Contradictory Quotes - Page 3

• Woman is the symbol to man of the uncleanness of bodily existence, of which he purifies himself by putting her to noble uses. She thus has for him a double, contradictory significance; she is the subject of his bawdry and the subject of his romance.

  Laura Riding

  Men, Romance, Noble

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• We end up with the contradictory picture of a society that appears to throw its doors wide open to women, but translates her every step towards success as having been damaging.

  Margaret Mead

  Doors, Justice, Diversity

  Margaret Mead (1975). “Male and female: a study of the sexes in a changing world”, William Morrow & Co

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• Consciousness of exclusion through naming is acute. Identities seem contradictory, partial, and strategic.

  Donna J. Haraway

  Identity, Exclusion, Consciousness

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• A blush is no language; only a dubious flag - signal which may mean either of two contradictories

  George Eliot

  Mean, Two, Dubious

  George Eliot “Daniel Deronda - Volume 2 of 2”, Lulu.com

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• Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk-the curiosity that leads to creativity belongs to this set. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement or support from outside to motivate behaviour, the second can wilt if not cultivated.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Encouragement, Creativity, Self

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2009). “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and”, p.11, Harper Collins

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• Words belong to nobody, and in themselves they evaluate nothing. But they can serve any speaker and be used for the most varied and directly contradictory evaluations on the part of the speakers.

  Mikhail Bakhtin

  Evaluation, Used, Evaluate

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• Laughter is born out of the discovery of the contradictory.

  Alfred Jarry

  Laughter, Discovery, Born

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• Designing for me is a very complex process. There are many ideas that I want to express in one object, very often contradictory. The creative process in Miu Miu is completely different from that of Prada. Miu Miu is not as complicated and thought out as Prada. Rather than being young, Miu Miu is immediate Prada is very sophisticated and considered; Miu Miu is much more naive. The solution, when I am working on Miu Miu, has to come immediately, instinctively, spontaneously with whatever is available at the moment. If I think three times, I stop.

  Miuccia Prada

  Thinking, Ideas, Design

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• The further on we go, the more meaning there is, but the less articulable. You live your life and the older you get- the more specifically you harvest- the more precious becomes every ounce and spasm. Your life and times don’t drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable. The less explicable, the more meaning. The less like a mathematics equation (a sum game); the more like music (significant secret).

  Gregory Maguire

  Games, Live Your Life, Secret

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• Trying to keep up with health advice can feel like surfing the Net for weather forecasts: what you find is always changing, often contradictory and rarely encouraging.

  Julian Baggini

  Weather, Advice, Surfing

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• The typical white intellectual considers himself superior to ordinary white folks for two contradictory reasons. First, he constantly proclaims his belief in human equality, but they don’t. Second, he has a high IQ, but they don’t.

  Steve Sailer

  Two, White, People

  "Americans First". www.theamericanconservative.com. February 13, 2006.

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• Beautiful, ugly, impressive, disgusting, meaningless, grim, contradictory etc … It makes no difference, as long as it is life, vigorously pouring forth.

  Asger Jorn

  Beautiful, Differences, Long

  Asger Jorn, Per Hovdenakk, Stine Høholt, Arken museum for moderne kunst (Ishøj, Denmark), Cobra Museum voor Moderne Kunst (Amstelveen, Netherlands) (2002). “Asger Jorn”

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• A language possesses utility only insofar as it can construct conventional boundaries. A language of no boundaries is no language at all, and thus the mystic who tries to speak logically and formally of unity consciousness is doomed to sound very paradoxical or contradictory. The problem is that the structure of any language cannot grasp the nature of unity consciousness, any more than a fork could grasp the ocean.

  Ken Wilber

  Ocean, Unity, Trying

  Ken Wilber (2001). “No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth”, p.52, Shambhala Publications

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• I think it’s fairly common for writers to be afflicted with two simultaneous yet contradictory delusions, the burning certainty that we’re unique geniuses, and the constant fear that we’re witless frauds who are speeding toward epic failure.

  Scott Lynch

  Unique, Thinking, Epic

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• What I'm attempting in each picture is nothing other than this...to bring together in a living and viable way, the most different and the most contradictory elements in the greatest possible freedom.

  Gerhard

  Together, Different, Elements

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• I must be frank in my feeling that a notable heresy has come into being throughout our evangelical Christian circles -- the widely accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need Him as Saviour and that we have the right to postpone our obedience to Him as Lord as long as we want to... The truth is that salvation apart from obedience is unknown in the sacred scripture... Apart from obedience, there can be no salvation, for salvation without obedience is a self-contradictory impossibility.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Christian, Self, Circles

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• For centuries it was never discovered that education was a function of the State, and the State never attempted to educate. But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power....When the revolutionary theory of government began to prevail, and Church and State found that they were educating for opposite ends and in a contradictory spirit, it became necessary to remove children entirely from the influence of religion.

  Lord Acton

  Children, Government, Opposites

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• Ruth and I don't have a perfect marriage, but we have a great one. How can I say two things that seem so contradictory? In a perfect marriage, everything is always the finest and best imaginable; like a Greek statue, the proportions are exact and the finish is unblemished. Who knows any human being lke that? For a marriage couple to expect perfection in each other is unrealistic.

  Billy Graham

  Wisdom, Couple, Two

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• What does this contradictory pattern mean?one conclusion seems inevitable: when it comes to work, people do not heed the evidence of their senses. They disregard the quality of immediate experience, and base their motivation instead on the strongly rooted cultural stereotype of what work is supposed to be like. They think of it as an imposition, a constraint, an infringement of their freedom, and therefore something to be avoided as much as possible.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Motivation, Mean, Thinking

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2001). “Flow: the psychology of optimal experience”

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• Can theology give to the mind the ineffable boon of conceiving that which no man is in a capacity to comprehend? Can it procure to its agents the marvellous faculty of having precise ideas of a god composed of so many contradictory qualities?

  Baron d'Holbach

  Men, Ideas, Giving

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• She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant contradictory place, and it had me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.

  Curtis Sittenfeld

  Curiosity, World, Vibrancy

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• The nature of love is that it catches you off-guard, subjects you to rules you have never faced, some of them contradictory.

  Ivan Doig

  Love Is, Subjects

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• Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory, Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping

  Nicholas Sparks

  Confused, Bending, Gazing

  Nicholas Sparks (2014). “The Notebook: Student edition”, p.140, Hachette UK

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• I didn't believe in systems. Everything human was imperfect and ultimately absurd. What did I believe in then? In humor. In laughing at systems, at people, at one's self. In laughing even at one's need to laugh all the time. In seeing life as contradictory, many-sided, various, funny, tragic, and with moments of outrageous beauty. In seeing life as a fruitcake, including delicious plums and bad peanuts, but meant to be devoured hungrily all the same because you couldn't feast on the plums without also sometimes being poisoned by the peanuts.

  Erica Jong

  Believe, Self, Laughing

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• She couldn't think of anyone else who remotely resembled him. He was complicated, almost contradictory in so many ways, yet simple, a strangely erotic combination. On the surface he was a country boy, home from war, and he probably saw himself in those terms. Yet there was so much more to him. Perhaps it was the poetry that made him different, or perhaps it was the values his father had instilled in him, growing up. Either way, he seemed to savor life more fully than others appeared to, and that was what had first attracted her to him.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Country, Growing Up, Father

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