#Contradiction Quotes

“Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.”

“So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.”

“I really didn't say everything I said.”

“All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.”

“My tastes are aristocratic, my actions democratic.”

“I love doctors and hate their medicine.”

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I can bear it.”

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”

“Bert Williams was the funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever knew.”

“These tremendous contradictions in our intellect, in our knowledge, yea, in all the facts of our life face us on all sides.”

“The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.”

“The very idea of an infinite in place would be a contradiction in terms, as a place must begin and continue in time.”

“If there is no contradictory impression, there is nothing to awaken reflection”

“I like talking to a brick wall- it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!”

“There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite.”

“I can talk about humility, but I'm not humble. I mean, if you say, I'm humble, you've just contradicted yourself. But I'm trying to be, man, I'm trying so hard.”

“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"?.”

“The nation cannot be kept on the nonviolent path by violence.”

“The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men---as well as his great moments of grand harmony---a rare accident even in us! A sort of planetary motion---”

“The world is full of contradiction.”

“My lyrics are a big pile of contradictions.”

“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”

“Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not traveling.”

“The state is based on this contradiction. It is based on the contradiction between public and private life, between universal and particular interests. For this reason, the state must confine itself to formal, negative activities.”

“More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary furtherers of men whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have rarely felt like friends of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but eventually also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscience of their time.”

“If you demand my authorities for this and that, I must reply that only those who have never hunted up the authorities as I have believe that there is any authority who is not contradicted flatly by some other authority.”

“What we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction makes us productive.”

“Nixon was a crook, of course, but he was also a rabid football fan - and he knew the game, which still astounds me, but I have always had a soft spot for him because of it.”

“One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions.”

“My father was a deeply sentimental man. And like all sentimental men, he was also very cruel.”

“We cannot possibly imagine the variety of contradictions in every heart.”

“Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.”

“Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.”

“Imagination could never invent the number of different contradictions that exist innately in each person's heart.”

“Everything I eat has been proved by some doctor or other to be a deadly poison, and everything I don't eat has been proved to be indispensable for life. But I go marching on.”

“Imagination does not enable us to invent as many different contradictions as there are by nature in every heart.”

“An anguish of longing would boil up inside me; a hysterical thirst for contradictions and contrasts would appear, and I would embark on dissipations.”

“Only idiots fail to contradict themselves three times a day.”

“I love watching keep-fit videos while munching chocolate chip cookies.”

“Life is a paradox. Every truth has its counterpart which contradicts it; and every philosopher supplies the logic his own undoing.”

“It is one of those problems of human nature, which may be noted down, but not solved; - although Ralph felt no remorse at that moment for his conduct towards the innocent, true-hearted girl; although his libertine clients had done precisely what he had expected, precisely what he most wished, and precisely what would tend most to his advantage, still he hated them for doing it, from the very bottom of his soul.”

“And still I stood looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, but always miserable.”

“What a chimera then is man. What a novelty! What a monster... what a contradiction, what a prodigy”

“I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once and cannot add up the sum.”

“(Man,) the glory and the scandal of the universe.”

“What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?”

“The contradiction is this: man rejects the world as it is, without accepting the necessity of escaping it. In fact, men cling to the world and by far the majority do not want to abandon it.”

“Nothing fails like success—because the self-imposed task of our society and all its members is a contradiction: to force things to happen which are acceptable only when they happen without force.”