Contradiction Quotes - Page 36

• The task for me is to not only comprehend the world, but to change the world. I would like to see a world where America lives up to its ideals, and resolves the contradiction between reality and principles.

  Ronald Takaki

  Reality, America, Principles

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• Leadership without mutual trust is a contradiction in terms.

  Stephen Covey

  Term, Mutual, Mutual Trust

  Stephen M. R. Covey (2012). “Smart Trust”, p.201, Simon and Schuster

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• I think being an activist and an artist is an interesting contradiction, because so often they are at odds with one another. When you write as an artist you have to clean the palate of your own politics in creating characters and activism is kind of the exact opposite.

  Eve Ensler

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  "Avocados and Vaginas". Interview with Joe Saxon, www.thestateofthearts.co.uk. May 16, 2015.

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• When you're an immigrant, you're at the bottom of the ladder. You might not be at the bottom of the ladder economically. Those contradictions led me to feel that the role in society I was given didn't jive with my sense of myself. I think, in fact, that is the case with most people. Everybody feels themselves to be in an original relationship to creation, and feels confined by their social role.

  Vijay Seshadri

  Thinking, People, Ladders

  "You Are Vijay Seshadri". Interview with Laura Standley, logger.believermag.com. June 10, 2014.

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• Big business is basic to the very life of this country; and yet many -perhaps most - Americans have a deep-seated fear and an emotional repugnance to it. Here is monumental contradiction.

  David Lilienthal

  Country, Emotional, Bigs

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• it is impossible for any mind of common honesty not to be revolted by the contradictions in their principles and practice. They inveigh against the governments of Europe, because, as they say, they favor the powerful and oppress the weak. ... [yet] you will see them with one hand hoisting the cap of liberty, and with the other flogging their slaves. You will see them one hour lecturing their mob on the indefeasible rights of man, and the next driving from their homes the children of the soil, whom they have bound themselves to protect by the most solemn treaties.

  Frances Trollope

  Children, Honesty, Powerful

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• A cat is a purring parcel of paradox, a cunning collection of contradictions. A cat is lazy and busy, dainty and savage, affectionate and aloof, greedy and finicky, sound asleep in one instant, and awake and stalking in the next. A cat is a limp puddle of softness, surrounding a steel-hard and ever-alert set of muscles. ... A cat has the face of a pansy flower, and is just as velvety. A cat holds infinity in her eyes, and your heart in her front paws.

  Leonore Fleischer

  Flower, Heart, Cat

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• When Catullus expresses his love and hate for Lesbia, he is not obviously voicing a wish to rid himself of one or the other of these two sentiments. Not all contradictions resolve into temporal change of belief or desire.

  Raymond Geuss

  Hate, Two, Wish

  Raymond Geuss (2008). “Philosophy and Real Politics”, p.3, Princeton University Press

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• I would much rather sit, dimmed by inattention, and study the atmosphere and the silence and dance between people, but often times I’m not offered this privilege. The necessity for isolation, and the striving for popularity is the only contradiction I find in being a writer and an actress.

  Masiela Lusha

  People, Silence, Atmosphere

  "REEL Lady: Masiela Lusha". REEL Ladies Interview, reelladies.wordpress.com. September 1, 2008.

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• Nothing that rest on some contradictory basis shall succeed or last in the long run ("ne saurait réussir ou durer, à la longue", Fr.); all that involve (or imply...) a contradiction is fatally destined, early or late, to disintegrate and disappear.

  African Spir

  Running, Long, Succeed

  "Paroles d'un sage: Choix de pensées d'African Spir" ("Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir") by Hélène Claparède-Spir, (p. 37), 1937.

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• All my life I have been acutely aware of a contradiction in the very nature of my existence. For forty-five years I struggled to resolve this dilemma by writing plays and novels. The more I wrote, the more I realized mere words were not enough. So I found another form of expression.

  Yukio Mishima

  Writing, Expression, Years

  "Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters". Biography, www.imdb.com. September 12, 1985.

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• Remember us in your prayers that we grow not weary in well doing. It is hard to work for years with pure motives, and all the time be looked upon by most of those to whom our lives are devoted as having some sinister object in view. Disinterested labor - benevolence - is so out of their line of thought, that many look upon us as having some ulterior object in view; but He who died for us, and Whom we ought to copy, did more for us than we can do for any one else. He endured the contradiction of sinners. We should have grace to follow in His steps.

  David Livingstone

  Prayer, Views, Should Have

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• As far as the game of marbles is concerned, there is therefore no contradiction between the egocentric practice of games and the mystical respect entertained for rules. This respect is the mark of a mentality fashioned, not by free cooperation between equals, but by adult constraint.

  Jean Piaget

  Practice, Games, Adults

  Jean Piaget (1997). “The Moral Judgement of the Child”, p.62, Simon and Schuster

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• We must learn to live with contradictions, because they lead to deeper and more effective understanding.

  Edward Teller

  Understanding, Deeper

  "Science and Morality". Science, Vol. 280, (p. 1200), 1998.

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• Who trades in contradictions will not be contradicted.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Trade

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to reason ; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us? I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis, I mean a necessary dialectical tool.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Mean, Heart, Silence

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1888). “System of Economical Contradictions: Or, The Philosophy of Misery”

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• I want to die at a hundred years old with an American flag on my back and the star of Texas on my helmet, after screaming down an Alpine descent on a bicycle at 75 miles per hour. I want to cross one last finish line as my wife and my ten children applaud, and then I want to lie down in a field of those famous French sunflowers and gracefully expire, the perfect contradiction to my once anticipated poignant early demise.

  Lance Armstrong

  Stars, Children, Lying

  "It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life". Book by Lance Armstrong, 2001.

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• You can’t teach art, so ART SCHOOL is a contradiction in terms.

  Duane Michals

  Art, School, Teach

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• The negative way [of describing God] is a cardboard prop of Christianity to conceal its unknowable God. When this prop collapses, theistic agnosticism emerges, complete with its package of contradictions and non-sensical utterances.

  George H. Smith

  Negative, Utterance, Way

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• Do not mathematics and all sciences seem full of contradictions and impossibilities to the ignorant, which are all resolved and cleared to those that understand them?

  Richard Baxter

  Ignorant, Mathematics, Seems

  Richard Baxter (1830). “The Practical Works of Richard Baxter: with a Life of the Author and a Critical Examination of His Writings by William Orme”, p.206

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• Revolutionary practice in any field of human existence develops by itself if one comprehends the contradictions in every new process; it consists in siding with those forces which act in the direction of progressive development.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Practice, Development, Fields

  "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1933.

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• There are more ways of killing a cat than drowning it in butter; but this is the sort of thing (as the proverb indicates) we overlook: there are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely.

  J. L. Austin

  Cat, Way, Speech

  "How to Do Things with Words". Book by J. L. Austin, p. 48, 1975.

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• We must face the ultimate contradiction that our free and democratic society was made possible by massive slave labor.

  David Brion Davis

  Slave Labor, Faces, Made

  David Brion Davis (2008). “Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World”, p.6, Oxford University Press

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• All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.

  William James

  Happiness, Natural, Breaths

  William James, Robert D Richardson (2010). “The Heart of William James”, p.219, Harvard University Press

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• True, more than a half of the green graves in the Grafton cemetery are marked "Unknown," and sometimes it occurs that one thinks of the contradiction involved in "honoring the memory" of him of whom no memory remains to honor; but the attempt seems to do no great harm to the living, even to the logical.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Memories, Thinking, Honor

  Ambrose Bierce (2002). “Shadows of Blue & Gray: The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce”, p.280, Forge Books

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