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Definition
something assumed to be self-evident- We prove with axioms. We do not prove axioms, so we have to agree on a place to start.
- It is an axiom of governance that power, once acquired, is seldom freely relinquished.
- In chemistry also the axiom fails.Edgar Allan Poe -- The Purloined Letter
- The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom.F. Scott Fitzgerald -- This Side of Paradise
- You know, Scarlett, money ill come by never comes to good and this house is proof of the axiom.Margaret Mitchell -- Gone with the Wind
- Lord Warburton seemed scarcely in the mood for doing justice to general axioms—he was thinking of a special case.Henry James -- The Portrait of a Lady - Volumes 1 & 2
- The axioms of the few are shared by the many; the latter believe superstitiously what the former believe soberly.Clement Greenberg -- Avant-garde and Kitsch
- But my mother-in-law taught me another axiom one day, when she was aggravated with her husband: "Obey, obey, obey, then do what you want."Lisa See -- Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
- I consider that an axiom.Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- The Idiot
- It became an axiom for me.Robert Ludlum -- The Bourne Supremacy
- This was his axiom: "There is but one certainty, my full glass."Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables
- It was a Bene Gesserit axiom.Frank Herbert -- Dune
- This was not the axiom he wanted.Ernest Hemingway -- For Whom the Bell Tolls
- He would have answered by some axiom from Plato.Jules Verne -- A Journey to the Center of the Earth
- Lord Warburton seemed scarcely in the mood for doing justice to general axioms—he was thinking of a special case.Henry James -- The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2
- Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort.Ayn Rand -- Atlas Shrugged
- Lateral truths point to the falseness of axioms and postulates underlying one's existing system of getting at truth.Robert M. Pirsig -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- "Oh, I don't know; it's definitions, and axioms, and triangles, and things.George Eliot -- The Mill on the Floss
- The axiom that a man is innocent until proved guilty by a court of law has been flagrantly ignored once again in the State of Mississippi.John Howard Griffin -- Black Like Me
- "All roads lead to Amber," he said, as though it were an axiom.Roger Zelazny -- Nine Princes in Amber
axiom = something assumed to be self-evident