Unsound Quotes & Sayings

But the argument is still unsound, because the first premise is false: there are other unmentioned alternatives, for example, that Jesus as described in the gospels is a legendary figure, so that the trilemma is false as it stands. — William Lane Craig

There is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant or unpromising objectives. — George F. Kennan

Compassion is the fellow-feeling of the unsound. — George Bernard Shaw

When people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound. — Daniel Kahneman

One reason why it is difficult for management to accept unexpected success is that all of us tend to believe that anything that has lasted a fair amount of time must be 'normal' and go on 'forever'. Anything that contradicts what we have come to consider a law of nature is then rejected as unsound, unhealthy, and obviously abnormal. — Peter F. Drucker

But to dwell prematurely on the sadness of one's death to others, Uncle Kostia, is like asking for money in advance. It's commercially unsound. — William Gerhardie

Inability to distinguish doctrine is spreading far and wide, and so long as the preacher is "clever" and "earnest," hundreds seem to think it must be all right, and call you dreadfully "narrow and uncharitable" if you hint that he is unsound! — J.C. Ryle

At Bow Street Magistrates' Court the essential facts were established. The man's name was James Tilly Matthews. He was a pauper of the south London parish of Camberwell. He had a wife and a young family. He appeared to be of unsound mind. — Mike Jay

Punishment is but legalized crime. In a society built on prevention, rather than retaliation, there would be very little crime. The few exceptions will be treated medically, as of unsound mind and body. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is impossible to approve in Catholic publications of a style inspired by unsound novelty which seems to deride the piety of the faithful and dwells on the introduction of a new order of Christian life, on new directions of the Church, on new aspirations of the modern soul, on a new vocation of the clergy, on a new Christian civilisation. — Pope Pius X

Look," Anil says, after Billy has explained enough of this. "Just cut to the chase."

"The chase," Billy says. He knocks back the new shot that the bartender has set up for him. He wipes his chin with the back of his hand. "The chase is that at the end of it she said she just wanted me to say one thing. She just wanted me to tell her that everything was going to be okay and that things were going to get easier from here on out."

"Okay, yeah," says Anil. "And you responded by saying - ?"

"I responded by saying that it would be ethically unsound for me to make a claim, for the purposes of comfort, that I couldn't be certain was true under the present circumstances."

Anil opens his mouth and then shuts it again. Finally he offers this: "No offense, man, but you're a fucking idiot."

"I'm aware."

"Fucking," Anil says, ticking it off on his thumb. "Idiot," he concludes, ticking this one off on his pointer finger. — Jeremy Bushnell

No one has ever explained why it is that parents and guardians consider dull people such safe matrimonial investments for their young charges. Even granting the unsound assumption that dull people are more apt to be content with their own matrimonial fetters, they are certainly more apt to be the cause of discontent in others. — Alice Duer Miller

An argument can be logically valid, but unsound in that it contains a false premise and, therefore, leads to a false conclusion (e.g., Scientists are smart; smart people do not make mistakes; therefore, scientists do not make mistakes). — Sam Harris

I took a shot of morphine, liked it, and eventually became addicted. It takes quite a while. It took me three months the first time. This nonsense of people becoming addicted with one shot is medically unsound. — William S. Burroughs

As a man is taught, so he believes. Thoughts being things, they may be planted like seeds in the mind of the child and completely dominate his mental content. Given the favourable soil of the will to believe, whether the seed-thoughts be sound or unsound, whether they be of pure superstition or of realizable truth, they take root and flourish, and make the man what he is mentally. — W.Y. Evans-Wentz

Besides, my usefulness here is destroyed because all of my friends think me a man of unsound mind. — Alex Campbell

The death tax is unfair, inefficient, economically unsound and, frankly, immoral. — Jon Kyl

We humans, through old habits, and because of the inherent structure of human knowledge have a tendency to make static, definite, and, in a way, absolutistic one-valued statements. But when we fight absolutism, we quite often establish, instead, some other dogma equally silly and harmful. For instance, an active atheist is psycho-logically as unsound as a rabid theist. — Alfred Korzybski

It has been stated that a characteristic mark of a combination is surprise; surprise for the defender, not for the assailant, since otherwise the combination will probably be unsound. — Eugene Znosko-Borovsky

Be not with honor's gilded baits beguil'd,
Nor think ambition wise, because 'tis brave;
For though we like it, as a forward child,
'Tis so unsound, her cradle is the grave. — William Davenant

Everyone talks about green cities now, but the concrete results in affluent cities mostly involve curbside composting and tackling solar panels onto rooftops while residents continue to drive, to stop, to eat organic pears flown in from Argentina, to be part of the big machine of consumption and climate change. The free-range chickens and Priuses are great, but they alone aren't adequate tools for creating a truly different society and ecology. The future, at least the sustainable one, isn't going to be invented by people who are happily surrendering selective bits and pieces of environmentally unsound privilege. It's going to be made by those who had all that taken away from them or never had it in the first place. {...} There is no moral reason why they should do and be better than the rest of us - but there is a practical one. They have to. Detroit is where change is most urgent and therefore most viable. — Rebecca Solnit

Social Security is inherently unsound for the simple reason that it's a political program run by politicians for political purposes ... Social Security operates on a very simple principle: the politicians take your money from you and squander it. — Harry Browne

I would rather label the whole enterprise of setting a biological value upon groups for what it is: irrelevant, intellectually unsound, and highly injurious. — Stephen Jay Gould

It has long been my personal view that the separation of practical and theoretical work is artificial and injurious. Much of the practical work done in computing, both in software and in hardware design, is unsound and clumsy because the people who do it have not any clear understanding of the fundamental design principles of their work. Most of the abstract mathematical and theoretical work is sterile because it has no point of contact with real computing. — Christopher Strachey

By amending our mistakes, we get wisdom. By defending our faults, we betray an unsound mind. — Huineng

The errors which arise from the absence of facts are far more numerous and more durable than those which result from unsound reasoning respecting true data. — Charles Babbage

A sane man often reasons from sound premises; an insane man commonly reasons as well, but the premises are unsound. — Austin O'Malley

Weak is that throne, and in itself unsound,
Which takes not solid virtue for its ground. — Charles Churchill

Thou learnest no secret until thou knowest friendship, since to the unsound no heavenly knowledge enters. — Hafez

Try to imagine the calamity of that: Zack, age twenty-eight, with no management experience, gets training from Dave, a weekend rock guitarist, on how to apply a set of fundamentally unsound psychological principles as a way to manipulate the people who report to him. — Dan Lyons

The mind is a mine. So often we revisit its winding, unsound caverns when we ought to stay out. — Claire Vaye Watkins

It is our duty to concentrate all our influence to make popular that which is sound and good, and unpopular that which is unsound. — Joseph Smith Jr.

Okay, little car, you are protesting roads. They are death traps for animals. They are environmentally unsound impervious surfaces that cause runoff. I understand this. But could we protest in the summer? — Carrie Jones

I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process [IPCC process] that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. — Christopher Landsea

Differences of Opinion

1 HE TELLS HER

He tells her that the earth is flat --
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong,
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.

The planet goes on being round. — Wendy Cope

Chinese brands will face many obstacles when marketing to Western consumers. Beyond the associations with poor quality and unsound environmental practices, they generally do not have the marketing capabilities or budgets to build powerful global brands. — Nirmalya Kumar

The sky has stopped
offering you reasons to live and your heart is the rock
you threw through each window
of what's deserted you, so you turn
to the burnt out building inside you: the scaffolding
overhead, the fallen beams,
the unsound framework;


according to the blue that's printed on the inside of your arms
you have no plans, no plans
uncovered, or uncovering: the offing is emptying,


the horizon empty


now that your sanity is
a tarp or a bedsheet
in the rough hands of the wind,


now that everything is hooded
in drop cloth.


It didn't happen
overnight. Or maybe it did:


your heart, the rock;
your soul, the Gothic barn. — Olena Kalytiak Davis

My God died young. Theolatry i found
Degrading, and its premises, unsound.
No free man needs God; but was I free? — Vladimir Nabokov

One correspondent, who is into psychology, notes that in his experience people who are hoplophobes are nearly always nutty in other ways, too. Hoplophobia [fear of guns], of course, is not simply an attitude but rather an aberration in which the sufferer clings to an idea which he himself knows to be unsound, such as the idea that inanimate instruments have a will of their own or that lawbreakers abide by the law. — Jeff Cooper

When humanitarianism came into vogue, and the unsound were tended at public expense, this natural selection ceased. And since these unfortunates were incapable alike of prudence and of social responsibility, they procreated without restraint, and threatened to infect the whole species with their rottenness. — Olaf Stapledon

Tolstoy isn't the only reason I don't wish to marry," Pandora said. "Whatever your reasons, they are unsound. I will explain to you later why you do wish to marry. Furthermore, you are an unconventional girl, and you must learn to conceal it. There is no happiness for any individual, man or woman, who does not dwell within the broad zone of average. — Lisa Kleypas

We do not wish incorrect and unsound doctrines to be handed down to posterity under the sanction of great names, to be received and valued by future generations as authentic and reliable, ... Errors in history and doctrine, if left uncorrected by us who are conversant with the events, and who are in a position to judge of the truth or falsity of the doctrines, would go to our children as though we had sanctioned and endorsed them. — Brigham Young

Are we reading the Constitution and pondering it? Are we aware of its principles? Are we abiding by these principles and teaching them to others? Could we defend the Constitution? Can we recognize when a law is constitutionally unsound? Do we know what the prophets have said about the Constitution and the threats to it? — Ezra Taft Benson

So-called 'higher education' is a veritable magnet for second-raters and actively destructive parasites bent on promoting unsound ideas to the inexperienced and gullible. The concentrate in areas like social studies, literature, and art - where opinion reigns supreme. And I find their opinions almost universally appalling. — Doug Casey

Research performed on animals is, by definition, scientifically unsound. — Moby

The theory that everyone acts from self-interest, direct or indirect, is psychologically unsound ... Throughout history ... there have been millions of men and women with some sort of Humanist philosophy who have consciously given up their lives for a social ideal. — Corliss Lamont

A statesman in these days has a difficult task. He has to pursue the policy he deems advantageous to his country, but he has at the same time to recognize the force of popular feeling. Popular feeling is very often sentimental, muddleheaded, and eminently unsound, but it cannot be disregarded for all that. — Agatha Christie

Jack. [After some hesitation.] I know nothing, Lady Bracknell. Lady Bracknell. I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square. — Oscar Wilde

[Mr. Gifford] made it much his business to deliver the people of God from all those false and unsound rests that by nature we are prone to make and take to our souls. He pressed us to take special heed that we took not up any truth upon trust - as from this or that, or any other man or men - but to cry mightily to God that He would convince us of the reality thereof, and set us down therein by his own Spirit in the holy word. — John Bunyan

Heisenberg and Bohr and Einstein strike me as being like gifted retriever dogs. Off they go, not just for an afternoon, but for ten years; they come back exhausted and triumphant and drop at your feet ... a vole. It's a remarkable thing in its way, a vole - intricate, beautiful really, marvellous. But does it ... Does it help? Does it move the matter on?
When you ask a question that you'd actually like to know the answer to - what was there before the Big Bang, for instance, or what lies beyond the expanding universe, why does life have this inbuilt absurdity, this non sequitur of death - they say that your question can't be answered, because the terms in which you've put it are logically unsound. What you must do, you see, is ask vole questions. Vole is - as we have agreed - the answer; so it follows that your questions must therefore all be vole-related. — Sebastian Faulks

And yet the artist will go on with his work without knowing in some way if any of his representations are sound or unsound. The artist knows nothing worth mentioning about the subjects he represents, and that art is a form of play, not to be taken seriously. — Plato

That renunciation of human closeness, of our deepest instincts: is it, in the end, simply too much to ask? Good men-sound, healthy men-can't make the sacrifice, or don't want to; has Holy Mother settled for the unsound and unhealthy? Has the Church, ever pragmatic, made do with what is left? — Jennifer Haigh

But, surprise - none of these blockbuster events made the slightest dent in Ben Graham's investment principles. Nor did they render unsound the negotiated purchases of fine businesses at sensible prices. Imagine the cost to us, then, if we had let a fear of unknowns cause us to defer or alter the deployment of capital. Indeed, we have usually made our best purchases when apprehensions about some macro event were at a peak. Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist. — Warren Buffett

Fame is but a fruit tree- so very unsound. It can never flourish 'till its stock is in the ground. — Nick Drake

There are very few errors and false doctrines of which the beginning may not be traced up to unsound views about the corruption of human nature. Wrong views of the disease will always bring with them wrong views of the remedy. Wrong views of the corruption of human nature will always carry with them wrong views of the grand antidote and cure of that corruption. — J.C. Ryle

Flesh-eating by humans is unnecessary, irrational, anatomically unsound, unhealthy, unhygienic, uneconomic, unaesthetic, unkind and unethical. May I elaborate? — Helen And Scott Nearing

A life based on [religious] faith is a life based on pure speculation, and speculation is, by its very definition, unsound. — Michael Vito Tosto

Long experience has taught me that people who do not like geraniums have something morally unsound about them. Sooner or later you will find them out; you will discover that they drink, or steal books, or speak sharply to cats. Never trust a man or a woman who is not passionately devoted to geraniums. — Beverley Nichols

My friends all regarded me as a man of unsound mind because I held the view that my wife was with me in spirit always. I have lived with her spirit guiding me every day and she is with me now as I write this letter, and helps me to do as I am now doing. — Alex Campbell

I have characterized Ross as exemplifying an extreme position among theistic scientists. However, he is not so extreme as to promote the scientifically unsound notions of the young-Earth creationists and other anti-evolutionists ... They are so far off the scale that their scientific claims need not be taken seriously. Their distortions and misrepresentations of the scientific facts are not consistent with their self-righteous claims of acting to protect all that is good and moral. — Victor J. Stenger

Logan couldn't remember when a few drinks became a bottle and then two bottles every night. He couldn't point to one single moment or event as the cause. From his first drink at fourteen, alcohol began soaking into his skin, the moisture rotting him on the inside. Every few years he'd use a chisel to hack away all the wet, unsound wood without trying to find the source of the moisture. The rot always came back, stronger than before. — J.D. Ruskin

For, when the credit of a country is in any degree questionable, it never fails to give on extravagant premium, in one shape or another, upon all the loans it has occasion to make. Nor does the evil end here; the same disadvantage must be sustained upon whatever is to be bought on terms of future payment. From this constant necessity of borrowing and buying dear, it is easy to conceive how immensely the expenses of a nation, in a course of time, will be augmented by an unsound state of the public credit. — Alexander Hamilton

Too much work, too much vacation, too much of any one thing is unsound. — Walter Annenberg

Men's souls are crooked and unsound things, not good materials out of which to build friendships, families, households, cities, civilizations. But good or no, these things must be built, and we must craft them with the materials at hand, and make as strong and stubborn redoubt as we can make, lest the horrors of the Night should triumph over us, not in some distant age to come, but now. — John C. Wright

All education must be unsound which does not propose for itself some object; and the highest of all objects must be that of living a life in accordance with God's Will. — Catharine Beecher

Virtue and sense are one; and, trust me, still A faithless heart betrays the head unsound. — John Armstrong

At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way - and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay. — C.A.R. Hoare

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. — Oscar Wilde

Unsound minds like unsound Bodies, if you feed, you poyson.
[Unsound minds, like unsound bodies, if you feed, you poison.] — George Herbert

All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now many are thought not only unexplained but inexplicable; as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It would be unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried. — Francis Bacon

Wright puts this idea can only proceed from the assumption - not entirely unsound - that Americans, who evade, so far as possible, all genuine experience, have therefore no way of assessing the experience of others and no way of establishing themselves in relation to any way of life which is not their own. — James Baldwin

Close the weak banks and impose serious capital requirements on the strong ones ... You see, it may sound hard-hearted, but you cannot keep unsound financial institutions operating simply because they provide jobs. — Paul Krugman

Let us pray for the Catholic Church; for the Churches throughout the whole world; that is, for their truth, unity, and stability; that in all charity may flourish, and truth may live. For our own Church, that what is lacking in it may be supplied; what is unsound, corrected; that all Heresies, Schisms, Scandals, as well public as private, may be removed. Correct the wandering, convert the unbelieving, increase the faith of the Church, destroy Heresies, discover the crafty enemies, crush the violent. — Lancelot Andrewes

You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound. — P.G. Wodehouse

Just as experience dictates to the ballet teacher the length of time necessary to train his students, so the horse, too, needs time to mature into a great four legged dancer. This fact cannot be obliterated by seeming successes that supposedly prove the opposite. For, even if someone should succeed in training a horse to high school level by the age of eight, this individual occurrence cannot shake the foundations of the classical art of riding, if this dressage horse is completely unsound and unusable by the age of ten. — Alois Podhajsky

1. Insects and fungi are not the real cause of plant diseases but only attack unsuitable
varieties or crops imperfectly grown. Their true role is that of censors for pointing
out the crops that are improperly nourished and so keeping our agriculture up to the
mark. In other words, the pests must be looked upon as Nature's professors of
agriculture: as an integral portion of any rational system of farming.
2. The policy of protecting crops from pests by means of sprays, powders, and so
forth is unscientific and unsound as, even when successful, such procedure merely
preserves the unfit and obscures the real problem -- how to grow healthy crops." (An Agricultural Testament) — Albert Howard

A win by an unsound combination, however showy, fills me with artistic horror. — Wilhelm Steinitz

At times like the present, when the evils of unsound finance threaten us, the speculator may anticipate a harvest gathered from the misfortune of others, the capitalist may protect himself by hoarding or may even find profit in the fluctuations of values; but the wage earner - the first to be injured by a depreciated currency and the last to receive the benefit of its correction - is practically defenseless. — Grover Cleveland

An unsound thinker goes where his motives and interests invite him; a sound thinker goes where the argument takes him. — J. Budziszewski

Every new increase in the vast imperial organism seemed to me an unsound growth, like a cancer or dropsical edema which would eventually cause our death. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Helping people doesn't have to be an unsound financial strategy. — Melinda Gates

In finance everything that is agreeable is unsound
and everything that is sound is disagreeable. — Winston Churchill

The main cause of my difficulties stemmed from the tragedy of my daughter's unsound birth and my inability to face my feelings. — Gene Tierney

He who possesses a reasonable, sound theoretical equipment will perceive correctly, however neurotic or wicked he may be personally; he who lacks it or possesses an unsound one, will perceive incorrectly, however pure of neurotic tensions or compulsions he may be. — Ernest Gellner

It is vain to shut our eyes to the fact that there is a vast quantity of so-called Christianity nowadays, which you cannot declare positively unsound - but which, nevertheless, is not full measure, good weight and sixteen ounces to the pound. It is a Christianity in which there is undeniably "something about Christ, and something about grace, and something about faith, and something about repentance, and something about holiness," but it is not the real "thing as it is" in the Bible. Things are out of place and out of proportion. As old Latimer would have said, it is a kind of "mingle-mangle," and does no good. It neither . . . exercises influence on daily conduct, nor comforts in life, nor gives peace in death. And those who hold it often awake too late to find that they have got nothing solid under their feet. — J.C. Ryle

The unsound convert takes Christ by halves. He is all for the salvation of Christ, but is not for sanctification. He is for the privileges, but does not appropriate the person of Christ. — Joseph Alleine

Adding more people causes problems. But people are also the means to solve these problems. The main fuel to speed the world's progress is our stock of knowledge; the brakes are our lack of imagination and unsound social regulations of these activities. The ultimate resource is people - especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty - who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefits, and so inevitably they will benefit the rest of us as well. — Julian Simon

At least with magical portals and mystic byways, you had a reasonably good chance that economics and time constraints confined the journey to just a few minutes of scrambling around through geographically unsound temporal mists. In the small hours of the morning, the air cold and damp, and the sun not yet even a glow on the eastern horizon, it was more of a challenge to get back using nothing more than the urban travel infrastructure. — Kate Griffin

World War II revealed two of the enduring features of the Keynesian Revolution. One was the moral difference between spending for welfare and spending for war. During the Depression very modest outlays for the unemployed seemed socially debilitating, economically unsound. Now expenditures many times greater for weapons and soldiers were perfectly safe. It's a difference that still persists. — John Kenneth Galbraith

It is unsound for an independent editor to be a financial contributor to any cause which would cause any type of special pleading. — Walter Annenberg

She is but a woman and many unsound and dangerous principles are held by her. — John Cotton