Contrary Quotes - Page 7

Contrary to popular belief. It's much wiser to take money from the poor than the rich.

Mike Royko

Belief, Rich, Poor

Mike Royko (1982). “Sez Who? Sez Me”, Dutton Adult

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My earlier poems were sadder than my poems are today, perhaps because I wrote them in confusion or when I was unhappy. But I am not a melancholy person, quite the contrary, no one enjoys laughing more than I do.

Anne Stevenson

Laughing, Confusion, Unhappy

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To accuse another of having weak kidneys, lungs, or heart, is not a crime; on the contrary, saying he has a weak brain is a crime. To be considered stupid and to be told so is more painful than being called gluttonous, mendacious, violent, lascivious, lazy, cowardly: every weakness, every vice, has found its defenders, its rhetoric, its ennoblement and exaltation, but stupidity hasn't.

Primo Levi

Stupid, Heart, Brain

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An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique andconsequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.

Henri Bergson

Unique, Order, Intuition

Henri Bergson (1961). “Introduction to metaphysics”

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Extreme complication is contrary to art.

Claude Debussy

Art, Complication, Extremes

"French Music: From the Death of Berlioz to the Death of Fauré". Book by Martin Cooper (p. 136), 1951; later quoted in "Debussy and Wagner", book by Robin Holloway (p. 207), 1979.

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The paradox of knowledge is not confined to the small, atomic scale; on the contrary, it is as cogent on the scale of man, and even of the stars.

Jacob Bronowski

Stars, Knowledge, Men

Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

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The English are crooked as a nation and honest as individuals. The contrary is true of the French, who are honest as a nation and crooked as individuals.

Edmond de Goncourt

Honest, Individual, Crooked

Statement on October 29, 1868. "Pages from the Goncourt Journal". Book by Edmond de Goncourt, translated by Robert Baldick, p. 141, 1962.

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Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture.

William Blackstone

Men, Rights, Law

William Blackstone (1922). “Commentaries on the Laws of England: In Four Books”, p.45, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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Infield practice is more mystic ritual than preparation, encouraging the big-leaguer, no less than the duffer in the stands, to believe in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that playing ball is a snap.

Roger Angell

Sports, Believe, Practice

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What is most contrary to salvation is not sin but habit.

Charles Peguy

Sin, Habit, Salvation

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Every ignoramus imagines that all that exists, exists with a view to his individual sake; it is as if there were nothing that exists except him. And if something happens to him that is contrary to what he wishes, he makes the trenchant judgement that all that exists is an evil.

Maimonides

Views, Evil, Judgement

Moses Maimonides, Isadore Twersky (1972). “A Maimonides Reader”, p.301, Behrman House, Inc

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In the history of mankind there are recorded two great Inversions. The first, set forth by the Nazarene to the effect that love is a greater power and more real than vengeance. The second proclaimed the earth to be a sphere revolving in its course around the sun. These affirmations were made in the face of all evidence sacred to the contrary.

Louis Sullivan

Real, Love Is, Two

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I am very sorry to know and hear how unreverently that most precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung and jangled in every ale-house and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same.

King Edward VIII

Sorry, Jewels, House

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He has the lucidity which is the by-product of a fundamentally sterile mind. He does not have to struggle... with the crowded pulsations of a fecund imagination. On the contrary he is almost devoid of imagination.

Aneurin Bevan

Struggle, Imagination, Mind

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We human beings have not secured happiness; on the contrary, science gives us catastrophes. We are like travelers losing their way in a desert. They see a big black shadow ahead and desperately run to it, thinking it may lead them somewhere. But after running a long way, they no longer see the shadow and fall into the slough of despond. What is that shadow? It is this ""Mr. Science.

Liang Qichao

Running, Fall, Technology

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Every house was festooned with flowers and with lanterns. On the national day, the whole country went wild with joy, But on that very day, I was placed in chains and transferred: The wind remains contrary to the flight of the eagle.

Ho Chi Minh

Country, Flower, Eagles

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What is the cause that one is hardened, and another readily moved to compunction? Listen! It springs from the will, in the latter case a good will, in the former an evil one. It springs also from the thoughts, in the former case evil thoughts, in the latter from the opposite; and similarly from actions, in the former case actions contrary to God, in the latter godly ones... it is by free choice of the will that every person either attains compunction and humility, or else becomes hard-hearted and proud.

Symeon the New Theologian

Christian, Spring, Humility

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In your occupations, try to possess your soul in peace. It is not a good plan to be in haste to perform any action that it may be sooner over. On the contrary, you should accustom yourself to do whatever you have to do with tranquility, in order that you may retain the possession of yourself and of settled peace.

Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon

Peace, Order, Soul

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I've never found anything to be lacking in a blurry canvas. Quite the contrary: you can see many more things in it than in a sharply focused image. A landscape painted with exactness forces you to see a determined number of clearly differentiated trees, while in a blurry canvas you can perceive as many trees as you want. The painting is more open.

Gerhard Richter

Art, Numbers, Tree

Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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When I see a cheerful young man shrieking about how full of life he is, banging on a drum, and blowing on a tin trumpet, and speaking of his good spirits, it depresses me, since naturally it gives the contrary impression. It can't be real. It ought to be but it isn't. If the noisy person meant what he said, he wouldn't say it.

Ada Leverson

Depressing, Real, Men

Ada Leverson (2012). “Love at Second Sight”, p.100, tredition

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I am learning that mature faith, which encompasses both simple faith and fidelity, works the opposite of paranoia. It reassembles all the events of life around trust in a loving God. When good things happen, I accept them as gifts from God, worthy of thanksgiving. When bad things happen, I do not take them as necessarily sent by God -- I see evidence in the Bible to the contrary -- and I find in them no reason to divorce God. Rather, I trust that God can use even those bad things for my benefit.

Philip Yancey

Divorce, Simple, Opposites

Philip Yancey (2009). “Reaching for the Invisible God Study Guide”, p.28, Zondervan

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My message is that the counterclaim - which is that if wages go up, employment will go down - is a scam. It's a con job. It's an intimidation tactic. There is absolutely no evidence anywhere that it's true. On the contrary, where you find high wages you usually find low unemployment.

Nick Hanauer

Jobs, Wages, Scams

Source: gawker.com

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Regardless of the importance of known evidence to the contrary, the arts are generally regarded as being so much entertaining fluff, a commodity that isn't a priority in the traditional program of learning. This is unacceptable in a so-called 'enlightened' society.

Ken Danby

Art, Priorities, Commodity

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For me there is no gap between my painting and my so-called 'decorative' work. I never considered the 'minor arts' to be artistically frustrating; on the contrary, it was an extension of my art.

Sonia Delaunay

Art, Gaps, Painting

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An artist, in my experience, is a man or woman of unusual talent and peculiar, highly individual sensibility, with an independent and probably contrary mind, driven by mysterious passions for which another word is neurosis. In getting from point A to point B, the neurotic goes via point Q. It's in that roundabout that people are either completely crippled and hopeless in life, or highly creative.

Peter Schjeldahl

Passion, Independent, Artist

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