Contradiction Quotes - Page 4

• To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

  Ayn Rand

  Thinking, Reality, Errors

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.260, Penguin

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• The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction.

  Benjamin Tucker

  Exercise, Two, Authority

  Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1972). “Instead of a Book”

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• I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ.

  Fidel Castro

  Jesus, Ideas, Saws

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Philosophical, Tautology, Shows

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2016). “Tractatus Logico Philosophicus”, p.15, Clube de Autores

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• Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.

  Andre Breton

  Death, Real, Believe

  "Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939". Book by Georges Bataille, p. 41, 1985.

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• He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

  Douglas Adams

  Reality, Afterlife, Religion

  Douglas Adams (2009). “Life, the Universe and Everything”, p.138, Pan Macmillan

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• There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights.

  Dorothy Height

  Rights, Law, Enforcement

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• What an antithetical mind! - tenderness, roughness - delicacy, coarseness - sentiment, sensuality - soaring and groveling, dirt and deity - all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay!

  Lord Byron

  Mind, Clay, Delicacy

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• I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.

  Georges Bataille

  Believe, Literature, Faces

  Georges Bataille (1984). “Violent silence: celebrating Georges Bataille”

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• Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

  Blaise Pascal

  Truth, Mathematics, Contradicting

  "Bare Facts and Naked Truths: A New Correspondence Theory of Truth". Book by George Englebretsen (p. 153), 2006.

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• There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Government, Community, Liberty

  "Southey's Colloquies on Society". Book by Thomas B. Macaulay, 1830.

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• I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Writing, Mad, Never Quit

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• What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.

  Roland Barthes

  Sarcastic, Time, Truth

  Roland Barthes (1973). “Mythologies”

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• The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.

  Thomas Merton

  Way, Mercy

  Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.148, Sounds True

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• People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Mean, People, Trying

  Oliver Wendell Holmes (2007). “Professor At The Breakfast Table”, p.33, Reprint Services Corporation

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• There is, I conceive, no contradiction in believing that mind is at once the cause of matter and of the development of individualised human minds through the agency of matter

  Alfred Russel Wallace

  Believe, Agency, Mind

  Alfred Russel Wallace (1991). “Alfred Russel Wallace: An Anthology of His Shorter Writings”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Lying, Together Again, Two

  Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (2009). “God and the State”, p.27, Cosimo, Inc.

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• But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.

  Garrett Hardin

  Real, Lying, Fire

  Garrett James Hardin (1982). “Naked emperors: essays of a taboo-stalker”, Course Technology Ptr

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• I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Order, Ontology

  Arturo Schwarz, Marcel Duchamp (1997). “The complete works of Marcel Duchamp”, Delano Greenridge Editions

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• Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.

  Eric Hobsbawm

  Past, People, History

  "Mapping the Nation". Book edited by Gopal Balakrishnan and Benedict Anderson, 1996.

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• Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.

  Thomas Hardy

  Practice, Principles, Constitution

  Thomas Hardy (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)”, p.1305, Delphi Classics

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  Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Confidence, Dream, Mistake

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.206, Harvard University Press

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• God is, as it were, the sewer into which all contradictions flow.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  God, Atheism, Flow

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• Let us, cautious in diction, And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully.

  Martin Buber

  Life, Diction, Power Of Love

  "Power and Love". Poem by Martin Buber, 1926.

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• Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.

  Audre Lorde

  Inspiring, Harmony

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.31, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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