Quotes about contradiction

"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."

Alther, Lisa on contradiction
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"I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction."

Bataille, Georges on contradiction   

"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!"

Byron, Lord on contradiction   

"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."

Churchill, Winston on contradiction   

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

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on contradiction
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"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on contradiction   

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

Hardy, Thomas on contradiction   

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on contradiction
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"All concord's born of contraries."

Jonson, Ben on contradiction   

"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."

Joseph, Jeremiah on contradiction   

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

Moore, George on contradiction   

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

Orwell, George on contradiction
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"Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth."

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

Seymour, Jane on contradiction   

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

Shaw, George Bernard on contradiction   

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

Whitman, Walt on contradiction
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"The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves."

Wilde, Oscar on contradiction
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