Contradiction Quotes - Page 23

• Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed. Having once experienced the mystery, plenitude, contradiction, and composure of a work of art, we afterward have a built-in resistance to the slogans and propaganda of oversimplification that have often contributed to the destruction of human life. Poetry is a verbal means to a nonverbal source. It is a motion to no-motion, to the still point of contemplation and deep realization.

  A. R. Ammons

  Art, Mean, Self

  A. R. Ammons (1996). “Set in motion: essays, interviews, and dialogues”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• No Irish nationalist could support any treaty which institutionalizes British government claims to a part of Irish national territory. Indeed, the term - 'constitutional nationalism'- used by Mr.Mallon (SDLP) and his colleagues to describe their political philosophy is a contradiction in terms. The only constitutional nationalist in Ireland today is Sean McBride. He puts his nationalism within a framework of Irish constitutionality. Mr. Mallon, however, puts his within the framework of British constitutionality. Irish nationalism within British constitutionality is a contradiction in terms.

  Gerry Adams

  Philosophy, Government, Support

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• Isn’t everyone’s life a mass of contradictions?

  Noah Feldman

  Mass

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• The idea that the Christian god is just, is directly contradicted by the idea that the Christian god is merciful. Perfect justice and any mercy are necessarily directly in contradiction, because mercy is a suspension of justice.

  Matt Dillahunty

  Christian, Ideas, Perfect

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• I think [audiences are] more aware now of the contradictions in mainstream culture, the phony piety that permeates society, the inhumane hypocrisy.

  Paul Krassner

  Thinking, Mainstream Culture, Hypocrisy

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• Legalized abortion is a national holocaust; an affront to our national character; a contradiction of established principles subscribed to from the beginning of Western Civilization; an insult to the principles of our Declaration of Independence; a bane of our national spirit; and a stench in the nostrils of Almighty God.

  Chuck Baldwin

  Character, Civilization, Abortion

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• So capital is in fact borderless; that's the problem. On the other hand capital has to keep borders alive in order for this kind of cross-border trade to happen. So therefore the idea of borderlessness has a performative contradiction within it which has to be kept alive.

  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

  Hands, Order, Ideas

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• I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity ... I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can.

  Thomas Merton

  Buddhist, Buddhism, Christianity

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• We can speak very much to the purpose and yet in such a way that the whole world cries out in contradiction: namely, when we are not speaking to the whole world.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Way, Purpose, World

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• The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Agreement, Principles, Doe

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2016). “The World As Will And Idea: 3 vols in 1 [unabridged]”, p.55, Kshetra Books

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• The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Thinking, Facts, Ordinary

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• As we follow a genuine path of practice, our sufferings may seem to increase because we no longer hide from them or from ourselves. When we do not follow the old habits of fantasy and escape, we are left facing the actual problems and contradictions of our life.

  Jack Kornfield

  Practice, Old Habits, Suffering

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• The differing opinions regarding the gospel are often categorized as different variations of the same truth, or coming at the same truth from different angles, or even emphasizing different aspects of the same truth. This fails to recognize that the different 'variations' are often altogether different gospels. The Reformed gospel is completely different from the Roman Catholic gospel; a faith-based gospel is in direct contradiction to a works-based gospel; a truly evangelical gospel stands in contrast to an ultracharismatic gospel.

  Paul Washer

  Catholic, Different, Variation

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• In modern day evangelism, this precious doctrine [of regeneration] has been reduced to nothing more than a human decision to raise one's hand, walk an aisle, or pray a 'sinner's prayer.' As a result, the majority of Americans believe that they've been 'born again' even though their thoughts, words, and deeds are a continual contradiction to the nature and will of God.

  Paul Washer

  Prayer, Believe, Hands

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• An idle life and a holy heart is a contradiction.

  Thomas Brooks

  Heart, Holy, Idle

  Thomas Brooks (1820). “The privie key of heaven; or Twenty arguments for closet-prayer, in a select discourse”, p.205

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• Paradox implies that stating a contradiction disposes of it.

  Mason Cooley

  Paradox

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• Paradox likes contradictions with exits.

  Mason Cooley

  Likes, Exit, Paradox

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• . . . in one sense a foundation is a security blanket: If you meticulously follow the rules laid down, no paradoxes or contradictions will arise. In reality there is now no guarantee of this sort of security . . .

  Saunders Mac Lane

  Reality, Guarantees, Foundation

  Saunders Mac Lane (1986). “Mathematics, form and function”, Springer Verlag

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• God's love is so perfect that He lovingly requires us to obey His commandments because He knows that only through obedience to His laws can we become perfect, as He is. For this reason, God's anger and His wrath are not a contradiction of His love but an evidence of His love. Every parent knows that you can love a child totally and completely while still being creatively angry and disappointed at that child's self-defeating behavior.

  Dallin H. Oaks

  Children, Love Is, Wrath

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• You are really in search of yourself, without knowing it. You are love-longing for the love-worthy, the perfect lovable. Due to ignorance you are looking for it in the world of opposites and contradictions. When you find it within, your search will be over.

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Ignorance, Knowing, Opposites

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• The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. Where formerly life and death contended, now enduring being is made manifest-as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the appearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars.

  Joseph Campbell

  Stars, Destiny, Men

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• The reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not lifelessly but in the eternal process of movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Reflection, Men, Process

  "Materialism and Empirio-criticism: Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy (1908)". Book by Vladimir Lenin. Collected Works, Volume 14,

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• Whereas the comic confronts simply logical contradictions, the tragic confronts a moral predicament. Not minor matters of true andfalse but crucial questions of right and wrong, good and evil face the tragic character in a tragic situation.

  Marie Taylor Collins Swabey

  Character, Evil, Tragedy

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• The truth and regularity of a character is not, in justice, to be looked upon as broken, from any one single act or omission which may seem a contradiction to it:Mthe best of men appear sometimes to be strange compounds of contradictory qualities.

  Laurence Sterne

  Character, Men, Omission

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• The soul of a child is as complicated and full of contradictions as our soul is.

  Janusz Korczak

  Children, Soul, Complicated

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