#contradict

I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this. ↗

— Soren Kierkegaard

#bore #bores #contradict #great #himself

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for contradictions. ↗

— Maxine Hong Kingston

#i #large #learned #make #mind

We don't perceive a contradiction between writing books, making films or producing a television program. These days you can't choose how you want to express yourself anymore. ↗

— Alexander Kluge

#between #books #choose #contradiction #days

Each building has to be beautiful, but cheap and fast, but it lasts forever. That is already an incredible battery of seemingly contradictory demands. So yes, I'm definitely perhaps contradictory person, but I operate in very contradictory times. ↗

— Rem Koolhaas

#battery #beautiful #building #cheap #contradictory

It is not possible to live in this age if you don't have a sense of many contradictory forces. ↗

— Rem Koolhaas

#contradictory #forces #live #many #possible

It was not simply out of a spirit of contradiction that I exposed a light source to magnetic forces. The idea came to me during an investigation of the effect discovered by Kerr on light reflected by magnetic mirrors. ↗

— Pieter Zeeman

#contradiction #discovered #during #effect #exposed

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

#conundrums #desire #groundhog-day #life #money

Some people suggest that the problem is the separation of powers. If you had a parliamentary system, the struggle for power would not result in such complex peace treaties that empower so many different people to pursue so many contradictory aims. ↗

— James Q. Wilson

#complex #contradictory #different #different people #empower

I'm an alien in my own world, a writer without words, a musician without a piano, a magician without a wand. I am fooled by infinite words that rush in my blood, yet imprisoned by the very thoughts of silence. I'm a gray green fallow leaf on trees and abandoned on the streets, a never-ending spring season and an eternal autumn. I'm the golden of the sun and the silver of the moon, the fog of dawn and the amber of dusk. I'm the white and the red flag , the obedient and the rebel. I am the coward in the brave, and the child in the man. I am, but a writer. ↗

— Nema Al-Araby

#suffering #writer #musician

The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles. ↗

— Harrison Birtwistle

#built-in #contradictions #different #different angles #many