Contradiction Quotes - Page 16

• It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction and between profession and practice - that is to say with a strong feeling of guilt - are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others.

  Eric Hoffer

  Strong, Practice, Feelings

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• One can't found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past--they say their deities are the masters of all the universes, and yet that they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.

  Gene Wolfe

  Children, Grandmother, Past

  Gene Wolfe (1994). “Shadow & Claw: The First Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.57, Macmillan

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• Poetry dovetails contradictions.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Marilyn Hacker (1980). “Taking notice”, Alfred A. Knopf

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• I'm aware that I'm kind of a paradox, and at times a bit ill-suited to my profession. But there's something that brings me back. There's something in me that feels like I have to do this, that this is what I'm meant to be doing. If I didn't feel this way, I wouldn't do it. But it's full of contradictions, for sure.

  Emma Watson

  Kind, Paradox, Profession

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Contradictions, most of all, a balance between chaos and order. It needs neighborhoods vibrating with energy just as much as cozy little corners and parks; well-tended, middle-class sections as well as an alternative scene; technology centers for innovative youth and social facilities for older people.

  Charles Landry

  Technology, Order, Class

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• For decades I'd flit from drawing table to typewriter to guitar with no sense of strain or contradiction. They all exercised the same psychic muscle (the Imagination), and working in one medium refreshed my appetite for the others.

  Peter Blegvad

  Guitar, Typewriters, Psychics

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I love that contradiction of being feminine but playing in the boys' treehouse. My whole life's been like that.

  Gwen Stefani

  Boys, Feminine, Treehouses

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• The great multinationals are unwilling to face the moral and economic contradictions of their own behavior - producing in low-wage dictatorships and selling to high-wage democracies. Indeed, the striking quality about global enterprises is how easily free-market capitalism puts aside its supposed values in order to do business. The conditions of human freedom do not matter to them so long as the market demand is robust. The absence of freedom, if anything, lends order and efficiency to their operations.

  William Greider

  Order, Long, Democracy

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• If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, 'The author of this book is mistaken'; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood.

  Saint Augustine

  Book, Scripture, Mistaken

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• Consciousness is a state in which a man knows all at once everything that he in general knows and in which he can see how little he does know and how many contradictions there are in what he knows.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Men, Doe, Littles

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• If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless.

  Denis Diderot

  Order, Two, Heaven

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• It has been the bankers' destiny ... to find themselves on the dangerous edge of the world, pointing up the contradictions and cross-purposes. They are not often loved for it.

  Anthony Sampson

  Destiny, Bankers, Purpose

  Anthony Sampson (1983). “The money lenders”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• The practical man demands an appearance of reality at least. Always dealing in the concrete, he regards mathematical terms not as symbols or thought but as images of reality. A system acceptable to the mathematician because of its inner consistency may appear to the practical man to be full of contradictions because of the incomplete manner in which it represents reality.

  Tobias Dantzig

  Reality, Men, Consistency

  Tobias Dantzig (1954). “Number, the Language of Science: A Critical Survey Written for the Cultured Non-mathematician”

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• Images work on so many different levels. As a writer you feel them, try not to get in their way or narrow them down to anything other or less complex. A writer is a curator of sorts - once you've brought the images together you try to stand at a respectful distance and let them speak for themselves. Try not to mess with their ambiguities and contradictions. They are what they are, irreducible. This is their integrity.

  Laurie Sheck

  Integrity, Distance, Trying

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I wrote to make sense out of all the contradictions I experienced and to deal with the pain and loss I was undergoing.

  Marge Piercy

  Pain, Loss, Deals

  Interview with Charlotte Templin, margepiercy.com. May 2004.

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• I think it's better to have limits. My limits are different from other people's limits. I'm all for freedom, I'm all for people doing what they want. I'm also all for people shouldering the consequences of their behaviors, and not being assholes, and not lying unless they need to, and being honest except when you shouldn't, and being faithful except when it's okay to cheat. I guess I'm just a mass of contradictions.

  Dan Savage

  Lying, Thinking, People

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 8, 2006.

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• You're always fighting the contradiction between the supposed intimacy of a two-person conversation and the blunt reality that you're trying to sell the play to people who are sitting maybe too far away from you.

  Wallace Shawn

  Fighting, Reality, Play

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. April 1, 2009.

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• For me, the intent in a song is to sing it. I compose songs, meaning I'm writing words to be set to music; I'm intending it to not be recited. I'm a singer-songwriter, and I'm a poet, and there really isn't a contradiction, at least for me.

  Cornelius Eady

  Song, Writing, Singers

  "Breaking into Song: An Interview with Cornelius Eady". Interview with Alexis Orgera, www.anmly.org.

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• We belong to a tradition where we treat the entire universe as our family. For me, globalisation is the manifestation of nationalisation. There is no contradiction between the two.

  Narendra Modi

  Motivation, Two, India

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• The equivocations, the confusions, the contradictions. There's no way we can live through or comprehend something so big that happened so long ago. We've lost true history. But if we are willing to tolerate the contradictions, and if we suffer through events rather than ticking them off, we may at least get closer to understanding what happened than if we grip the handrail of a carefully polished and reassuringly heroic narrative.

  Nicholson Baker

  Long Ago, Confusion, Understanding

  "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke" by James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.

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• Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictions word, preserves contact - it is silence which isolates.

  Thomas E. Mann

  Civilization, Silence, Speech

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• You see, among men who are honored with the common appellation ogentleman, many contradictions to that character.

  Richard Steele

  Character, Men, Common

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• A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

  Daniel Webster

  Military, War, Men

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• The city's contradictions and frailties drive me to the church. The church, in turn, binds my wounds and soothes my troubled heart, and sends me right back out into the city again.

  Steve Ross

  Heart, Cities, Church

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• I try to write about complex issues--young people in an adult world-- full of irony and contradiction in a narrative style that relies heavily on suspense with a texture rich in emotion and imagery. I take a great deal of satisfaction in using popular forms-- the adventure, the mystery, the thriller-- so as to hold my reader with the sheer pleasure of a good story. At the same time I try to resolve my books with an ambiguity that compels engagement. In short, I want my readers to feel, to think, sometimes to laugh. But most of all I want them to enjoy a good read.

  Avi

  Book, Writing, Adventure

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