Contradict Each Other Quotes & Sayings

Ever since the French Revolution, people throughout the world have gradually come to see both equality and individual freedom as fundamental values. Yet the two values contradict each other. Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off. — Yuval Noah Harari

All of us, in words that contradict each other, express at bottom the same exalted impulse. What sets us against one another is not our aims - they all come to the same thing - but our methods, which are the fruit of our varied reasoning. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

If you're a history buff, you know about J. Edgar Hoover. He was likely the most powerful man in the US. If you start reading about him, the books contradict each other constantly. I was often left with very little sense of the man personally. I had a sense of what he did and didn't do and what people disagreed about whether he did this or didn't do this or that, but I was like, "Why? Why was he doing all of this?" That was my big question. — Dustin Lance Black

There is an old maxim that says that two empires that are too large will collapse. The analog in set theory is that two different theories that are too powerful must necessarily contradict each other. — Saharon Shelah

The spirit of our accurate and exact philosophy is outraged by conclusions that contradict each other so glaringly. — Christopher Hitchens

All the magazines contradict each other because it is so diverse. Know what you like, know what looks good on you and keep doing it, no reason to chase trends. — Tim Gunn

If you love things or ideas or people that contradict each other, you have to be prepared to fight for every square inch of intellectual real estate you occupy. — G. Willow Wilson

The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It's a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I'm not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they're called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation. — Carl Sagan

And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other. — Fernando Pessoa

If you read any of the biographies on J. Edgar Hoover, you find that they contradict each other more than they agree. Often times, they're often told from a political perspective. — Clint Eastwood

The Sentimentalist, roughly speaking, is the man who wants to eat his cake and have it. He has no sense of honor about ideas; he will not see that one must pay for an idea as well as for anything else. He will have them all at once in one wild intellectual harem, no matter how much they quarrel and contradict each other. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I conclude by applying to political economy what Chateaubriand says of history: "There are," he says, two consequences in history; an immediate one, which is instantly recognized, and one in the distance, which is not at first perceived. These consequences often contradict each other; the former are the results of our own limited wisdom, the latter, those of that wisdom which endures. The providential event appears after the human event. God rises up behind men. Deny, if you will, the supreme counsel; disown its action; dispute about words; designate, by the term, force of circumstances, or reason, what the vulgar call Providence; but look to the end of an accomplished fact, and you will see that it has always produced the contrary of what was expected from it, if it was not established at first upon morality and justice.3 — Frederic Bastiat

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. — Frederic Bastiat

Two religions cannot both be right, because they contradict each other, yet they can both be wrong. — Richard Dawkins

There have been so many interpretations of the story that I'm not going to choose between them. Make your own choice. They contradict each other, the various choices. The only choice that really matters, the only interpretation of the story, if you want one, is your own. Not your teacher's, not your professor's, not mine, not a critic's, not some authority's. The only thing that matters is, first, the experience of being in the story, moving through it. Then any interpretation you like. If it's yours, then that's the right one, because what's in a book is not what an author thought he put into it, it's what the reader gets out of it. — William Golding

Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body; which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The medievals loved to say that God wrote two books: nature and Scripture. And since he is the author of both books, and since this Teacher never contradicts himself, these two books never contradict each other. And since this God who never contradicts himself also gave us the two truth detectors, faith and reason, it follows that faith and reason, properly used, never contradict each other. Therefore, all heresies are contrary to reason. Not all the truths of faith can be proved by reason, but all arguments against the truths of faith can be disproved by reason. — Peter Kreeft

Many sweat to reconcile St Paul and St James, but in vain. 'Faith justifies' and 'faith does not justify' contradict each other flatly. If any one can harmonize them I will give him my doctor's hood and let him call me a fool. — Martin Luther

If we consider the actual basis of this information [i.e., intelligence], how unreliable and transient it is, we soon realize that war is a flimsy structure that can easily collapse and bury us in its ruins ... Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain. This is true of all intelligence but even more so in the heat of battle, where such reports tend to contradict and cancel each other out. In short, most intelligence is false, and the effect of fear is to multiply lies and inaccuracies. — Carl Von Clausewitz

Wherever life and knowledge seemed to contradict each other, there was never any serious struggle: in such cases, denial and doubt amounted to madness. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It must be wonderful sport to contradict each other. — Juliana Of The Netherlands

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the true work of art is that it is able to both contain and express different meanings - meanings which may in fact contradict each other. — Edward Lucie-Smith

Poetic language that knows itself as such doesn't contradict reason. On the contrary, it reminds each speaking subject not to take the narrative of his mind's adventures for the voice of truth. Every speaking subject is the poet of himself and of things. Perversion is produced when the poem is given as something other than a poem, when it wants to be imposed as truth, when it wants to force action. — Jacques Ranciere

You do believe it,' he said. 'You do believe everything. We all believe everything, even when we deny everything. The denyers believe. The unbelievers believe. Don't you feel in your heart that these contradictions do not really contradict: that there is a cosmos that contains them all? The soul goes round upon a wheel of stars and all things return; perhaps Strake and I have striven in many shapes, beast against beast and bird against bird, and perhaps we shall strive for ever. But since we seek and need each other, even that eternal hatred is an eternal love. Good and evil go round in a wheel that is one thing and not many. Do you not realize in your heart, do you not believe behind all your beliefs, that there is but one reality and we are its shadows; and that all things are but aspects of one thing: a centre where men melt into Man and Man into God?'
'No,' said Father Brown. — G.K. Chesterton

All those religions
they contradict each other on every point but every one of them is filled with ways to help people to be brave enough to laugh even though they know they are dying. — Robert A. Heinlein

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other. — Blaise Pascal

Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a nation. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop. — Michel De Montaigne

There are two consequences in history; an immediate one, which is instantly recognized, and one in the distance, which is not at first perceived. These consequences often contradict each other; ... look to the end of an accomplished fact, and you will see that it has always produced the contrary of what was expected from it. — Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

Principles Principles are rules you have made in order to align what you are doing to some larger goal, and will sometimes change. For example, if one of your strategic goals as an organization is to decrease the time to market for new features, you may define a principle that says that delivery teams have full control over the lifecycle of their software to ship whenever they are ready, independently of any other team. If another goal is that your organization is moving to aggressively grow its offering in other countries, you may decide to implement a principle that the entire system must be portable to allow for it to be deployed locally in order to respect sovereignty of data. You probably don't want loads of these. Fewer than 10 is a good number - small enough that people can remember them, or to fit on small posters. The more principles you have, the greater the chance that they overlap or contradict each other. — Sam Newman

You said their prayer - is this the religion you believe in, then?"
"I believe in them all."
Vin frowned. "None of them contradict each other?"
Sazed smiled. "Oh, often and frequently they do. But, I respect the truths behind them all. — Brandon Sanderson

Our strategy is how we cope
how we measure and weigh what is to be said and when, what is to be done and how, and to whom and towhom and to whom, daily deciding/risking who it is we can call an ally, call a friend (whatever that person's skin, sex or sexuality). We are women without a line. We are women who contradict each other. — Cherrie Moraga

it is clear that divine sovereignty and human freedom contradict each other.[16] If God controls everything, including man's thoughts, then man is not free from God. If man is free from God in any sense or to any degree, then God does not control everything. — Vincent Cheung

If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. — G.K. Chesterton

I cannot agree with those who say that they have 'new truth' to teach. The two words seem to me to contradict each other; that
which is new is not true. It is the old that is true, for truth is as old as God himself. — Charles Spurgeon

Individual freedom and drug laws contradict each other. In a genuinely free society, people are free to ingest whatever they want to ingest, no matter how harmful or destructive. What people ingest is none of the government's business. If drug users or drug addicts wish to get help, a free society provides the means to do so. — Jacob G. Hornberger

Vin shook her head. "Not right now. You said their prayer - is this the religion you believe in, then?" "I believe in them all." Vin frowned. "None of them contradict each other?" Sazed smiled. "Oh, often and frequently they do. But, I respect the truths behind them all - and I believe in the need for each one to be remembered." "Then, how did you decide which religion's prayer to use?" Vin asked. "It just seemed ... appropriate," Sazed said quietly, regarding the scene of shadowed death. — Brandon Sanderson

It is important to realize that the Social Nurturance metaphor and the Moral Nurturance metaphor may sometimes contradict each other, even though they form a natural pairing. This occurs when you have to maintain social ties with people in your community who do not believe in or operate by the Moral Nurturance metaphor. Compromising with such people for the sake of maintaining social ties may require compromising on moral nurturance. M — George Lakoff

This is why they say you should look before you leap. They say a lot of things. Carpe diem. Even platitudes contradict each other. Man, this has to be the longest fall ever if I have the time to think all this. — Swati Avasthi

I think as human beings we contradict our feelings constantly, we make mistakes, but I think ultimately it comes down to actions to define how we feel about each other. — Charlyne Yi

Nobody ever feels just one way about another person, Margo. We're so much more complicated than that. I can see a million things you want from me, just like the million things I want from you. Some of them are wonderful. Some are awful. Some contradict each other, and some don't make sense at all. But none of those things matter, not really. What matters is what you do about them. — Lindsay Ribar

The fact of the existence of two theories [causal and acausal] that contradict each other in Jung ... corresponds psychologically to the vascillation between 3 and 4. — Wolfgang Pauli

When you're young, you think of your parents with the simplest adjectives. As you get older, you add more adjectives and notice some of them contradict each other. — Elan Mastai

Another example is the modern political order. Ever since the French Revolution, people throughout the world have gradually come to see both equality and individual freedom as fundamental values. Yet the two values contradict each other. Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off. Guaranteeing that every individual will be free to do as he wishes inevitably short-changes equality. The entire political history of the world since 1789 can be seen as a series of attempts to reconcile this contradiction. Anyone who has read a novel by Charles Dickens knows that the liberal regimes of nineteenth-century Europe gave priority to individual freedom even if it meant throwing insolvent poor families in prison and giving orphans little choice but to join schools for pickpockets. Anyone who has read a novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn knows how Communism's egalitarian ideal produced brutal tyrannies that tried to control every aspect of daily life. — Yuval Noah Harari

I'd let her sell it to Dad. They tended not to contradict each other so if one of them had already said "yes" it usually meant "yes." If one of them said "no", ditto
which was why I'd asked Mom first. — Steven Gould

I say things that contradict each other, that are in real tension with each other, that compose me, that make me live, and that will make me die. — Jacques Derrida

You have people saying two things that seem to contradict each other. One, that we live in a golden age of TV. The other, that television is dying. There's a reason for that. What we mean when we say it's dying is that it's already way past being fragmented into little chunks. Now it's being polarized into an aerosol mist. — Dan Harmon