Tenet Quotes & Sayings

In fact, Darwin's own grandfather anticipated the central tenet of Lamarckism by some seven years: "All animals undergo perpetual transformations; which are in part produced by their own exertions ... and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity." — Erasmus Darwin

The diversity of mankind is a basic postulate of our knowledge of human beings. But if mankind is diverse and individuated, then how can anyone propose equality as an ideal? Every year, scholars hold Conferences on Equality and call for greater equality, and no one challenges the basic tenet. But what justification can equality find in the nature of man? If each individual is unique, how else can he be made 'equal' to others than by destroying most of what is human in him and reducing human society to the mindless uniformity of the ant heap? — Murray Rothbard

All new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom. — Hyman Rickover

From the first winter afternoon in the Harvard ball fields, "Oh no
I need you" had become an admission and a clarion call
the tenet of dependency that forms the weft of friendship. We needed each other so that we could count the endless days of forests and flat water, but the real need was soldered by the sadder, harder moments
discord or helplessness or fear
that we dared to expose to each other. It took me years to grasp that this grit and discomfort in any relationship are an indicator of closeness, not it's opposite. — Gail Caldwell

In raising problems without solutions, in posing questions without answers, in retreating to the hermetic, cavernous abode of complaint, pessimism is guilty of that most inexcusable of Occidental crimes - the crime of not pretending it's for real. Pessimism fails to live up to the most basic tenet of philosophy - the "as if." Think as if it will be helpful, act as if it will make a difference, speak as if there is something to say, live as if you are not, in fact, being lived by some murmuring non-entity both shadowy and muddied. — Eugene Thacker

To reject even one major tenet of the religion or to violate one major rule of behavior is enough to get one kicked out - or worse. — Robert Shea

Jihad is holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community. — John O. Brennan

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs
for their religion
I have shuddered at it,
I shudder no more.
I could be martyred for my religion.
Love is my religion
and I could die for that.
I could die for you.
My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet. — John Keats

Before beheading one such Brahmin, when Alexander asked him as to why he instigated a certain Indian ruler against the Greeks, he fearlessly and firmly replied that it was his most sacred tenet and that if he were to live, he ought to live honorably, else he should die honorably. — V D Savarkar

With winsomeness and clarity this great tenet in witness to which we are gladly uniting.
-Roger R. Nicole — R.C. Sproul

The short conversation that follows eventually led to a tree religion. Its tenet of faith was this: a tree that was a good tree and led a clean decent and upstanding life could be assured of a future life after death. If it was very good indeed it would eventually be reincarnated as five thousand rolls of lavatory paper. — Terry Pratchett

The first tenet is that you should report corruption regardless of loyalty to incumbent or party. — Linda Tripp

We have a responsibility to give people opportunities to do what they can do. It's a fundamental tenet of democratic society. Libertarians who believe in a completely minimalist state, and don't feel we have that responsibility, are harming humanity. — Mitch Kapor

The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existance, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. — George Orwell

The principal tenet of Jainism is non-harming. Observant Jains will literally not harm a fly. Fundamentalist Jainism and fundamentalist Islam do not have the same consequences, neither logically nor behaviorally. — Sam Harris

CIA Director George Tenet briefed a Senate panel ... about the current situation in Iraq. He described how cash was being stolen and women were being assaulted with impunity. Senators love to attend these continuing education seminars. — Argus Hamilton

Never, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question you don't already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with my baby-food. — Harper Lee

One can understand why Surrealism was not afraid to make for itself a tenet of total revolt, complete insubordination, of sabotage according to rule, and why it still expects nothing save from violence. — Andre Breton

I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my Life seems to stop there - I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I were dissolving ... I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion - I have shudder'd at it - I shudder no more - I could be martyr'd for my Religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that - I could die for you. My creed is Love and you are its only tenet - You have ravish'd me away by a Power I cannot resist. — John Keats

There is no obligation for the author of a film to believe in, or to sympathise with, the moral behaviour of his characters. Nor is he necessarily to be accredited with the same opinions as his characters. Nor is it necessary or obligatory for him to believe in the tenet of his construction - all of which is a disclaimer to the notion that the author of Drowning by Numbers believes that all men are weak, enfeebled, loutish, boorish and generally inadequate and incompetent as partners for women. But it's a thought. — Peter Greenaway

Evolution has been the key tenet of success over the past 13 years, and we have transformed from a single subscription e-commerce image business into a company with a diversified portfolio of content offerings, servicing the needs of businesses of all types and sizes globally. — Jon Oringer

I think it's a very central tenet to it yes, it is. I can't bear it, I can't bear inequality, I can't bear bad behaviour to other people. I cannot bear it that people are mean to people who can't help what they are. — Janet Suzman

A tenet of stoicism advises to live according to your nature. If you try to be something you aren't, you'll self-destruct. — Blake Crouch

CIA Director George Tenet has now testified before the 9/11 commission and he said we are still making the same dumb mistakes, like leaving memos on the President's desk. — David Letterman

Also when it is a case of only upholding some spiritual tenet, such as infant baptism, original sin, and unnecessary separation, then ... we conclude that ... the stubborn sectaries must be put to death. — Martin Luther

For the fundamentalist who wants to believe every word of the Bible, however, life is a house of cards, with each card a tenet of faith. If you remove one card, the entire house collapses. — Morris Sullivan

Aristotle suggests that the rotating Earth was a generally accepted tenet of Pythagorism: "While most of those who hold that the whole heaven is finite say that the earth lies at the center, the philosophers of Italy, the so-called Pythagoreans, assert the contrary. They say that in the middle there is fire, and that the earth is one of the stars, and by its circular motion round the center produces night and day." — Aristotle.

I hope that I've been able to treat people with the respect they've shown me. That's basically the tenet you try to live by. I haven't been successful at it all my life, but that's what I strive for. — Tom Watson

Even if we accept, as the basic tenet of true democracy, that one moron is equal to one genius, is it necessary to go a further step and hold that two morons are better than one genius? — Leo Szilard

There's something I believe wholeheartedly: Cynicism is the true refuge of the pseudo-intellectual, .. Cynicism is easy. Joy is an extremely advanced spiritual and intellectual tenet. — Craig Ferguson

The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you're trying to design for. Leadership is exactly the same thing - building empathy for the people that you're entrusted to help. — David M. Kelley

She'd always found a deep comfort in praying. A profound sense of connection to something infinitely larger than herself. Her atheist friends called it awe in the face of an infinite cosmos. She called it God. That they might be talking about the same thing didn't bother her at all. It was possible she was hurling her prayers at a cold and unfeeling universe that didn't hear them, but that wasn't how it felt. Science had given mankind many gifts, and she valued it. But the one important thing it had taken away was the value of subjective, personal experience. That had been replaced with the idea that only measurable and testable concepts had value. But humans didn't work that way, and Anna suspected the universe didn't either. In God's image, after all, being a tenet of her faith. At first, — James S.A. Corey

Foreign nations have begun to include information warfare in their war college curricula with respect to both defensive and offensive applications. — George Tenet

Freedom, or individual liberty, was a basic premise of the Spanish anarchist tradition. "Individual sovereignty" is a prime tenet of most anarchist writing; the free development of one' s individual potential is one of the basic "rights" to which all humans are born. Yet Spanish anarchists were firmly rooted in the communalist-anarchist tradition. For them, freedom was fundamentally a social product: the fullest expression of individuality and of creativity can be achieved only in and through community. As Carmen Conde (a teacher who was also active in Mujeres Libres) wrote, describing the relationship of individuality and community: "I and my truth; I and my faith ... And I for you, but without ever ceasing to be me, so that you can always be you. Because I don' t exist without your existence, but my existence is also indispensable to yours. — Martha A. Ackelsberg

Waging war on his enemies had been Sokolov's habit and his profession for a long time, but being chivalrous to everyone else was simply a basic tenet of having your shit together as a human and as a man. — Neal Stephenson

The very idea of penalizing based on propensities is nauseating. To accuse a person of some possible future behavior is to negate the very foundation of justice: that one must have done something before we can hold him accountable for it. After all, thinking bad things is not illegal, doing them is. It is a fundamental tenet of our society that individual responsibility is tied to individual choice of action. [ ... ] Were perfect predictions possible, they would deny human volition, our ability to live our lives freely. Also, ironically, by depriving us of choice they would exculpate us from any responsibility. — Viktor Mayer-Schonberger

Never break faith with the truth. — George Tenet

The only people that ever stand up and tell the truth are who? Intelligence officers. Because our culture is, never break faith with the truth. We'll tell you, you don't have to drag it out of us. — George Tenet

The notion that a woman's sexuality belongs only to the husband is a central tenet tied to the idea that a woman is the property of the father first, then the property of the husband. — Darrel Ray

I still lie awake at night thinking about everything that could have been, that wasn't done to stop 9/11. To the 9/11 families, I said, you deserve better from your entire government. All of us. — George Tenet

And for all concerned there was a deepening anger that under the cloak of defending the sacred tenet of "free trade," the United States continued to finance and do business with both sides in the conflict, growing ever richer while Europe bled. — Scott Anderson

One of those blocks (that prevent the 'Middle East from entering the mainstream of modernity') is the orthodox tenet that the Koran and the scriptures contain all the knowledge required to deal with the problems of contemporary society. — Arnold Beichman

The tenet of the philosopher that for each man there was only one perfect friend; — Mary Renault

It is an essential tenet of our whole representative form of government, the idea that there should not be some tyranny which makes it so nobody can even have a chance to vote. — Todd Akin

Much of the left's hate speech bears greater similarity to a psychological disorder than to standard political discourse. The hatred is blinding, producing logical contradictions that would be impossible to sustain were it not for the central element faith plays in the left's new religion. The basic tenet of their faith is this: Maybe they were wrong on facts and policies, but they are good and conservatives are evil. You almost want to give it to them. It's all they have left. — Ann Coulter

One mushroom cloud would change history. My deepest fear is that this is exactly what they Al Qaeda intend. — George Tenet

Hard edges make truth and by necessity, truth is unbending. Unlike truth's absolutism, justice is a qualitative substance; it is not an absolute tenet. Justice must be pliable in order to meet the needs of more than one person or one group. Justice goes against separation; it is a form of human superglue. Justice is what binds us as people. No human is capable of measuring out or dispensing unqualified justice. Justice naturally seeks conciliation and demands compromise. — Kilroy J. Oldster

No other book has been so chopped, knifed, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified. What book on philosophy or religion or psychology or belles lettres of classical or modern times has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible? With such venom and skepticism? With such thoroughness and erudition? Upon every chapter, line and tenet? — Bernard Ramm

All these years! All this time with us
have you learned nothing?!
You only live by the grace of our clan's tenet of forgiveness!
Your judgement is shit!
Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. Without decency, neither talent nor learning can make the human frame into a samurai. — Rick Remender

tenet, n.

At the end of the French movie, the lover sings, "Love me less, but love me for a long time. — David Levithan

The belief that recipients of government aid are better off the more we spend on them is remarkably persistent. No matter how many times this central tenet of liberalism gets debunked, like Brett Favre, it just keeps coming back. — Paul Ryan

Love your enemies ... it's not always an easy tenet to live by ... and I have more often than not been inclined to wish my enemies ill than well. — Lea Salonga

Through an arbitrary problem, I had arrived at a tenet of good writing: brevity wins. — Michael Winter

But what does it mean to be on God's side? I believe it starts with focusing on the common good - not just in politics, but in all the decisions we make in our personal, family, vocational, financial, communal, and, public lives. That old but always new ethic simply says we must care for more than just ourselves or our own group. We must care for our neighbor as well, and for the health of the life we share with one another. It echoes a very basic tenet of Christianity and other faiths - love your neighbor as yourself - still the most transformational ethic in history. — Jim Wallis

Any statement or claim that contradicts reason and valid experience cannot be upheld. Therefore, as Buddhists, we must discard any tenet that may contradict reason and valid experience. — Dalai Lama XIV

It is said that peace is the basic tenet of all religion. Yet it is in the name of religion that there has been so much disturbance, bloodshed and persecution. It is indeed a pity that even at the close of the twentieth century we've had to witness such atrocities because of religion. Flying the flag of religion has always proved the easiest way to crush to nothingness human beings as well as the spirit of humanity. — Taslima Nasrin

It's a basic tenet you learn at drama school. If you're playing someone evil, you can't make an objective moral judgment. You've got to get inside the character and empathize as much as possible. — Jacki Weaver

Like the absence of gender-specific terms such as glyany and androcracy from the vocabulary of historians, the systematic omission of women from accounts of our past serves to maintain a system founded on male-female thinking. It reinforces the central tenet of male dominance: women are not as important as men. By omitting any hint that "women's issues" are central to our social and ideological organization, it also effectively serves to conceal the social alternatives described by gylany and androcracy. — Riane Eisler

We are not entitled to such licence, I mean that of affirming what we please; we make the Holy Scriptures the rule and the measure of every tenet; we necessarily fix our eyes upon that, and approve that alone which may be made to harmonize with the intention of those writings — Gregory Of Nyssa

Geneticists experienced a comparable shock when, contrary to their expectations of over 120,000 genes, they found that the entire human genome consists of approximately 25,000 genes. (Pennisi 2003a and 2003b; Pearson 2003; Goodman 2003) More than eighty percent of the presumed and required DNA does not exist! The missing genes are proving to be more troublesome than the missing eighteen minutes of the Nixon tapes. The one-gene, one-protein concept was a fundamental tenet of genetic determinism. Now that the Human Genome Project has toppled the one-gene for one-protein concept, our current theories of how life works have to be scrapped. No longer is it possible to believe that genetic engineers can, with relative ease, fix all our biological dilemmas. There are simply not enough genes to account for the complexity of human life or of human disease. — Bruce H. Lipton

What I find interesting as a 40-year-old is the idea of trying to be a part of a pronounced, continuing independent culture. The basic tenet of America is that you rebel and then you get real. — Ian MacKaye

The Buddhist tenet, "Non-killing is supreme virtue", is very good, but in trying to enforce it upon all by legislation without paying any heed to the capacities of the people at large, Buddhism has brought ruin upon India. — Swami Vivekananda

Our tenet ever was ... that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated; and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action. — Thomas Jefferson

If there is a credo in practical medicine, it is that the important thing is to be sensible. — Atul Gawande

Make sure he's worth it. She had thought it so many times it had become a part of her. Like her tongue filling her mouth, so this tenet filled her being. — Colleen McCarty

The CIA officer at the black site relayed the report to his headquarters. The CIA's director, George Tenet, was unhappy to learn that the FBI was leading the questioning. He ordered a CIA counterterrorism team to take over in Thailand. "We were removed," Soufan said. "Harsh techniques were introduced" - at first, stripping the prisoner of his clothes and depriving him of sleep for forty-eight hours at a time - and "Abu Zubaydah shut down and stopped talking." Then the FBI took over again. — Tim Weiner

Where do new ideas come from? The answer is simple: differences. While there are many theories of creativity, the only tenet they all share is that creativity comes from unlikely juxtapositions. The best way to maximize differences is to mix ages, cultures, and disciplines. — Nicholas Negroponte

Increase my friend, is a natural tenet — Sunday Adelaja

Mantua gave me birth, Calabri snatched me away, now Parthenope holds me; I sang of shepherds, pastures, and heroes. -Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope, cecini pascua, rura, duces — Virgil

George Tenet has been the director of central intelligence since 1997, time enough to have changed the Agency's culture. He has failed. He should go. — Richard Perle

It was a basic tenet of faith with men of Ranulf's class that a knight, trained in the ways of war since boyhood, could easily vanquish lesser foes, as much a belief in the superiority of blood and breeding as in the benefits of battle lore and killing competence. Ranulf had accepted this comforting conviction, too, but no one seemed to have told his assailants that they were inferior adversaries. — Sharon Kay Penman

But even this gives rise to another central tenet, attendant to the Comedy Is Good myth: Comedy Is Hard. Certainly well-rendered comedy is hard. All things done well require practice and work. But for the most funny people, being funny is as inevitable as being double-jointed; it is a worldview formed long before words. One is born funny. The adage, as is, is incomplete. It should be Comedy is hard ... if you're not funny. Pirouettes are almost impossible ... without legs. Jokes can be honed, made better, tighter, and cleaner, and people can even be made funnier. But you can't really make someone funny who isn't. — David Rakoff

The independence of the economic sphere was a tenet of faith with Liberalism. — Francis Parker Yockey

I am convinced the next major attack against the United States may well be conducted by people with Asian or African faces, not the ones that many Americans are alert to. — George Tenet

If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant. — Vera Nazarian

Remember my first tenet in getting dressed is how you feel in the morning. So if you're not being true blue to that, it usually shows. — Pharrell Williams

The three cardinal tenets of rum drinking in Newfoundland. The first of these is that as soon as a bottle is placed on a table it must be opened. This is done to "let the air get at it and carry off the black vapors." The second tenet is that a bottle, once opened, must never be restoppered, because of the belief that it will then go bad. No bottle of rum has ever gone bad in Newfoundland, but none has ever been restoppered, so there is no way of knowing whether this belief is reasonable. The final tenet is that an open bottle must be drunk as rapidly as possible "before all to-good goes out of it. — Farley Mowat

I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion. — Calvin Coolidge

Mr. Speaker, in 1848, Karl Marx said, a progressive income tax is needed to transfer wealth and power to the state. Thus, Marx's Communist Manifesto had as its major economic tenet a progressive income tax. Think about it, 1848 Karl Marx, Communism ... I say it is time to replace the progressive income tax with a national retail sales tax, and it is time to abolish the IRS, my colleagues. I yield back all the rules, regulations, fear, and intimidation of our current system. — James Traficant

To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days. — George Tenet

I'm much better informed than Mr. Clarke ever was about the nature of the intelligence that was available again Osama bin Laden and which was consistently denigrated by himself and Mr. Tenet. — Michael Scheuer

The central tenet of Christianity as it has come down to us is that we are to reach out when our instinct is to pull inward; to give when we want to take; to love when we are inclined to hate; to include when are tempted to exclude. — Jon Meacham

We should return to the docks," Miss Grey suggested. "Perhaps they will be waiting there." Sure enough, she was correct - or at least, half correct. Mr. Kent was leaning on a splintery post by the Aurora, shaking his head as we approached.

"It took you three far too long to return here," he said. "Did you not learn that universal tenet as a child? If you ever lose track of your mother, go back to the last place you shared, no other. It's not terribly complicated. — Tarun Shanker

Cauthon lives," Arganda said. "And that's bloody amazing, considering that someone blew up his command post, set fire to his tenet, killed a bunch of his damane, and chased off his wife. Cauthon crawled out of it somehow."
"Ha!" Abell Cauthon said. "That's my boy. — Robert Jordan

The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind. This is the cardinal tenet of scientific understanding. Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution. — E. O. Wilson

probably the best-known tenet of modern moral philosophy: the doctrine that there is an unbridgeable gulf between facts and values, between descriptions of what is and prescriptions of what ought to be. — Peter Singer

A basic tenet of a healthy democracy is open dialogue and transparency. — Peter Fenn

I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state. The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process. — Barry Goldwater

There is scarcely any popular tenet more erroneous than that which holds that when time is slow, life is dull. — Benjamin Disraeli

It is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. — Pope Leo XIII

Balls and strikes are the basic tenet to everything in baseball. From the perspective of hitting, pitching, offense and defense, it's all about the strike zone and how the battle is waged there between the pitcher and hitter. — Doug Harvey

There is a very prevalent tenet with youth, that good company is every thing desirable, and that bad is even better than none. — Norm MacDonald

We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period. — George Tenet

There's a critical insight in all this for those of us who want to learn to be more influential. The best persuaders become the best through pre-suasion - the process of arranging for recipients to be receptive to a message before they encounter it. To persuade optimally, then, it's necessary to pre-suade optimally. But how?

In part, the answer involves an essential but poorly appreciated tenet of all communication: what we present first changes the way people experience what we present to them next. — Robert B. Cialdini

Resurrection is the central tenet of the Christian faith. And it isn't something we just celebrate on Easter. Resurrection is something we celebrate every day in every way. — Mark Batterson

The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum. — George Will

In nearly every religion I am aware of, there is a variation of the golden rule. And even for the non-religious, it is a tenet of people who believe in humanistic principles. — Hillary Clinton

Here's the teaching point, if you're teaching kids about intelligence and policy: Intelligence does not absolve policymakers of responsibility to ask tough questions, and it doesn't absolve them of having curiosity about the consequences of their actions. — George Tenet

I'm not religious anymore, but I think it's like papal infallibility, which is a ridiculous man-made tenet, like what I believe most religious tenets to be, are man-made after the fact. — Janeane Garofalo

In early Islam, it was an absolute tenet that the prophet was not to be worshipped. The prophet was a messenger. And one of the things that's happened in Islam is this cult of the prophet, which to my view is counter to the original tradition. — Salman Rushdie