Oxymoronic Quotes & Sayings

One of the key psychological characteristics of the Tea Party is its oxymoronic love of authority figures coupled with a narcissistic celebration of its own "revolutionary" defiance. It's this psychic weakness that allows this segment of the population to be manipulated by the likes of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. The advantage is that their willingness to take orders has allowed them to organize effectively (try getting one hundred progressives at a meeting focused on anything). The downside is, they see absolutely nothing weird in launching a revolution based upon the ravings of a guy who's basically a half-baked PR stooge shoveling propaganda coal for bloodsucking transnational behemoths like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. — Matt Taibbi

Alasdair yanked a pillow, shoving it under his arse. "I think you'll find I'm a heavy but remarkably fit and supple git, thank you very much." He spread his legs wide open and leered.
"With real self-esteem issues." Cosmo deadpanned.
"I will have if you don't hurry up and make love to me."
"Make love?" Aww, that's sweet."
"Less talking. More shagging."
"Yes, boss!" Cosmo saluted with his free hand ... — Josephine Myles

Don't let anyone ever make you feel you don't deserve what you want.. — Heath Ledger

About being grateful for what you have instead of yearning for what you think you want. — Gayle Forman

There's something undeniably oxymoronic about a 'successful' rock n' roll band. Who wants to hear a bunch of success stories whining about their success? More importantly, what can be the drive behind a band, what can they have to rage against when they are successes? That's a dichotomy every successful band wrestles with. — Dexter Holland

The very idea of "managing" a forest in the first place is oxymoronic, because a forest is an ecosystem that is by definition self-managing. — Bernd Heinrich

See for me, it's immediate. Silence is so freaking loud.' This seemed either deep or deeply oxymoronic. I wasn't sure which. — Sarah Dessen

The very term 'combinatorial methods' has an oxymoronic character. — Joel Spencer

For as long as we can trace back human life, there's always been some sort of music - ceremonies, rituals. It's part of the human makeup. — Ingrid Michaelson

As a rule, we don't like to feel to sad or lonely or depressed. So why do we like music (or books or movies) that evoke in us those same negative emotions? Why do we choose to experience in art the very feelings we avoid in real life?
Aristotle deals with a similar question in his analysis of tragedy. Tragedy, after all, is pretty gruesome. [ ... ] There's Sophocles's Oedipus, who blinds himself after learning that he has killed his father and slept with his mother. Why would anyone watch this stuff? Wouldn't it be sick to enjoy watching it? [ ... ] Tragedy's pleasure doesn't make us feel "good" in any straightforward sense. On the contrary, Aristotle says, the real goal of tragedy is to evoke pity and fear in the audience. Now, to speak of the pleasure of pity and fear is almost oxymoronic. But the point of bringing about these emotions is to achieve catharsis of them - a cleansing, a purification, a purging, or release. Catharsis is at the core of tragedy's appeal. — Brandon W. Forbes

The whole Silicon Valley is oxymoronic - geeky and rich and hip. — Douglas Coupland

DPRK translates to Democratic People's Republic of Korea - and if the words Democratic and Republic sound like a good thing, well, it's oxymoronic because the Korea we're talking about here is the communist one in the North, and when I said the pastor's father was their guest, what I really meant is he was shot down, captured, tortured, and held prisoner by a depraved enemy in what today can only be described as a failed state. — Tucker Elliot

In whichever way a democratic system might be sick, terrorism does not heal it, it kills it. Democracy is healed with democracy. - VIRGINIO ROGNONI, — Clive James

To fix hearts one must know one's own. — Will Advise

I feel most comfortable keeping versatile when it comes to music genres. — Thia Megia

A computer model which manipulated data about itself and its "surroundings" in essentially the same way as an organic brain would have to possess essentially the same mental states. "Simulated consciousness" was as oxymoronic as "simulated addition. — Greg Egan

I feel like, for me, reading Thomas Merton is like that. When you're a ways into it, you're five pages in, 20 pages in, 30 pages in, it seems like one of the more oxymoronic undertakings you could attempt. — Will Oldham

As life speeds by, nostalgia has a shorter pregnancy. Games still in progress are given the straight-to-sepia status of "Instant Classics" no matter how oxymoronic that phrase appears. — Steve Rushin

It seems almost oxymoronic to believe that this new idealism has led to a new pessimism about marriage, but that is exactly what has happened. In generations past there was far less talk about "compatibility" and finding the ideal soul mate. Today we are looking for someone who accepts us as we are and fulfills our desires, and this creates an unrealistic set of expectations that frustrates both the searchers and the searched for. — Timothy Keller

I write novels with a lawyer as the hero, no matter how oxymoronic that might sound. — William Lashner

An oxymoronic combination of the tough and tender, [Of Mice and Men] will appeal to sentimental cynics, cynical sentimentalists ... Readers less easily thrown off their trolley will still prefer Hans Andersen.
[Time 1937] — Time-Life Books

The charge was left entirely to himself from midnight until the rising of the sun; and if all the shepherds in the Forest had been there to have assisted him, they could not have effected it with greater propriety. — James Hogg

Blogging is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud. — Andrew Sullivan

The most beautiful things often stand alone. — Jenim Dibie

Attachment to a baby is a long-term process, not a single, magical moment. The opportunity for bonding at birth may be compared to falling in love - staying in love takes longer and demands more work. — T. Berry Brazelton

Happy and alone, you say? Reclusive and merry? How oxymoronic! Pas possible! Alas, the concept is lost on so many. — Caroline Knapp

In fact, the very phrase "teaching creative writing" sounds to me oxymoronic. How can you teach someone to be creative? — Yuriy Tarnawsky