Contradiction Quotes

See also Core English Vocabulary (C) Quotes

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

- Groucho Marx

For thirty years people have been asking me how I reconcile X with Y! The truthful answer is that I don`t. Everything about me is a contradiction and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There is a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don`t reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.

- Orson Welles

I don`t do ads for suits in Spain like George Clooney or cigarettes in Japan like Harrison Ford. And on one level, people go, `Well, more fault to you, mate, because there`s free money to be handed out.` But to me it`s kind of sacrilegious - it`s a complete contradiction of the f**king social contract you have with your audience. I mean, Robert De Niro`s advertising "American Express". Gee whiz, it`s not the first time he`s disappointed me. It`s been happening for a while now.

- Russell Crowe

What the nation`s built on is discussion, contradiction and growth, and at the moment you can`t discuss anything. If you do start to discuss it, you get criticized. If people hate us, you have to find out why and try to solve that problem.

- Donald Sutherland

The industry is a bit more visual oriented (more) towards something to the eyes than something to the ears, That`s a bit of a contradiction. We can`t forget that, at the end of the day, what really matters here is music. I must confess that sometimes I have been a victim of that.

- Shakira

He hoped and prayed that there wasn`t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn`t an afterlife.

- Douglas Adams

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

- Elia Kazan

The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism.

- Mikhail Gorbachev

I am the epitome of a walking contradiction for various reasons, only one of which being that I feel my existence is of heaven and hell.

- Kim Elizabeth

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

- Jim Jarmusch

I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.

- Georges Bataille

Satire dramatizes better than any other use of it, the inherent contradiction of free speech that it functions best when what is being said is at its most outrageous

- Tony Hendra

I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don`t need a national ID card.

- Ron Paul

It creates a contradiction, ... The (majority) of messages still are that attractiveness and beauty are really important.

- Kevin Thompson

Good taste and humor are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.

- Malcolm Muggeridge

Good taste and humour are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.

- Malcolm Muggeridge

The fatigue of body and mind has almost unnerved this old frame, and unfitted me to endure the burdens which Providence calls upon me to bear. I find as I grow old I grow more peevish and cannot bear so much contradiction, therefore I am called uncharitable and severe. No matter -- this frail life will soon be over.

- William Miller

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

- Aaron Howard

Using bad language while promising to restore dignity to the White House is a contradiction that will hurt him in a tiny, modest way.

- Ahmad Zeidabady

There is, I conceive, no contradiction in believing that mind is at once the cause of matter and of the development of individualised human minds through the agency of matter.

- AJ Nicholson

The exercise of authority over the same area by two States is a contradiction.

- Al Nash

Furthermore, there is absolutely no contradiction between the separate organizations of revolutionary vanguard militants and their participation in the mass organizations of the working class.

- Alejandro Aviles

That man is a creature who needs order yet yearns for change is the creative contradiction at the heart of the laws which structure his conformity and define his deviancy.

- Alex Eckelberry

But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists` chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.

- Alex Hamilton

When I write down my thoughts, they do not escape me. This action makes me remember my strength which I forget at all times. I educate myself proportionately to my captured thought. I aim only to distinguish the contradiction between my mind and nothingness.

- Alfie Kohn

I now add, farther, that the apostle`s argument is so far from proving it to be the duty of people to obey, and submit to, such rulers as act in contradiction to the public good, and so to the design of their office, that it proves the direct contrary.

- Allan Moss

We have to acknowledge peace is in danger and mankind still has not realised the priority to be given to world dialogue versus armed contradiction and bloodshed.

- Amit Shankardass

Men who hold a theory of the Church which excludes from communion those whom they admit to have the Spirit of Christ simply proclaim that their theory is in flat contradiction to the spiritual fact.

- Andre Gold

What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.

- Andre Grant

There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.

- Andrew Bosomworth

I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.

- Apichart Sankary

He hoped and prayed that there wasn`t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn`t an afterlife.

- Douglas Adams