Quotes & Sayings About Self Contradiction

I always feel that there are two choices for women. Either be totally confident about your non-size-zero body and say, 'I love what I look like and this is who I am,' or be the person who is obsessed with diet and exercise and keeping toned. What feels more realistic to me is that some days I wake up and think I love how I look. On other days I say, 'If I had real self-control, I would be 10 pounds lighter.' That contradiction is, to me, what being a girl actually feels like. — Lena Dunham

Socrates proved the immortality of the soul from the fact that the sickness of the soul (sin) does not consume it as sickness of the body consumes the body. So also we can demonstrate the eternal in man from the fact that despair cannot consume his self, that this precisely is the torment of contradiction in despair. If there were nothing eternal in a man, he could not despair; but if despair could consume his self, there would still be no despair. — Soren Kierkegaard

An entirely honest man, in the severe sense of the word, exists no more than an entirely dishonest knave; the best and the worst are only approximations to those qualities. Who are those that never contradict themselves? yet honesty never contradicts itself. Who are they that always contradict themselves? yet knavery is mere self-contradiction. Thus the knowledge of man determines not the things themselves, but their proportions, the quantum of congruities and incongruities. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

[J]uvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms. 'Delinquent' means 'failing in duty.' But duty is an adult virtue
indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge and duty and embraces it more than the self-love he was born with. — Robert A. Heinlein

Autocratic governments are masters of self-contradiction. They say one thing, do another. — Alastair Reynolds

[...] let us note that a so-called "Sociobiologist" - this word is a whole project by itself - pushed the ingeniosity to the point of replacing matter by "genes", whose egoist selfishness, combined with ant and bee instincts, would have managed to constitute not only bodies but also conscience and at the end, human intelligence, miraculously able to dissert on the genes that amusingly created it. — Frithjof Schuon

It is axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time; conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction. — W. H. Auden

This solid permanence in Foreign Office affairs had always antagonized MacGregor: there was something threatening and deadly and over-sure in it. The building itself was far more flexible and animate than its regular and eternal inhabitants who demanded such rigid conformity of anyone entering the kingdom. No one could enter the Foreign Office with a contradiction to it and have his conviction untouched and unshaken. This was a n atmosphere of such self-conviction and God-like authority that any rival opinion was shattered in the contact. — James Aldridge

We can know that the Christian God cannot exist. If he is all-powerful and all-good, as Christians maintain, there would not have been, for instance, the Holocaust. This is an inherent self-contradiction. So if Christians insist on having a God, they can do so, but if they have any respect for logic they'll have to redefine who he is. — Vincent Bugliosi

It takes a purely human courage to renounce the whole temporal realm in order to gain eternity, but this I do gain and in all eternity can never renounce - it is a self-contradiction. But it takes a paradoxical and humble courage to grasp the whole temporal realm now by virtue of the absurd, and this is the courage of faith. — Soren Kierkegaard

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man! — Ralph Ellison

Incompleteness was real. It meant that mathematics could never be proved free of self-contradiction. — James Gleick

The essence of man is his freedom. Sin is committed in that freedom. Sin can therefore not be attributed to a defect in his essence. It can only be understood as a self-contradiction, made possible by the fact of his freedom but not following necessarily from it. — Reinhold Niebuhr

All true love and all sacrifice are
in their essence Nature's contradiction of the primary egoism and
its separative error; it is her attempt to turn from a necessary first
fragmentation towards a recovered oneness. All unity between
creatures is in its essence a self-finding, a fusion with that from
which we have separated, a discovery of one's self in others.
But it is only a divine love and unity that can possess in the light what the human forms of these things seek for in
the darkness. — Sri Aurobindo

She was a contradiction, both vulnerable and incredibly self-assured. She knew exactly who she was and didn't hide from that knowledge, but she didn't like the scrutiny of others. — Nicole Jacquelyn

Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to ... my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art. This turbulent sea was the sea outside my bedroom window in Bombay. It is the sea by which I was born, and which I carry within me wherever I go. — Salman Rushdie

If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The only real philosophical answer is automatically self-contradictory: 'Only if I did not know that I was doing so.' To go through the entire experience once more would be banal and Sisyphean - even if it did build muscle - whereas to wish to be young again and to have the benefit of one's learned and acquired existence is not at all to wish for a repeat performance, or a Groundhog Day. And the mind ought to, but cannot, set some limits to wish-thinking. All right, same me but with more money, an even sturdier penis, slightly different parents, a briefer latency period ... the thing is absurd. I seriously would like to know what it was to be a woman, but like blind Tiresias would also want the option of re-metamorphosing if I wished. How terrible it is that we have so many more desires than opportunities. — Christopher Hitchens

The paradox of this arrangement was not lost on Lewis Mumford, who described suburbia as "a collective effort to live a private life." In many ways, this goes to the heart of the matter, for it is a project based on self-contradiction - the tragedy of American domestic — Morris Berman

I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the futherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. — Robert Louis Stevenson

I would like to say that, as the protester finished his shower, I was disturbed by the contradiction between my avowed political materialism and my inexperience with this brand of making, of poeisis, but I could dodge or dampen that contradiction via my hatred of Brooklyn's boutique biopolitics, in which spending obscene sums and endless hours on stylized food preparation somehow enabled the conflation of self-care and political radicalism. — Ben Lerner

This is love. I have my self-consciousness not in myself but in the other. I am satisfied and have peace with myself only in this other and I AM only because I have peace with myself; if I did not have it then I would be a contradiction that falls to pieces. This other, because it likewise exists outside itself, has its self-consciousness only in me; and both the other and I are only this consciousness of being-outside-ourselves and of our identity; we are only this intuition, feeling, and knowledge of our unity. This is love, and without knowing that love is both a distinguishing and the sublation of this distinction, one speaks emptily of it. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The very design of the gospel doth tend to self-abasing; and the work of grace is begun and carried on in humiliation. Humility is not a mere ornament of a Christian, but an essential part of the new creature: it is a contradiction to be a sanctified man, or a true Christian, and not humble. — Richard Baxter

I told you that 'juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms. 'Delinquent' means 'failing in duty.' But duty is an adult virtue - indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a 'juvenile delinquent.' But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents - people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail. — Robert A. Heinlein

Wish" gives the warmth, the content, the imagination, the child's play, the freshness, and the richness to "will." "Will" gives the self-direction, the maturity, to "wish." Without "wish," "will" loses its life-blood, its
viability, and tends to expire in self-contradiction. If you have only "will" and no "wish," you have the dried-up, Victorian, neopuritan man. If you have only "wish" and no "will," you have the driven, unfree, infantile person who, as an adult-remaining-an-infant, may become the robot man.66 — Irvin D. Yalom

Each of us is several, is man, is a profusion of selves. So that the self who disdains his surroundings is not the same as the self who suffers or takes joy in them. In the colony of our being there are many species of people who think and feel in different ways. — Pascal Mercier

For generations, the Gandhi family has been more spiritual than religious. This may seem to be a contradiction, but it is not. The Gandhis have drawn a clear distinction between two terms. Spirituality refers to the aspiration of our true nature, and ultimate realization of the Self. Religion, on the other hand, as in many cases come to mean a dogmatic observance of rituals that one practices at specified times of the day or week. — Arun Gandhi

Self-contradiction is the most fruitful kind of contradiction. — Marty Rubin

My father's moral inculcations were at all times mainly those of the Socratici viri; justice, temperance (to which he gave a very extended application), veracity, perseverance, readiness to encounter pain and especially labour, regard for the public good; estimation of persons according to their merits, and of things according to their intrinsic usefulness; a life of exertion, in contradiction to one of self-indulgent sloth. These and other moralities he conveyed in brief sentences, uttered as occasion arose, of grave exhortation, or stern reprobation and contempt. — John Stuart Mill

I have never agreed with my other self wholly. The truth of the matter seems to lie between us. — Kahlil Gibran

Individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong. — Friedrich Schiller

Pure sensism leads inevitably to universal doubt; if reality is in the end reducible to sensible appearance, then, since this is in a state of perpetual flux and self-contradiction, no kind of certitude will any longer be possible. [...] Truth is necessary and immutable; but in the sensible order nothing necessary or immutable is to be found; therefore sensible things will never yield us any truth. — Etienne Gilson

Ethical and cultural desegregation. It is a contradiction in terms to scream race pride and equality while at the same time spurning Negro teachers and self-association. — Zora Neale Hurston

Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind's faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which stemma to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should have a self-evident absurdity -namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth. — Mary Baker Eddy

God's love is so perfect that He lovingly requires us to obey His commandments because He knows that only through obedience to His laws can we become perfect, as He is. For this reason, God's anger and His wrath are not a contradiction of His love but an evidence of His love. Every parent knows that you can love a child totally and completely while still being creatively angry and disappointed at that child's self-defeating behavior. — Dallin H. Oaks

From the first time he'd met her, he'd sensed an air of contradiction about her. She was very much a woman, but still retained a waiflike quality. She could be brash, and at times deliberately suggestive, yet she was painfully shy. She was incredibly easy to get along with, yet she had few friends. She was a talented artist in her own right, but so self-conscious about her work that she rarely completed a piece and preferred to work with other people's art and ideas ... — Charles De Lint

The more formidable the contradiction between inexhaustible life-joy and inevitable fate, the greater the longing which reveals itself in the kingdom of poetry and in the self-created world of dreams hopes to banish the dark power of reality. The gods enjoy eternal youth, and the search for the means of securing it was one of the occupations of the heroes of mythology and the sages, as it was of real adventurers in the middle ages and more recent times ... But the fountain of youth has not been found, and can not be found if it is sought in any particular spot on the earth. Yet it is no fable, no dream-picture; it requires no adept to find it: it streams forth inexhaustible in all living nature. — Ferdinand Cohn

Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat: these two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. — Frederic Bastiat

Women are mere "beauties" in men's culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character, they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable. A beautiful heroine is a contradiction in terms, since heroism is about individuality, interesting and ever changing, while "beauty" is generic, boring, and inert. While culture works out moral dilemmas, "beauty" is amoral: If a woman is born resembling an art object, it is an accident of nature, a fickle consensus of mass perception, a peculiar coincidence
but it is not a moral act. From the "beauties" in male culture, women learn a bitter amoral lesson
that the moral lessons of their culture exclude them. — Naomi Wolf

Subjectivity is my middle name, a trick memory is my pack mule, and self-contradiction is my trusty old jackknife. — Luc Sante

The four stages of acceptance:
1. This is worthless nonsense.
2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
3. This is true, but quite unimportant.
4. I always said so."

(Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464) — J.B.S. Haldane

I spoke without fear of contradiction. I simply did not suffer self-doubt. — Elia Kazan

In the Christian religion, though perhaps not in any other, we frequently find a conception of god that is selfcontradictory and therefore corresponds to nothing. That is the conception formed by the following three propositions taken together:
1. God is all-powerful.
2. God is all-benevolent.
3. There is much misery in the world.
A god who was all-powerful but left much misery in the world would not be all-benevolent. An all-benevolent god in a world containing much misery would not be an all-powerful god. A world containing a god who was both all-powerful and all-benevolent would contain no misery.
Here, then, we have a mathematical proof bearing on a common religious doctrine. Anyone who is confident that he frequently comes across misery in the world may conclude with equal confidence that there is no such thing as an all-powerful and all-benevolent god. And this mathematically disposes of official Christianity, as has long been known. — Richard Robinson

A dragon is a confusion at the heart of things, a law unto himself. He embraces good, evil, and indifference; in his own nature he makes them indivisible and absolute. He knows who he is. Surely you see that... Put it this way. Dragons all love life's finer things- music, art, treasure- the works of the spirit; yet in their personal habits they're foul and bestial- they burn down cathedrals, for instance, and eat maidens- and they see in their whimsical activities no faintest contradiction... Dragons never grow, never change... Believe me, nothing in this world is more despicable than a dragon. They're a walking- or flying- condemnation of all we stand for, all we pray for our children, nay, for ourselves. We struggle to improve ourselves, we tortuously balance on the delicate line between our duties to society and our duties within- our duties to God and our own nature. — John Gardner

The free-trade idea, logically applied, will abolish usury; and with usury will disappear the chief bone of contention between labor and capital. But, just at this point, free-traders go over to the enemy; and many writers on political economy, in flat contradiction of the essential principles of that science, have made elaborate arguments to prove self-government in finance, impossible! What shall we think of men who, having dethroned kings, demolished popes, destroyed slave oligarchies and assailed tariff monopoly, advise submission to the most oppressive and dishonest of despotisms, Usury? — Ezra Heywood

When you feel hatred towards your life, hate it. See how it will actually do something to your life. — Ade Santi

Many readers are familiar with the spirit and the letter of the definition of "prayer," as given by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil's Dictionary. It runs like this, and is extremely easy to comprehend: Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy. Everybody can see the joke that is lodged within this entry: The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right. Half-buried in the contradiction is the distressing idea that nobody is in charge, or nobody with any moral authority. The call to prayer is self-cancelling. — Christopher Hitchens

Self-development is a contradiction in terms Personal development is the way. — Frank Ra

The idea that there is some kind of contradiction between the in-depth study of God's Word, so as to know what God has revealed about himself, and a living, vital faith is inherently self-contradictory. — James R. White

A pacifist male is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described "pacifists" are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger. — Robert A. Heinlein

To give the theory plenty of 'rope' and see if it hangs itself eventually is better tactics than to choke it off at the outset b abstract accusations of self-contradiction — William James

I always make sure that the world will prove me right. It gives me the freedom to contradict myself. — Criss Jami

But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? — Charles Darwin

We tend to view ourselves as this, lying in contradiction with everything that is not ourselves, that. — Chris Matakas

One of the biggest contradictions in self-proclaimed open-mindedness is to say that we're all one but when a true bigot comes around tell him we're all different. It's usually the case that neither side is correct. One might have the right to do something, anything, but sure enough, that doesn't mean it's right and a benefit to other people. — Criss Jami

It would be gross understatement to say that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of clarity. It is in many important respects a model of ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction. — Antonin Scalia

The Seductive Lure of Socialism Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat again: These two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free. — Frederic Bastiat