Contrary Quotes - Page 16

• For WAR, consisteth not in Battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to content by Battle is sufficiently known.... So the nature of War, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

  Thomas Hobbes

  War, Fighting, Battle

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• Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men's preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men's wills such as men would have them.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Hurt, Men, Election

  Thomas Hobbes (1839). “Of Liberty and Necessity; a treatise, wherein all controversy concerning predestination, election, free will, grace, merits, reprobation, etc. is fully decided and cleared. New edition”, p.18

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• Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagious illness. They have remained standing with the symptoms and have interpreted these in manifold and contrary ways. Some have regarded it as a merely local ill. The most ingenious opponents have pressed for castration. They well noticed that this alleged illness is nothing other than the crisis of beginning puberty.

  Novalis

  Clever, Opponents, Way

  "Pollen and Fragments". Book by Novalis. Fragment No. 105, 1798.

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• What praise is implied in the simple epithet useful! What reproach in the contrary.

  David Hume

  Simple, Praise, Epithet

  David Hume (2010). “Moral and Political Philosophy”, p.262, Simon and Schuster

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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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• Enthusiasm, being the infirmity of bold and ambitious tempers, is naturally accompanied with a spirit of liberty; as superstition,on the contrary, renders men tame and abject, and fits them for slavery.

  David Hume

  Men, Liberty, Ambitious

  David Hume (1875). “Essays Moral, Political, and Literary”, p.149

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• It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. It is not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian, or person wholly unknown to me. It is as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledged lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter.

  David Hume

  World, Littles, Ruins

  A Treatise upon Human Nature bk. 2 (1739)

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• I claim that relativity and the rest of modern physics is not complicated. It can be explained very simply. It is only unusual or, put another way, it is contrary to common sense.

  Edward Teller

  Simple, Common Sense, Way

  Edward Teller, Wendy Teller, Wilson Talley (2013). “Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics”, p.2, Basic Books

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• Racial discrimination in elections in Texas is no mere historical artifact. To the contrary, Texas has been found in violation of the Voting Rights Act in every redistricting cycle from and after 1970.

  Ruth Bader Ginsburg

  Reality, Rights, Texas

  "Ruth Bader Ginsburg Pens Scathing Dissent On Texas Voter ID Law" By Braden Goyette, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 18, 2014.

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• When we suddenly awake to the realization that there is no barrier, and never has been, one realizes that one is all things mountains, rivers, grasses, trees, sun, moon, stars, universe are all oneself. There is no longer a division or barrier between myself and others, no longer any feeling of alienation or fear there is nothing apart from oneself and therefore nothing to fear. Realizing this results in true compassion. Other people and things are not seen as apart from oneself but, on the contrary, as one's own body.

  Bruce Lee

  Stars, Moon, Compassion

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• There is not a single rule, however plausible, and however firmly grounded in epistemology, that is not violated at some time or other. It becomes evident that such violations are not accidental events, they are not results of insufficient knowledge or of inattention which might have been avoided. On the contrary, we see that they are necessary for progress.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Science, Progress, Events

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.14, Verso

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• Education belongs pre-eminently to the church ... neutral or lay schools from which religion is excluded are contrary to the fundamental principles of education.

  Pope Pius XI

  Education, School, Church

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• Newton's theory is not 'not right', it just does not cover all distances. Contrary to popular belief, theories in science are not proven wrong, they are just replaced by more complete and convenient theories. To sound provocative, even the geocentric theory was never "proven" wrong, it is just not as convenient as the heliocentric theory, since it requires endless epicycles.

  Nathan Seiberg

  Distance, Science, Sound

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• Removing religious symbols from public places is not neutrality. On the contrary, it sends a highly negative message - that religion is something shameful, embarrassing, or at best strictly private.

  Charles Colson

  Christian, Religious, Messages

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• There appears to be but two grand master passions or movers in the human mind, namely, love and pride. And what constitutes the beauty or deformity of a man's character is the choice he makes under which banner he determines to enlist himself. But there is a strong distinction between different degress in the same thing and a mixture of two contraries.

  Sarah Fielding

  Strong, Passion, Character

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• The truth is paradoxical to the extent of being exactly contrary to the usual perception.

  Georges Bataille

  Perception, Usual, Truth Is

  Georges Bataille (1988). “The accursed share: an essay on general economy”

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• Extended families have never been the norm in America; the highest figure for extended-family households ever recorded in Americanhistory is 20 percent. Contrary to the popular myth that industrialization destroyed "traditional" extended families, this high point occurred between 1850 and 1885, during the most intensive period of early industrialization. Many of these extended families, and most "producing" families of the time, depended on the labor of children; they were held together by dire necessity and sometimes by brute force.

  Stephanie Coontz

  Children, America, Together

  Stephanie Coontz (2016). “The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap”, p.25, Basic Books

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• People tend to be clueless about prices. Contrary to economic theory, we don't really decide between A and B by consulting our invisible price tags and purchasing the one that yields the higher utility, he says. We make do with guesstimates and a vague recollection of what things are “supposed to cost.”

  William Poundstone

  Clueless, Price Tag, Yield

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• The gospel of grace is not the license to sin. On the contrary, it is the power for them to sin no more!

  Joseph Prince

  Grace, Sin, License

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• I believe that all women of working ages and physical capacity, regardless of income, should be expected to earn their livings either in or out of the home. Until this attitude prevails I believe the position of women will be uncertain and undignified, in spite of poetic rhapsodies to the contrary.

  Mary Barnett Gilson

  Attitude, Believe, Home

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• To say that an idea is necessary is simply to affirm that we cannot conceive the contrary; and the fact that we cannot conceive the contrary of any belief may be a presumption, but is certainly no proof, of its truth.

  Thomas Huxley

  Truth, Ideas, May

  Thomas Henry Huxley (1908). “Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of Thomas Henry Huxley”, p.157, Library of Alexandria

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• Male initiation does not move toward machoism; on the contrary, it moves toward achieving a cultivated heart before we die.

  Robert Bly

  Moving, Heart, Males

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• If we want to read and to pray the prayers of the Bible and especially the Psalms, therefore, we must not ask first what they have to do with us, but what they have to do with Jesus Christ...It does not depend, therefore, on whether the Psalms express adequately that which we feel at a given moment in our heart. If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Jesus, Prayer, Heart

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• Contrary to many of the rumors and innuendo in circulation, I wholeheartedly believe that Obama views Israels security as absolute.

  Edgar Bronfman, Sr.

  Believe, Israel, Views

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• To the young mind every thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground whereby contrary and remote things cohere and flower out from one stem.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Flower, Thinking

  "The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature addresses and lectures", Vol. 1, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Library, 2006.

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