Contrary Quotes - Page 15

• Iran won't pursue nuclear weapons because 'it's contrary to their faith.'

  Barack Obama

  Iran, Weapons, Nuclear

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• It is a false principle that because we are entirely occupied with ourselves, we must equally occupy the thoughts of others. The contrary inference is the fair one.

  William Hazlitt

  Principles, Inference, Egotism

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1492, Delphi Classics

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• Marriage is an institution necessary to the maintenance of society but contrary to the laws of nature.

  Honore de Balzac

  Marriage, Law, Maintenance

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• I suppose we all share this pipe-dream of being able to reach out a hand and find anything at will; what is amazing is that we think that good filing could somehow make it comes true. On the contrary: putting a letter into a filing system is like releasing your ferret in the Hampton Court maze.

  Katharine Whitehorn

  Dream, Thinking, Hands

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• Meditation is not the pursuit of pleasure and the search for happiness. Meditation, on the contrary, is a state of mind in which there is no concept or formula, and therefore total freedom. It is only to such a mind that this bliss comes unsought and uninvited. Once it is there, though you may live in the world with all its noise, pleasure and brutality, they will not touch that mind.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Happiness, Freedom, Meditation

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2001). “Freedom, Love, and Action”, p.60, Shambhala Publications

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• A well regulated commerce is not, like law, physic, or divinity, to be overstocked with hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to all its professors.

  Joseph Addison

  Hands, Law, Giving

  Joseph Addison (1856). “The works of ... Joseph Addison, with notes by R. Hurd”, p.274

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• There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, "That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults." Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.

  Joseph Addison

  Wine, Men, Mind

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• In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.

  Joseph Addison

  Wise, Running, Wisdom

  Joseph Addison (1858). “Works, Including the Whole Contents of Bp. Hurd's Edition: Withletters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection; and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works”, p.191

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• I no longer believe the conservative message that children are naturally selfish and destructive creatures who need civilizing by hierarchies or painful controls. On the contrary, I believe that hierarchy and painful controls create destructive people. And I no longer believe the liberal message that children are blank slates on which society can write anything. On the contrary, I believe a unique core self is born into every human being; the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again.

  Gloria Steinem

  Family, Children, Selfish

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• gardening is a madness, a folly that does not go away with age. Quite the contrary.

  May Sarton

  Gardening, Going Away, Age

  May Sarton (2014). “At Seventy: A Journal”, p.30, Open Road Media

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• I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend; I am now convinced that the nature of servitude generally bears a contrary tendency. People's characters are to be chiefly collected from their education and place in life; birth itself does but little.

  William Shenstone

  Silly, Character, People

  William Shenstone (1804). “Essays on Men and Manners”, p.107

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• Gaming is a vice the more dangerous as it is deceitful; and, contrary to every other species of luxury, flatters its votaries with the hopes of increasing their wealth; so that avarice itself is so far from securing us against its temptations that it often betrays the more thoughtless and giddy part of mankind into them.

  Henry Fielding

  Gambling, Luxury, Temptation

  Henry Fielding (1988). “An Enquiry Into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers and Related Writings”, p.92, Wesleyan University Press

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• The raillery which is consistent with good-breeding is a gentle animadversion of some foible, which, while it raises the laugh in the rest of the company, doth not put the person rallied out of countenance, or expose him to shame or contempt. On the contrary, the jest should be so delicate that the object of it should be capable of joining in the mirth it occasions.

  Henry Fielding

  Joining In, Laughing, Mirth

  Henry Fielding, Thomas Roscoe (1851). “The Works of Henry Fielding: Complete in One Volume”, p.643

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• When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.

  Diane Ackerman

  Flames, Life And Death, Effort

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• There are three means of believing--by inspiration, by reason, and by custom. Christianity, which is the only rational institution, does yet admit none for its sons who do not believe by inspiration. Nor does it injure reason or custom, or debar them of their proper force; on the contrary, it directs us to open our minds by the proofs of the former, and to confirm our minds by the authority of the latter.

  Blaise Pascal

  Faith, Inspiration, Believe

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• In How to Be an American Housewife Margaret Dilloway creates an irresistible heroine. Shoko is stubborn, contrary, proud, a wonderful housewife and full of deeply conflicted feelings. I wanted to shake her, even as I was cheering her on, and this cunningly structured novel allowed me to do both. It also took me on two intricate journeys, from post-war Japan and the shadow of Nagasaki to contemporary California, and from motherhood to daughterhood and back again. A profound and suspenseful debut.

  Margot Livesey

  Cheer, War, Motherhood

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• Fearfulness, contrary to all other vices, maketh a man think the better of another, the worse of himself.

  Philip Sidney

  Fear, Past, Men

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.100

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• The recurrence of periods of depression and mass unemployment has discredited capitalism in the opinion of injudicious people. Yet these events are not the outcome of the operation of the free market. They are on the contrary the result of well-intentioned but ill-advised government interference with the market.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Government, People, Liberty

  Ludwig von Mises (2015). “Middle of the Road Policy Leads to Socialism”, p.27, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• Truth, in its struggles for recognition, passes through four distinct stages. First, we say it is damnable, dangerous, disorderly, and will surely disrupt society. Second, we declare it is heretical, infidelic and contrary to the Bible. Third, we say it is really a matter of no importance either one way or the other. Fourth, we aver that we have always upheld it and believed it.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Struggle, Liberty, Four

  Elbert Hubbard (1911). “A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard”

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• Your good mother tells me you are feeling very badly in your new situation. Allow me to assure you it is a perfect certainty that you will, very soon, feel better - quite happy - if you only stick to the resolution you have taken to procure a military education.... On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Mother, Perseverance, Giving Up

  Abraham Lincoln, Bob Blaisdell (2013). “Abraham Lincoln's Wit & Wisdom”, p.13, Courier Corporation

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• Speaking one day to Monsieur de Buffon, on the present ardor of chemical inquiry, he affected to consider chemistry but as cookery, and to place the toils of the laboratory on the footing with those of the kitchen. I think it, on the contrary, among the most useful of sciences, and big with future discoveries for the utility and safety of the human race.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Science, Thinking, Race

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.102, Rowman & Littlefield

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• I may conclude this chapter by quoting a saying of Professor Agassiz, that whenever a new and startling fact is brought to light in science, people first say, 'it is not true,' then that 'it is contrary to religion,' and lastly, 'that everybody knew it before.'

  Charles Lyell

  Truth, Science, Light

  Charles Lyell (2005). “The Geological Evidence of Man”, p.82, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast?

  Douglas Hofstadter

  Clever, Truth, Science

  Douglas Hofstadter (2008). “Metamagical Themas: Questing For The Essence Of Mind And Pattern”, p.85, Hachette UK

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• No true geologist holds by the development hypothesis;-it has been resigned to sciolists and smatterers;-and there is but one other alternative. They began to be, through the miracle of creation. From the evidence furnished by these rocks we are shut down either to belief in miracle, or to something else infinitely harder of reception, and as thoroughly unsupported by testimony as it is contrary to experience. Hume is at length answered by the severe truths of the stony science.

  Hugh Miller

  Truth, Science, Rocks

  Hugh Miller, Louis Agassiz (1859). “The Foot-prints of the Creator: Or, The Asterolepis of Stromness”, p.301

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• In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions.

  Isaac Newton

  Philosophy, Science, Liable

  Isaac Newton, I. Bernard Cohen, Anne Whitman (1999). “The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”, p.796, Univ of California Press

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