Quotes and Sayings about Contradiction
"That man is a creature who needs order yet yearns for change is the creative contradiction at the heart of the laws which structure his conformity and define his deviancy."
- Freda Adler
(Related: Change, Heart, Conformity, Contradiction, Laws, Man, Needs, Order)
"Men who hold a theory of the Church which excludes from communion those whom they admit to have the Spirit of Christ simply proclaim that their theory is in flat contradiction to the spiritual fact."
- Roland Allen
(Related: Men, Church, Christ, Contradiction, Fact, Spirit, Spiritual, Theory)
"There are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely."
- J. L. Austin
(Related: Contradiction, Speech)
"There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits."
- Thomas Babington
(Related: Community, Contradiction, Habits, May, Opinions, Property, Rest, Saying)
"This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other."
- Mikhail Bakunin
(Related: God, Contradiction, Humanity, Lies)
"I regard the principle of conscription of life as a flat contradiction of all our cherished ideals of individual freedom, democratic liberty and Christian teaching."
- Roger Nash Baldwin
(Related: Life, Christian, Contradiction, Freedom, Ideals, Liberty, Teaching)
"What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth."
- Roland Barthes
(Related: Time, Truth, Contradiction, May, Sarcasm)
"I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction."
- Georges Bataille
(Related: Truth, Contradiction)
"The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles."
- Harrison Birtwistle
(Related: Opera)
"Do what you will, this world's a fiction and is made up of contradiction."
- William Blake
(Related: Contradiction, Fiction, Will, World)
"Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life."
- Fernand Braudel
(Related: History, Life, Difficulties, May, Paradoxes, Respect, Unity)
"An unconscious consciousness is no more a contradiction in terms than an unseen case of seeing."
- Franz Clemens Brentano
(Related: Consciousness, Contradiction, Unconscious)
"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions."
- Andre Breton
(Related: Life, Death, Future, Mind, Past)
"In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies."
- L. Sprague de Camp
(Related: Detail, Writing)
"I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ."
- Fidel Castro
(Related: Ideas, Christ, Contradiction, Symbol)
"I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large."
- Charlie Chaplin
(Related: Thought, Dress)
"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
(Related: Courage, Contradiction, Desire)
"Experience alone can give a final answer. The knowledge gained in a few years by a commission of the kind suggested would be worth more than volumes of mere assertions and contradictions."
- John Bates Clark
(Related: Experience, Knowledge, Worth, Years)
"Chicago is a city of contradictions, of private visions haphazardly overlaid and linked together."
- Pat Colander
(Related: Chicago, Visions)
"Good morning is a contradiction of terms."
- Jim Davis
(Related: Contradiction)
"I am the epitome of a walking contradiction for various reasons, only one of which being that I feel my existence is of heaven and hell."
- Kim Elizabeth
(Related: Being, Contradiction, Existence, Heaven, Hell, Walking)
"Biography - a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified."
- Jose Ortega Y Gasset
(Related: Life, Biography)
"The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism."
- Mikhail Gorbachev
(Related: People, Civilization, Capitalism, Contradiction, Dawn, Invention, Socialism)
"Say to all small and great, and that often, that fully, quickly and willingly, without grumbling and contradiction, they do all your commands that are not against God."
- Robert Grosseteste
(Related: God, Contradiction)
"Hybridity keeps me from being rigid about most things. It has taught me to appreciate the contradictions in the world and in my life. I scavenge from the best."
- Jessica Hagedorn
(Related: Life, Being, World)
"But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere."
- Garrett Hardin
(Related: Lie, Contradiction, Fire, Reason)
"I'm full of contradictions."
- Juliana Hatfield
"There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights. Dr. King did not stir us to move for our civil rights to have them taken away in these kinds of fashions."
- Dorothy Height
(Related: Civil rights, Contradiction, Human rights, Law, Respect)
"Ladies and gentlemen, I take office at a time in which the world is living in extreme contradictions."
- Gustav Heinemann
(Related: Time, Extreme, Ladies, Gentlemen, Living, Office, World)
"Big cities are chaotic. And chaos for humans - who have experience from their ancestors - is the last step before conflict. So, in the park, every kind of visual contradiction has been eliminated."
- John Hench
(Related: Experience, Chaos, Cities, Conflict, Contradiction)
"Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it."
- Eric Hobsbawm
(Related: People, Historians, Nation, Nations, Past)
"Many of the contradictions in Postmodern art come from the fact that we're trying to be artists in a democratic society. This is because in a democracy, the ideal is compromise. In art, it isn't."
- Brad Holland
(Related: Art, Society, Artists, Compromise, Democracy, Fact, Trying)
"That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise."
- David Hume
(Related: Affirmation, Contradiction, Sun, Tomorrow, Will)
"Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy."
- Jim Jarmusch
(Related: Contradiction, Philosophy)
"I spoke without fear of contradiction. I simply did not suffer self-doubt."
- Elia Kazan
(Related: Fear, Contradiction, Self)
"There stands no contradiction between giving voice to legitimate anxiety and at the same time, as and when exchange of fire commences, looking to the rest of the country, as well as all of us in the House, to give full moral support to our forces."
- Charles Kennedy
(Related: Time, Anxiety, Contradiction, Country, Fire, Giving, Rest, Support, Voice)
"Do you think when two representatives holding diametrically opposing views get together and shake hands, the contradictions between our systems will simply melt away? What kind of a daydream is that?"
- Nikita Khrushchev
(Related: Will)
"I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for contradictions."
- Maxine Hong Kingston
(Related: Mind, Universe)
"We don't perceive a contradiction between writing books, making films or producing a television program. These days you can't choose how you want to express yourself anymore."
- Alexander Kluge
(Related: Books, Contradiction, Television, Want, Writing)
"When I write down my thoughts, they do not escape me. This action makes me remember my strength which I forget at all times. I educate myself proportionately to my captured thought. I aim only to distinguish the contradiction between my mind and nothingness."
- Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont
(Related: Thought, Action, Strength, Thoughts, Contradiction, Forget, Mind, Nothingness)
"Christians who have influence in political life must feel as individuals responsibility in front of their own faith. And the duty of encouraging laws that are not in contradiction with the Commandments comes within the mission of the Church."
- Karl Lehmann
(Related: Life, Faith, Encouraging, Church, Contradiction, Duty, Influence, Laws, Mission, Responsibility)
"Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat."
- Audre Lorde
(Related: Harmony, Learning)
"Darwinism as presented by Darwin contradicted idealistic philosophy, and this contradiction grew deeper with the development of its materialist teaching."
- Trofim Lysenko
(Related: Development, Contradiction, Philosophy, Teaching)
"Furthermore, there is absolutely no contradiction between the separate organizations of revolutionary vanguard militants and their participation in the mass organizations of the working class."
- Ernest Mandel
(Related: Class, Contradiction, Participation)
"Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms."
- Groucho Marx
(Related: Intelligence, Contradiction, Military)
"I now add, farther, that the apostle's argument is so far from proving it to be the duty of people to obey, and submit to, such rulers as act in contradiction to the public good, and so to the design of their office, that it proves the direct contrary."
- Jonathan Mayhew
(Related: Design, People, Act, Argument, Contradiction, Duty, Now, Office, Public)
"You may find many contradictory statements and philosophies within my writings. However, to this I will say such is life, for life is full of contradictions."
- Bryant H. McGill
(Related: Life, May, Will)
"The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me."
- Thomas Merton
(Related: Life, God, Mercy)
"I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself."
- Michel de Montaigne
(Related: Work, Mankind)
"Good taste and humor are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore."
- Malcolm Muggeridge
(Related: Humor, Contradiction, Taste)
"We have to acknowledge peace is in danger and mankind still has not realised the priority to be given to world dialogue versus armed contradiction and bloodshed."
- Nursultan Nazarbayev
(Related: Peace, Contradiction, Danger, Mankind, World)
"Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities."
- Thomas Paine
(Related: Religion, New testament)
"There are many of these apparent philosophical paradoxes or contradictions which don't concern me anymore."
- Evan Parker
(Related: Concern, Paradoxes)
"We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves."
- Blaise Pascal
(Related: Contradiction, Disguise, Falsehood)
"Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth."
- Blaise Pascal
(Related: Truth, Contradiction)
"I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don't need a national ID card."
- Ron Paul
(Related: Government, Society, Purpose, Contradiction, Privacy, Secrecy)
"That was my first lesson from Ben-Gurion. Then I saw him making peace, and I saw him making war. He mobilized me before the war. The man was a very rare combination between a real intellectual and a born leader. There is a contradiction between the two."
- Shimon Peres
(Related: Peace, War, Leader, Contradiction, First, Man)
"Woman's at best a contradiction still."
- Alexander Pope
(Related: Contradiction, Woman)
"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."
- Ayn Rand
(Related: Contradiction, Will, Wrong)
"It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Art, Society, Contradiction)
"The language of the moment or, as it were, the language of the order in which we live, is the image. I felt that if I wanted to commune with the public, I should best do so through the language of image. It's a conscious embrace of a contradiction."
- Godfrey Reggio
(Related: Contradiction, Language, Order, Public)
"Hope, insofar as it is hope of resurrection, is the living contradiction of what it proceeds from and what is placed under the sign of the Cross and death."
- Paul Ricoeur
(Related: Death, Hope, Contradiction, Living)
"The city's contradictions and frailties drive me to the church. The church, in turn, binds my wounds and soothes my troubled heart, and sends me right back out into the city again."
- Steve Ross
(Related: Heart, Church, Right, Wounds)
"When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time."
- Saint Francis de Sales
(Related: Time, Difficulties)
"The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be."
- George Santayana
(Related: Contradiction, World)
"Such, Polly, are your sex - part truth, part fiction; - Some thought, much whim and all a contradiction."
- Richard Savage
(Related: Sex, Truth, Thought, Contradiction, Fiction, Whim)
"To write a book about improvisation is partly a contradiction in terms. Improvisation is spontaneous. It's in the moment."
- Sally Schneider
(Related: Contradiction)
"I think people have to choose between living with contradictions or painting themselves into a corner. I have a lot of contradictions."
- Michelle Shocked
(Related: People, Living, Painting)
"Life is never free of contradictions."
- Manmohan Singh
(Related: Life)
"What the nation's built on is discussion, contradiction and growth, and at the moment you can't discuss anything. If you do start to discuss it, you get criticized. If people hate us, you have to find out why and try to solve that problem."
- Donald Sutherland
(Related: People, Growth, Contradiction, Hate, Nation)
"I've always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions."
- Antonio Tabucchi
(Related: People)
"I try to take people one at a time, with all the contradictions and compromises that most of us live with."
- Garry Trudeau
(Related: Time, People)
"The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction."
- Benjamin Tucker
(Related: Authority, Contradiction, Exercise, states)
"The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it."
- Mao Tse Tung
(Related: Leadership, Work, Contradiction, Responsibility)
"The contradictions are what make human behavior so maddening and yet so fascinating, all at the same time."
- Joan D. Vinge
(Related: Time, Behavior)
"There is, I conceive, no contradiction in believing that mind is at once the cause of matter and of the development of individualised human minds through the agency of matter."
- Alfred Russel Wallace
(Related: Development, Cause, Contradiction, Mind)
"As the new spirituality begins to become the pervasive spirituality of the planet, we'll find that we have abandoned our philosophy of contradictions in which we say we're all one but continue to try to win."
- Neale Donald Walsch
(Related: Philosophy, Spirituality)
"When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door."
- Simone Weil
(Related: Lie, Contradiction)
"In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory."
- Alfred North Whitehead
(Related: Knowledge, Progress, Victory, Contradiction, Defeat, Evolution, First, Logic)
"The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?"
- E. O. Wilson
(Related: Truth, Humanity, Spiritual, World)
"Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
(Related: Nothing)
"It was not simply out of a spirit of contradiction that I exposed a light source to magnetic forces. The idea came to me during an investigation of the effect discovered by Kerr on light reflected by magnetic mirrors."
- Pieter Zeeman
(Related: Idea, Contradiction, Effect, Investigation, Light, Spirit)