“In the past decade or so, the women's magazines have taken to running home-handyperson articles suggesting that women can learn to fix things just as well as men. These articles are apparently based on the ludicrous assumption that _men_ know how to fix things, when in fact all they know how to do is _look_ at things in a certain squinty-eyed manner, which they learned in Wood Shop; eventually, when enough things in the home are broken, they take a job requiring them to transfer to another home.” KnowsMenWellsEnoughFactsHomeRunningJobsPastCertainKnow HowTakenBrokenMen And WomenWoodsDecadesMagazinesAssumptionShopsArticlesTransfersSuggesting Author:Robert Briffault
“As I looked more carefully at the listening matrix I saw that during the past twenty years we had taken a magnifying glass to the first of these four quadrants, the female experience of powerlessness. I saw I was subconsciously making a false assumption: The more deeply I understood women's experience of powerlessness, the more I assumed men had the power women did not have. In fact, what I was understanding was the female experience of male power.” MenYearsFirstsFactsPastUnderstandingTakenSawsFourListeningUnderstoodFemaleTwentiesMalesGlassesAssumptionPowerlessnessMagnifyingMagnifying GlassFalse Assumptions Author:Warren Farrell
“we are far too used to the assumption that poetry and poets will be there when we want them, no matter how long they have been ignored, taken for granted, misused. After all, isn't poetry a form of prophecy, and aren't prophets known for their talent for flourishing in inhospitable deserts and other bleak surroundings? Maybe. But maybe not indefinitely.” WantLongHas BeensMatterFormUsedPoetryKnownTakenTalentPoetGrantedDesertProphetAssumptionProphecyIgnoredSurroundingsBleakFlourishingTaken For GrantedMisused Book:A movement of poets: thoughts on poetry and feminism Source: A movement of poets: thoughts on poetry and feminism
“What has not been clear is that the potential of this emergency-born technology has always accrued to human's prewar individual initiatives taken in a humble but irrepressible progression of assumptions, measurements, deductions, and codifications of pure science.” HumansIndividualBornTechnologyTakenClearPureHumbleAssumptionInitiativeEmergenciesMeasurementProgressionDeductionsIrrepressible Book:Earth, Inc. Source: Earth, Inc.
“Therefore, a grotesque account of a period some thousands of years ago is taken seriously though it be built by piling special assumptions on special assumptions, ad hoc hypothesis [invented for a purpose] on ad hoc hypothesis, and tearing apart the fabric of science whenever it appears convenient. The result is a fantasia which is neither history nor science.” YearsPurposeResultsTakenSpecialEvolutionPeriodsBuiltYears AgoAccountsAssumptionAdsFabricHypothesisConvenientGrotesqueFantasiaTearing Apart Author:James Bryant Conant