Contradiction Quotes - Page 34

• We have never been more detached from one another, or lonelier. In a world consumed by ever more novel modes of socializing, we have less and less actual society. We live in an accelerating contradiction: The more connected we become, the lonelier we are.

  Stephen Marche

  World, Novel, Connected

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• The Christian idea of a perfect heaven that is something other than a non-existence is a contradiction in terms.

  Aldous Huxley

  Christian, Ideas, Perfect

  Aldous Huxley (1969). “Great Short Works of Aldous Huxley”

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• Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.

  James A. Baldwin

  America, Society, Battle

  "Notes of a Native Son". Book by James Baldwin, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 21, 1955.

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• There's a constant contradiction between what feels good and what feels right. But you live with decisions that you make in your life.

  Randy Travis

  Philosophy, Feel Good, Decision

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• If we celebrate life with all its contradictions, embrace, experience, and ultimately live with it, a chance exists for a spiritual life filled not only with pain and untidiness, but also with joy, community, and creativity.

  Derrick Jensen

  Life, Spiritual, Pain

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• We are caught in the contradiction of finding life a rather perplexing puzzle which causes us a lot of misery, and at the same time being dimly aware of the boundless, limitless nature of life. So we begin looking for an answer to the puzzle.

  Joko Beck

  Answers, Causes, Misery

  "Everyday Zen: Love and Work" by Charlotte J. Beck, HarperCollins, (p. 12), October 6, 2009.

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• An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.

  Frances Wright

  Errors, May, Opinion

  Frances Wright (1850). “A few days in Athens: being the translation of a Greek manuscript discovered in Herculaneum”, p.166

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• I do hope I play out the contradictions that I feel, all the anxieties and dilemmas. If they're there in the work, then that's brilliant.

  Jenny Saville

  Artist, Play, Anxiety

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• Your desires will very often be contradictory and so will your strengths. All of our contradictions make us whole.

  Danielle LaPorte

  Often Is, Desire, Contradictory

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• The usual marriage in traditional cultures was arranged for by the families. It wasn't a person-to-person decision at all. . . . In the Middle Ages, that was the kind of marriage that was sanctified by the Church. And so the troubadour idea of real person-to-person Amor was very dangerous. . . . It is in direct contradiction to the way of the Church. The word AMOR spelt backwards is ROMA, the Roman Catholic Church, which was justifying marriages that were simply political and social in their character. And so came this movement validating individual choice, what I call following your bliss.

  Joseph Campbell

  Real, Character, Individual Choice

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• The gospel is the fulfillment of all hopes, the perfection of all philosophy, the interpretation of all revelation, the key to all the seeming contradictions of the physical and moral world.

  Max Muller

  Philosophy, Keys, Perfection

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 287, 1895.

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• The longer I live, the more I am certified that men, in all that relates to their own health, have not common sense! whether it be their pride, or their impatience, or their obstinancy, or their ingrained spirit of contradiction, that stupefies and misleads them, the result is always a certain amount of idiocy, or distraction in their dealings with their own bodies! ... either by their wild impatience of bodily suffering, and the exaggerated moan they make over it, or else by their reckless defiance of it, and neglect of every dictate of prudence!

  Jane Welsh Carlyle

  Pride, Men, Common Sense

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• If you do not assume the law of non-contradiction, you have nothing to argue about. If you do not assume the principles of sound reason, you have nothing to argue with. If you do not assume libertarian free will, you have no one to argue against. If you do not assume morality to be an objective commodity, you have no reason to argue in the first place.

  William J. Murray

  Law, Sound, Principles

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• A proud faith is as much a contradiction as a humble devil.

  Stephen Charnock

  Humble, Devil, Proud

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• The philosophy of love and peace strangely overlooked who was in possession of the guns. There had been love and peace for some time on the continent of Africa because for all this time black men had been captivated by the doctrines of Christianity. It took them centuries to realize its contradictions. ... perhaps there was no greater crime as yet than all the lies Western civilization had told in the name of Jesus Christ.

  Bessie Head

  Jesus, Lying, Philosophy

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• Of all the systems - if indeed a bundle of contradictions and absurdities may be called a system - which human nature in its moments of intoxication has produced, that which men have contrived with a view to forming the minds and regulating the conduct of women, is perhaps the most completely absurd.

  Mary Hays

  Men, Views, Mind

  Mary Hays (1974). “Appeal to the men of Great Britain in behalf of women”, Dissertations-G

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• The amplest knowledge has the largest faith. Ignorance is always incredulous. Tell an English cottager that the belfries of Swedish churches are crimson, and his own white steeple furnishes him with a contradiction.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Ignorance, White, Church

  Robert Aris WILLMOTT (1851). “Pleasures,objects and advantages of literature”, p.121

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• Most People are wretched more by the Fears of what may come, than what they endure at present. ... a manifest Contradiction to good Sense; for who, with the right use of that, wou'd lose the Enjoyment of a present Comfort, to lament a Misfortune only in Supposition; which ten to one never comes to pass.

  Eliza Haywood

  Fear, People, Live In The Moment

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• The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into the magic aura are not dealt with rationally but by a specific type of pseudo-reasoning. Absurdities and contradictions are made acceptable by specious rationalizations.

  Arthur Koestler

  Mind, Magic, Atheism

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• Had the Bible been in clear straightforward language, had the ambiguities and contradictions been edited out, and had the language been constantly modernised to accord with contemporary taste it would almost certainly have been, or become, a work of lesser influence.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Atheism, Taste, Language

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• I do know without fear of contradiction what the definition of life is and it is 12 words long. 'Life is defined by how much you improve the lives of others.'

  Keith Olbermann

  Long, Definitions, Life Is

  Cornell Senior Convocation Speech, May 23, 1998.

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• It must be obvious...that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.

  Shunryu Suzuki

  Wisdom, Fluidity, Obvious

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• 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.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Moving, Successful, Power

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Chap. 7 : Majority Rules, 1960.

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• God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions: the theologian it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three.

  J. L. Mackie

  Two, Evil, Essentials

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• One of the fundamental preconditions of successful socialist construction is to ensure the people's readiness to defend themselves from the ravages of probable regional or global wars on the basis of the balance of forces generating from the basic contradictions of our epoch.

  Mengistu Haile Mariam

  War, Successful, People

  "Revolutionary Ethiopia: From Empire to People's Republic". Book by Edmund J. Keller, 1991.

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