Contradiction Quotes - Page 28

• Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Science, Two, Judging

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• This (functional - E.W.) language controls by reducing the linguistic forms and symbols of reflection, abstraction, development, contradiction; by substituting images for concepts. It denies or absorbs the transcendent vocabulary; it does not search for but establishes and imposes truth and falsehood.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Reflection, Vocabulary, Doe

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.106, Routledge

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• We live fragmented, compartmentalized lives in which contradictions are carefully sealed off from each other. We have been taught to think linearly rather than comprehensively, and we do this not through conscious design or because we are not intelligent or capable, but because of the way in which deep cultural undercurrents structure life in subtle but highly consistent ways that are not consciously formulated.

  Edward T. Hall

  Life, Thinking, Intelligent

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• I always look for contradiction in a character.

  Rebecca Hall

  Character, Looks

  "Rebecca Hall Talks PARADE’S END, Her Extreme Character, How Invigorating the Role Was, Working with Benedict Cumberbatch and IRON MAN 3". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. February 24, 2013.

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• There's a constant contradiction between what feels good and what feels right. But you live with decisions that you make in your life.

  Randy Travis

  Philosophy, Feel Good, Decision

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• I was listening to a lot of hip hop, music like Public Enemy that was about raising consciousness, and I realised I could feed that directly into my work, using images in a way that was a bit like sampling - taking images from diverse places, exploring the contradictions without trying to hide the seams.

  Chris Ofili

  Hip Hop, Enemy, Listening

  "Chris Ofili: 'I wander deep into the forest - where it's scary'" by Mark Hudson, www.telegraph.co.uk. January 25, 2010.

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• Well, Freddie Mercury is a really huge rock star in my head. I've always thought he was just so tough and such an amazing entertainer, really a contradiction in many ways as well. So he was incredible.

  Karen O

  Stars, Rocks, Way

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I believe that it is our human right to be parents and women. And there's no contradiction between feminism, which means women should have all that they are entitled to, all that they can do, all the opportunities that they can take advantage of they should have.

  Anne Roiphe

  Believe, Mean, Opportunity

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• I think that contradictions, unless they're understood, unless they're analyzed, unless they're thoughtfully probed, unless people have a sense of what those contradictions mean - there's just as much of a chance that they'll move into embracing fascism as there is that they'll move into a more radical conception of democracy itself.

  Henry Giroux

  Moving, Mean, Thinking

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• Great art is not a matter of presenting one side or another, but presenting a picture so full of the contradictions, tragedies, [and] insights of the period that the impact is at once disturbing and satisfying.

  Pauli Murray

  Art, Impact, Tragedy

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• You cannot have humane Zionism, it is a contradiction in terms.

  Israel Shahak

  Term, Humane, Zionism

  "An Interview with Israel Shahak", Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. IV, No. 3, p. 3, 1975.

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• self-possession is the ability to face without fear life in all its contradictions.

  Vivian Gornick

  Confidence, Self, Faces

  Vivian Gornick (1978). “Essays in feminism”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• The class struggle is precisely that which resolves the contradictions between two opposed classes by abolishing them at the same time that it constitutes and reveals them as classes.

  Monique Wittig

  Struggle, Class, Two

  Monique Wittig (1992). “The Straight Mind: And Other Essays”, Beacon Press (MA)

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• The task for me is to not only comprehend the world, but to change the world. I would like to see a world where America lives up to its ideals, and resolves the contradiction between reality and principles.

  Ronald Takaki

  Reality, America, Principles

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• Leadership without mutual trust is a contradiction in terms.

  Stephen Covey

  Term, Mutual, Mutual Trust

  Stephen M. R. Covey (2012). “Smart Trust”, p.201, Simon and Schuster

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• I think being an activist and an artist is an interesting contradiction, because so often they are at odds with one another. When you write as an artist you have to clean the palate of your own politics in creating characters and activism is kind of the exact opposite.

  Eve Ensler

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  "Avocados and Vaginas". Interview with Joe Saxon, www.thestateofthearts.co.uk. May 16, 2015.

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• When you're an immigrant, you're at the bottom of the ladder. You might not be at the bottom of the ladder economically. Those contradictions led me to feel that the role in society I was given didn't jive with my sense of myself. I think, in fact, that is the case with most people. Everybody feels themselves to be in an original relationship to creation, and feels confined by their social role.

  Vijay Seshadri

  Thinking, People, Ladders

  "You Are Vijay Seshadri". Interview with Laura Standley, logger.believermag.com. June 10, 2014.

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• Big business is basic to the very life of this country; and yet many -perhaps most - Americans have a deep-seated fear and an emotional repugnance to it. Here is monumental contradiction.

  David Lilienthal

  Country, Emotional, Bigs

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• it is impossible for any mind of common honesty not to be revolted by the contradictions in their principles and practice. They inveigh against the governments of Europe, because, as they say, they favor the powerful and oppress the weak. ... [yet] you will see them with one hand hoisting the cap of liberty, and with the other flogging their slaves. You will see them one hour lecturing their mob on the indefeasible rights of man, and the next driving from their homes the children of the soil, whom they have bound themselves to protect by the most solemn treaties.

  Frances Trollope

  Children, Honesty, Powerful

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• A cat is a purring parcel of paradox, a cunning collection of contradictions. A cat is lazy and busy, dainty and savage, affectionate and aloof, greedy and finicky, sound asleep in one instant, and awake and stalking in the next. A cat is a limp puddle of softness, surrounding a steel-hard and ever-alert set of muscles. ... A cat has the face of a pansy flower, and is just as velvety. A cat holds infinity in her eyes, and your heart in her front paws.

  Leonore Fleischer

  Flower, Heart, Cat

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• When Catullus expresses his love and hate for Lesbia, he is not obviously voicing a wish to rid himself of one or the other of these two sentiments. Not all contradictions resolve into temporal change of belief or desire.

  Raymond Geuss

  Hate, Two, Wish

  Raymond Geuss (2008). “Philosophy and Real Politics”, p.3, Princeton University Press

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• I would much rather sit, dimmed by inattention, and study the atmosphere and the silence and dance between people, but often times I’m not offered this privilege. The necessity for isolation, and the striving for popularity is the only contradiction I find in being a writer and an actress.

  Masiela Lusha

  People, Silence, Atmosphere

  "REEL Lady: Masiela Lusha". REEL Ladies Interview, reelladies.wordpress.com. September 1, 2008.

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• Nothing that rest on some contradictory basis shall succeed or last in the long run ("ne saurait réussir ou durer, à la longue", Fr.); all that involve (or imply...) a contradiction is fatally destined, early or late, to disintegrate and disappear.

  African Spir

  Running, Long, Succeed

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 37), 1937.

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• There are (or is) indeed no contradiction between science and religion, the fields of which are different, and which, far from mutually fighting and persecute, must, on the contrary, complete each other.

  African Spir

  Fighting, Fields, Different

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 39), 1937.

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• If there is one sweeping generalization I can make without fear of contradiction, it is that 'change' is the scariest word in the English language Nothing will change in our lives until we change our own behavior. Insight won't do it. Understanding why we do the self-defeating things we do won't make us stop doing them. Nagging and pleading with the other person to change won't do it. We have to act. We have to take the first step down a new road.

  Susan Forward

  Self, Understanding, Nagging

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