Quotes & Sayings About Supposition

The desertion of Jesus, by his followers, furnishes an argument in support of the supposition that he attempted to be king of the Jews, rather than that he was a superior being. — Lysander Spooner

The writings and the recommendations of the earliest medical scientists and the new breed of clinicians between the mid-fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries were based on the supposition that sufficient study and experimentation would elucidate not only the origins of disease, but its treatment as well. — Sherwin B. Nuland

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. — George Washington

The hands of Hitler were filthy, but those of the United States were not clean. Our government had accepted, was still accepting, the subordination of black people in what we claimed was a democratic society. Our government threw Japanese families into concentration camps on the racist supposition that anyone Japanese - even if born in this country - could not be allowed to remain free. — Howard Zinn

Yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; — Thomas Jefferson

Our megatechnic culture, based as it is on the strange supposition that subjective malice has no reality and that evils do not exist, except in the sense of reparable mechanical defects, has proved itself incompetent to take on such responsibilities. — Lewis Mumford

It will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of evolution may be guided by an intelligent design. — F. C. S. Schiller

I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I shall have finished my travels. — Mark Twain

No more harmful nonsense exists than [the] common supposition that deepest insight into great questions about the meaning of life or the structure of reality emerges most readily when a free, undisciplined, and uncluttered (read, rather, ignorant and uneducated) mind soars above mere earthly knowledge and concern. — Stephen Jay Gould

What triggers a poem for me is not the same as what triggers an essay. My mind is geared to looking for, or to watching out for, the image that attracts my attention or the phrase or the strange juxtaposition that strikes me bodily, or an odd question or supposition. — Pattiann Rogers

Considered as a mere question of physics, (and keeping all moral considerations entirely out of sight,) the appearance of man is a geological phenomenon of vast importance, indirectly modifying the whole surface of the earth, breaking in upon any supposition of zoological continuity, and utterly unaccounted for by what we have any right to call the laws of nature. — Adam Sedgwick

The next morning, as she was going downstairs, she was met by her father, who came out of his library with a letter in his hand. "Lizzy," said he, "I was going to look for you; come into my room." She followed him thither; and her curiosity to know what he had to tell her was heightened by the supposition of its being in some manner connected — Jane Austen

In inquiring concerning the benefits of the plan proposed, I shall proceed upon the supposition that female seminaries will be patronized throughout our country. — Emma Willard

I'm very curious to meet a guy who makes you completely forsake the scientific method in favor of unfounded supposition and speculation."
"It's called intuition! — Rosemary Clement-Moore

A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night. — Thomas B. Macaulay

The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit. — David Hume

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. — Anne Sullivan

When you read a history or biography you are entitled to imagine that it is as accurate as the authors can make it. That research has gone into it and we say "This is a history of the civil war, this is a biography of Lincoln" whatever. But you don't make any such supposition when you say "This is a historical novel." — Nicholas Meyer

The supposition that it was possible for any woman to be so mean-spirited as not at least to wish to tear out her rival's eyes was too hard for the digestion of the Cry. — Sarah Fielding

I think you enjoy messing with people."
"That's a purely hypothetical supposition on your part," the bastard says. — Nenia Campbell

The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first sight confused, set of appearances, is necessarily tentative; we begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what consequences will follow from it ; and by observing how these differ from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make in our assumption. — John Stuart Mill

Tommy was persuaded that the murder charge was buttressed by that antagonism, which, from the prosecution's viewpoint, was probably ninety percent of their case. The bloodstains, being absent from the bunk room on the night of the murder, the discovery of the knife - all these things when taken together painted a compelling portrait. It was only upon examining each separately that the supposition unraveled somewhat. — John Katzenbach

The innocent supposition, entertained by most people, that even if they are not brilliant, they are not dumb, is correct only in a very relative sense. — James Gould Cozzens

If everything in chemistry is explained in a satisfactory manner without the help of phlogiston, it is by that reason alone infinitely probable that the principle does not exist; that it is a hypothetical body, a gratuitous supposition; indeed, it is in the principles of good logic, not to multiply bodies without necessity. — Antoine Lavoisier

One unconsciously takes it for granted that doer and sufferer think and feel alike, and according to this supposition we measure the guilt of the one by the pain of the other. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Was music once a proof of God's existence? As long as it admits things beyond measure, That supposition stands. — Seamus Heaney

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex. — Samuel Johnson

starts upon the supposition that when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It — Arthur Conan Doyle

This awakening of a new interest - this passing from the supposition that we hold the right opinions on a subject we are careless about, to a sudden care for it, and a sense that our opinions were ignorance - is an effectual remedy for ennui, which, unhappily, cannot be secured on a physician's prescription; — George Eliot

The idea that we should be open to all ideas, is very different from the supposition that all ideas are equally valid. — Lawrence Summers

Ll arguments concerning existence are founded on the relation of cause and effect; that our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely from experience; and all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the future will be conformable to the past ... Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. — David Hume

Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.'
I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her ... I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me. — George Eliot

Supposing is good, but finding out is better. — Mark Twain

I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration and falsified data. Show me the research, show me the results, show me the conclusions - and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that. — Claire Scovell LaZebnik

35. When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never shun the being seen to do it, even though the world should make a wrong supposition about it; for, if you don't act right, shun the action itself; but, if you do, why are you afraid of those who censure you wrongly? — Epictetus

Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his neighbors believe all that they profess, and act up to all that they believe! — Thomas B. Macaulay

This is what writers mean when they say that the notion of cause involves the idea of necessity. If there be any meaning which confessedly belongs to the term necessity, it is unconditionalness. That which is necessary, that which must be, means that which will be, whatever supposition we may make in regard to all other things. — John Stuart Mill

The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment, so that, in short, the public ear is at the mercy of the first impudent pretender who chooses to fill it with noisy assertions, or false surmises, or secret whispers. What is said by one is heard by all; the supposition that a thing is known to all the world makes all the world believe it, and the hollow repetition of a vague report drowns the 'still, small voice' of reason. — William Hazlitt

[T]hat the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty. — Thomas Jefferson

Are not all Hypotheses erroneous, in which Light is supposed to consist in Pression or Motion, propagated through a fluid Medium? For in all these Hypotheses the Phaenomena of Light have been hitherto explain'd by supposing that they arise from new Modifications of the Rays; which is an erroneous Supposition. — Isaac Newton

There are facts. There are suppositions. There are beliefs. Learn to keep them separate, Sergeant. All men die. Fact. Death may not be the end. Supposition. There's pie in the sky when you die. Belief. — P.D. James

It is the prerogative of night, when thoughts, like relentless waves, break on the impressionable sands of the mind. Questions, theories, and suppositions come crashing ashore, and just like waves, they disappear into the grains of the mind without a trace. In this sea of uncertainty, stormed by nocturnal nightmares, the mind slips in and out of consciousness. It is the melting pot where logic and fantasy combine until supposition becomes hypothesis and hypothesis morphs into unsubstantiated fact. — Luke Gracias

The benefits of a philosophy of neo-religious pessimism are nowhere more apparent than in relation to marriage, one of modern society's most grief-stricken arrangements, which has been rendered unnecessarily hellish by the astonishing secular supposition that it should be entered into principally for the sake of happiness. Christianity and Judaism present marriage not as a union inspired and governed by subjective enthusiasm but rather, and more modestly, as a mechanism by which individuals can assume an adult position in society and thence, with the help of a close friend, undertake to nurture and educate the next generation under divine guidance. These limited expectations tend to forestall the suspicion, so familiar to secular partners, that there might have been more intense, angelic or less fraught alternatives available elsewhere. Within the religious ideal, friction, disputes and boredom are signs not of error, but of life proceeding according to plan. — Alain De Botton

There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom. The glib supposition of utilizing atomic energy when our coal has run out is a completely unscientific Utopian dream, a childish bug-a-boo. Nature has introduced a few fool-proof devices into the great majority of elements that constitute the bulk of the world, and they have no energy to give up in the process of disintegration. — Robert Andrews Millikan

But as much as this is a soldier's reason d'etre, it is not often that you hear a soldier explicitly talk about 'killing'. The k-word as a verb is instead often disguised and supplanted by any number of other euphemisms. In precise and technical military parlance, reflecting the ever more precise and technically removed means of killing, the 'enemy' becomes the 'target'. But for the soldiers who personally 'engage' these 'targets', these objects are colloquially 'slotted', 'dropped', 'hit', 'fragged', 'sawn in half', 'smashed' or just plain 'shot'.
Then the soldier will have achieved the noun of a 'kill'.
The author's supposition is that such words are used by the soldier in combat as an attempt to mentally dissociate himself from the reality of his actions, so he can continue to operate as a soldier - and perhaps, when all is finally said and done, as a human being back home. — Jake Wood

But neither the business alleged, nor the magnificent compliment, could win Catherine from thinking that some very different object must occasion so serious a delay of proper repose. To be kept up for hours, after the family were in bed, by stupid pamphlets was not very likely. There must be some deeper cause: something was to be done which could be done only while the household slept; and the probability that Mrs. Tilney yet lived, shut up for causes unknown, and receiving from the pitiless hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food, was the conclusion which necessarily followed. Shocking as was the idea, it was at least better than a death unfairly hastened, as, in the natural course of things, she must ere long be released. The suddenness of her reputed illness, the absence of her daughter, and probably of her other children, at the time - all favoured the supposition of her imprisonment. Its origin - jealousy perhaps, or wanton cruelty - was yet to be unravelled. — Jane Austen

Give us more and more of real Christianity, and we shall need less of its evidences. Act upon the supposition that Christ is a Divine Teacher, and you will soon have a demonstration of its truth. — Edward Thomson

See the value of imagination. It is the one quality which Inspector Gregory lacks. We imagined what might have happened, acted upon the supposition, and find ourselves justified. Let us proceed. — Arthur Conan Doyle

And further, observing that all this indeterminate substance is in motion, and that no true predication can be made of that which changes, they supposed that it is impossible to make any true statement about that which is in all ways and entirely changeable. For it was from this supposition that there blossomed forth the most extreme view of those which we have mentioned, that of the professed followers of Heraclitus, and such as Cratylus held, who ended by thinking that one need not say anything, and only moved his finger; and who criticized Heraclitus for saying that one cannot enter the same river twice, for he himself held that it cannot be done even once. — Aristotle.

Given that we are passing the climate change bill, which is based on the supposition that the climate is getting warmer, let me point out that it is now snowing outside, in October. — Peter Lilley

Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?' saith the Apostle; 'it is God that justifieth,' and it is their being elect that carries it. Yea, his love is so strong that if there be any accusation, - the Apostle makes the supposition, 'Who shall lay anything to their charge?' Sin or devil? - that if at any time sin or devil come to accuse, it moves God to bless. His love is so violent, it is so set, that he takes occasion to bless so much the more. — Thomas Goodwin

Some also deny that the earth is in the middest of the world, and some affirme that it is mouable, as also Copernicus by way of supposition, and not for that he thought so in deede: who affirmeth that the earth turneth about, and that the sunne standeth still in the midst of the heauens, by help of which false supposition he hath made truer demonstrations of the motions and reuolutions of the celestiall Spheares, than euer were made before ... — Thomas Blundeville

Most People are wretched more by the Fears of what may come, than what they endure at present ... a manifest Contradiction to good Sense; for who, with the right use of that, wou'd lose the Enjoyment of a present Comfort, to lament a Misfortune only in Supposition; which ten to one never comes to pass ... — Eliza Haywood

When any person harms you, or speaks badly of you, remember that he acts or speaks from a supposition of its being his duty. Now, it is not possible that he should follow what appears right to you, but what appears so to himself. Therefore, if he judges from a wrong appearance, he is the person hurt, since he too is the person deceived. For if anyone should suppose a true proposition to be false, the proposition is not hurt, but he who is deceived about it. Setting out, then, from these principles, you will meekly bear a person who reviles you, for you will say upon every occasion, "It seemed so to him."
... — Epictetus

Her supposition that I was melancholy because I was alone put me out of humour. I'm used to travelling alone. I live, like every real man, in my work. On the contrary, that's the way I like it and I think myself lucky to live alone, in my view this is the only possible condition for men, I enjoy waking up and not having to say a word. Where is the woman who can understand that? — Max Frisch

I sometimes compare press officers to riflemen on the Somme
mowing down wave upon wave of distortion, taking out rank upon rank of supposition, deduction and gossip. — Bernard Ingham

If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism - at least in the sense of this work - is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature. — Ludwig Feuerbach

Fear and hope remain the same; therefore the study of the psychology of speculators is as valuable as it ever was. Weapons change, but strategy remains strategy, on the New York Stock Exchange as on the battlefield. I think the clearest summing up of the whole thing was expressed by Thomas F. Woodlock when he declared: "The principles of successful stock speculation are based on the supposition that people will continue in the future to make the mistakes that they have made in the past." — Edwin Lefevre

But all these hints at foreseeing what actually did happen on the French as well as on the Russian side are only conspicuous now because the event has justified them. If the event had not come to pass, these hints would have been forgotten, as thousands and millions of suggestions and supposition are now forgotten that were current at the period, but have been shown by time to be unfounded and so have been consigned to oblivion. — Leo Tolstoy

Every president, Democratic or Republican, simply works on the supposition that it's better to keep jobs in America than let them go to Mexico. — Paul Bloom

To insist, even with Olympian assurance, that life appeared quite by chance and evolved in this fashion, is an unfounded supposition which I believe to be wrong and not in accordance with the facts. — Pierre-Paul Grasse

The supposition that there is massive waste to be cut in the civilian budget is simply a myth. To recapitulate: ending all earmarks and foreign aid and achieving all of the specific cuts on civilian programs proposed by the deficit commission, even if such choices were meritorious, would amount to less than 1 percent of GDP. True — Jeffrey D. Sachs

It seems hardly possible to analyse such a complex situation involving deceit and supposition of another person's emotional response, and then prepare your own plausible lie, all while someone is waiting for you to reply to a question. Yet that is exactly what people expect you to be able to do. — Graeme Simsion

When people believe a tale that conflicts with self-checkable evidence it tells me that people undervalue the role of evidence on formulating an internal belief system. Why this is so is not clear, but it enables many people to hold fast to ideas and notions based purely on supposition. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Therefore, Sir Walter, what I would take leave to suggest is, that if in consequence of any rumours getting abroad of your intention; which must be contemplated as a possible thing, because we know how difficult it is to keep the actions and designs of one part of the world from the notice and curiosity of the other; consequence has its tax; I, John Shepherd, might conceal any family-matters that I chose, for nobody would think it worth their while to observe me; but Sir Walter Elliot has eyes upon him which it may be very difficult to elude; and therefore, thus much I venture upon, that it will not greatly surprise me if, with all our caution, some rumour of the truth should get abroad; in the supposition of which, as I was going to observe, since applications will unquestionably follow, I should think any from our wealthy naval commanders particularly worth attending to; and beg leave to add, that two hours will bring me over at any time, to save you the trouble of replying. — Jane Austen

I am not a collection of members which we call the human body: I am not a subtle air distributed through these members, I am not a wind, a fire, a vapour, a breath, nor anything at all which I can imagine or conceive; because I have assumed that all these were nothing. Without changing that supposition I find that I only leave myself certain of the fact that I am somewhat. — Rene Descartes

John Adams, second president of the United States, wrote that our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people ... George Washington warned us never to indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. — Joe Lieberman

It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it. — George Washington

Energy healing is based on the supposition that illness results from disturbances in the body's energies and energy fields and can be addressed via interventions into those energies and energy fields. — Jed Diamond

Personal experience is the surest method by which one can determine the truth of a supposition, no matter how reputable the reporter, since so many experiences are subject to individual proclivities. — Nick Offerman

A prevalent fallacy is the assumption that a proof of an afterlife would also be a proof of the existence of a deity. This is far from being the case. If, as I hold, there is no good reason to believe that a god either created or presides over this world, there is equally no good reason to believe that a god created or presides over the next world, on the unlikely supposition that such a thing exists. — A.J. Ayer

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I have finished my travels. — Mark Twain

A pawn in a very complicated game, a little cog in a huge gear, so little that it should not even be seen: in fact, it was established that I would go through here without leaving any traces; and instead, every minute I spend here I am leaving more traces. I leave traces if I do not speak with anyone, since I stick out as a man who won't open his mouth; I leave traces if I speak with someone because every word spoken is a word that remains and can crop up again later, with quotation marks or without. Perhaps this is why the author piles supposition on supposition in long paragraphs without dialogue, a thick, opaque layer of lead where I may pass unnoticed, disappear.
I am not at all the sort of person who attracts attention, I am an anonymous presence against an even more anonymous background. — Italo Calvino

Religion is a cultural relic inherited from ancient civilizations that doctrinal influence persists globally in modern times. Religious people rely upon their notional belief in the primal innocence of human beings in order to support the abstract supposition of inherently benevolent God guiding human souls. — Kilroy J. Oldster

But now the world breaks in on us, the world is shocked, the world looks upon our idyll as madness. The world maintains that no rational man or woman would have chosen this way of life - therefore, it is madness. Alone I confront them and tell them that nothing could be saner or truer! What do people really know about life? We fall in line, follow the pattern established by our mentors. Everything is based on assumptions; even time, space, motion, matter are nothing but supposition. The world has no new knowledge to impart; it merely accepts what is there. — Knut Hamsun

Geologists have usually had recourse for the explanation of these changes to the supposition of sundry violent and extraordinary catastrophes, cataclysms, or general revolutions having occurred in the physical state of the earth's surface. — George Julius Poulett Scrope

Thus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law. Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general. — Frederic Bastiat

Conceptual art' is an oxymoron. Concepts are articulations of fact or supposition, not attributes of quality. — Walter Darby Bannard

And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind her, and to whom she is grateful. — George Eliot

One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious, dangerous, or fatal to be deceived. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is my supposition that the Universe in not only queerer than we imagine, is queerer than we can imagine. — John B. S. Haldane

Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be but it doesn't feel right — Stephen Chbosky

without facts, rumor, innuendo, intimation, and supposition have a way of conflating into myth. — Eric Van Lustbader

If holy words could not offer up an answer to despair, then what good were they? If the truths so revealed did not invite restitution, then their utterance was no more than a curse. And if the restitution is found not in the mortal realm, then we are invited to inaction, and indifference. Will you promise to a soul a reward buried in supposition? Are we to reach throughout our lives but never touch? Are we to dream and to hope, but never know? — Steven Erikson

I start from the supposition that the world is topsyturvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth. I start from the supposition that we don't have to say too much about this because all we have to do is think about the state of the world today and realize that things are all upside down. — Howard Zinn

At least 200 dates have been suggested, varying from 3483 to 6934 years B.C., all based on the supposition that the Bible enables us to settle the point. But it does nothing of the sort. The literal interpretation has now been entirely abandoned; and the world is admitted to be of immense antiquity. On such questions we have no Biblical evidence, and the Catholic is quite free to follow the teaching of science. — Thomas Murasso

More philosophically-minded critics regarded Einstein's argument for relativity as little more than a logical bait-and-switch ploy: [T]he supposition of most expounders of the Special Theory, that Einstein has proved the relativity of simultaneity in general - or that his 'simultaneity' is something more than a logical artefact - must manifestly be given up. — Arthur Oncken Lovejoy

I like to think we were man and wife. Life itself can be sacramental. The supposition was that we would be leaving the Garden of Eden together, and would cleave to one another in the wilderness through thick and think. — Kurt Vonnegut

The law of God, and also the way to life, is written in our hearts: It lieth in no man's supposition and knowing, nor in any historical opinion, but in a good will and well-doing. — Jakob Bohme

But the feeling of a limb as a sensory and motor part of oneself seems to be innate, built-in, hardwired - and this supposition is supported by the fact that people born without limbs may nonetheless have vivid phantoms in their place.4 — Oliver Sacks

It isn't very logical to live my life on goundless supposition. I have to assume the truth of the moment is the truth of the future. - Leah — Jacquelyn Frank

What I affirm is the intuition that where God's presence is no longer a tenable supposition and where His absence is no longer a felt, indeed overwhelming weight, certain dimensions of thought and creativity are no longer attainable. And I would vary Yeats's axiom so as to say: no man can read fully, can answer answeringly to the aesthetic, whose "nerve and blood" are at peace in sceptical rationality, are now at home in immanence and verification. We must read as if. — George Steiner

Faith is not the supposition that something might be true, but the assurance that someone is there. — Kallistos Ware

Woman, especially her sexuality, provides the object of endless commentary , description, supposition. But the result of all the telling only deepens the enigma and makes woman's erotic force something that male storytelling can never quite explain or contain. — Peter Brooks

It was evident that such facts as these, as well as many others, could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified; and the subject haunted me. — Charles Darwin

The supposition that one sex needs the other's acquiescence in order to exist prevents both from moving together as self-defined persons toward a common goal. — Audre Lorde

Horrors of a nature most stern and most appalling would too frequently obtrude themselves upon my mind, and shake the innermost depths of my soul with the bare supposition of their possibility. — Edgar Allan Poe

Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man that would keep all the wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it. — Oliver Cromwell

This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself. — Jorge Luis Borges

What does the world know? Nothing! You simply get used to something, you accept it and acknowledge it, because your teacher has acknowledged it before you; everything is just a supposition - indeed, even time, space, motion, matter are suppositions. The world knows nothing, it merely accepts things ... — Knut Hamsun