Contradiction Quotes - Page 15

• Sameness leaves us in peace but it is contradiction that makes us productive.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Sameness, Productivity, Productive

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• America, as everybody knows, is a country of many contradictions, and a big contradiction for a long time has been between a very aggressive form of capitalism and consumerism against what might be called a kind of moral or civic impulse.

  David Foster Wallace

  Country, America, Long

  Source: www.nybooks.com

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• To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species. The essence of man is imperfection. Imperfection and blazing contradictions-between mixed good and evil, altruism and selfishness, cooperativeness and combativeness, optimism and fatalism, affirmation and negation.

  Norman Cousins

  Men, Essence, Optimism

  Norman Cousins (1953). “Who Speaks for Man?”, New York : Macmillan

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• I used to wonder why people should be so fond of the company of their physician, till I recollected that he is the only person with whom one dares to talk continually of oneself, without interruption, contradiction or censure; I suppose that delightful immunity doubles their fees.

  Hannah More

  People, Physicians, Wonder

  William Roberts, Hannah More (1835). “Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More”, p.317

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• There are evidently limits to the achievements of science; and there are irresolvable contradictions both between prosperity and virtue, and between happiness and ``the good life,'' which had not been anticipated in our philosophy.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Good Life, Philosophy, Achievement

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2010). “The Irony of American History”, p.45, University of Chicago Press

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• Can it then be doubted, but that God, who is infinitely fine Spirit, and withal intelligent, can make and change all species and kind of body as he pleaseth? But I dare not say, that this is the way by which God Almighty worketh, because it is past my apprehension: yet it serves very well to demonstrate, that the omnipotence of God implieth no contradiction.

  Thomas Hobbes

  God, Intelligent, Past

  Thomas Hobbes (2010). “Leviathan, Parts I and II - Revised Edition”, p.392, Broadview Press

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• Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary implies a contradiction. Nothing, that is distinctly conceivable, implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is no being, whose existence is demonstrable.

  David Hume

  Death, Afterlife, Being There

  David Hume (2005). “Dialogues sur la religion naturelle”, p.244, Vrin

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• What a weak, credulous, incredulous, unbelieving, superstitious, bold, frightened, what a ridiculous world ours is, as far as concerns the mind of man. How full of inconsistencies, contradictions and absurdities it is. I declare that taking the average of many minds that have recently come before me ... I should prefer the obedience, affections and instinct of a dog before it.

  Michael Faraday

  Dog, Men, Average

  Michael Faraday, F. James (1999). “The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, Volume 4: 1849-1855”, p.542, IET

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• You are not supposed to get it. It's a paradox. All of mathematics is built on paradoxes. That's the biggest paradox of all-all this orderliness, and at the heart, impossibility. Contradiction. Heaven built on the foundations of hell.

  David Leavitt

  Heart, Science, Heaven

  David Leavitt (2009). “The Indian Clerk”, p.225, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Contradiction is the salt which keeps truth from corruption

  John Lancaster Spalding

  Salt, Corruption

  John Lancaster Spalding (1895). “Means and Ends of Education”

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• A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.

  William Golding

  Animal, Men, Fire

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• A tree there is that from its topmost bough
  Is half all glittering flame and half all green
  Abounding foliage moistened with the dew;
  And half is half and yet is all the scene;
  And half and half consume what they renew.

  William Butler Yeats

  Flames, Tree, Dew

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.141, Simon and Schuster

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• Everything Brecht wrote—plays, dialogues, and poetry—was his attempt to clarify the inner contradictions not only of the capitalism and fascism of his times, but also of the communism that was always disappointing his deepest hopes. In a book that makes Brecht’s struggle to reveal these hidden contradictions its central theme, Glahn issues, by implication, a call to arms to today’s artists—who are faced with a world that seems to defy attempts to treat the global crisis with an art that is rarely more than notes on ‘local’ angst.

  Richard Foreman

  Art, Struggle, Book

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• It’s important not to be embarrassed by your past. The contradictions are part of what we are.

  Richey Edwards

  Past, Important, Embarrassed

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• Individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Character, Self, Individual

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• Take the road to contradiction, it'll lead you, I promise, to the palace of wisdom.

  Frank Lentricchia

  Promise, Palaces, I Promise

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• For me, the intent in a song is to sing it. I compose songs, meaning I'm writing words to be set to music; I'm intending it to not be recited. I'm a singer-songwriter, and I'm a poet, and there really isn't a contradiction, at least for me.

  Cornelius Eady

  Song, Writing, Singers

  "Breaking into Song: An Interview with Cornelius Eady". Interview with Alexis Orgera, www.anmly.org.

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• The equivocations, the confusions, the contradictions. There's no way we can live through or comprehend something so big that happened so long ago. We've lost true history. But if we are willing to tolerate the contradictions, and if we suffer through events rather than ticking them off, we may at least get closer to understanding what happened than if we grip the handrail of a carefully polished and reassuringly heroic narrative.

  Nicholson Baker

  Long Ago, Confusion, Understanding

  "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke" by James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.

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• You see, among men who are honored with the common appellation ogentleman, many contradictions to that character.

  Richard Steele

  Character, Men, Common

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• A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

  Daniel Webster

  Military, War, Men

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• I try to write about complex issues--young people in an adult world-- full of irony and contradiction in a narrative style that relies heavily on suspense with a texture rich in emotion and imagery. I take a great deal of satisfaction in using popular forms-- the adventure, the mystery, the thriller-- so as to hold my reader with the sheer pleasure of a good story. At the same time I try to resolve my books with an ambiguity that compels engagement. In short, I want my readers to feel, to think, sometimes to laugh. But most of all I want them to enjoy a good read.

  Avi

  Book, Writing, Adventure

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• Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life, itself, whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it? ... A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

  Daniel Webster

  Military, Men, America

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• There is scarcely a page of the Bible on which an open mind does not perceive a contradiction, an unlikely story, an obvious error, an historical impossibility of one sort or another.

  Steve Allen

  Bible, Religious, Errors

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• You're always fighting the contradiction between the supposed intimacy of a two-person conversation and the blunt reality that you're trying to sell the play to people who are sitting maybe too far away from you.

  Wallace Shawn

  Fighting, Reality, Play

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. April 1, 2009.

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• I think it's better to have limits. My limits are different from other people's limits. I'm all for freedom, I'm all for people doing what they want. I'm also all for people shouldering the consequences of their behaviors, and not being assholes, and not lying unless they need to, and being honest except when you shouldn't, and being faithful except when it's okay to cheat. I guess I'm just a mass of contradictions.

  Dan Savage

  Lying, Thinking, People

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 8, 2006.

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