Contradiction Quotes - Page 9

• Really, each era has its own false nostalgia. We all put a picket fence up around something. For my generation it was the '50s, and for other generations it will be something else. Change is scary for everyone, as is complexity, contradiction, and an uncertain future.

  Gary Ross

  Scary, Generations, Eras

  Interview with Joshua Klein, www.avclub.com. October 21, 1998.

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• The New York gallery scene being as incredibly overpopulated and overmoneyed as it is, deep conflicts and contradictions aren't hard to find.

  Jerry Saltz

  New York, Conflict, Scene

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• The theory of the permanent revolution, in contradiction to the theory of socialism in one country, was recognized by the entire Bolshevik party during the period from 1917 to 1923.

  Leon Trotsky

  Country, Party, Revolution

  Source: www.marxists.org

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• I hope when people ask what you're going to do with your English degree and/or creative writing degree you'll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say, Oh.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Motivation, Writing, People

  Cheryl Strayed (2013). “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone Who’s Been There”, p.98, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Autumn is the very soul of metamorphosis, a time when the world is poised at the door of winter - which is the door of death - but has not yet fallen. It is a world of contradictions: a time of harvest and plenty but also of cold and hardship. Here we dwell in the midst of life, but we know most keenly that all things must pass away and shrivel. Autumn turns the world from one thing into another. The year is seasoned and wise but not yet decrepit or senile.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Wise, Autumn, Winter

  Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making”, p.141, Macmillan

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• Making art now means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither an audience nor reward. Making the work you want to make means setting aside these doubts so that you may see clearly what you have done, and thereby see where to go next. Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself.

  David Bayles

  Art, Mean, Doubt

  David Bayles, Ted Orland (2001). “Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking”, p.2, Image Continuum Press

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• Individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Character, Self, Individual

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• Christianity - An old metaphysical romance, filled with marvels, contradictions, and absurdity, born in the ardent imagination of Orientals, has spread into our Europe. Enthusiasts have purveyed it, careerists have pretended to accept it, imbeciles have believed it.

  Frederick The Great

  Europe, Imagination, Romance

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• In Afghan society, parents play a central role in the lives of their children; the parent-child relationship is fundamental to who you are and what you become and how you perceive yourself, and it is laden with contradictions, with tension, with anger, with love, with loathing, with angst.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Children, Play, Parent

  "Barnes & Noble interview with Khaled Hosseini". Interview with James Mustich, www.csmonitor.com. November 24, 2008.

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• In the contradiction lies the hope.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Lying

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• Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE.

  Tristan Tzara

  Color, Opposites, Roaring

  "Dada manifesto" by Tristan Tzara, translated by Robert Motherwell, (1918); as quotes in "Dada Painters and Poets" by Robert Motherwell, New York, (pp. 78-81), 1951.

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• Whatever of goodness emanates from the soul, gathers its soft halo in the eyes; and if the heart be a lurking place of crime, the eyes are sure to betray the secret. A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction assent, an enraged eye makes beauty a deformity; so you see, forsooth, the little organ plays no inconsiderable, if not a dominant, part.

  Arthur Frederick Saunders

  Beautiful, Eye, Heart

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• Suppose a student of mine writes in her exam that "morality is completely relative to culture, so nothing is absolutely right or wrong. Because of that, it is absolutely wrong to be culturally intolerant". This student, if she believes what she writes, believes a contradiction. She ought not to believe the contradiction - it's a basic epistemic norm. This is true even if she can't avoid believing it - no amount of studying will show her the light.

  Nomy Arpaly

  Believe, Writing, Culture

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.

  William Golding

  Animal, Men, Fire

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• In the vocabulary of certain radical theorists contradictions are given the status of some deadly disease to which their opponents alone can succumb. But contradictions are the very stuff of life. If there had been a little dash of contradiction among the Gadarene swine some of them might have been saved from drowning.

  Chinua Achebe

  Vocabulary, Disease, Opponents

  Chinua Achebe (1988). “Anthills of the Savannah”, p.100, Heinemann

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• To exist (in mathematics), said Henri Poincaré, is to be free from contradiction. But mere existence does not guarantee survival. To survive in mathematics requires a kind of vitality that cannot be described in purely logical terms.

  Mark Kac

  Survival, Vitality, Doe

  Mark Kac, Stanislaw M. Ulam (1968). “Mathematics and Logic”, p.8, Courier Corporation

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• There is yet another kind of matrimonial dialect (which naturally succeeds this of talking at each other), which may very properlybe styled The Language Contradictory.... In the former, however plain the object of satire may be exhibited to the whole company, yet there always remains some little covering.... But in this last method, the defiance becomes more open and the impetuosity with which these contradictions are uttered (although the subjects of them are often of the most indifferent nature) evidently prove that they arise from passion.

  Sarah Fielding

  Marriage, Passion, Talking

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• You are not supposed to get it. It's a paradox. All of mathematics is built on paradoxes. That's the biggest paradox of all-all this orderliness, and at the heart, impossibility. Contradiction. Heaven built on the foundations of hell.

  David Leavitt

  Heart, Science, Heaven

  David Leavitt (2009). “The Indian Clerk”, p.225, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• What a weak, credulous, incredulous, unbelieving, superstitious, bold, frightened, what a ridiculous world ours is, as far as concerns the mind of man. How full of inconsistencies, contradictions and absurdities it is. I declare that taking the average of many minds that have recently come before me ... I should prefer the obedience, affections and instinct of a dog before it.

  Michael Faraday

  Dog, Men, Average

  Michael Faraday, F. James (1999). “The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, Volume 4: 1849-1855”, p.542, IET

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• There seems to be an unalterable contradiction between the human mind and its employments. How can a soul be a merchant? What relation to an immortal being have the price of linseed, the brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit petty expenses and charge for carriage paid? The soul ties its shoes; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous.

  Walter Bagehot

  Shoes, Ties, Hands

  Walter Bagehot, Norman St. John-Stevas (1959). “Walter Bagehot: A Study of His Life and Thought, Together with a Selection from His Political Writings”, London : Eyre & Spottiswoode

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• It seems certain, that though a man, in a flush of humour, after intense reflection on the many contradictions and imperfections of human reason, may entirely renounce all belief and opinion, it is impossible for him to persevere in this total scepticism, or make it appear in his conduct for a few hours.

  David Hume

  Men, Reflection, Imperfection

  David Hume, Peter Millican (2008). “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, p.153, Oxford University Press

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• Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary implies a contradiction. Nothing, that is distinctly conceivable, implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is no being, whose existence is demonstrable.

  David Hume

  Death, Afterlife, Being There

  David Hume (2005). “Dialogues sur la religion naturelle”, p.244, Vrin

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• Sameness leaves us in peace but it is contradiction that makes us productive.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Sameness, Productivity, Productive

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• After Trump's election victory, I explained why there would be no friendship between Putin and Trump. The contradictions between the systems are too great. And Putin needs an enemy. He wants to be the leader of the anti-American, anti-European world. And given that he cannot be friends with their heads of state and government, he instead needs to generate scandals and resistance.

  Alexei Navalny

  Leader, Enemy, Victory

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• At this point, we are living one of the greatest experiments in humankind - to create something that has, throughout history, been considered a contradiction in terms - a passionate marriage. Passion has always existed, but it took place somewhere else. Everything that we wanted from a traditional marriage - companionship, family, children, economic support, a best friend, a passionate lover, a trusted confidante, an intellectual equal - we are asking from one person what an entire village once provided. And couples are crumbling under the weight of so much expectation.

  Esther Perel

  Children, Couple, Passion

  Source: wbur.org

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