"In the old days, you assumed things were going to go wrong," he said, but today "there's this blithe assumption that things are going to go right."

The city administration's blithe assumption that such intangibles are for sale, and its refusal to think of itself as their custodian, are what is really being challenged.

Her blithe assumption that an Ethsharitic street gambler would know how to ride seemed to call for a cutting remark, but Sterren could not rise to the occasion.

Rather, the blithe assumption that "The X-Files" needed to turn itself into a high-action film reveals the rigidity and wrongheadedness of so much Hollywood movie making.

Pressing ahead on the blithe assumption it was all ankle deep he crashed through the brittle surface and sank in over his knees.

The librarian seemed a bit testy-at Motiak's blithe assumption that he could read the old angel's mind?

In the meantime, politicians and journalists rattle on about the Cooper plan or employer mandates in the blithe assumption that the public knows what they are talking about.

I grew up on Long Island, in the blithe assumption that everybody hated it.

Still, Rumsfeld's blithe assumptions, coupled with misleading C.I.A. intelligence about weapons of mass destruction and the prospects for an insurgency, were fateful.

He says that his age group is reeling, their blithe assumptions buried in the World Trade Center rubble.