Contradiction Quotes - Page 18

• I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Long, Doe, Phrases

  Edgar Allan Poe, Gary Richard Thompson (1984). “Essays and Reviews”, p.71, Library of America

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• America's the great conundrum and the great dream and the great fascination: the new land, the new world, the new temple, the new city, and the great mess. The most handguns, bombs, weaponry, violence, the cop of the world etcetera. All the contradictions. Mediocrity versus something like indigenous jazz, one of the most evolved sophisticated musical forms on the planet.

  Anne Waldman

  Dream, Land, Cities

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• I am most interested in people. I try to capture their complexity and contradiction and beauty. It does not matter where they are from.

  Kwame Dawes

  People, Trying, Doe

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The heartbeat of your originality is deep within a body of thought that continually wrestles with the contradictions and limitations that we're constantly trying to overcome, the curiosities and the ignorances of the people we seek to help.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  Ignorance, Heart, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Man can never stand still. He must find solutions to this contradiction, and ever better solutions to the extent to which reality enables him.

  Erich Fromm

  Reality, Men, Stills

  "Human Nature and Social Theory". Letter by Erich Fromm to Vladimir Dobrenkov, March 10, 1969.

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• Man is the only animal who does not feel at home in nature, who can feel evicted from paradise, the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem that he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature, and he does not know where he will arrive if he goes forward. Man's existential contradiction results in a state of constant disequilibrium. This disequilibrium distinguishes him from the animal, which lives, as it were, in harmony with nature.

  Erich Fromm

  Home, Animal, Men

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.373, Open Road Media

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• When you're in your early 20s, a lot of characters can be one or two dimensional. You want a role to substantiate the drama, as opposed to actually analyzing the psychology of a human being. That's what drew me to acting, particularly the contradictions in people.

  Tom Hughes

  Drama, Character, Two

  Source: collider.com

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• My whole life is a contradiction on purpose - to make you think. I think people have forgetten how to have their own opinions. They're always waiting for someone to tell them what to do and what to wear - it's so boring.

  Jeffree Star

  Thinking, People, Make You Think

  Source: substreammagazine.com

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• The interesting thing I learned was that if you're really concerned about your health, the best decisions for your health turn out to be the best decisions for the farmers and the best decisions for the environment-and that there is no contradiction there.

  Michael Pollan

  Interesting, Decision, Environment

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• The invention of the concept of sustainable human development and that of so-called human security, as opposed to territorial security of nation- states, and its promotion by the UN is in clear contradiction to all that we, the Group of 77, and the UN Charter itself consider inalienable, namely national sovereignty and security.

  Pranab Mukherjee

  Development, Groups, Promotion

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• In matters of faith, inconvenient evidence is always suppressed while contradictions go unnoticed.

  Gore Vidal

  Matter, Evidence, Unnoticed

  Gore Vidal (1991). “A view from the diners club: essays 1987-1991”

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• Millions of Christians can and do go through life attending church, listening to sermons, reciting the creeds and never confront the seeming contradictions, redaction and myths passed off as verifiable history.

  A. N. Wilson

  Christian, Listening, Church

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• A pacifist male is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described "pacifists" are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Self, Color, Wind

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.223, Penguin

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• To discover our own intimate contradictions is a success in itself because our interior judgment is spontaneously free. The man guided by the voice of the Consciousness walks victorious through the Correct Path.

  Samael Aun Weor

  Men, Voice, Path

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• So it can be seen that the trouble with the motion picture art was (and is) that it is too much an industry; and the trouble with the motion picture industry is that it is too much an art. It is out of this basic contradiction that most of the ills of the form arise.

  Garson Kanin

  Art, Too Much, Trouble

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Sport is something that does not matter, but is performed as if it did. In that contradiction lies its beauty

  Simon Barnes

  Sports, Lying, Doe

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• It is madness and a contradiction to expect that things which were never yet performed should be effected, except by means hitherto untried.

  Francis Bacon

  Mean, Science, Madness

  Francis Bacon (1813). “The Novum Organum Scientiarum: In Two Parts”, p.2

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• I like first class, but I don't like first class people - I prefer the people in coach. I like fine restaurants, but prefer the taste of McDonalds. I like to be perfect, but I don't like perfection - I think it's dangerous. There is nothing after perfection. I know, I am a walking contradiction.

  Alber Elbaz

  Fashion, Thinking, Class

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• Both the physicist and the mystic want to communicate their knowledge, and when they do so with words their statements are paradoxical and full of logical contradictions.

  Fritjof Capra

  Communication, Knowledge, Science

  "The Tao of Physics". Book by Fritjof Capra, 1975.

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• Tears throw a veil over our faults and allow us to accuse fate without fear or contradiction.

  Italo Svevo

  Fear, Fate, Tears

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• If you were dealing with the accumulated repressions of only one lifetime, it would be different. But these are the repressions of numerous lives. Nobody knows how many times you have been born, and how many societies have crushed you. And each time a different society, and all these societies destroying you in different ways... this is why you carry so many inner contradictions.

  Rajneesh

  Meditation, Different, Would Be

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• Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism, confirmed by the work of population genetics, and the actual findings of paleontology. Following phyletic lines through time seemed to reveal only minimal gradual changes but no clear evidence for any change of a species into a different genus or for the gradual origin of an evolutionary novelty. Anything truly novel always seemed to appear quite abruptly in the fossil record.

  Ernst Mayr

  Long, Population, Different

  Ernst Mayr (1991). “One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought”, p.138, Harvard University Press

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• There are urges and urges; you are exploding with urges, desires. You don`t have one desire, you have many desires. Not only that you have many desires, you have contradictory desires. If one is fulfilled, the other, which is its contradiction, remains unfulfilled and you are in misery. If the other is fulfilled, then something else remains unfulfilled.

  Rajneesh

  Desire, Misery, Contradictory

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• ...Choice in every form is conflict. Contradiction is inevitable in choice; this contradiction, inner and outer breeds confusion and misery.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Confusion, Choices, Misery

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2016). “Krishnamurti's Notebook”, p.162, Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd

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• Mind is dual, it always divides things into polar opposites: the conqueror and the conquered, the observer and the observed, the object and the subject, the day and the night. It goes on dividing things which are not divided. Neither is the day divided from the night, nor is birth divided from death. They are one energy. But mind goes on dividing everything into polarities, opposites. Nothing is opposite in existence; every contradiction is only apparent. Deep down all contradictions are meeting together.

  Rajneesh

  Night, Opposites, Mind

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