Contradictory Quotes - Page 6

• We often think ourselves inconsistent creatures, when we are the furthest from it, and all the variety of shapes and contradictory appearances we put on, are in truth but so many different attempts to gratify the same governing appetite.

  Laurence Sterne

  Thinking, Different, Shapes

  Laurence Sterne (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Laurence Sterne (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I and you-We are infinate, rich, large, contradictory, living, breathing miracles-free human beings, children of God and the everlasting universe. That's what we do.

  Robert Fulghum

  Children, Breathing, Miracle

  Robert Fulghum (2010). “It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It”, p.68, Ivy Books

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods. and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.

  Neil Postman

  Ideas, Profound, Important

  4 Copy quote

• Those [scientists] who dislike entertaining contradictory thoughts are unlikely to enrich their science with new ideas.

  Max Planck

  Science, Ideas, Scientist

  30 Copy quote

• I make one image—though 'make' is not the right word; I let, perhaps, an image be 'made' emotionally in me and then apply to it what intellectual & critical forces I possess—let it breed another, let that image contradict the first, make, of the third image bred out of the other two together, a fourth contradictory image, and let them all, within my imposed formal limits, conflict.

  Dylan Thomas

  Two, Intellectual, Together

  14 Copy quote

• [T]he only real moral crime that one man can commit against another is the attempt to create, by his words or actions, an impression of the contradictory, the impossible, the irrational, and thus shake the concept of rationality in his victim.

  Ayn Rand

  Real, Men, Thinking

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.374, Hamilton Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The problem of meaning today is the problem of how the diverse and superficially self-contradictory experiences of men can be put into a consistent picture that will provide contemporary man with a convincing basis from which to live and to act.

  Carroll Quigley

  Men, Self, Today

  "Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time". Book by Carroll Quigley, p. 1278, 1966.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The desire of privilege and the taste of equality are the dominant and contradictory passions of the French of all times.

  Charles de Gaulle

  Passion, Desire, Taste

  "France and Her Army". Book by Charles de Gaulle, 1938.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• A phrase begins life as a literary expression; its felicity leads to its lazy repetition, and repetition soon establishes it as a legal formula, undiscriminatingly used to express different and sometimes contradictory ideas.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Expression, Ideas, Lazy

  "Tiller v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 318 U.S. 54". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. February 1, 1943.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• The dream is a series of images, which are apparently contradictory and nonsensical, but arise in reality from psychologic material which yields a clear meaning.

  Carl Jung

  Dream, Reality, Yield

  Carl Gustav Jung, Beatrice M. Hinkle (2003). “Psychology of the Unconscious”, p.9, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Seeing clearly within himself and always able to dodge around the ends of any position, including his own, Shaw assumed from the start the dual role of prophet and gadfly. To his contemporaries it appeared frivolous and contradictory to perform as both superman and socialist, sceptic and believer, legalist and heretic, high-brow and mob-orator. But feeling the duty to teach as well as to mirror mankind, Shaw did not accept himself as a contradictory being.

  Jacques Barzun

  Mirrors, Feelings, Gadflies

  "Bernard Shaw in Twilight" by Jacques Barzun in "The Kenyon Review", Volume 5, No. 3 (pp. 321-345), Part II, www.jstor.org. Summer 1943.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Barack Obama's campaign of empty self-contradictory promises has apparently hoodwinked the state of Wyoming.

  Charles Foster Johnson

  Self, Wyoming, Promise

  4 Copy quote

• Our unconscious, then, does not believe in its own death; it behaves as if it were immortal. It knows nothing that is negative; in it contradictories coincide. This may be the secret of heroism.

  Sigmund Freud

  Art, Philosophy, Believe

  16 Copy quote

• Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out only by few, and that it alone among all the languages unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable - these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Music, Character, Mean

  27 Copy quote

• Over against any cognition, there is an unknown but knowable reality; but over against all possible cognition, there is only the self-contradictory. In short, cognizability (in its widest sense) and being are not merely metaphysically the same, but are synonymous terms.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Reality, Self, Cognition

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1991). “Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic”, p.50, UNC Press Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• When it happeneth that a man signifieth unto us two contradictory opinions whereof the one is clearly and directly signified, andthe other either drawn from that by consequence, or not known to be contradictory to it; then (when he is not present to explicate himself better) we are to take the former of his opinions; for that is clearly signified to be his, and directly, whereas the other might proceed from error in the deduction, or ignorance of the repugnancy.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Ignorance, Men, Errors

  Thomas Hobbes, John Charles Addison Gaskin (1999). “The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic: Part I, Human Nature, Part II, De Corpore Politico ; with Three Lives”, p.77, Oxford University Press, USA

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?

  David Hume

  World, Stones, Coherence

  David Hume (1824). “The Philosophical Works of David Hume ... Containing Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Essays on the Immortality of the Soul, Suicide ... &c. A New Edition”, p.6

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am not unaware that I have the mindset, as contradictory as it may sound, to discover in the world what I am in fact looking for. Perhaps the best pictures are a seamless hybrid of discovery and construction.

  Richard Misrach

  Photography, Discovery, Sound

  4 Copy quote

• The source of Pyrrhonism comes from failing to distinguish between a demonstration, a proof and a probability. A demonstration supposes that the contradictory idea is impossible; a proof of fact is where all the reasons lead to belief, without there being any pretext for doubt; a probability is where the reasons for belief are stronger than those for doubting.

  Andrew Michael Ramsay

  Ideas, Doubt, Stronger

  4 Copy quote

• A desire to succeed in politics is propelled by these two seemingly contradictory forces, which frequently change places and sometimes coexist: to save others and to save oneself.

  Madeleine M. Kunin

  Two, Desire, Succeed

  4 Copy quote

• Maybe most people were fundamentally contradictory. The real people at any rate.

  Tom Robbins

  Real, People, Rate

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates”, p.141, Bantam

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We [H&M] believe that growth, profit and sustainability are not contradictory. Our ambition is to be a fair and profitable company, because otherwise we couldn't open any new stores, we couldn't produce new designs and no new jobs would be created. H&M would soon cease to exist.

  Karl-Johan Persson

  Jobs, Believe, Ambition

  16 Copy quote

• Now I existed solely thanks to the quantum paradox, my brain a collection of qubits in quantum superposition, encoding truths and memories, imagination and irrationality in opposing, contradictory states that existed and didn't exist, all at the same time.

  Robin Wasserman

  Memories, Data, Imagination

  Robin Wasserman (2011). “Shattered”, p.158, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Strange combination, isn't it--gratitude and resentment? But this is the way I think. Actually, I think everybody thinks that way. Even the children of the humans who died long ago, I think they lived their lives holding similar contradictory thoughts about their parents. They were raised to learn about love and death, and they lived out their lives passing from the sunny spots to the shady spots of this world.

  Otsuichi

  Gratitude, Children, Thinking

  6 Copy quote

• I realize I am contradictory: I have an independent filmmaker's sensibility and a Hollywood director's short-attention span.

  Doug Liman

  Independent, Attention, Directors

  4 Copy quote