe

You may have done 20 great shows in a row and come to one, and it doesn't work. You never presume anything. — Bob Newhart

Someone told me recently that a commentator or some sort had said, "The United States is in spiritual free-fall." When people make such remarks, such appalling judgements, they never include themselves, their friends, those with whom they agree. They have drawn, as they say, a bright line between an "us" and a "them." Those on the other side of the line are assumed to be unworthy of respect or hearing, and are in fact to be regarded as a huge problem to the "us" who presume to judge "them." This tedious pattern has repeated itself endlessly through human history and is, as I have said, the end of community and the beginning of tribalism. — Marilynne Robinson

You don't know me. How dare you presume to know me? Are you really so arrogant to believe you can sum up a man by his online presence? I have memories and feelings that have never seen the glow of a computer screen. Ideas that have never set foot online. — Wayne Gladstone

This life in us; however low it flickers or fiercely burns, is still a divine flame which no man dare presume to put out, be his motives never so humane and enlightened; To suppose otherwise is to countenance a death-wish; Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other. — Malcolm Muggeridge

Never expect, never presume, always work hard and always be true to who you are. — Jessie J.

I never claim my photographs reveal some definitive truth. I claim that this is what I saw and felt about the subject at the time the pictures were made. That's all that any photographer can claim. I do not know any great photographer who would presume otherwise. — David Hurn

One should never presume one is the sole object of a hunt, — Frank Herbert

Merris, this is Mae and Jamie."
Merris unbent slightly. "Alan's young lady, I presume?"
Mae actually blushed. "Er - no."
"Young Nicholas's, then," Merris said wearily. "What they all see in you, I cannot imagine."
Nick leaned against the stall ansd smirked at her. "You'll never know until you try. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I can't presume to speak for the others, but I never felt anything negative from anyone when I was onstage with Television. When I played rhythm behind Lloyd, the only thing that concerned me was to push him as hard as I could so that he'd go beyond what he was capable of and come up with something new, and vice versa. That's the only thing that mattered. — Tom Verlaine

Great and good men and women stirred sugar into their coffee knowing that it had been picked by slaves. Kind, good ancestors of all of us never questioned hangings, burnings, tortures, inequality, suffering and injustice that today revolt us. If we dare to presume to damn them with our fleeting ideas of morality, then we risk damnation from our descendants for whatever it is that we are doing that future history will judge as intolerable and wicked: eating meat, driving cars, appearing on TV, visiting zoos, who knows? — Stephen Fry

Never presume yours is a better morality. — Graham Greene

Knowledge is unsettled by the idea of power. We see how it works in the worlds of business and politics, and we suspect that it works the same in the spiritual world. We presume it's a gift for the exceptional and the few. She can do it, but we cannot, people might say to themselves. He is the chosen one; I am not. He's a master, but I can never be. We have become masters of what we are not. We have made ourselves vulnerable to the belief that others have greater power than we do, because we won't acknowledge the power of us - the truth of us. Power, to the world-dream, is something small and self-serving. Power, from the point of view of creation, is infinite and selfless. — Miguel Ruiz

Katherine Anne [Porter] treated them like favored nephews; she even cooked meals for them. Unfortunately, however, beneath Christopher's deference and flattery, there was a steadily growing aggression. By her implicit claim to be the equal of Katherine Mansfield and even Virginia Woolf, Katherine Anne had stirred up Christopher's basic literary snobbery. How dare she, he began to mutter to himself, this vain old frump, this dressed-up cook in her arty finery, how dare she presume like this! And he imagined a grotesque scene in which he had to introduce her and somehow explain her to Virginia, Morgan [Forster] and the others . . . [t]hus Katherine Anne became the first of an oddly assorted collection of people who, for various reasons, made up their minds that they would never see Christopher again. The others: Charlie Chaplin, Benjamin Britten, Cole Porter, Lincoln Kirstein. — Christopher Isherwood

Those who are truly humble will never presume to judge and condemn others, even when they see them committing very serious wrongs. They will say to themselves, "Who knows how much more grievously I would sin if I were exposed to the same temptations as these persons?" or, "Who can tell how much better these persons would be than I am if they had received from God the graces that have been granted to me? — F.J. Remler

I dare say you are planning on a late repentance. You do not know what you are doing. You are planning without God. Repentance and faith are the gifts of God, and they are gifts that He often withholds, when they have been long offered in vain. I grant you true repentance is never too late, but I warn you at the same time, late repentance is seldom true. I grant you, one penitent thief was converted in his last hours, that no man might despair; But I warn you, only one was converted, that no man might presume. I grant you it is written, Jesus is 'Able to save completely those who come to God through him' (Hebrews 7:25). But I warn you, it is also written by the same Spirit, 'Since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you' (Proverbs 1:24-26).

Believe me, you will find it no easy matter to turn to God whenever you please. — J.C. Ryle