Dichotomies Quotes & Sayings

By setting such strong, harsh dichotomies God taught Israel that any assimilation to pagan idolatry is intolerable. It was His way of preserving Israel's spiritual health and posterity. God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. The killing of the Canaanite children not only served to prevent assimilation to Canaanite identity but also served as a shattering, tangible illustration of Israel's being set exclusively apart for God. — William Lane Craig

In reality, the Us-and-Them or I-and-Thou dichotomies do not exist. There is only one universal We - one human family united by the capacity to feel compassion and to demand equal justice for all. — John Howard Griffin

Today the environmental movement has become opposed to issues of justice. You can see this in the way issues are framed. It's a permanent replay of jobs-versus-the-environment, in nature-versus-bread. These are extremely artificial dichotomies. — Vandana Shiva

The thought [behind the Golden Notebook] was that to divide off and compartmentalize living was dangerous and led to nothing but trouble. Old, young, black, white, men, women, capitalism, socialism: these great dichotomies undo us, force us into unreal categorization, make us look for what separates us rather than what we have in common. — Doris Lessing

In fact it seems that there may be not one but two basic dichotomies : on the one hand similitude and difference, on the other hands solidarity and opposition. The "indifference" is ultimately a form of opposition.

At the pre-oedipien state, when there is acquired the distinction of the self and the other, similitude is a sign of belonging to a single class, an extension of the self, and difference is a sign of exteriority, of separation.
With the oedipien state the homology is reversed: difference of sex signifies complementarity and desire, whereas identity of sex entails identity of object of desire, rivalry, conflict — Gilbert Durand

You need something more than just the scientific method to explain the world in which we live. Beware of false dichotomies (either/or situations) that proponents of scientism assume. You should never have to choose whether or not you believe in either a plane's engine or gravity. You can have both. You shouldn't have to accept the existence of Steve Jobs or the iPhone; nor should you have to decide whether you believe in God or science. Those who insist that scientific discoveries disprove God are mistaken. — Jon Morrison

I'll tell you ... why Wonder Woman worked. Or Bionic Woman. Or any of those [shows] really. It was because it wasn't about brawn ... it was about brains. And yes, she happened to be beautiful, she happened to be kind of extraordinary in some way, but she wasn't a guy. And I think that, [now], they ... put out a female hero, and all they are doing is changing the costume from a man to a woman ... they're not showcasing any of the tremendous dichotomies than women possess in term of softness and toughness, sweetness and grit, inner and outer strength. — Lynda Carter

Thinking in dichotomies eliminates possibilities. — Paul J. Leslie

I understand Los Angeles as a space where "real and imagined narratives overlap" in ways that disrupt both either/or dichotomies (Spanish or Indian, Mexican or American, Brown or White) and "linear historical understandings of this place and its people."22 — David Samuel Torres-Rouff

False dichotomies are often at the heart of discord. — Deborah Tannen

Science tries to record and explain the factual character of the natural world, whereas religion struggles with spiritual and ethical questions about the meaning and proper conduct of our lives. The facts of nature simply cannot dictate correct moral behavior or spiritual meaning. — Stephen Jay Gould

Here are two dichotomies here. In the West it is a very physical practice, and even meditation is a practice to become productive and more at peace. In the East, you think of the deep spiritual practices as a journey of complete dissolution of the self, the ego. — Karan Bajaj

The intangible, as you can guess, creates some decidedly strange and perceived dichotomies for scientific interpretations. Ask a scientist what the definition of electricity is and he might rattle off, "It is the physical phenomena arising from the reaction of electrons and protons ... " Note the word " ... phenomena ... " in the above statement - it is the key word. It is used as a reference in the philosophical usage rather than as a scientific justification. — H.D. Rennerfeldt

The dichotomies, the brokenness of the culture around things like the Vietnam war, and then a lot of it has to do with war and where we put our energy and money and attention. And the military industrial complex, which dominates our whole economy. Even with the vision of democracy in other places we know the dark side. — Anne Waldman

I have often been amused by our vulgar tendency to take complex issues, with solutions at neither extreme of a continuum of possibilities, and break them into dichotomies, assigning one group to one pole and the other to an opposite end, with no acknowledgment of subtleties and intermediate positions and nearly always with moral opprobrium attached to opponents. — Stephen Jay Gould

Studying anthropology, I developed a kind of holistic view of human existence, in which the dichotomies you listed are all necessary and vital aspects of life. — Joan D. Vinge

How do we break free from the dichotomies that limit God's power in our lives? How can love and service to God become living sparks that light up our whole lives? By discovering a worldview perspective that unifies *both* secular and sacred, public and private, within a single framework. By understanding that all honest work and creative enterprise can be a valid calling from the Lord. And by realizing that there are biblical principles that apply to every field of work. These insights will fill us with purpose, and we will begin to experience the joy that comes from relating to God in and through every dimension of our lives. — Nancy Pearcey

The verdure of mountains enhancing the beauty of the earth is recounting us to live not only for ourselves but for others too, accepting the dichotomies (dualities) of life like heat, cold rain etc. How true this is in actuality that the greenery of land is owing to the grass, still no one recalls the grass. Likewise, greenery of this life (happiness) always inspire you to enliven not only your own but others' lives too."- Acharya Balkrishna — Acharya Balkrishna

My message is to forget about dichotomies. The 'Brain Opera' is an opera, even if it does not tell a story in the usual way. It is a psychological journey with voice - so I do consider it an opera. — Tod Machover

I consider myself a fairly ethical individual while I do have a lot of dichotomies within me. We're all victims of our own hypocrisy at times. — T. J. Miller

We need to learn how to live consciously and, trusting ourselves, purposefully on that inevitable balance point between form and emptiness, relative and absolute, being and non-being, self and non-self, time and eternity, the finite and infinite. It is between all such dichotomies and poles that our life actually flows. — Lama Surya Das

We could speak about the meaning of life vis-a-vis non-consequential/deontological theories, apodictic transformation schemata, the incoherence of exemplification, metaphysical realism, Cartesian interactive dualism, revised non reductive dualism, postmodernist grammatology and dicey dichotomies. But we would still be left with Nietzsche's preposterous mustache which instills great anguish and skepticism in the brain, which leads (as it did in his case) to utter madness. I suggest we go to Paris instead. — Maira Kalman

The novel had a framework made by thinking. The thought was that to divide off and compartmentalize living was dangerous and led to nothing but trouble. Old, young; black, white; men, women; capitalism, socialism; these dichotomies undo us, force us into unreal categorisation, make us look for what separates us rather than what we have in common. That was the thought, which made the shape or pattern of 'The Golden Notebook'. But the emotions were stronger than the thought. This is why I have always seen TGN as a failure: a failure in my terms, of what I had meant. For has this book changed by an iota our tendency to think like computers set to sort everything - people, ideas, history - into boxes? No, it has not. Yet why should I have such a hubristic thought? But I was in the grip of discovery, of revelation. I had only just seen this Truth: I was watching my own mind working like a sorting machine, and I was appalled. — Doris Lessing

I despair of persuading people to drop the familiar and comforting tactic of dichotomy. Perhaps, instead, we might expand the framework of debates by seeking other dichotomies more appropriate than, or simply different from, the conventional divisions. All dichotomies are simplifications, but the rendition of a conflict along differing axes of several orthogonal dichotomies might provide an amplitude of proper intellectual space without forcing us to forgo our most comforting tool of thought. — Stephen Jay Gould

Damn all false dichotomies to hell — D. A. Carson

We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want. — Nelson Mandela

Try seeing your world and yourself this way, eyes open to whatever is before you, mind free of dichotomies. Are you good or bad, fragile or tough, wise or foolish? Yes. And so am I. — Martha N. Beck

We live in a polarized world of contrived dualisms, dichotomies and paradoxes: light vs. dark and good vs. evil. We as Mexic Amerindians/mestizas are the dark. We are the evilor at least, the questionable. — Ana Castillo

The convention that there were two sides to every story eliminated the third and fourth and fifth sides. Even dividing the past two and a half million years into the "Neolithic" (the new stone age) and the "Paleolithic" (the old stone age) was reductionist. "Write this down," he said. "Dichotomies are for idiots. — Marilyn Johnson

I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each. — Stephen Fry

And cranky old Jacques Derrida notwithstanding, we do love our dichotomies. — Thomas King

Look at the kind of people who most object to the childishness and cheapness of celebrity culture. Does one really want to side with such apoplectic and bombastic bores? I should know, I often catch myself being one, and it isn't pretty. I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for being able to sustain each. Monocultures are uninhabitably dull and end as deserts. — Stephen Fry

Beyond the mythology, Wonder Woman gets to play with several dichotomies. It's Amazon culture versus man's world; ancient mythological times versus the contemporary world; and, of course, all the male and female issues. — Bruce Timm

Dichotomies are most mischevious when they arbitrarily separate parts of a highly interrelated and complex system. — David W. Ehrenfeld

I think we all live dichotomies. I'm a father of three boys and a loyal homebody sort of husband and father. And yet I act in movies and write and direct movies. — Tim Blake Nelson

Dichotomies are an inherent part of comics, aren't they? Comics are both pictures and words. They blend time and space. Many feature characters with dual identities like Bruce Wayne/Batman. Cartoonists also tend to live dichotomous lives because many of us have day jobs. — Gene Luen Yang