Contradiction Quotes - Page 38

• The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It is only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Character, Personality, Problem

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.21, Open Road Media

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• Optimism, then, is a fact within my own heart. But as I look out upon life, my heart meets no contradiction. The outward world justifies my inward universe of good.

  Helen Keller

  Heart, Optimism, Facts

  Helen Keller (2012). “Optimism”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• The world is full of contradiction.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  World

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• On the whole, I would bid you stand up to your work, whatever it may be, and not be afraid of it; not in sorrows or contradictions to yield, but to push on towards the goal.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Yield, Goal, Training

  Thomas Carlyle, Henry Duff Traill (2010). “The Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.480, Cambridge University Press

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• Writer's block is a natural affliction. Writers who have never experienced it have something wrong with them. It means there isn't enough friction-that they aren't making enough of an effort to reconcile the contradictions of life. All you get is sweet monotonous flow. Writer's block is nothing to commit suicide over. It simply indicates some imbalance between your experience and your art, and I think that's constructive.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Suicide, Sweet, Art

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• You stay young as long as you can learn, acquire new habits, and suffer contradictions.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Long, Suffering, Youth

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• I wanted to start a website for teenaged girls that was not kind of this one-dimensional strong character empowerment thing, because one thing that can be very alienating about a misconception of feminism is that girls then think that to be feminists, they have to live up to being perfectly consistent in their beliefs, never being insecure, never having doubts, having all the answers...and this is not true and actually, recognizing all the contradictions I was feeling became easier once I realized that feminism was not a rule book but a discussion, a conversation, a process.

  Tavi Gevinson

  Girl, Strong, Badass

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• Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind's faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which stemma to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should have a self-evident absurdity -namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth.

  Mary Baker Eddy

  Life, Pain, Mistake

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• In it he proves that all things are true and states how the truths of all contradictions may be reconciled physically, such as for example that white is black and black is white; that one can be and not be at the same time; that there can be hills without valleys; that nothingness is something and that everything, which is, is not. But take note that he proves all these unheard-of paradoxes without any fallacious or sophistical reasoning.

  Cyrano de Bergerac

  Philosophical, White, Black

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• Much of the left's hate speech bears greater similarity to a psychological disorder than to standard political discourse. The hatred is blinding, producing logical contradictions that would be impossible to sustain were it not for the central element faith plays in the left's new religion. The basic tenet of their faith is this: Maybe they were wrong about their facts and policies, but they are good and conservatives are evil. You almost want to give it to them. It's all they have left.

  Ann Coulter

  Hate, Psychological Disorders, Play

  "Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right". Book by Ann Coulter, 2002.

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• A good addiction is a contradiction in terms. Anything people can't give up or must have is not healthy, no matter what the activity.

  Jody Dean

  Giving Up, Addiction, People

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• No society can exist if respect for the law does not to some extent prevail; but the surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction, the citizen finds himself in the cruel dilemma of either losing his moral sense or of losing respect for the law, two evils of which one is as great as the other, and between which it is difficult to choose.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Law, Two, Evil

  "Selected Essays on Political Economy". Book by Frederic Bastiat edited by George B. de Huszar (translated), 1964.

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• There is a point where in the mystery of existence contradictions meet; where movement is not all movement and stillness is not all stillness; where the idea and the form, the within and the without, are united; where infinite becomes finite, yet not losing its infinity. If this meeting is dissolved, then things become unreal.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Ideas, Infinity, Movement

  Rabindranath Tagore, Mohit Kumar Ray (2007). “Essays”, p.364, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• It turns out most of the conclusions that I've come to in life have equally valid contradictions. I think it's true you need to make a plan, set a goal and stick to it, but I would also advise: Don't keep your eyes so fixed on your goal that you miss what sneaks up to surprise you, because magic will come from unexpected places.

  Paul Reiser

  Eye, Thinking, Goal

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• It would be gross understatement to say that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of clarity. It is in many important respects a model of ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction.

  Antonin Scalia

  Self, Important, Would Be

  "Bells Lose High Court Ruling" by Joanna Glasner, www.wired.com. January 25, 1999.

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• You are a woman: you must never speak what you think; your words must contradict your thoughts, but your actions may contradict your words.

  William Congreve

  Thinking, May, Action

  William Congreve (1747). “Love for Love. A Comedy: Written by Mr. Congreve”, p.44

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• There is no way that you can read the entire Bible seriously and take every word literally. Contradictions start in the first chapter of Genesis. There are two Creation stories, two stories of the making of Adam and Eve. And that is all right. The Bible is still true.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Two, Stories, Way

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• There is unquestionably a contradiction between an efficient technological machine and the flowering of human nature, of the human personality.

  Arthur Miller

  Technology, Personality, Machines

  Arthur Miller, Matthew Charles Roudané (1987). “Conversations with Arthur Miller”, p.145, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Fall, Omnipotence

  "Polyphonic Thinking and the Divine". Book by Jim Kanaris (p. 58), 2013.

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• It is quite easy to remark the absurdities and contradictions of a country's social system from outside its borders, but very difficult if one has been brought up in it.

  Doris Lessing

  Country, Borders, Easy

  Doris May Lessing (1991). “Martha Quest”, Plume

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• Contradictions in human character are one of its most consistent notes.

  Muriel Spark

  Character, Notes, Consistent

  Muriel Spark (2014). “Loitering with Intent”, p.16, New Directions Publishing

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• Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that overlooked these differences.

  Albert Camus

  Believe, Europe, Civilization

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.243, Vintage

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• There's an inherent contradiction between appreciating the beauty of clothes and creativity and individuality, and the waste around the ideas of trends and seasons.

  Lily Cole

  Creativity, Ideas, Clothes

  "Vivienne Westwood vs Lily Cole". Interview with Bertie Brandes, www.dazeddigital.com. December 16, 2013.

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• I've come to the conclusion that beautiful women in the West aren't comfortable finding strength in their femininity. They want to do masculine-oriented things to establish their femininity. It's a contradiction.

  Wesley Snipes

  Beautiful, Want, West

  "Wesley Snipes: The Wisdom of Wesley". Interview with Lawrence Grobel, movieline.com. August 1, 1998.

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• Providence has fixed the limits of human enjoyment by immovable boundaries, and has set different gratifications at such a distance from each other, that no art or power can bring them together. This great law it is the business of every rational being to understand, that life may not pass away in an attempt to make contradictions consistent, to combine opposite qualities, and to unite things which the nature of their being must always keep asunder.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Distance, Law

  Samuel Johnson, William Page (1860). “Life and Writings”, p.148

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