Quotes About Contradiction

Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.

When somebody says that all statements are false, the obvious problem is that as an assertion it's self-defeating.

I make my music to express everything I feel is necessary to communicate at a given time. Through music, I can express myself with statements that are more nuanced and more contradictory than factual details.

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.

Every time the Catholic Church takes one step forward, it seems to take one giant step back.

There are moments when you're stepping out of a really nice car on to a red carpet, and you feel inside like, 'This is quite nice,' but I'm never whisked off my feet.

I'm part of the consumer culture... I'm just using the space I am given to express something that is out of the space so I'm part of the consumer system but I'm advocating stepping out. Which is a contradiction but I could be part of he consumer system and say, 'let's consume even more.'

Conservatism, on the other hand, is the doctrine of the oppressed majority. Conservatism does not defend some established order of things: It accuses; it rants; it points out hypocrisies and gleefully pounces on contradictions.

One more thing about the backlash personality type: every single one of the bitter self-made men of my youth was a believer in the power of positive thinking. If you just had a sunny disposish and kept everlastingly at it, they thought, you were bound to succeed. The contradiction between their professed positiveness and their actual negativity about nearly everything never seemed to occur to them.

Swearing off economic liberalism also prevented Democrats from capitalizing on the great, glaring contradiction of their rivals' campaign, namely, the GOP's tendency to demote "values" issues once elections are over.

Rather than simply ignoring contradictory information, we often examine it particularly closely. The end product of this intense scrutiny is that the contradictory information is either considered too flawed to be relevant, or is redefined into a less damaging category.

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms.

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

Many people who live in expensive homes and drive luxury cars do not actually have much wealth. Then, we discovered something even odder: Many people who have a great deal of wealth do not even live in upscale neighborhoods.

we must make believe that we are not what we are—contradictory beings whose continuance only worsens our plight as mutants who embody the contorted logic of a paradox.

If you can't say something positive about humanity, then say something equivocal.

Renowned for stating his convictions in the form of a paradox, as above, Chesterton, along with anyone who has something positive or equivocal to say about the human race, comes out on top in the crusade for truth. (There is nothing paradoxical about that.) Therefore, should your truth run counter to that of individuals who devise or applaud paradoxes that stiff up the status quo, you would be well advised to take your arguments, tear them up, and throw them in someone else's garbage.

As a rule, anyone desirous of an audience, or even a place in society, might profit from the following motto: "If you can't say something positive about humanity, then say something equivocal.

Creativity isn't always an index of niceness

To state this matter in the most lucid terms: each of these hyper-organisms, even as they scintillated with an obscene degree of vital impulses, also, and at the same time, had degeneracy and death written deeply upon them.

Here was a flower (the daisy reflected) strangely like itself and yet utterly unlike itself too. Such a paradox has often been the basis for the most impassioned love.

Arguing at length with a conspiracy theorist is not only fruitless but sometimes dangerous, and I do not recommend it. It's a treadmill of nonsense that can exhaust even the most tenacious teacher. Such theories are the ultimate bulwark against expertise, because of course every expert who contradicts the theory is ipso facto part of the conspiracy.

about Voltaire)...he was generally unbedeviled by any foolish consistency.

A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.