Asking who won a given war, someone has said, is like asking who won the San Francisco earthquake. That in war there is no victory but only varying degrees of defeat is a proposition that has gained increasing acceptance in the twentieth century.
Most people fear pain. I've learned that not feeling pain is a much more frightening proposition than feeling it. In fact, there are times when I'm playing when I actually enjoy it.
It means nothing to be open to a proposition we don't understand.
If the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted.
The above proposition is occasionally useful.
There is a plain distinction to be made betwixt pleasure and happiness. For tho' there can be no happiness without pleasure--yet the converse of the proposition will not hold true. --We are so made, that from the common gratifications of our appetites, and the impressions of a thousand objects, we snatch the one, like a transient gleam, without being suffered to taste the other.
Truth is a risky proposition. It's the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies.
I was not an atheist. Few people really are, for that means blind faith in the strange proposition that this universe originated in a cipher and aimlessly rushes nowhere.
The so-called law of induction cannot possibly be a law of logic, since it is obviously a proposition with a sense. --Nor, therefore, can it be an a priori law.
The heterosexuality or homosexuality of many individuals is not an all-or-none proposition.
It is the direct man who strikes sledgehammer blows, who penetrates the very marrow of a subject at every stroke and gets the meat out of a proposition, who does things.
Christian faith, as I understand it, is not primarily a matter of signing on for the proposition that there exists a Supreme Being, but the kind of commitment made manifest by a human being at the end of his tether, foundering in darkness, pain, and bewilderment, who nevertheless remains faithful to the promise of a transformative love.
Well, because I have twin seven-year-old boys, I enjoy the gift giving stuff a great deal. We do both Hanukkah and Christmas, so it is a costly, though extremely pleasing proposition.
Now that I know how supermarket meat is made, I regard eating it as a somewhat risky proposition. I know how those animals live and what's on their hides when they go to slaughter, so I don't buy industrial meat.
Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgements;. . . But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.
The proposition that humans have mental characteristics wholly absent in non-humans is inconsistent with the theory of evolution.
We criticize a thinker more acutely when he advances a proposition that is disagreeable to us; and yet it would be more reasonableto do so when his proposition is agreeable to us.
I will be glad to discuss this proposition with my attorney, and that after I talk with one, we could either discuss it with him or discuss it with my attorney, if the attorney thinks it is a wise thing to do, but at the present time I have nothing more to say to you.
Faith is the assent to any proposition not made out by the deduction of reason but upon the credit of the proposer.
Marriage isn't a 50-50 proposition very often. It's more like 100-0 one moment and 0-100 the next.
