Not Making Assumptions Quotes & Sayings

Pause and remember - Making the wrong assumptions causes pain and suffering for everyone. — Jennifer Young

In a heated debate, the novice at working with mental models will have to make an effort to identify the assumptions he is making and why. Often the beginner's efforts in a discipline are characterized by time displacement: only after the debate, does one see one's assumptions clearly and distinguish them from the "data" and reasoning upon which they are based. — Peter M. Senge

Making negative assumptions based on a person's weight is never healthy. Overweight or thin, it sends the same damaging message: Your body does not conform. — Melissa Milne

You will make a perfectly rational mistake: You will assume that sooner or later the paradigm you are presently practicing (which has been mostly successful) will solve all the rest of your problems. — Joel Barker

The way to keep yourself from making assumptions is to ask questions. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

But you are making assumptions without all the facts, and that's not a sign of intelligence. — C.C. Hunter

That's always important to us, is being truthful. Not guessing, not making any assumptions. Just coming at it with knowledge. — Simon Pegg

How would your life be different if ... You stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day ... You look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey. — Steve Maraboli

This will not be my fate," I said firmly, confidently. "And it won't be Lillatta's and maybe not even yours, though that might be wishful thinking."
"Ah, you wish it not to be my fate?" Javen said brightly. "My assumption then is that I am at last making an impression?"
"The impression you are making is that you make way too many assumptions," I said. — Michael Puttonen

In life, you can be unhappy, or you can change things. And even if there are things you can't change, you can often change your mind-set and question assumptions that are making life less goof than it could be. — Laura Vanderkam

I'm being careful with here, Harlow told me, apparently irritated by something I hadn't even had the time to say yet. She was making assumptions about my no-fun-at-all-ness. They were good assumptions. — Karen Joy Fowler

He looks a bit like Robert Pattinson - if you genetically spliced him with Buzz Lightyear. He has dark, quiffy hair and wide-spaced eyes, though his skin is tanned as opposed to diamond sparkly white. He has a very square jaw with a dimple in the center of his chin but alas no jet
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THE SOUND
SARAH ALDERSON
pack. I note that his eyebrow is cocked and the smile on his face is half sneer, half smirk as if he's laughing at Eliza but she doesn't seem to realize.
I shake my head. I'm making a lot of assumptions here and the only two that I can safely claim are true are the ones about him being neither a vampire nor a space ranger. — Sarah Alderson

Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make
bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake
if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this can lead to terrible trouble. For instance, one morning you might wake up and make the assumption that your bed was in the same place that it always was, even though you would have no real evidence that this was so. But when you got out of your bed, you might discover that it had floated out to sea, and now you would be in terrible trouble all because of the incorrect assumption that you'd made. You can see that it is better not to make too many assumptions, particularly in the morning. — Lemony Snicket

Making assumptions and then taking them personally is the beginning of hell in this world. Almost all of our conflicts are based on this, and it's easy to understand why. Assumptions are nothing more than lies that we are telling ourselves. This creates a big drama for nothing, because we don't really know if something is true or not. Making assumptions is just looking for drama when there's no drama happening. And if drama is happening in someone else's story, so what? It's not your story; it's someone else's story. — Miguel Ruiz

Your imagination is tricking you into making negative assumptions about people based on past experience. Your imagination is running the show, and the score is coming imagination one, you zero. — Nicholas Boothman

After invoking the language and symbols of religion to bypass reason and convince the country to go to war, Bush found it increasingly necessary to disdain and dispute inconvenient facts that began to surface in public discussions. He sometimes seemed to wage war against reason itself in his effort to deny obvious truths that were totally inconsistent with the false impressions the nation had been given prior to making the decision to invade. He and his team seemed to approach every question of fact as a partisan fight to the finish. Those who questioned the faulty assumptions on which the war was based were attacked as unpatriotic. Those who pointed to the forged evidence and glaring inconsistencies were accused of supporting terrorism. One of Bush's congressional allies, John Boehner, then House majority leader, said, If you want to let the terrorists win in Iraq, just vote for the Democrats. — Al Gore

When you speak openly and honestly, you won't have to make assumptions. The day you stop making assumptions, you will communicate cleanly and clearly, and achieve impeccability with your word. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

This can only be done by making these cultural assumptions explicit, by exposing them for the intellectual frauds they actually are, and by being vigilant in keeping them before one's mind and spotting their presence in the ordinary reception of input each day from newspapers, magazines, office conversation, television, movies and so on. — J.P. Moreland

But as Austen delineates so clearly, you can't stop people from making assumptions if they're so inclined. You can only do your best to show your character through your actions and hope that other people will be capable of forming sound opinions. And if you're a realist like Austen, you'll also be wise enough to realize how many people aren't up to it. — Amy Smith

The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making. — Douglas Adams

Assumptions are the things we don't know we're making. — Douglas Adams

You tell them one real thing and then the doctor thinks he knows you. He starts getting arrogant and overfamiliar, making insulting suggestions left and right. You have to protest constantly just to set the record straight. Finally he makes offensive assumptions and throws them in your face. A stranger in a bar could do the same ... — Sarah Schulman

The problem would not exist if I asked beforehand. Hence, it is vital to ask honest questions (even if it sounds "stupid") rather than making assumptions. Everybody makes mistakes; the good news is that everything can be fixed. — Anna Agoncillo

Making assumptions in our relationships is really asking for problems. Often we make the assumption that our partners know what we think and that we don't have to say what we want. We assume they are going to do what we want, because they know us so well. If they don't do what we assume they should do, we feel so hurt and say, You should have known. — Miguel Ruiz

A propaganda model has a certain initial plausibility on guided free-market assumptions that are not particularly controversial. In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers). The national media typically target and serve elite opinion, groups that, on the one hand, provide an optimal "profile" for advertising purposes, and, on the other, play a role in decision-making in the private and public spheres. The national media would be failing to meet their elite audience's needs if they did not present a tolerably realistic portrayal of the world. But their "societal purpose" also requires that the media's interpretation of the world reflect the interests and concerns of the sellers, the buyers, and the governmental and private institutions dominated by these groups. — Noam Chomsky

They came generally from people writing theses on fantasy or on the Dark Is Rising books. They were full of questions I'd never thought about and false assumptions that I didn't want to think about. They would ask me in great detail for, say, the specific local and mythical derivations of my Greenwitch, a leaf-figure thrown over a Cornish cliff as a fertility sacrifice, and I would have to write back and say, "I'm terribly sorry; I made it all up." They told me I echoed Hassidic myth, which I hadn't read, and the Mormon suprastructure, which I'd never even heard of. They saw symbols and buried meanings and allegories everywhere. I'd thought I was making a clear soup, but for them it was a thick mysterious stew.

from "In Defense of the the Artist" in Signposts to Criticism of Children's Literature (1983) — Susan Cooper

Our minds have the need to know. When we dont know we make assumptions - they make us feel safer than not knowing. And we are pretty much always making assumptions. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

All of the sadness and drama you have lived in your life was rooted in the making of assumptions and taking things personally. The whole world of control between humans is based on that. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Treat with utmost respect your power of forming opinions, for this power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to nature and judgments that overthrow the rule of reason. — Marcus Aurelius

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

To help with that, I suggested some new agreements - what I would come to call "The Four Agreements" - to alter old behavior patterns. I told them not to take things personally, and to stop making assumptions. I asked them to be impeccable with the wondrous gift of language: the words they spoke and the words that comprised their innermost thoughts. I asked them to do their best in every effort. Four simple agreements. I also reminded them again and again not to believe, but to listen. Put into practice, these new agreements would cause a disturbance that would alter their reality. — Miguel Ruiz

A mathematician is always asking, "What assumptions are you making? And are they justified? — Jordan Ellenberg

Washington not only fit the bill physically, he was also almost perfect psychologically, so comfortable with his superiority that he felt no need to explain himself. (As a young man during the French and Indian war he had been more outspoken, but he learned from experience to allow his sheer presence to speak for itself.) While less confident men blathered on, he remained silent, thereby making himself a vessel into which admirers for their fondest convictions, becoming a kind of receptacle for diverse aspirations that magically came together in one man. — Joseph J. Ellis

In any kind of relationship we can make the assumption that others know what we think, and we don't have to say what we want. They are going to do what we want because they know us so well. If they don't do what we want, what we assume they should do, we feel hurt and think, "How could you do that? You should know." Again, we make the assumption that the other person knows what we want. A whole drama is created because we make this assumption and then put more assumptions on
top of it. — Miguel Ruiz

The time must come inevitably when mankind shall surmount the imbecility of religion, as it has surmounted the imbecility of religion's ally, magic. It is impossible to imagine this world being really civilized so long as so much nonsense survives. In even its highest forms religion embraces concepts that run counter to all common sense. It can be defended only by making assumptions and adopting rules of logic that are never heard of in any other field of human thinking. — H.L. Mencken

The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal. — David Brin

You asked how I'd define prejudice. That's it. Making assumptions about people you've never met. — Tony Horwitz

Oh."
"And by this," said Liru, "I hope that you mean, 'Sorry for making stupid assumptions and not asking your help for a mutual friend."
"Well, isn't that what 'Oh' translates to in Fenn? — Jonathan Renshaw

The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth. We could swear they are real. — Miguel Ruiz

Contrary to popular assumptions, the Bible is not a record of the blessed good, but rather the blessed bad. That's not a typo. The Bible is a record of the blessed bad. The Bible is not a witness to the best people making it up to God; it's a witness to God making it down to the worst people. — Tullian Tchividjian

Someone who has a disability is not necessarily in distress. You may be embarrassing and inconveniencing someone by butting in and making assumptions. — Mallory Ortberg

Assumptions are what we don't know we are making — Douglas Adams