Contradictory Quotes

Opposites are not contradictory but complementary. (Niels Bohr)
As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
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. View quote
Anne Rice
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. View quote
George Orwell
One might as well try to ride two horses moving in different directions, as to try to maintain in equal force two opposing or contradictory sets of desires. View quote
Robert Collier
The fact that Communism and Fascism assigned contradictory roles to history and reason-the emancipation of the proletariat versus the domination of the Aryan race-mattered little. View quote
Francois Furet
Artists are not cheerleaders, and we're not the heads of tourism boards. We expose and discuss what is problematic, what is contradictory, what is hurtful and what is silenced in the culture we're in. View quote
Junot Diaz
Why do we pigeonhole and label an artist? It is a sure way of missing the important, the contradictory, the things that make him or her unique. View quote
Lukas Foss
To be a preacher requires two apparently contradictory qualities: confidence and humility. View quote
Timothy Radcliffe
All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard. View quote
Edward Norton
The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-satisfied man." (José Ortega y Gasset)
One of the questions on which clarity of thinking is now most necessary is that of the relation between the methods of science and of Marxist philosophy. Although much has already been written on the subject, yet there is still an enormous amount of confusion and contradictory statement. View quote
John Desmond Bernal
If you want to do good research, it's important not to know too much. This almost sounds contradictory but really if you know too much and you get an idea, you will sort of talk yourself out of trying it because you figure it won't work. But if you know just the right amount and you get enthusiastic about your project, you go ahead, you do it and if you're lucky things'll work out. View quote
Ivar Giaever
The desire of privilege and the taste of equality are the dominant and contradictory passions of the French of all times. View quote
Charles de Gaulle
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory, Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping. View quote
Nicholas Sparks
If only all the contradictory voices shouting inside my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn't care so long as they sang without dissonance. View quote
Ralph Ellison
Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake. View quote
Robert Penn Warren
Nothing that rest on some contradictory basis shall succeed or last in the long run ("ne saurait réussir ou durer, à la longue", Fr.); all that involve (or imply...) a contradiction is fatally destined, early or late, to disintegrate and disappear. View quote
African Spir
It is in applied psychology, if anywhere, that today we should be modest and grant validity to a number of apparently contradictory opinions; for we are still far from having anything like a thorough knowledge of the human psyche, that most challenging field of scientific enquiry. For the present we have merely more or less plausible opinions that defy reconciliation. View quote
Carl Jung
If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a different place. Epidemiology, not evidence. View quote
Richard Dawkins
The 'morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised. (Andrew Carnegie)
Egoism, which is the moving force of the world, and altruism, which is its morality, these two contradictory instincts, of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism. View quote
Joseph Conrad
Beautiful, ugly, impressive, disgusting, meaningless, grim, contradictory etc... It makes no difference, as long as it is life, vigorously pouring forth. View quote
Asger Jorn
Although mathematical notation undoubtedly possesses parsing rules, they are rather loose, sometimes contradictory, and seldom clearly stated. [...] The proliferation of programming languages shows no more uniformity than mathematics. Nevertheless, programming languages do bring a different perspective. [...] Because of their application to a broad range of topics, their strict grammar, and their strict interpretation, programming languages can provide new insights into mathematical notation. View quote
Kenneth E. Iverson
In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water. View quote
Markus Zusak