98 Human Contradiction Quotes
Following is our list of human contradiction quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about paradoxes and contradictions.
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Famous Human Contradiction Quotes
It’s a contradiction that we all deal with. — Naval Ravikant
What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster... what a contradiction, what a prodigy — Blaise Pascal
People pretend to be nice, people pretend to be smooth, and polite and everything, but this is only an appearance, because the way we're built as human beings is only in paradox and contradictions. — Vincent Cassel
There's nothing more ironic or contradictory than life itself. — Robert De Niro
Woman is a miracle of divine contradictions. — Jules Michelet
Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past. — Anne Rice
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead. — Aldous Huxley
We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves. — Blaise Pascal
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. — Albert Camus
Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is. — Albert Camus
The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics. — D.T. Suzuki
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. — Bryant H. McGill
After all, what would be "beautiful" if the contradiction had not first become conscious of itself, if the ugly had not first said to itself: "I am ugly"?. — Friedrich Nietzsche
It must be obvious...that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity. — Shunryu Suzuki
Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him. — Dorothy Dunnett
Short Human Contradiction Quotes
- Man partly is and wholly hopes to be. — Robert Browning
- It is not possible to live in this age if you don't have a sense of many contradictory forces. — Rem Koolhaas
- Opposites are not contradictory but complementary. — Niels Bohr
- Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything -- except his own nature. — Henry Miller
- Man is a centaur, a tangle of flesh and mind, divine inspiration and dust. — Primo Levi
- Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself. — Upton Sinclair
- ...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency. — Jeremy Bentham
- Man is his own worst enemy. — Marcus Tullius Cicero
Human Contradiction Image Quotes
Love Contradiction Quotes
As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is my destiny and the meaning of my life. — Napoleon Bonaparte
Having limits to push against is how you find out what you can do. I have always been full of contradictions. I am shy but I love the freedom of the stage. I need reassurance but at the same time I don’t want it. I hate being afraid but I can’t help wanting to frighten myself. That is how you grow. — Sylvie Guillem
When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him. — Elisabeth Elliot
Love is a contradiction. — Cassandra Clare
Love resolves all contradictions. Without love, man cannot make sense of his existence. — Peter Deunov
The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental , nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink — George Orwell
The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. — Elizabeth Gilbert
Young people nowadays love luxury; they have bad manners and contempt for authority. They show disrespect for old people... contradict their parents, talk constantly in front of company, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers. — Socrates
I like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I can't give up love. Maybe it's the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me. — Jeanette Winterson
Let us, cautious in diction, And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully. — Martin Buber
Paradoxes And Contradictions Quotes
I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes. — Ferdinand De Saussure
We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full. — Thomas Merton
Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life. — Fernand Braudel
If by the time we're sixty we haven't learned what a knot of paradox and contradiction life is, and how exquisitely the good and the bad are mingled in every action we take, and what a compromising hostess Our Lady of Truth is, we haven't grown old to much purpose. — John Cowper Powys
You have to think of your brand as a kind of myth. A myth is a compelling story that is archetypal, if you know the teachings of Carl Jung. It has to have emotional content and all the themes of a great story: mystery, magic, adventure, intrigue, conflicts, contradiction, paradox. — Deepak Chopra
The measure of your enlightenment is the degree to which you are comfortable with paradox, contradiction, and ambiguity. — Deepak Chopra
In a branch of medicine rife with paradoxes, contradictions, inconsistencies, and illogic, episiotomy crowns them all. The major argument for episiotomy is that it protects the perineum from injury, a protection accomplished by slicing through perineal skin, connective, tissue, and muscle. — Henci Goer
You are not supposed to get it. It's a paradox. All of mathematics is built on paradoxes. That's the biggest paradox of all-all this orderliness, and at the heart, impossibility. Contradiction. Heaven built on the foundations of hell. — David Leavitt
Life is a paradox. Every truth has its counterpart which contradicts it; and every philosopher supplies the logic his own undoing. — Elbert Hubbard
The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It is only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast. — Madeleine L'Engle
Contradiction Quotes
Teenagers these days are out of control. They eat like pigs, they are disrespectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers. — Aristotle
I’m a feminist so I believe in inhabiting contradictions. I believe in making contradictions productive, not in having to choose one side or the other side. As opposed to choosing either or, choosing both. — Angela Davis
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
It’s time to put away our fairytales, all of them, and assume our responsibilities, the adult responsibilities that begin with adult knowledge. Our planet needs us. She needs us to think like healers and act like warriors. And if you think that’s a contradiction, then get out of the way. — Lierre Keith
Drama is exposure; it is confrontation; it is contradiction and it leads to analysis, construction, recognition and eventually to an awakening of understanding. — Peter Brook
Intelligence is measured by a person's ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments. — F. Scott Fitzgerald
Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students. — Paulo Freire
A fundamental contradiction does not exist between socialism and a market economy. — Deng Xiaoping
I we are born to die and we all die to live, then what's the point of living life if it just contradicts? — Ronnie Radke
No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal? — Elie Wiesel
People Writing About Human Contradiction
| Name | Quotes | Likes |
|---|---|---|
 Blaise Pascal |
731 | 6110 |
 Albert Camus |
975 | 9693 |
 Naval Ravikant |
583 | 1 |
 Vincent Cassel |
56 | 208 |
 Robert De Niro |
91 | 816 |
 Jules Michelet |
27 | 199 |
More Human Contradiction Quotes
There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights. — Dorothy Height
The truth of a theory can never be proven, for one never knows if future experience will contradict its conclusions. — Albert Einstein
The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views? — E. O. Wilson
I am convinced that an important stage of human thought will have been reached when the physiological and the psychological, the objective and the subjective, are actually united, when the tormenting conflicts or contradictions between my consciousness and my body will have been factually resolved or discarded. — Ivan Pavlov
We who live in free market societies believe that growth and prosperity, and ultimately human fulfillment are created from the bottom up, not the government down. — Ronald Reagan
Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them. — Thomas Jefferson
Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions; its very complexity engenders art-and by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, oversimplified explanations. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
There is nothing more lonely than eternity. And nothing is more cozy for us than to be a human being. This indeed is another contradiction-how can we keep the bonds of our humanness and still venture gladly and purposefully into the absolute loneliness of eternity? — Carlos Castaneda
When we think of eternity, and of the future consequences of all human conduct, what is there in this life that should make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice, the laws of religion, and of God? — William Wilberforce
When human laws contradict or discountenance the means, which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void. — Alexander Hamilton
Humanity is a crazy contradiction. I accept us for who we are. We're not that great. Every time we take a step forward we go back to the same primitive behavior. We're meant to be this way. It's not our fault, it's just who we are. — Colin Quinn
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. — Pope John Paul II
The invention of the concept of sustainable human development and that of so-called human security, as opposed to territorial security of nation- states, and its promotion by the UN is in clear contradiction to all that we, the Group of 77, and the UN Charter itself consider inalienable, namely national sovereignty and security. — Pranab Mukherjee
When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is too complex. — Marguerite Yourcenar
Revolutionary practice in any field of human existence develops by itself if one comprehends the contradictions in every new process; it consists in siding with those forces which act in the direction of progressive development. — Wilhelm Reich
The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life without contradiction is only half a life; or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels. But God loves human beings more than the angels. — Carl Jung
Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions. — Charles Caleb Colton
The contradictions are what make human behavior so maddening and yet so fascinating, all at the same time. — Joan D. Vinge
Big cities are chaotic. And chaos for humans - who have experience from their ancestors - is the last step before conflict. So, in the park, every kind of visual contradiction has been eliminated. — John Hench
It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation. — Joseph Conrad
Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success - only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, prosperous, progressive and free. — Ronald Reagan
The human qualities of the raw materials show through. Naivety, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing Psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not "the Word of God" in the sense that every passage in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God. — C. S. Lewis
I think that Michael Jackson, just as an entertainer, as a figure who embodies the contradictions of Black identity, and the possibilities of R&B music in the '70s and '80s will continue to be one of the most recognized and formidable human beings that we've ever produced in our tradition. — Michael Eric Dyson
It seems certain, that though a man, in a flush of humour, after intense reflection on the many contradictions and imperfections of human reason, may entirely renounce all belief and opinion, it is impossible for him to persevere in this total scepticism, or make it appear in his conduct for a few hours. — David Hume
You cannot have humane Zionism, it is a contradiction in terms. — Israel Shahak
BLINDSIGHT is fearless: a magnificent, darkly gleaming jewel of a book that hurdles the contradictions inherent in biochemistry, consciousness, and human hearts without breaking stride. — Elizabeth Bear
It is necessary to guard ourselves from thinking that the practice of the scientific method enlarges the powers of the human mind. Nothing is more flatly contradicted by experience than the belief that a man distinguished in one or even more departments of science, is more likely to think sensibly about ordinary affairs than anyone else. — Wilfred Trotter
I hope when people ask what you're going to do with your English degree and/or creative writing degree you'll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say, Oh. — Cheryl Strayed
A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries. — Tim O'Brien
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. — Erich Fromm
Biography is: a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified. — Jos
There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights. Dr. King did not stir us to move for our civil rights to have them taken away in these kinds of fashions. — Dorothy Height
There is, I conceive, no contradiction in believing that mind is at once the cause of matter and of the development of individualised human minds through the agency of matter. — Alfred Russel Wallace
For me, sexual identity and orientation is a human right, which should also be accepted by the United Nations. Of course, innovations in this area provoke contradictions, especially in a society like ours, because Cuba has so many revolutionary processes. — Mariela Castro
Sometimes as human beings, we're so contradictory - we may say something or do something and completely contradict ourselves. That's what I'm learning to embrace in television - not knowing what's going to happen. I might make a specific choice for myself and then in the next episode the writers might write something that contradicts it. — Aja Naomi King
I have never, so far, in all the studies I have done, met a contradiction between what the human, experimental and natural sciences are telling us and the Islamic rules. In fact, the opposite is true: anything that is coming from the modern sciences is helping me better understand the text. It's not a contradiction. It's a relation. — Tariq Ramadan
People tell me the Netflix series, House of Cards, is sort of like my class come to life. The movie Margin Call portrays the realities of hierarchical relationships and rivalries beautifully, and how people respond when under pressure. Gandhi and Long Walk to Freedom both have the virtue of presenting larger-than-life figures in a more realistic way, showing their flaws and contradictions - their humanity - in a way that is very helpful. — Jeffrey Pfeffer
According to Bastardi, human-induced climate change "contradicts what we call the 1st law of thermodynamics. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. So to look for input of energy into the atmosphere, you have to come from a foreign source. — Joe Bastardi
Like the Bible-a document that often contradicts itself and from which one can construct sharply different arguments-theology is the product of human hands and hearts. — Jon Meacham
The Laws of Nature are the Laws of God, Whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth. A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to Him from whose punishment they cannot protect us. All human constitutions which contradict His laws, we are in conscience bound to disobey. — George Mason
The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures.. are found upon comparison to be really part of the original law of nature. Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these. — William Blackstone
We are on the earth, and they tell us of heaven; we are human beings, and they tell us of angels and devils; we are matter, and they tell us of spirit; we have five senses whereby to admit truths, and a reasoning faculty by which to build our belief upon them; and they tell us of dreams dreamed thousands of years ago, which our experience flatly contradicts. — Frances Wright
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