Contrary Quotes - Page 8

• The idea that God will pardon a rebel who has not given up his rebellion is contrary both to the Scriptures and to common sense.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Ideas, Common Sense, Rebel

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• I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.

  Albert Einstein

  Simple, Men, Class

  Albert Einstein (2016). “The Albert Einstein Collection: Essays in Humanism, The Theory of Relativity, and The World As I See It”, p.168, Open Road Media

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• You see, if the height of the mercury [barometer] column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it (as I have many reasons for believing, although everyone who has so far written about it is of the contrary opinion), it follows that the weight of the air must be the sole cause of the phenomenon, and not that abhorrence of a vacuum, since it is obvious that at the foot of the mountain there is more air to have weight than at the summit, and we cannot possibly say that the air at the foot of the mountain has a greater aversion to empty space than at the top.

  Blaise Pascal

  Believe, Air, Feet

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• Nowadays public opinion is not the sum of private opinions. On the contrary, private opinions are an echo of public opinion

  Nicolas Gomez Davila

  Echoes, Public Opinion, Opinion

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• Courage is by no means incompatible with tenderness. On the contrary, gentleness and tenderness have been found to characterize the men, no less than the women, who have done the most courageous deeds.

  Samuel Smiles

  Mean, Men, Done

  Samuel Smiles (1910). “Character. Repr”

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• You have a soft spot. Contrary to popular belief, it is not where you are weak, it is the gateway to indestructible power.

  Susan Piver

  Belief, Weak, Gateways

  "The Importance of Sadness" by Susan Piver, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 17, 2011.

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• You will be surprised to learn how some very knowing people have misunderstood Plotto. On glancing at it, some of the intelligentia have jumped at the false conclusion, that Plotto is a dictionary of situations, a mechanism that yields a cut and dried plot by the mere use of a thumb index. Plotto, to the contrary, merely suggests the situations for the plot, explains what is to be done through Purpose and Obstacle and even offers suggestions as to the way in which it should be done.

  William Wallace Cook

  Cutting, Yield, Knowing

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• The riches of the rich are not the cause of the poverty of anybody; the process that makes some people rich is, on the contrary, the corollary of the process that improves many peoples want satisfaction. The entrepreneurs, the capitalists and the technologists prosper as far as they succeed in best supplying the consumers.

  Ludwig von Mises

  People, Entrepreneur, Want

  Ludwig Von Mises (1978). “Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, The”, p.43, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• It is a grave misconception to regard the mystical progress as passing mostly through ecstasies and raptures. On the contrary, it passes just as much through broken hearts and bruised emotions, through painful sacrifices and melancholy renunciations.

  Paul Brunton

  Heart, Sacrifice, Broken

  Paul Brunton (1984). “The Notebooks of Paul Brunton: Perspectives (posthumous)”

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• Away with tears and fears and troubles! United in wedlock with the eternal Godhead Itself, our nature ascends into the Heaven of Heavens. So it would be impious to call ourselves 'miserable.' On the contrary, Man is a creature whom the Angels-were they capable of envy-would envy. Let us lift up our hearts!

  C. S. Lewis

  Heart, Angel, Men

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• The slight, the facile and the merely self-glorifying tend to drop away over the centuries, and what we are left with is the bedrock: Homer and Milton, the Greek tragedian and Shakespeare, Chaucer and Cervantes and Swift, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and James and Conrad. Time does not make their voices fainter, on the contrary, it reinforces our sense of their truth-telling capacity.

  Wendy Lesser

  Self, Voice, Greek

  Wendy Lesser (2014). “Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books”, p.98, Macmillan

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• The conservative "thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless.

  Russell Kirk

  Thinking, Order, Justice

  Russell Kirk (2014). “The Politics of Prudence”, p.21, Open Road Media

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• Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.

  Elaine Dundy

  Acting, Actors, Acting From Actors

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• Contrary to popular myth, werewolves myth, werewolves are born, not made. No matter how many times they bite someone, that person will not turn, though they will probably bleed profusely and will definitely be annoyed.

  Molly Harper

  Annoyed, Matter, Werewolf

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• Nothing cuts the nerve of the desire to pursue holiness as much as a sense of guilt. On the contrary, nothing so motivates us to deal with sin in our lives as does the understanding and application of the two truth that our sins are forgiven and the dominion of sin is broken because of our union with Christ.

  Jerry Bridges

  Cutting, Two, Broken

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• A broken heart is not the same as sadness. Sadness occurs when the heart is stone cold and lifeless. On the contrary, there is an unbelievable amount of vitality in a broken heart.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Heart, Sadness, Broken

  Elizabeth Lesser (2010). “Broken Open: How difficult times can help us grow”, p.115, Random House

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• One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Weakness, Principles, Ordinary

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1863). “Democracy in America”, p.34

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• Contrary to what you might think, China's economy is relatively less efficient, and more polluting, than those of rich countries.

  James Fallows

  Country, Thinking, Rich Countries

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• Contrary to current cynicism about past golden ages, the abstraction known as 'the intelligent layperson' does exist - in the form of millions of folks with a passionate commitment to continuous learning.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Commitment, Intelligent, Past

  "A grand finale" by Robin McKie, www.theguardian.com. May 26, 2002.

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• Contrary to popular belief. It's much wiser to take money from the poor than the rich.

  Mike Royko

  Belief, Rich, Poor

  Mike Royko (1982). “Sez Who? Sez Me”, Dutton Adult

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• An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique andconsequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.

  Henri Bergson

  Unique, Order, Intuition

  Henri Bergson (1961). “Introduction to metaphysics”

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• Extreme complication is contrary to art.

  Claude Debussy

  Art, Complication, Extremes

  "French Music: From the Death of Berlioz to the Death of Fauré". Book by Martin Cooper (p. 136), 1951; later quoted in "Debussy and Wagner", book by Robin Holloway (p. 207), 1979.

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• The English are crooked as a nation and honest as individuals. The contrary is true of the French, who are honest as a nation and crooked as individuals.

  Edmond de Goncourt

  Honest, Individual, Crooked

  Statement on October 29, 1868. "Pages from the Goncourt Journal". Book by Edmond de Goncourt, translated by Robert Baldick, p. 141, 1962.

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• Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.

  William Blackstone

  Men, Rights, Law

  William Blackstone (1922). “Commentaries on the Laws of England: In Four Books”, p.45, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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• In the history of mankind there are recorded two great Inversions. The first, set forth by the Nazarene to the effect that love is a greater power and more real than vengeance. The second proclaimed the earth to be a sphere revolving in its course around the sun. These affirmations were made in the face of all evidence sacred to the contrary.

  Louis Sullivan

  Real, Love Is, Two

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