Quotes

Quotes about Contradiction


Woman's at best a contradiction still.

Alexander Pope

What a chimera, then, is man! what a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! A judge of all things, feeble worm of the earth, depositary of the truth, cloaca of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe!

Blaise Pascal

There's a devil in all of us. We are full of self-contradictions

There's a devil in all of us. We are full of self-contradiction

Human language disposes to contradiction

The more we know the more we are prey to the contradictions of thought

Feast of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath & Wells, Hymnographer, 1711 [The] doctrine of [inevitable] progress sustained our fathers in the carrying of capitalistic democratic culture to most parts of the globe. Its core was the conviction that, in thus extending the range of western liberal culture and developing its assumptions, they were in effect establishing on earth that which would grow into the kingdom of God. Some put it sharply but un-Biblically: "building the kingdom"; others, of a more secular turn of mind, echoed J. A. Symonds' hymn, "These Things Shall Be". That whole view exists today only as debris, for it has foundered on the rocks, not so much of human sin, as of the contradictions and complexities of the very western culture that was the substance of its belief.

David M. Paton

That man is a creature who needs order yet yearns for change is the creative contradiction at the heart of the laws which structure his conformity and define his deviancy.

Freda Adler

I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.

Georges Bataille

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms: it means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms: it means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Some dreams we have are nothing else but dreams, Unnatural and full of contradictions; Yet others of our most romantic schemes Are something more than fictions.

Thomas Hood

New ideas stir from every corner. The show up disguised innocently as interruptions, contradictions and embarrasing dilemmas. Beware of total strangers and friends alike who shower you with comfortable sameness, and remain open to those who make you uneasy, for they are the true messengers of the future. -Rob Lebow.

Rob Lebow

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat: but in the evolution of real knowledge, it marks the first step in progress toward victory.

Alfred North Whitehead

Einstein is an analytical mathematician seeking to give a physical interpretation to the conclusions of his mathematical process. In this he is hampered by a load of contradictory and absurd assumptions of the school that he follows, which throws him into all manner of difficulty. Einstein has such a faculty for embracing both sides of a contradiction that one would have to be of the same frame of mind to follow his thought, it is so peculiarly his own. The whole Relativity theory is as easy to follow as the path of a bat in the air at night.

Jeremiah Joseph

To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our belief.

Sir Thomas Browne

A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.

Clifford Irving

The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves within the accepted framework of thought, that he thinks and talks conventionally. It would be almost a contradiction in terms for a politician to be a leader in the field of ideas. His task in a democracy is to find out what the opinions held by the largest number are, not to give currency to new opinions which may become the majority view in some distant future.

F.a. Hayek

What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.

Roland Barthes

That man is a creature who needs order yet yearns for change is the creative contradiction at the heart of the laws which structure his conformity and define his deviancy.

Freda Adler

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