Opposing View Quotes & Sayings

I blew out the flame, and when my breath hit his face, his eyes closed. I waited for them to reopen, but they didn't. — Raziel Reid

Toleration of people who differ in convictions and habits requires a residual awareness of the complexity of truth and the possibility of opposing view having some light on one or the other facet of a many-sided truth. — Reinhold Niebuhr

In business, there's a constant focus on developing strategies, reviewing executive performance against those strategies each year, engaging with opposing or different points of view, and having intellectual dialogue. — Jeff Raikes

What should you do when you find you have made a mistake like that? Some people never admit that they are wrong and continue to find new, and often mutually inconsistent, arguments to support their case - as Eddington did in opposing black hole theory. Others claim to have never really supported the incorrect view in the first place or, if they did, it was only to show that it was inconsistent. It seems to me much better and less confusing if you admit in print that you were wrong. A good example of this was Einstein, who called the cosmological constant, which he introduced when he was trying to make a static model of the universe, the biggest mistake of his life. — Stephen Hawking

The difference between a debater and a polemicist is that unlike debaters, who try to seek a common ground, a polemicist intends to establish the truth of a controversial point of view while refuting the opposing point of view - there is no room for compromise. — Henrik O. Lunde

Every film I've made has a kind of frustrated love story in the center of it. They were people who saw life from opposing points of view, which has been in every film I've ever done. It had all the ingredients of the kinds of films I like to do. — Sydney Pollack

We were thinking of secrets. Real secrets, and snide. Too many to count. When I try now to sort out who knew what and who knew nothing, who knew everything and who was a fraud, I have to stop and give it up, it makes my head spin. — Sarah Waters

I don't want these. They're mud and they've got no color. Or at least the color is different from what I'm used to. Take any American city, in autumn, or in winter, when the light makes the colors dance and flow, and look at it from a distant hill or from a boat in the bay or on the river, and you will see in any section of the view far better paintings than in this lentil soup that you people have to pedigree in order to love. I may be a thief, but I know color when I see it in the flash of heaven or in the Devil's opposing tricks, and I know mud. Mr. Knoedler, you needn't worry about your paintings anymore. I'm not going to steal them. I don't like them.
Sincerely yours,
P. Soames — Mark Helprin

Obsession is an attractive thing. People who are really, really interested and good at one thing and smart are attractive, if they're men. — Meryl Streep

The Tea Party is a fitting representation of our era of no-debate, politically correct politics, where each political side has its own media, and opposing views are almost never given a fair hearing. Conservatives listen only to conservatives, and liberals listen only to liberals. People are spared the inconvenience of facts that don't fit their beliefs and the unpleasantness of seriously considering a point of view other than their own. — Juan Williams

An educated man must have a "curiosity in exploring the unfamiliar and unexpected, an open-mindedness in entertaining opposing points of view, tolerance for the ambiguity that surrounds so many important issues, and a willingness to make the best decisions he can in the face of uncertainty and doubt". — Derek Bok

Fine," Connor tells him. "Think about stuff until your head explodes. But the only thing I want to think about is surviving to eighteen."
I find your shallowness both refreshing and disappointing at the same time. Do you think that means I need therapy? — Neal Shusterman

The worst part, the worst part, was that Lord de Worde was never wrong. It was not a position he understood in relation to his personal geography. People who took an opposing view were insane, or dangerous, or possibly even not really people. You couldn't have an argument with Lord de Worde. Not a proper argument. An argument, from arguer, meant to debate and discuss and persuade by reason. What you could have with William's father was a flaming row. — Terry Pratchett

Refusing to hear an opposing point of view is a sign of weakness, not strength. — Moustafa Gadalla

It's perfectly possible to hold two opposing points of view in the mind at once, oscillating between them. — S.J. Watson

The opposing barristers were in tactical agreement (because it was plainly the judge's view) that the issue was not merely a matter of education. The court must choose, on behalf of the children, between total religion and something a little less. Between cultures, identities, states of mind, aspirations, sets of family relations, fundamental definitions, basic loyalties, unknowable futures. In such matters there lurked an innate predisposition in favor of the status quo, as long as it appeared benign. — Ian McEwan

I loved the old government in 1861. I loved the old Constitution yet. I think it is the best government in the world, if administered as it was before the war. I do not hate it; I am opposing now only the radical revolutionists who are trying to destroy it. I believe that party to be composed, as I know it is in Tennessee, of the worst men on Gods earth - men who would not hesitate at no crime, and who have only one object in view - to enrich themselves. — Nathan Bedford Forrest

One must dig deeply into opposing points of view in order to know whether your own position remains defensible. Iron sharpens iron. — Francis Collins

His view of war - and he had seen a great deal of it - was that a general made as many blunders as he fought battles, but, by the grace of the gods, the opposing generals' blunders were sometimes worse. — Aubrey Menen

The cycle of parental disapproval begins at dawn. That's why I have to get up five minutes before sunrise, so I can berate my grandpa like he was my own child. — Jarod Kintz

When I was in high school, I listened to a lot of death metal bands. — Amy Lee

What are the liberal arts and sciences? They are simply fields in which knowledge is pursued disinterestedly - that is, without regard to political, economic, or practical benefit. Disinterestedness doesn't mean that the professor is equally open to any view. Professors are hired because they have views about their subjects, views that exclude opposing or alternative views. Disinterestedness just means that whatever views a professor does hold, they have been arrived at unconstrained, or as unconstrained as possible, by anything except the requirement of honesty. — Louis Menand

Obstacles are not opposing you, but merely and gently re-routing you. It is important not to view that which stands in your way as your 'enemy.' It can often be your best friend, sending you on a detour that takes you around what would have been your biggest stumbling block. — Neale Donald Walsch

You can change your life if you really want to. You can improve it, make it better. And it all starts with changing the way you think. — John C. Maxwell

If your mind is open to opposing ideas, your intelligence will go up. If your mind is closed to opposing ideas, your ignorance is in control. Intelligence or ignorance? Your ability to keep an open mind and appreciate multiple points of view is conscious choice. And one that can open your world, and shape your childs future. — Robert Kiyosaki

There are no heroes and there are no villains. There are just opposing points of view. That's all history is...the viciously long battle between world views. — Peter J. Tomasi

If you go to Cass Sunstein, what net neutrality means is now if you go to FoxNews, you will have Arianna Huffington, a little box pop up with her showing that "Bill O'Reilly is wrong on this" or "here's an opposing view of Bill O'Reilly". — Glenn Beck

The most effective way to close down the human mind and to manipulate its sense of self is to program into it some form of dogma. A dogma will always vehemently defend itself from other information and repel any alternative opinion which contradicts its narrow, solidified view. Dogmas become a person's sense of security and means of retaining power, and humanity tends to cling to both until its knuckles turn white. Dogmas take endless forms, and when you can persuade different people to hold opposing dogmas, the manipulation of conflict and control through "divide and rule" becomes easy. — David Icke

The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of ourmost accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy. — David Hume

The key to handling conflict is to make sure people understand it's okay to have an opposing view. — Eunice Parisi-Carew

It's very hard in our adversarial society to find a third view. Take journalism, where everything is always presented as one person against another: "Now we're going to hear the opposing view." There is never a third view. — James Hillman

Fanatics." Mircea sounded disgusted. "She called them utopians." "Same thing under a different name." "She said they could be dangerous - " "They always are. Anyone who can only see their point of view is. Once a group decides that their way is the only way, it is an easy progression to vilifying anyone who doesn't agree with them. And once someone has been demonized, has been characterized as opposing the good, killing him becomes a virtue. — Karen Chance

Overall, people are about twice as likely to seek information that supports their own point of view as they are to consider an opposing idea.19 — Margaret Heffernan

If there's one thing I've learned, buddy, it's that love is messy and complicated. If it's too easy, then it isn't the real deal. It can't be, because passion doesn't follow the path of least resistance. It's this fiery, out-of-control entity that sucks you in and spits you out more hurt and more alive than ever before. — Siobhan Davis

Yer ticket fer Hogwarts," he said. "First o' September - King's Cross - it's all on yer ticket. Any problems with the Dursleys, send me a letter with yer owl, she'll know where to find me. . . . See yeh soon, Harry. — J.K. Rowling

One of my biggest challenges is figuring out how to shoehorn my newfound knowledge into conversations. — A. J. Jacobs

The social view of humanity, namely that of social ecology, focuses primarily on the historic emergence of hierarchy and the need to eliminate hierarchical relationships. It emphasizes the just demands of the oppressed in a society that wantonly exploits human beings, and it calls for their freedom. It explores the possibility or a new technology and a new sensibility, including more organic forms of reason, that will harmonize our relationship with nature instead of opposing society to the natural world. — Murray Bookchin

We must also recognize that people who have diametrically opposing views may believe *they too* are advancing the kingdom, which is all well and good so long as we don't christen our views as *the* Christian view. As people whose citizenship is in heaven before it is in any nation (Phil 3:20), and whose kingdom identity is rooted in Jesus rather than in a political agenda, we must never forget that the only way we individually and collectively represent the kingdom of God is through loving, Christlike, sacrificial acts of service to others. Anything and everything else, however good and noble, lies outside the kingdom of God. — Gregory A. Boyd

I've always wondered if people who block each other from expressing their opinions do so because they have so little confidence in their own. To me, encountering an opposing point of view is a chance to gain a deeper understanding of the issues at stake and develop my own point of view. But the first thing you've got to do is you've got to let people speak and you've got to listen. And that's what the first amendment is all about. That's what really distinguishes this country from others. — Michael Bloomberg