Top 71 Contradiction In Terms Quotes
#1. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.
Edgar Allan Poe
#2. No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?
Elie Wiesel
#3. Free verse is like free love; it is a contradiction in terms.
G.K. Chesterton
#4. You cannot have humane Zionism, it is a contradiction in terms.
Israel Shahak
#5. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
G.K. Chesterton
#7. I realize that, to many readers, Hard Fantasy may seem to be a contradiction in terms. Fantasy, according to most generally recognized definitions, differs from both 'real world' fiction and 'science fiction' in that magic or magical creatures are active elements.
Jane Lindskold
#8. A holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it.
Elie Wiesel
#9. RUSSEL. When he grows up I want to be able to point to him and say: "There goes my son -- the man". I want to live in a masculine culture.
BONGI. That's a contradiction in terms.
Valerie Solanas
#10. Beyond the futility of armed force, and ultimately more important, is the fact that war in our time inevitably results in the indiscriminate killing of large numbers of people. To put it more bluntly, war is terrorism. That is why a 'war on terrorism' is a contradiction in terms.
Howard Zinn
#11. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.
Hunter S. Thompson
#12. An expropriating property protector (the state, through taxation) is a contradiction in terms
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
#13. 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
#14. We might miss the sign or we may be unable to read the expression, but it is almost a contradiction in terms to say that a dog feels something but does not show it. What a dog feels, a dog shows, and, conversely, what a dog shows, a dog actually does feel.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
#15. The very idea of an infinite in place would be a contradiction in terms, as a place must begin and continue in time.
Swami Vivekananda
#16. You can be a very charitable capitalist. Like [Nicola] Sarkozy was saying, we have to 'moralise capitalism', which for me is a contradiction in terms.
Tariq Ramadan
#17. It would be a contradiction in terms if the oppressors not only defended but actually implemented a liberating education.
Paulo Freire
#18. A quiet city is a contradiction in terms. It is a thing uncanny, spectral.
Max Beerbohm
#19. Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it's popular, it's not culture.
Vivienne Westwood
#20. I'd love to do some comedy. Particularly French comedy, which I know sounds like a contradiction in terms.
Kristin Scott Thomas
#21. Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
Groucho Marx
#22. Perfect life is a contradiction in terms. Therefore we must always expect to find things not up to our highest ideal. Knowing this, we are bound to make the best of everything.
Swami Vivekananda
#23. You're doing great,' she said. 'You're in Birmingham .' Scullion wanted to say this was a contradiction in terms but he couldn't speak.
Andrew O'Hagan
#24. Self-development is a contradiction in terms Personal development is the way.
Frank Ra
#25. To write a book about improvisation is partly a contradiction in terms. Improvisation is spontaneous. It's in the moment.
Sally Schneider
#26. The Christian is a [person] of joy ... A gloomy Christian is a contradiction of terms, and nothing in all religious history has done Christianity more harm than its connection with black clothes and long faces.
William Barclay
#27. You have to know someone intimately to be able to love them. So love at first sight is a contradiction in terms. Unless in that first sight there's some sort of mystical gigabyte downloading of information from one mind into the other.
David Mitchell
#28. I'm going back to sleep,' she said, lying back down. 'I shall see if there's anyone interesting asleep in America.'
'That seems rather like a contradiction in terms, ma'am.'
'God, you're such a snob.
Daniel O'Malley
#29. But I always liked the fact that you get these totally unacceptable images, but they're taken by a really expensive photographer, with great light, and in terms of the quality of the photograph it's a great photograph, but in terms of imagery it's unacceptable, and I like that contradiction.
Damien Hirst
#30. A good addiction is a contradiction in terms. Anything people can't give up or must have is not healthy, no matter what the activity.
Jody Dean
#31. Hollywood was set up by a bunch of businessmen. They do not see their job as being philanthropists. I don't think it's a contradiction in terms to attempt to be a good businessman and to also be liberal.
Sydney Pollack
#32. The concept of free competition enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms.
Ayn Rand
#33. The only society that works today is also one founded on mutual respect, on a recognition that we have a responsibility collectively and individually, to help each other on the basis of each other's equal worth. A selfish society is a contradiction in terms.
Tony Blair
#34. All my own experience of life teaches me the contempt of cunning, not the fear. The phrase "profound cunning," has always seemed to me a contradiction in terms. I never knew a cunning mind which was not either shallow, or on some point diseased.
Anna Brownell Jameson
#35. Christians necessarily believe we depend on God for everything-a prayerless Christian, then, is a contradiction in terms.
Timothy Keller
#36. Consumer culture is contradiction in terms
Tibor Kalman
#37. Leadership without mutual trust is a contradiction in terms.
Stephen Covey
#38. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality.
Ayn Rand
#39. He's a typical existentialist. And that's a contradiction in terms if ever there was one.
Johnny Rich
#40. You can't teach art, so ART SCHOOL is a contradiction in terms.
Duane Michals
#41. - activity holidays are a whatsit. Contradiction in terms."
"Oxymoron."
I flipped him a finger. "Same to you with knobs on.
J.L. Merrow
#42. Gatting at fine leg - that's a contradiction in terms.
Richie Benaud
#43. I wondered if this wasn't a case of making the ideal an enemy of the good, but Salatin was convinced that industrial organic was finally a contradiction in terms. I decided I had to find out if he was right.
Michael Pollan
#44. [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
#45. I don't like PG-13 horror movies. I think they're a contradiction in terms.
Clive Barker
#46. This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other.
Mikhail Bakunin
#47. Good architecture is still the difficult, conscientious, creative, expressive planning for that elusive synthesis that is a near-contradiction in terms: efficiency and beauty.
Ada Louise Huxtable
#48. By its durability this settlement proved that conservative liberty is an oxymoron, not a contradiction in terms.
Timothy C.W. Blanning
#49. That expression "positive neutrality" is a contradiction in terms. There can be no more positive neutrality than there can be a vegetarian tiger.
V. K. Krishna Menon
#50. Thomas Henri Huxley often preached tolerance, but in practice he could not wait to go after religion and religious people in the most scornful of terms.
[Curb your enthusiasm,2016]
Michael Ruse
#51. I realize that was becoming a contradiction in terms, especially after my friend Alison Krauss was shot and killed in Kent State in 1970 on campus by the National Guard.
Surya Das
#52. Political art - not always a contradiction in terms - can destroy institutions, or eat away at them.
Joe Haldeman
#53. Since only an individual man can possess rights, the expression "individual rights"? is a redundancy (which one has to use for purposes of clarification in today's intellectual chaos). But the expression "collective rights"? is a contradiction in terms.
Ayn Rand
#54. What men call chance is simply their ignorance of causes; if the statement that something had happened by chance were to mean that it had no cause, it would be a contradiction in terms.
Rene Guenon
#55. How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.
George Bernard Shaw
#56. I believe that the community - in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures - is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms. (pg. 146, Health is Membership)
Wendell Berry
#57. I started to think more about becoming peace rather than fighting for peace, and the contradiction in terms, and the anger and violence that we were prey to and involved in to some extent in those days.
Surya Das
#58. Whether considered as a doctrine, or as an historical fact, or as a movemement, socialism, if it really remains socialism, cannotbe brought into harmony with the dogmas of the Catholic church ... Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are expressions implying a contradiction in terms.
Pope Pius XI
#59. Hindu fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals; there is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. How dare a bunch of goondas shrink the soaring majesty of the Vedas and the Upanishads to the petty bigotry of their brand of identity politics?
Shashi Tharoor
#60. For a Russian to be chivalrous with an American is a spiritual impossibility, a contradiction in terms
Kurt Vonnegut
#61. There will never be a perfectly good or bad world, because the very idea is a contradiction in terms.
Swami Vivekananda
#62. Brands are faced with the daily challenge of massively scaling their outreach in order to build personal relationships. While this may seem like a contradiction in terms, it becomes much more possible when brands shift from push to pull dynamics in their marketing.
Simon Mainwaring
#63. 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
#64. So firm, yet so soft, her body was a contradiction in terms."
~Zane's thoughts...
Tina Folsom
#65. The Christian idea of a perfect heaven that is something other than a non-existence is a contradiction in terms.
Aldous Huxley
#66. There was a time when 'universe' meant 'all there is.' Everything. The whole shebang. The notion of more than one universe, more than one everything, would seemingly be a contradiction in terms.
Brian Greene
#67. A gentleman with a pug nose is a contradiction in terms.
Edgar Allan Poe
#68. A non-serving Christian is a contradiction in terms.
Rick Warren
#69. The successful cannot be unhappy
it was a contradiction in terms.
Barry Unsworth
#70. There were mysterious questions, but a mysterious answer was a contradiction in terms.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
#71. A perfect life is a contradiction in terms. Life itself is a state of continuous struggle between ourselves and everything outside. Every moment we are fighting actually with external nature, and if we are defeated, our life has to go.
Swami Vivekananda
