Contradictory Quotes - Page 12

• The point is... to live one's life in the full complexity of what one is, which is something much darker, more contradictory, more of a maelstrom of impulses and passions, of cruelty, ecstacy, and madness, than is apparent to the civilized being who glides on the surface and fits smoothly into the world.

  Thomas Nagel

  Passion, World, Maelstrom

  Thomas Nagel (2010). “Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002-2008”, p.34, Oxford University Press

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• They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.

  William Faulkner

  Voice, People, Desire

  William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.117, Modern Library

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• Every second that passes is like a door that opens to allow in what has not yet happened, what we call the future, but, to challenge the contradictory nature of what we have just said, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the future is just an immense void, that the future is just the time on which the eternal present feeds.

  Jose Saramago

  Doors, Challenges, Void

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• So you're trying to make her happy despite the fact that the reason she's unhappy in the first place is you," said Simon, not very kindly. "That seems contradictory, doesn't it?" "Love is a contradiction," said Jace.

  Cassandra Clare

  Love Is, Unhappy, Trying

  Cassandra Clare (2012). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (5 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls”, p.1535, Simon and Schuster

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• Yet, isn't it strange, isn't it weird, how we can KNOW that someone is not behaving in the way we imagine, and at the same time we can be totally convinced that he is! How clever the human mind is, that it can accept two contradictory things as 'facts.' Yes, I know that in this case one 'fact' was untrue. But the human mind can KNOW something is untrue and still accept it as a 'fact,' and act on it as if it were true.

  Aidan Chambers

  Clever, Two, Mind

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• Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Inspirational, Motivational, History

  Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, James A. Grimshaw (1998). “Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren: A Literary Correspondence”, p.15, University of Missouri Press

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  You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life

  Salvador Dali

  Art, Creativity, Confusion

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• In art, and maybe just in general, the idea is to be able to be really comfortable with contradictory ideas. In other words, wisdom might be, seem to be, two contradictory ideas both expressed at their highest level and just let to sit in the same cage sort of, vibrating. So, I think as a writer, I'm really never sure of what I really believe.

  George Saunders

  Art, Believe, Thinking

  "Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing". Book by Jamie Holmes, 2015.

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• This wasn't the person he'd thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he'd been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual definite someone, rather than a collection of contradictory potential someones.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Comforting, Chosen, Collections

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.432, Macmillan

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• To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.

  John Fowles

  Suicide, Writing, Commit

  John Fowles (1965). “The Magus”

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• Life's very difficult and full of surprises. At all events, I've got as far as that. To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged - well, one can't do all these things at once, worse luck, because they're so contradictory. It's then that proportion comes in - to live by proportion. Don't begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.

  E. M. Forster

  Humble, People, Luck

  E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.580, Delphi Classics

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• No school can supply an anti-liberal education, or a fascist education, as these terms are contradictory. Liberalism and education are one.

  George Seldes

  School, Anti Liberal, Fascists

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• A name can't begin to encompass the sum of all her parts. But that's the magic of names, isn't it? That the complex, contradictory individuals we are can be called up complete and whole in another mind through the simple sorcery of a name.

  Charles de Lint

  Simple, Names, Magic

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• In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Self Esteem, Humility

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.76, Penguin

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• Art has a way of confronting us, of reminding us, of engaging us, in what it means to be human, and what it means to be human is to be flawed, is to be contradictory, is to be often weak, and yet despite all of these what we would consider drawbacks, that we're also quite beautiful. Spin is the opposite.

  Junot Diaz

  Beautiful, Art, Mean

  "Author Explains Tales Of New Vision, New Life". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. June 10, 2009.

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  A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Art, Essentials, Doe

  Leonard Bernstein (2007). “The Infinite Variety of Music”, p.141, Amadeus Press

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• People are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.

  Alan Lightman

  Long, People, World

  Alan Lightman (2011). “Einstein's Dreams”, p.18, Vintage

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• When you talk about what you want and why you want it, there's usually less resistance within you than when you talk about what you want and how you're going to get it. When you pose questions you don't have answers for, like how, where, when, who, it sets up a contradictory vibration that slows everything down.

  Esther Hicks

  Law Of Attraction, Unanswered Questions, Answers

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• One could think of a person who seems to have two opposing and contradictory sides to his personality; but it turns out that in the end the two sides are complementary. The same happens with an artist's work: deep down, what appear as contradictory sides are merely different registers, different aspects of the reality that the artist inhabits

  Manuel Alvarez Bravo

  Artist, Reality, Thinking

  Susan Kismaric, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1997). “Manuel Alvarez Bravo”

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• Illnesses which occur because of physical causes should be treated by doctors with medical remedies; those which are due to spiritual causes disappear through spiritual means. Thus an illness caused by affliction, fear, nervous impressions, will be healed more effectively by spiritual rather than physical treatment. Hence, both kinds of treatment should be followed; they are not contradictory.

  Abdu'l-Bahá

  Spiritual, Mean, Doctors

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• Life is so urgent and necessitates living slow. It's only the amateurs-and that I've been, and it's been ugly-who thinks slow and urgent are contradictory.

  Ann Voskamp

  Thinking, Ugly, Life Is

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• Power is not a matter of one dominant individual or institutions, but instead manifests in interconnected, contradictory sites where regimes of knowledge and practice circulate and take hold. This way of understanding the dispersion of power helps us realize that power is not simply about certain individuals being targeted for death or exclusion by a ruler, but instead about the creation of norms that distribute vulnerability and security.

  Dean Spade

  Practice, Understanding, Matter

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• You've got to be able to hold a lot of contradictory ideas in your mind without going nuts. I feel like to do my job right, when I walk out on stage I've got to feel like it's the most important thing in the world. Also I've got to feel like, well, it's only rock and roll. Somehow you've got to believe both of those things.

  Bruce Springsteen

  Wisdom, Jobs, Believe

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• I see the world in very fluid, contradictory, emerging, interconnected terms, and with that kind of circuitry I just don't feel the need to say what is going to happen or will not happen.

  Jerry Brown

  Justice, Needs, World

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• In this world we find that all happiness is followed by misery as its shadow. Life has its shadow, death. They must go together, because they are not contradictory, not two separate existences, but different manifestations of the same unit, life and death, sorrow and happiness, good and evil.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Two, Life And Death, Evil

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Jnana Yoga: The Yoga of Knowledge”, p.104, Advaita Ashrama

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