Contradictory Quotes - Page 10

• You have a lot more leeway to be contradictory playing a character than most of the scripts have in them. That's how all actors are. We have so many different sides of ourselves and we're so different, in meeting with different people. The audiences relate more to that and find that more believable.

  Joel Kinnaman

  Character, People, Scripts

  Source: collider.com

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• If we manage to last in spite of everything, it is because our infirmities are so many and so contradictory that they cancel each other out.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Lasts, Spite, Infirmity

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• There is something in the American project, something in simple American oratory, something in the hope and idealism of this frustrating and contradictory nation that still makes my spirits soar and my heart leap with optimism and belief. If only they understood how to make a cup of tea.

  Stephen Fry

  Heart, Simple, Optimism

  Stephen Fry, Vanda Vucicevic (2008). “Stephen Fry in America”, Harpercollins Pub Ltd

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• Tears may be considered as the natural and involuntary resource of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion, before ithas had time to reconcile its feelings to the change in circumstances: while laughter may be defined to be the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occasioned by mere sur prise or contrast (in the absence of any more serious emotion), before it has time to reconcile its belief to contradictory appearances.

  William Hazlitt

  Laughter, Feelings, Mind

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Lectures on the English Comic Writers”, p.2

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• The myths and legends about Faerie are many and diverse, and often contradictory. Only one thing is certain - that nothing is certain. All things are possible in the land of Faerie.

  Brian Froud

  Land, Legends, Fairy

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• Medicine being a compendium of the successive and contradictory mistakes of medical practitioners, when we summon the wisest of them to our aid, the chances are that we may be relying on a scientific truth the error of which will be recognized in a few years time.

  Marcel Proust

  Mistake, Errors, Doctors

  Marcel Proust, Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, Dennis Joseph Enright (1996). “In Search of Lost Time: The Guermantes way”, Vintage Classics

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• The history of acceptance of new theories frequently shows the following steps: At first the new idea is treated as pure nonsense, not worth looking at. Then comes a time when a multitude of contradictory objections are raised, such as: the new theory is too fancy, or merely a new terminology; it is not fruitful, or simply wrong. Finally a state is reached when everyone seems to claim that he had always followed this theory. This usually marks the last state before general acceptance.

  Kurt Lewin

  Science, Acceptance, Ideas

  Kurt Lewin (1951). “Field Theory in Social Science: Selected Theoretical Papers”, New York : Harper

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• The ultimate way of Being lies beyond all contradictory pairs of opposites
  with which our two dimensional thinking mind operates.
  As soon as we are successful in silencing the restless activity of the thinking mind
  and give a chance to intuition, the pure all embracing spirit in us will manifest effortlessly.

  Anagarika Govinda

  Lying, Successful, Thinking

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• Capitalism and socialism are two distinct patterns of social organization. Private control of the means of production and public control are contradictory notions and not merely contrary notions. There is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Mean, Organization, Two

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• In their recently aborted struggle to inject Genesis literalism into science classrooms, fundamentalist groups followed their usual opportunistic strategy of arguing two contradictory sides of a question when a supposed rhetorical advantage could be extracted from each.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Struggle, Two, Usual

  Stephen Jay Gould (1991). “Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

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• Opposites are not contradictory but complementary.

  Niels Bohr

  Education, Teacher, Learning

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• If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a different place.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Believe, Moving

  "Viruses of the Mind". Book by Richard Dawkins, 1993.

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• History is tangled, messy, contradictory. But is where we are.

  Eamon Duffy

  History, Tangled, Messy

  Eamon Duffy (2006). “Faith of Our Fathers”, p.77, A&C Black

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• I don't know who I am or who I was. I know it less than ever. I do and I don't identify myself with myself. Everything is totally contradictory, but maybe I have remained exactly as I was as a small boy of twelve.

  Alberto Giacometti

  Happiness, Boys, Who I Am

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• People who have drawn wealth into their lives used The Secret, whether consciously or unconsciously. They think thoughts of abundance and wealth, and they do allow any contradictory thoughts to take root in their minds.

  Rhonda Byrne

  Positive, Optimistic, Thinking

  Rhonda Byrne (2012). “The Magic”, p.221, Simon and Schuster

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• How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Honesty, Integrity, Lying

  "The Ordeal of Mansart". Book by W. E. B. Du Bois, 1957.

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• But because me and myself, as you no doubt are well aware, we are going to die, my relation—and yours too—to the event of this text, which otherwise never quite makes it, our relation is that of a structurally posthumous necessity. Suppose, in that case, that I am not alone in my claim to know the idiomatic code (whose notion itself is already contradictory) of this event. What if somewhere, here or there, there are shares in this non-secret’s secret? Even so the scene would not be changed. The accomplices, as you are once again well aware, are also bound to die.

  Jacques Derrida

  What If, Doubt, Secret

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• I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.

  Andre Breton

  Dream, Believe, Reality

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• Never yet has a God been defined in terms which were not palpably self-contradictory and absurd; never yet has a God been described so that a concept of Him was made possible to human thought.

  Annie Besant

  God, Self, Religion

  Annie Besant (2014). “The Origins of Theosophy (Routledge Revivals): Annie Besant - The Atheist Years”, p.282, Routledge

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• I am convinced that this is the only means of advancing science, of clearing the mind from a confused heap of contradictory observations, that do but perplex and puzzle the Student, when he compares them, or misguide him if he gives himself up to their authority; but bringing them under one general head, can alone give rest and satisfaction to an inquisitive mind.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Confused, Mean, Science

  sir Joshua Reynolds (1853). “Discourses on the Fine Arts Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy”, p.13

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• Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge. They are chaotic, sometimes painful, sometimes contradictory, but they come from deep within us. And we must key into those feelings... This is how new visions begin.

  Audre Lorde

  Keys, Feelings, Vision

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.91, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The deepest poverty is the inability of joy, the tediousness of a life considered absurd and contradictory. This poverty is widespread today, in very different forms in the materially rich as well as the poor countries. The inability of joy presupposes and produces the inability to love, produces jealousy, avarice - all defects that devastate the life of individuals and of the world. This is why we are in need of a new evangelization - if the art of living remains an unknown, nothing else works... this art can only be communicated by [one] who has life - he who is the Gospel personified.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Faith, Country, Art

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• Non-violence and cowardice are contradictory terms. Non-violence is the greatest virtue, cowardice the greatest vice. Non-violence springs from love, cowardice from hate. Non-violence always suffers, cowardice would always inflict suffering. Perfect non-violence is the highest bravery. Non-violent conduct is never demoralising; cowardice always is.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Courage, Hate, Spring

  Mahatma Gandhi, Anand T. Hingorani, Ganga Anand Hingorani (1985). “The Encyclopaedia of Gandhian Thoughts”

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• I must try, however, as best I can, although I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

  Albert Einstein

  Simple, Feelings, Trying

  Albert Einstein (2016). “The Albert Einstein Collection: Essays in Humanism, The Theory of Relativity, and The World As I See It”, p.9, Open Road Media

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• My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants.

  Gerd R. Puin

  Christian, Islamic, Years

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