Contradictions Quotes

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

The world is a perpetual caricature of itself;

at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.

I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).

When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door.

All concord's born of contraries.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be consistent.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

The world is a contradiction, the universe a paradox.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.

It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.

Wise men are not wise at all hours, and will speak five times from their taste or their humor, to once from their reason.

We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to aflict the world so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully.

I am the epitome of a walking contradiction for various reasons, only one of which being that I feel my existence is of heaven and hell.

We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction;

we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.

I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.

You may find many contradictory statements and philosophies within my writings.

However, to this I will say such is life, for life is full of contradictions.

The acceptance of contradiction is the telling of a story, not the resolution.

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.

I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat.

everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.

Life is never free of contradictions.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.

Everybody sets out to do something, and everybody does something, but no one does what he sets out to do.

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.

Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms.

We must be physicists in order to be creative since so far codes of values and ideals have been constructed in ignorance of physics or even in contradiction to physics.

He who comes from afar may lie without fear of contradiction as he is sure to be listened to with the utmost attention.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.

It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.

Hope, insofar as it is hope of resurrection, is the living contradiction of what it proceeds from and what is placed under the sign of the Cross and death.

Another key element of human ecology is the inviolability of human life, especially at its beginning and its end. The Holy See insistently proclaims that the first and most fundamental of all human rights is the right to life, and that when this right is denied all other rights are threatened. The assumption that abortion and euthanasia are human rights deserving legislative sanction is seen by the Holy See as a contradiction which amounts to a denial of the human dignity and freedom which the law is supposed to protect. A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members; and among the most vulnerable are surely the unborn and the dying.

They that have grown old in a single state are generally found to be morose, fretful and captious; tenacious of their own practices and maxims; soon offended by contradiction or negligence; and impatient of any association but with those that will watch their nod, and submit themselves to unlimited authority.

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife.

Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism.

No man could bring himself to reveal his true character, and, above all, his true limitations as a citizen and a Christian, his true meannesses, his true imbecilities, to his friends, or even to his wife. Honest autobiography is therefore a contradiction in terms: the moment a man considers himself, even in petto, he tries to gild and fresco himself. Thus a man's wife, however realistic her view of him, always flatters him in the end, for the worst she sees in him is appreciably better, by the time she sees it, than what is actually there.

I happen to feel that the degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.

What an antithetical mind! -- tenderness, roughness -- delicacy, coarseness -- sentiment, sensuality -- soaring and groveling, dirt and deity -- all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay!

Einstein is an analytical mathematician seeking to give a physical interpretation to the conclusions of his mathematical process. In this he is hampered by a load of contradictory and absurd assumptions of the school that he follows, which throws him into all manner of difficulty. Einstein has such a faculty for embracing both sides of a contradiction that one would have to be of the same frame of mind to follow his thought, it is so peculiarly his own. The whole Relativity theory is as easy to follow as the path of a bat in the air at night.

Even though I make those movies, I find myself wishing that more of those magic moments could happen in real life.

How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.

What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.

To call a man evangelical who is not evangelistic is an utter contradiction.

One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us, and whereto our passions transport us; but those which by long habits are rooted in a strong and powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.

Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual

Good taste and humor are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.

Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest. Good for society, our laws are very bad for the individuals whereof it is composed; for, if they one time protect the individual, they hinder, trouble, fetter him for three quarters of his life.

'All Mr. Pitt's sentiments were liberal and elevated. His ruling passion was an unbounded ambition, which, when supported by great abilities and crowned with great success, make (sic) what the world calls a great man. He was haughty, imperious, impatient of contradiction, and over-bearing; qualities which too often accompany, but always clog, great ones