- Beginning
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- Nov 07, 2020
Assumes Quotes
On the quiet assumptions behind ambition, risk, and order.
This collection looks at what people and systems assume without saying so, from entrepreneurs accepting risk to entire economic theories built on hidden premises. One even ties creative drama to the order it later disrupts. Related reflections continue in our Character collection.
- Last Updated on May 30, 2021
- Love
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- Nov 07, 2020
Clowning is a trick to get love close. I can hug 99 percent of people in the first second of contact if I'm in my clown character. The clown assumes your humanity. It assumes that, whatever trauma you've had, you can still love yourself.
- Game
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- Nov 07, 2020
The popular dystopian vision of AI is wrong for one simple reason: it equates intelligence with autonomy. That is, it assumes a smart computer will create its own goals and have its own will and will use its faster processing abilities and deep databases to beat humans at their own game.
- Everyone
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- Nov 07, 2020
I was not necessarily the best student. I was not necessarily the favourite kid. I wasn't necessarily the most responsible or the most ambitious, and suddenly, when you get given celebrity, you get anointed with all these lovely qualities that you don't have, necessarily, but everyone assumes you must because you're successful.
- Person
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- Nov 07, 2020
I think your average fan probably just assumes that the same person directs every episode of their favorite series, week in and week out.
- Change
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- Nov 07, 2020
Nowadays, if a studio assumes that his film is bad, there is always an executive that gets more nervous than usual and thinks that if they change the music, the film will become a masterpiece.
- Law
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- Nov 07, 2020
If a company is not a monopoly, then the law assumes market competition can restrain the company's actions. No problem. If a monopoly exists, but the monopoly does not engage in acts designed to destroy competition, then we can assume that it earned and is keeping its monopoly the pro-consumer way: by out-innovating its competitors.
- City
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- Nov 07, 2020
The form a city assumes as it evolves over time owes more to large-scale works of civil engineering - what we now call infrastructure - than almost any other factor save topography.
- Life
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- Nov 07, 2020
Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.
- Imperfection
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- Nov 07, 2020
A conservative vision to tech issues assumes the imperfection of mankind and a preference for markets - not politics - to drive outcomes.
- Man
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- Nov 07, 2020
The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.
- Food
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- Nov 07, 2020
Everything one reads is nourishment of some sort - good food or junk food - and one assumes it all goes in and has its way with your brain cells.
- More
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- Nov 07, 2020
Everyone assumes that novelists are smarter and more interesting. They're generally smarter and more interesting, but they're often very short. So it kind of cancels all the smart and interesting stuff out.
- Demanded
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- Nov 07, 2020
This assumes an upward revision of the European Budget, which is precisely what Jacques Chirac refuses to do. On the contrary, he has demanded a reduction.
- Better
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- Nov 07, 2020
Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something.
- Cynically
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- Nov 07, 2020
While President Obama assumes that at their core the Republican leadership team is just trying to do what's best for America, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner assume that the president is cynically trying to secure his own reelection, power, and legacy.
- Evil
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- Nov 07, 2020