Contradictory Quotes - Page 15

• It just struck me that one of the things about photography that made it such a compelling medium to deal with is that it is perhaps the most contradictory of mediums.

  Bill Henson

  Photography, Made, Mediums

  Source: www.americansuburbx.com

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• To keep doing this job [draw political cartoons] week after week, I think you have to want to change the world, while understanding that you can't. You have to hold both of those contradictory ideas simultaneously.

  Tom Tomorrow

  Jobs, Thinking, Ideas

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• It would be unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.

  Francis Bacon

  Mean, Self, Fancy

  1620 Novum Organum.

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• It's very contradictory for a man to teach about the murder in corporate capitalism, to isolate and expose the murderes behind it, to instruct that these madmen are completely without stops, are licentious, totally depraved — and then not make adequate preparations to defend himself from the madman's attack. Either they don't really believe their own spiel or they harbor some sort of subconscious death wish

  George Jackson

  Believe, Men, Preparation

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• Only the #‎ gospel can do two seemingly contradictory things: destroy pride and increase courage.

  John Piper

  Pride, Two, Increase

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• At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes-an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.

  Carl Sagan

  Attitude, Heart, Science

  "The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark". Ch. 17 : The Marriage of Skepticism and Wonder. Book by Carl Sagan, 1995.

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• The reflection and experience of many years have led me to consider the holy writings not only as the most authentic and instructive in themselves, but as the clue to all other history. They tell us what man is, and they alone tell us why he is what he is: a contradictory creature that seeing and approving of what is good, pursues and performs what is evil. All of private and public life is there displayed. ... From the same pure fountain of wisdom we learn that vice destroys freedom; that arbitrary power is founded on public immorality.

  Gouverneur Morris

  Writing, Reflection, Men

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• I think people have the capacity to be many different things and many seemingly contradictory behaviors.

  Richard Ayoade

  Thinking, People, Different

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Literature is about being a complex, contradictory human being.

  Julia Alvarez

  Literature, Humans, Complexes

  Source: ncac.org

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• The sea has this contradictory quality, that the more you see of it, the more it overwhelms the eye and disappears in its own brightness. Like a flame, whose meaning is light but whose centre is dark, it demands to be undefined.

  Alice Oswald

  Eye, Dark, Light

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• The contradictory, consuming, contested relationship between detail and whole, event an eventuality, breathes fire and wisdom in every great work of art.

  Russell Sherman

  Art, Fire, Events

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• We each create a story - a narritive, a picture, an allegory, a model - for what's going on in the universe. And then we fight - sometimes to the death - to make others believe in that model, or to be able to keep believing in it ourselves. In other words, we try to erase contradictory evidence to that model.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Believe, Fighting, Trying

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• Things will happen that seem to be totally contradictory, but these are God's arrangements. It was a wonderful day when I finally realized I don't have to explained or defend the will of God. My job is simply to obey it.

  Charles R. Swindoll

  Jobs, Wonderful, Gods Will

  Charles R. Swindoll (2007). “Wisdom for the Way: Wise Words for Busy People”, p.115, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• We are fragmented into so many different aspects. We don't know who we really are, or what aspects of ourselves we should identify with or believe in. So many contradictory voices, dictates, and feelings fight for control over our inner lives that we find ourselves scattered everywhere, in all directions, leaving nobody at home.

  Sogyal Rinpoche

  Buddhist, Believe, Home

  "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying". Book by Sogyal Rinpoche, www.businessinsider.com. 1992.

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• In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Self Esteem, Humility, Eye

  Eckhart Tolle (2008). “Oneness With All Life: Inspirational Selections from A New Earth”, p.47, Penguin

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• Reality the iconoclast once more. Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reality, Thinking, Feet

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.34, Faber & Faber

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• Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.

  Thomas Paine

  Atheist, Heart, Mean

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