Contrary Quotes - Page 23

• Nothing is impossible to us, except of course, that which is contrary to the laws of nature and the Universe.

  Emile Coue

  Law, Impossible, Courses

  Émile Coué (1923). “My method, including American impressions”

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• The lesson of the way of love is that evil can only be overcome by good. We don't need to reach out and tear down the things that are evil because nothing which is contrary to the law of love can endure.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Love Is, Law, Evil

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• If you do not read and listen to the opposite ideas, you can always remain a stupid person! Opposite ideas, however contrary they may sound, are your greater chances on the way to truth!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Stupid, Opposites, Ideas

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• We’re such contrary creatures

  David Malouf

  Creatures

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• I say that in narrative paintings one should mingle direct contraries close by, because they produce strong contrasts with one another, and all the more so when they are very close together; that is, the ugly next to the beautiful, the big to the small, the old to the young, the strong to the weak; in this way you will vary as much as possible and close by.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Beautiful, Strong, Together

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• I don't paint women, I paint pictures. . . What I am after above all is expression. If in a portrait I put eyes, a nose, a mouth, there isn't much use; on the contrary it paralyses the imagination of the spectator, and obliges us to see the person in a certain way.

  Henri Matisse

  Eye, Expression, Imagination

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• Let not therefore thy heart be troubled, neither let it fear. Trust in me, and put thy confidence in my mercy. When thou thinkest thyself farthest off from me, oftentimes I am nearest unto thee. When thou countest almost all to be lost, then oftentimes the greatest gain of reward is close at hand. All is not lost, when any thing falleth out contrary. Thou oughtest not to judge according to present feeling; nor so to take any grief, or give thyself over to it.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Grief, Heart, Hands

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• Chess computers do not sweat during time pressure and commit costly blunders. Furthermore, the strength of these programs (over and above their faultless recall processes) lies in their capacity to make relatively superficial tactical decisions with incredible speed. Positional values, long-range strategy, aesthetic judgment, and political astuteness remain staples of human performance, man vs. machine results in the foreseeable future to the contrary not withstanding.

  Ira Carmen

  Lying, Men, Sweat

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• For if many ill-conceived plans have succeeded through the still greater lack of judgment of an opponent, many more, apparently well laid, have on the contrary ended in disgrace. The confidence with which we form our schemes is never completely justified in their execution; speculation is carried on in safety, but, when it comes to action, fear causes failure.

  Thucydides

  Safety, Opponents, Causes

  Thucydides (1996). “The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War”

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• Atheism in not simply beyond reason, it is contrary to reason.

  Dave Hunt

  Atheism, Reason

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• There are genuine questions to be asked about why we now have the highest level of employment in many decades, contrary to the position during the boom-bust years of the Conservatives.

  Douglas Alexander

  Years, Employment, Levels

  House of Commons debate, www.publications.parliament.uk. June 6, 2006.

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• We are told that Sin consists in acting contrary to God's commands, but we are also told that God is omnipotent. . . . This leads to frightful results. . . . The British State considers it the duty of an Englishman to kill people who are not English whenever a collection of elderly gentlemen in Westminster tells him to do so. . . . Church and State are placable enemies of both intelligence and virtue.

  Bertrand Russell

  Elderly, People, Gentleman

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• Passion and platonic friendliness, often contrary siblings, frequently wear similar faces to hide the great distance between them.

  Darin Strauss

  Sibling, Distance, Passion

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• One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of it.

  Joseph Campbell

  Affirmation, Accepted, Aspect

  Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers (2011). “The Power of Myth”, p.188, Anchor

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• When you believe you have found an important scientific fact, and are feverishly curious to publish it, constrain yourself for days, weeks, years sometimes, fight yourself, try and ruin your own experiments, and only proclaim your discovery after having exhausted all contrary hypotheses. But when, after so many efforts you have at last arrived at a certainty, your joy is one of the greatest which can be felt by a human soul.

  Louis Pasteur

  Believe, Fighting, Discovery

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• Do we ever get what we really want? Do we ever achieve what our powers have ostensibly equipped us for? No: everything works by contraries.

  Nikolai Gogol

  Want, Achieve

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• It is not that pearls fetch a high price because men have dived for them; but on the contrary, men have dived for them because they fetch a high price.

  Richard Whately

  Men, Fetch, Pearls

  Introductory Lectures on Political Economy, 2nd ed., lecture 9 (1832)

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• We do not want Ukraine to default. On the contrary, we need an economically viable partner. However, debts should be paid, and this includes state and commercial debts

  Dmitry Medvedev

  Ukraine, Needs, Debt

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• We ought not to believe those who today, adopting a philosophical air and with a tone of superiority, prophesy the decline of culter and are content with the unknowable in a self-satisfied way. For us there is no unknowable, and in my opinion there is also non whatsoever for the natural sciences. In place of this foolish unknowable, let our watchword on the contrary be: we must know - we shall know.

  David Hilbert

  Philosophical, Believe, Self

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• The black kids, the poor white kids, Spanish-speaking kids, and Asian kids in the US - in the face of everything to the contrary, they still bop and bump, shout and go to school somehow. Their optimism gives me hope.

  Maya Angelou

  Kids, School, White

  "Visions: Maya Angelou". Interview With Ken Kelley, www.motherjones.com. May/June 1995.

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• I'm in favor of any form of sexual relationship that gives pleasure to those involved. And I have never heard a convincing argument to the contrary.

  Gore Vidal

  Giving, Favors, Argument

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• Information...exhausts itself in the staging of meaning...[and leads] not at all to a surfeit of innovation but to the very contrary, to total entropy

  Jean Baudrillard

  Innovation, Information, Entropy

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• We have got to fight it [Communism] with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they are accessible to others is unquestioned, or it isn't America.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Fighting, Thinking, Ideas

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• Contrary to popular belief, there are actually quite a few guys in the action sports community that have faith and are Christians.

  Nick Goepper

  Sports, Christian, Community

  "A conversation with Olympic freestyle skier Nick Goepper". Interview with Chad Bonham, www.beliefnet.com.

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• He that rectifies a crooked stick bends it the contrary way, so must he that would reform a vice learn to affect its mere contrary, and in time he shall see the springing blossoms of a happy restoration.

  Roger Chamberlain

  Vices, Reform, Restoration

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