Contradicting Quotes

Lightning never strikes twice in the same place
it doesn't have to. ~ Harry Hershfield

It seems that the hurdle you have to jump over is everyone's informed opinion. When you're a young playwright, you're probably too precarious in your own technique to understand that when these seemingly informed opinions are contradicting each other, it becomes this paralyzing monolith. ~ Richard Greenberg

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves. ~ Oscar Wilde

There exists [a] word in German, Geschichte, which designates not accomplished history, but history in the present, doubtless determined in large part, yet only in part, by the already accomplished past; for a history which is present, which is living, is also open to a future that is uncertain, unforeseeable, not yet accomplished, and therefore aleatory. Living history obeys only a constant (not a law): the constant of class struggle. Marx did not use the term 'constant', which I have taken from Levi-Strauss, but an expression of genius: 'tendential law', capable of inflecting (but not contradicting) the primary tendential law, which means that a tendency does not possess the form or figure of linear law, but that it can bifurcate under the impact of an encounter with another tendency, and so on ad infinitum. At each intersection the tendency can take a path that is unforeseeable because it is aleatory. ~ Louis Althusser

What's up, Albert?" said the same balding wizard who had followed Harry out of the fireplace earlier. He looked nervous.
"This lot need to leave before you seal the exits," said Harry with all the authority he could muster.
The group of wizards in front of him looked at one another.
"We've been told to seal all exits and not let anyone--"
"Are you contradicting me?" Harry blustered. "Would you like me to have your family tree examined, like I had Dirk Cresswell's?"
"Sorry!" gasped the balding wizard, backing away. "I didn't mean nothing, Albert, but I thought…I thought they were in for questioning and…"
"Their blood is pure," said Harry, and his deep voice echoed impressively through the hall. "Purer than many of yours, I daresay. Off you go," he boomed to the Muggle-borns, who scurried forward into the fireplaces and began to vanish in pairs. ~ J.K. Rowling

Consistent or inconsistent, no one is exempt from the mystery of the self. Probably we are all inconsistent. The world is just too complicated for a person to be able to afford the luxury of reconciling all of his beliefs with each other. Tension and confusion are important in a world where many decisions must be made quickly. Miguel de Unamuno once said, 'If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.' I would say that we all are in the same boast as the Zen master who, after contradicting himself several times in a row, said to the confused Doko, 'I cannot understand myself.'. ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter

We made quite a crew, all talking at once, contradicting and sparring, a cacophony of affectionate arguing. ~ Patti Smith Just Kids

Our alleged facts might be true in all kinds of ways without contradicting any truth already known. I will dwell now on only one possible line of explanation, not that I see any way of elucidating all the new phenomena I regard as genuine, but because it seems probable I may shed a light on some of those phenomena. All the phenomena of the universe are presumably in some way continuous; and certain facts, plucked as it were from the very heart of nature , are likely to be of use in our gradual discovery of facts which lie deeper still. ~ William Crookes

The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting in; the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without contradicting. ~ Charles Dickens

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

Human experience, which is constantly contradicting theory, is the great test of truth. A system, built upon the discoveries of a great many minds, is always of more strength, than what is produced by the mere workings of any one mind, which, of itself, can do very little. There is not so poor a book in the world that would not be a prodigious effort were it wrought out entirely by a single mind, without the aid of prior investigators. ~ Samuel Johnson

Nietzsche said that the earth has been a madhouse long enough. Without contradicting him we might perhaps soften the expression, and say that philosophy has been long enough an asylum for enthusiasts. ~ George Santayana

Besides, we shall want employments for our senses, and subjects for arguments; for were there nothing but truth, and no falsehood, there would be no occasion for to dispute, and by this means we should want the aim and pleasure of our endeavours in confuting and contradicting each other; neither would one man be thought wiser than another, but all would either be alike knowing and wise, or all would be fools ... ~ Margaret Cavendish

We are lying to ourselves when we're not contradicting ourselves. ~ Marty Rubin

I like films that take their time a little bit more and don't show you all of their cards right away, characters that are conflicted and contradicting and seem one way at first and then suddenly turn out to be something else. ~ Oscar Isaac

Twitter is about creating whatever persona you want to create and either sticking with it or changing it or evolving it or contradicting it, and I've done all that stuff. ~ Michael Ian Black

In a way, literature is true than life,' he said to himself. 'On paper, you say exactly and completely what you feel. How easy it is to break things off on paper! You hate, you shout, you kill, you commit suicide; you carry things to the very end. And that's why it's false. But it's damned satisfying. In life, you're constantly denying yourself, and others are always contradicting you. On paper, I make time stand still and I impose my convictions on the whole world; they become the only reality. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The challenge - and much of the fun - of writing in an established future history lies in incorporating new knowledge while remaining true to what has gone before. Expanding and enriching, not contradicting. ~ Edward M. Lerner

When you want to attract something into your life, make sure your actions don't contradict your desires.. Think about what you have asked for, and make sure that your actions are mirroring what you expect to receive, and that they're not contradicting what you've asked for. Act as if you are receiving it. Do exactly what you would do if you were receiving it today, and take actions in your life to reflect that powerful expectation. Make room to receive your desires, and as you do, you are sending out that powerful signal of expectation.

~ Rhonda Byrne

I should as soon think of contradicting a bishop ~ Samuel Johnson

We live in a true chaos of contradicting authorities, an age of conformism without community, of proximity without communication. ~ Germaine Greer

If he exalts himself, I humble him.
If he humbles himself, I exalt him.
And I go on contradicting him
Until he understands
That he is a monster that passes all understanding. ~ Blaise Pascal

The joy is an absurd yellow tulip, popping up in my life, contradicting all the evidence that shows it should not be there. ~ Marya Hornbacher

The writer who's afraid to contradict himself will never write anything. ~ Marty Rubin

Some people think or expect that you should make the same kinds of art forever because it creates a convenient narrative ... I want my work to embody my inherent contradictions. ~ Kiki Smith

If the Pope were to deny that the death penalty could be an exercise of retributive justice, he would be overthrowing the tradition of two millenia of Catholic thought, denying the teaching of several previous popes, and contradicting the teaching of Scripture. ~ Avery Dulles

A religion contradicting science and a science contradicting religion are equally false. ~ P.D. Ouspensky

Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself; therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

If anyone accuses me of contradicting myself, I shall reply; I have been wrong once or more often, however I do not aspire to be always wrong. ~ Luc De Clapiers

But me contradicting a news story is not going to make my words fact. It will just create a new news story. ~ Megan Fox

One great thinker said one thing, another said another, and while the two thoughts are contradicting, the one that backs my argument at the moment is the superior statement. ~ Jarod Kintz

When death brings at last the desired forgetfulness, it abolishes life and being together, and sets the seal on the knowledge that "being" is merely a continual "has been," a thing that lives by denying and destroying and contradicting itself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Your natural instinct, from your broadest Nonphysical perspective, is to know your power. Fear is a vibration when you feel powerless. Your natural instinctual Nonphysical vibration is to know your worthiness, know your rightness, know your value. And the feeling of fear is always when you are contradicting that thought. ~ Esther Hicks

Looking back, I still can't believe how unprofessional the news media was. So much spin, so few hard facts. All those digestible sound bites from an army of 'experts' all contradicting one another, all trying to seem more 'shocking' and 'in-depth' than the last one. It was all so confusing, nobody seemed to know what to do. ~ Max Brooks

He had been brought up to it from a boy, his father, as I have heard, accustoming his children to dispute with one another for his diversion, while sitting at the table after dinner, but I think the practice was not wise; for, in the course of my observation, these disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of more use to them. ~ Benjamin Franklin

We were always contradicting ourselves. We wanted to be told apart - We didn't want to be told apart. We wanted people to know us - We didn't want them to know. We were always looking for someone who would finally accept us. But there was no way that would ever happen, not as twisted as we were. We were so afraid of someone breaking through our barrier and hurting us, we kept a strong lock on our hearts to protect ourselves. ~ Kaoru

A scene of Mahabharata where the Surya Devta(Sun God)would come to bless Kunti with a baby The child watching this on TV says I have been taught that Neil Armstrong had taken several days to reach the moon.Surya Devta took only half a minute to land up in the Kunti's room; that too, he didn't even need a rocket-he had simply walked. Science and Sanskrit had always appeared contradicting subjects to me at school:-) ~ Ravinder Singh

Human logic may be rationally adequate, but it is also existentially deficient. Faith declares that there is more than this - not contradicting, but transcending reason. ~ Alister E. McGrath

How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms. ~ George Bernard Shaw

We choose our friends on the basis of, among other things, our conception of ourselves. That's not to say that friendship is narcissistic, it doesn't follow that we choose people 'like ourselves'; in fact we might choose people very different than ourselves. For example, if I'm not very intelligent, and I'm concerned about my lack of intelligence, I might take up with an extremely intelligent woman, precisely in order to have her intelligence, in some sense, radiate onto me.

The idea is that in friendship what we do is we pick people who are going to reinforce, in some sense, our own conception of ourselves. So if I think of myself as intelligent, or I want to think of myself as intelligent, whether or not I pick a partner who is also intelligent, what is going to be essential is that it's going to be a partner who somehow expands my notion of my own intelligence, either by telling me all the time, perhaps, how intelligent I am, or maybe by always contradicting me in such a way that I can prove my intelligence with her or him. ~ Robert C. Solomon

What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves? ~ G.K. Chesterton

We're always contradicting ourselves.
We want people to tell us apart ...
... yet we don't want them to be able to.
We want people to get to know us ...
... but we also want them to keep their distance.
We've always longed for someone to accept us ...
But we never believed there'd be anyone who would accept our twisted ways.
That's why we'll stay locked up tight ...
... in our own little private world ...
... and throw away the key, so that no one can ever hurt us. ~ Bisco Hatori

But his Lordship [tells]us that God is wholly here, and wholly there, and wholly every where; because he has no parts. I cannot comprehend nor conceive this. For methinks it implies also that the whole world is also in the whole God, and in every part of God. Norcan I find anything of this in the Scripture. If I could find it there, I could believe it; and if I could find it in the public doctrine of the Church, I could easily abstain from contradicting it. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Intelligence is measured by a person's ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum. ~ George Will

Muslims can say that slavery is not legitimate now, and that crucifixion is wrong at this historical juncture. Many say precisely this. But they cannot condemn slavery or crucifixion outright without contradicting the Koran and the example of the Prophet. 'The only principled ground that the Islamic State's opponents could take is to say that certain core texts and traditional teachings of Islam are no longer valid,' Bernard Haykel says. That really would be an act of apostasy. ~ Graeme Wood

Facts are certainly the solid and true foundation of all sectors of nature study ... Reasoning must never find itself contradicting definite facts; but reasoning must allow us to distinguish, among facts that have been reported, those that we can fully believe, those that are questionable, and those that are false. It will not allow us to lend faith to those that are directly contrary to others whose certainty is known to us; it will not allow us to accept as true those that fly in the face of unquestionable principles. ~ Rene Antoine Ferchault De Reaumur

It is regrettable that, among the Rights of Man, the right of contradicting oneself has been forgotten. ~ Charles Baudelaire

We . . . go out into the Waste Land of Experts, each knowing so much about so little that he can neither be contradicted nor is worth contradicting. ~ G.M. Young

And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. ~ Anonymous

The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening. We live in a true chaos of contradicting authorities, an age of conformism without community, of proximity without communication. We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well. ~ Germaine Greer

Hypocrisy, is when individuals become abnoxiously contradicting, unrealistically criticizing the government of South Sudan, but yet are part of the puzzle underneath the Salva Kiir's regime. ~ Audrey Hepburn

...nothing in life is simple. It's all utter maddening chaos and contradicting emotions. ~ Sara Wolf

Constantly contradicting yourself because you genuinely see multiple sides to most situations. ~ Heidi Priebe

You get what you pay for. ~ Gabriel Biel

Only the 'Right belief' gives rise to non-contradicting principle and that which is free from contradiction is known as 'Principle'. ~ Dada Bhagwan

I have challenged several theologians to provide evidence contradicting the premise that theology has made no contribution to knowledge in the past five hundred years at least, since the dawn of science. So far no one has provided a counterexample. The most I have ever gotten back was the query, 'What do you mean by knowledge?' From an epistemological perspective this may be a thorny issue, but I maintain that, if there were a better alternative, someone would have presented it. Had I presented that same challenge to biologists, or psychologists, or historians, or astronomers, none of them would have been so flummoxed. ~ Lawrence M. Krauss

Yet the voice could take fright. This Kathy Kerouac foresaw only too well when syllables suddenly started coming out of her mouth like little fragments of oblivion giving her the impression she was contradicting herself. It was in these moments, when words were both true and false, solemn and light, on the tip of her tongue and deep in the throat, that space shrank in her mouth like a hard-felt blow. ~ Nicole Brossard

The truth of a theory can never be proven, for one never knows if future experience will contradict its conclusions. ~ Albert Einstein

God is angry with man. Unless we believe and repent we shall all be damned. It is impossible, indeed, for its advocates even to say this without instantly contradicting themselves. Their doctrine frightens them. They explain in various ways that a great many people will be saved without believing, and that eternal damnation is not eternal nor damnation. ~ Leslie Stephen

Man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom; that is, he can surrender his humanity ~ Paul Tillich

It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain, emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands, on the other hand, that man must suspend or renounce the use of his reason, is contradicting himself.
There can be no knowledge of what is good for man apart from knowledge of reality and human nature, and there is no manner in which this knowledge can be acquired except through reason. To advocate irrationality is to advocate that which is destructive to human life. ~ George H. Smith

People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be 'consistent'. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Placed as the fossils are in their several tiers of burial-places the one over the other; we have in them true witnesses of successive existences, whilst the historian of man is constantly at fault as to dates and even the sequence of events, to say nothing of the contradicting statements which he is forced to reconcile. ~ Roderick Murchison

Carnal reason is an enemy to faith: it is ever crossing and contradicting it. It will never be well with thee, Christian, so long as thou art swayed by carnal reason, and you rely more upon thy five senses, than upon the four Evangelists. As the body lives by breathing, so the soul lives by believing. ~ Thomas Brooks

However, he also trusted me to make my own decisions. Contradicting me or telling me what to do wasn't in his nature - even though he secretly may have wanted to. ~ Richelle Mead

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning. ~ Winston S. Churchill

What we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction makes us productive. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

This disputation would be needful against freethinkers (les Libertins). We are agreed on this point and those who are so mad as to contradict it can only rest their contradiction on the Scripture itself, contradicting themselves before contradicting the Scripture, using it in the very protestation which they make that they will not use it. ~ Francis De Sales

Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right. ~ John Stuart Mill

I don't have any mottoes. If I did I would forever be contradicting them. ~ Lisa Kleypas

As I have heard, since my arrival at this place, a circumstantial account of my death and dying speech, I take this early opportunity of contradicting the first, and of assuring you, that I have not as yet composed the latter. But by the All-Powerful Dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me! ~ George Washington

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

There are two contradicting universal principles which, when joined together, can help you lead a most satisfactory life: the first is to seize ever opportunity, and the second is to allow the will of the universe to be done through you. ~ Charbel Tadros

I write plays because writing dialogue is the only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation. ~ Tom Stoppard

Emotions are virtually always responses to thoughts. That's great news, because while it's impossible to control an emotion once a thought has triggered it, we can change our thoughts deliberately. We do this not by contradicting them, but by questioning them. EXPLANATION: ~ Martha N. Beck

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg. ~ Abraham Lincoln

When Jesus calls his disciples 'brothers' and 'friends', he is contradicting general Jewish usage and breaking through into a new concept of brotherhood which is not tribal, but open to any person. ~ David Kirk

To be pleasant, gentle, calm and self-possessed: this is the basis of good taste and charm in a woman. No matter how amorous or passionate you may be, as long as you are straightforward and refrain from causing others embarrassment, no one will mind. But women who are too vain and act pretentiously, to the extent that they make others feel uncomfortable, will themselves become the object of attention; and once that happens, people will find fault with whatever they say or do; whether it be how they enter a room, how they sit down, how they stand up or how they take their leave. Those who end up contradicting themselves and those who disparage their companions are also carefully watched and listened to all the more. As long as you are free from such faults, people will surely refrain from listening to tittle-tattle and will want to show you sympathy, if only for the sake of politeness.
I am of the opinion that when you intentionally cause hurt to another, or indeed if you do ill through mere thoughtless behavior, you fully deserve to be censured in public. Some people are so good-natured that they can still care for those who despise them, but I myself find it very difficult. Did the Buddha himself in all his compassion ever preach that one should simply ignore those who slander the Three Treasures? How in this sullied world of ours can those who are hard done by be expected to reciprocate in kind? ~ Murasaki Shikibu

Churchgoing is not synonymous with personal spirituality. There are some people who get so busy in church worship and projects that they become insensitive to the pressing human needs that sourround them, contradicting the very precepts they profess to believe deeply. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Making decent human beings accept the principle of a private, divine covenant be it first, second, third, old, new or whatever, will destroy all humanity and decency in our species.
All these diverging and contradicting one man "revelations" will always destroy our HUMAN grace, to serve one of the many "versions" of a hypothetical DIVINE grace…

Something like… rape for a divine virginity… ~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

I became suspicious as I noticed things like the time lapses in the writing, contradicting books, questionable authenticity of the authorship of certain books, and the different forms the bible had taken over the years as the church continued to disagree over which books were inspired. I also noticed things in the bible I had somehow missed before. When I chose to read the bible without the filter that it was the infallible word of God, I started seeing some terribly atrocious things that God was responsible for: genocide, killing of women and children, killing non-believers, killing homosexuals, etc. When I considered these things combined with the idea of eternal torment for people who merely didn't share my faith, it no longer logically fit with the idea of a loving and compassionate God. Through ~ David G. McAfee

The principles of logic and mathematics are true universally simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies. ~ A.J. Ayer

The necessity of political struggle especially means confronting and contradicting those on the left who say that resistance is futile. Such people have no place in a movement for justice. For actionists who choose to work aboveground, this confrontation with detractors - and some of these detractors reject the idea of resistance of any kind - is one of the small, constant actions you can take. Defend the possibility of resistance, insist on a moral imperative of fighting for this planet, and argue for direct action against perpetrators. Despite what much of the left has now embraced, we are not all equally responsible. There are a few corporations that have turned the planet into a dead commodity for their private wealth, destroying human cultures along with it. ~ Lierre Keith

There are hundreds of reasons for Daniel and me
to be impossible. History has not been kind
to two boys who love each other like we do.
But putting that aside. And not even considering
the fact that a hundred and fifty years ago,
his family was in a small town in Russia
and my family was in a similarly small town
in Ireland- I can't imagine they could have
imagined us here, together. Forgetting our gender,
ignoring all the strange roads that led to us
being in the same time and place, there is still
the simple impossibility of love. That all of our
contradicting securities and insecurities,
interests and disinterests, beliefs and doubts,
could somehow translate into this common
uncommon affection should be as impossible
as walking to the moon. But instead, I love him. ~ David Levithan

Humans generally get out the gist of what they need to say right at the beginning, then spend forever qualifying, contradicting, burnishing or taking important things back. Yor rareley miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences. ~ Richard Ford

Truths may clash without contradicting each other. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

My favorite six letter word is
always
because it promises
so much.

My favorite five letter word is
never
because it insists on contradicting
the promise.

My favorite four letter word is
once
because it says it
happened then.

My favorite three letter word is
yes
because I'm just now learning
to say it
to my heart.

My favorite two letter word is
if
because it makes
all things possible
like this:

If not always
If not never
Then once.

Yes. ~ Kate DiCamillo

One man told me, 'My tooth is hurting'. Why would 'your' tooth hurt you? This is considered a contradicting statement. What is yours, it will never give you pain and what is not yours will always give you pain. If you expound on this, you will have the solution! ~ Dada Bhagwan