Quotes About Contradiction

Our cruellest adversaries are not those who contradict and try to convince us, but those who exaggerate or invent things that are liable to distress us, taking care not to present them in a justifiable light, which would diminish our distress and perhaps lead us to entertain some slight respect for an attitude they are anxious to display to us, to complete our torment, as being both hideous and unassailable.

for the courage of one's opinions is always a form of calculating cowardice in the eyes of the other side),

The facts of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that endangered those beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them; they can aim at them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without weakening them; and an avalanche of miseries and maladies coming, one after another, without interruption into the bosom of a family, will not make it lose faith in either the clemency of its God or the capacity of its physician.

Françoise had not yet grasped that our cruelest adversaries are not those who contradict and try to convince us, but those who exaggerate or invent things that are likely to distress us, taking care not to present them in any justifiable light, which would diminish our distress and perhaps lead us to entertain some slight respect for an attitude they are anxious to display to us, to complete our torment, as being both hideous and unassailable.

Truth is paradox.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. —OSCAR WILDE

Matters of any consequence are three-sided, or four-sided, or polygonal; and the trotting round a polygon is severe work for people any way stiff in their opinions. For myself, I am never satisfied that I have handled a subject properly till I have contradicted myself at least three times.

Mostly, matters of any consequence are three-sided, or four-sided, or polygonal; and the trotting around a polygon is severe work for people in any way stiff in their opinions. For myself, I am never satisfied that I have handled a subject properly till I have contradicted myself at least three times.

I'm pretty delicate, Lucas admitted. You know, when I'm not beating someone senseless.

She was old and crankily conservative in the way only old liberals could be.

The answer to that is complicated." "Give me the short version." "The short version is 'Yes, but.' The slightly longer version is 'No, and.' Which version would you like?

Yes, that. You're feeling cognitive dissonance, Jamie. Two contradictory-yet-entirely-valid-within-their-contexts thoughts about the same subject. And humans hate that shit. We hate it so much. The worst answer for us for anything is, 'It depends.

My job is to be your loyal opposition.

It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

Cannery Row's] inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing.

Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.

It is a fact verified and recorded in many histories that soul capable of the greatest good is also capable of the greatest evil. Who is there more impious than backsliding priest? Who more carnal than a recent virgin? This, however, may be a matter of appearance.

I do love her, and that's odd because she is everything I detest in anyone else.

Courage and fear were one thing too.

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.

Tom's cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men. His violence balanced his tenderness, and himself was a pitted battlefield of his own forces. He was confused now, but Dessie could hold his bit and point him, the way a handler points a thoroughbred at the barrier to show his breeding and his form.

Tom's cowardice was as huge as his courage, as it must be in great men. His violence balanced his tenderness, and himself was a pitted battlefield of his own forces.

Suddenly he knew joy and sorrow felted into one fabric. Courage and fear were one thing too.

But it must be hard living the Lily Maid, the Goddess-Virgin, and the other all at once. Humans just do smell bad sometimes.