Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom.

Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people to discourage them from ambitious attempts and generally console them in their mediocrity.

The U.S. army confirmed that it gave a lucrative fire fighting contract in Iraq to the firm once run by the Vice President Dick Cheney without any competitive bidding. When asked if this could be conceived as Cheney's friends profiting from the war the spokesman said 'Yes.'

So far as hypotheses are concerned let no one expect anything certain from astronomy which cannot furnish it lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it.

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers but by preconceived opinion by prejudice.

We should conceive of ourselves not as rulers of Earth but as highly powerful conscious stewards: The Earth is given to us in trust and we can screw it up or make it work well and sustainably.

Liberty as it is conceived by current opinion has nothing inherent about it it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

It's too bad that one has to conceive of sports as being the only arena where risks are for all of life is risk exercise. That's the only way to live more freely and more interestingly.

The weapons were conceived and created by a small band of physicists and chemists they remain a cataclysmic threat to the whole of human society and the natural environment.

I call religion a natural authority but it has usually been conceived as a supernatural authority.

The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.

Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself.

Sit down before fact as a little child be prepared to give up every conceived notion follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads or you will learn nothing.

A lot of times we're just sold these movies that are really cynically conceived and marketed and they just want you there opening weekend before everybody finds out it's not so good.

We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.

I think mistakes are the essence of science and law. It's impossible to conceive of either scientific progress or legal progress without understanding the important role of being wrong and of mistakes.

Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived. It is a pity that this is still the only knowledge of their wives at which some men seem to arrive.

Here again as I conceive gentlemen forget that this government is a republican one resting exclusively in the intelligence and virtue of the People.

His imagination conceived and bore - worlds but nothing in these worlds became alive until he discovered its true and living name. The name was the breath of life and sooner or later he invariably found it.

The human imagination has already come to conceive the possibility of recreating human society.

There must be room for the imagination to exercise its powers we must conceive and apprehend a thousand things which we do not actually witness.

My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.

All I try to do is as earnestly and as acutely as I can conceive a character and try to portray this character just honestly. If the humor is within the absurdity and the awfulness of situations then let it be seen that way.

This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.