Quotes About Contrary

#1. Courage, contrary to popular belief, is not the absence of fear. Courage is the wisdom to act in spite of fear ...

Peter McWilliams

#2. Seneca's virtue shows forth so live and vigorous in his writings, and the defense is so clear there against some of these imputations, as that of his wealth and excessive spending, that I would not believe any testimony to the contrary.

Michel De Montaigne

#3. For it is necessary in every practical science to proceed in a composite (i.e. deductive) manner. On the contrary in speculative science, it is necessary to proceed in an analytical manner by breaking down the complex into elementary principles.

Thomas Aquinas

#4. Life and mind are continuously in conflict with each other. I want happiness, security. I won't reach that by considerations of my mind; on the contrary they will lead to a certain despair of the inner person. Not what he thinks engages the artist, but what he feels.

Bram Van Velde

#5. If you thought it was impossible for a film to contain less effective comedy than Date Movie , here's evidence to the contrary.

James Berardinelli

#6. We lack the sense of our own visibility as we lack that of distances, imagining as quite close to us the interested attention of people who on the contrary never give us a thought, and not suspecting that we are at the same moment the sole preoccupation of others.

Marcel Proust

#7. Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety.

Confucius

#8. I may conclude this chapter by quoting a saying of Professor Agassiz, that whenever a new and startling fact is brought to light in science, people first say, 'it is not true,' then that 'it is contrary to religion,' and lastly, 'that everybody knew it before.

Charles Lyell

#9. If a man wants to set up as an innkeeper and he does not succeed, it is not comic. If, on the contrary, a girl asks to be allowed to set up as a prostitute and she fails, as sometimes happens, it is comic.

Soren Kierkegaard

#10. Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism.

Alain Badiou

#11. He (God) permits, for reasons known only to Himself, people to act contrary to and in defiance of His revealed will. But He never permits them to act contrary to His sovereign will.

Jerry Bridges

#12. I think a Person who is thus terrified with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.

Joseph Addison

#13. "I can see nothing," said I, handing it back to my friend. "On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences."

Arthur Conan Doyle

#14. Be quiet or I'll be forced to flick you."
"Ooh," he mocked. "The ultimate threat. I don't think I've ever been flicked before."
"Are you suggesting I can't hurt you?"
"On the contrary, I think you have the power to do great damage.

Alexandra Adornetto

#15. And what makes humans so sure that thinking is the most important activity in the universe? ... I on the contrary have never forgotten that first I existed and then, with a lot of difficulty, I learned to think. (p. 31)

Sabina Berman

#16. To empty the heart does not mean to not love. On the contrary, true love, as God intented it, is purest when it is not based on a false attachment. The process of first emptying the heart can be found in the beginning half of the shahada (declaration of faith).

Yasmin Mogahed

#17. Contrary to what the fans may think, you don't just show up, wear a striped shirt and a whistle on Friday night.

Jim Mitchell

#18. The religion of Christ," he said, "is not a tidbit after one's bread; on the contrary, it is the bread or it is nothing. People should at least understand and concede this if they call themselves Christian.

Eric Metaxas

#19. If I know something to be true, am I prepared to follow it even though it is contrary to what I want[?]

Eric Metaxas

#20. The Christian religion is so manifestly contrary to the facts, belief in it can only be held with the most delusional gerrymandering imaginable.

Richard Carrier

#21. [H]e that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary.

John Locke

#22. It is true that men themselves made this world of nations ... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves.

Giambattista Vico

#23. Harris's fixed ideas that he can sing a comic song; the fixed idea, on the contrary, among those of Harris's friends who have heard him try, is that he can't and never will be able to, and that he ought not to be allowed to try.

Jerome K. Jerome

#24. Our adaptation to the natural forces
is a question of existence or non-existence.
We cannot transform the universe or nature so that they
adapt themselves to us; on the contrary, we must adapt ourselves
to nature and her laws.

Edmond Bordeaux Szekely

#25. In the middle of the conversation, I open a third ale. I cup my hand over the mouthpiece so they don't hear the tab of the ale being popped. It dawns on me that this is a slightly contrary action. Like stopping into Baby Gap before having an abortion.

Augusten Burroughs

#26. People generally will soon understand that writers should be judged, not according to rules and species, which are contrary to nature and art, but according to the immutable principles of the art of composition, and the special laws of their individual temperaments.

Victor Hugo

#27. Some think that by preparing to deal with crises you make them more likely. I think the wiser judgment is the contrary. In this area at least, if you want peace or stability, it's better to prepare for war or instability.

Timothy Geithner

#28. When we live habitually with the wicked, we become necessarily either their victim or their disciple; when we associate, on the contrary, with virtuous men, we form ourselves in imitation of their virtues, or, at least, lose every day something of our faults.

Charles Caleb Colton

#29. What worries me is that the debate about gender differences still seems to polarize nature vs. nurture, with some in the social sciences and humanities wanting to assert that biology plays no role at all, apparently unaware of the scientific evidence to the contrary

Simon Baron-Cohen

#30. Contrary to what people say, my wife never turned me away from the presidency. She told me to reflect on it and do what I wanted.

Jacques Delors

#31. No worthwhile life can be lived without risks, despite current American superstitions to the contrary ...

Alan Watts

#32. It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am.

George Washington

#33. There is a bizarre notion according to which it is claimed that because men are corrupt, it is necessary to give certain of them all the more power ... on the contrary, they must be given less power.

Benjamin Constant

#34. think that the rare Englishmen who have this gesture are never of the heavy type - for fear of any lumbering instance to the contrary, I will say, hardly ever; they have usually a fine temperament and much tolerance towards the smaller errors of men (themselves inclusive). The

George Eliot

#35. Overcoming attachment does not mean becoming cold and indifferent. On the contrary, it means learning to have relaxed control over our mind through understanding the real causes of happiness and fulfillment, and this enables us to enjoy life more and suffer less.

Kathleen McDonald

#36. Contrary to popular belief. It's much wiser to take money from the poor than the rich.

Mike Royko

#37. she was struck again by the intensity of his gaze. She wasn't used to being scrutinized this way - on the contrary, she often felt virtually invisible as she went through the well-worn circuit of her daily routines.

Nicholas Sparks

#38. It would be a mistake to assume that the present day educational system is unchanging. On the contrary, it is undergoing rapid change. But much of this change is no more than an attempt to refine the existent machinery, making it ever more efficient in pursuit of obsolete goals.

Alvin Toffler

#39. The genius of the French language, descended from its single Latin stock, has triumphed most in the contrary direction - in simplicity, in unity, in clarity, and in restraint.

Lytton Strachey

#40. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

John Stuart Mill

#41. The wrath of God is a way of saying that I have been living in a way that is contrary to the love that is God. Anyone who begins to live and grow away from God, who lives away from what is good, is turning his life toward wrath.

Pope Benedict XVI

#42. It would seem, after this, that even when living upon earth we must live as if in the heavenly kingdom, dwelling there in anticipation by hope. But in reality, for the greater part, the contrary is the case. Men cling with their whole being to the earth and everything earthly.

John Of Kronstadt

#43. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

Albert Camus

#44. Man can sin against nature in two ways. First, when he sins against his specific rational nature, acting contrary to reason. In this sense, we can say that every sin is a sin against man's nature, because it is against man's right reason ...

Thomas Aquinas

#45. But any idea of plainness is simply contrary to the fancy color that is red.

Marion Roach

#46. Unlike other dictators, Stalin and his satraps never made the mistake of believing themselves beloved
on the contrary they saw plots under every stone.

Anna Reid

#47. Contrary to my previously held belief, hunger does NOT, in fact, sharpen the mind.

Wendy Mass

#48. Right, well, he'd been sick for a while and his nurse said to him, 'You seem to be feeling better this morning,' and Isben looked at her and said, 'On the contrary,' and then he died.

John Green

#49. Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

Baruch Spinoza

#50. They could not understand the advantage of living contrary to their inclinations in this world in order to enjoy a hypothetical well-being in another.

Isabel Allende

#51. The English are crooked as a nation and honest as individuals. The contrary is true of the French, who are honest as a nation and crooked as individuals.

Edmond De Goncourt

#52. I find it awfully difficult to determine if the habit of talking about oneself at length runs contrary to the basic rules of propriety, or if instead the man exempt from this vice is rare.

Giacomo Leopardi

#53. Free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike Sweden, for example.

Osama Bin Laden

#54. Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.

Edward Snowden

#55. Shall we have recourse to the art of printing? But this has not destroyed property or aristocracy or corporations or paper wealth in England or America, or diminished the influence of either; on the contrary, it has multiplied aristocracy and diminished democracy.

John Adams

#56. What desire can be contrary to nature since it was given to man by nature itself?

Michel Foucault

#57. Miracles, contrary to popular belief, do not just happen. A miracle is the achievement of the impossible, and it is only when we put aside out greed, anger, pride and prejudice so that our minds are open and ready to accept it, that a miracle can occur.

Julie Andrews Edwards

#58. God has given this way of life to Israel: to abstain from everything which is contrary to nature, that is to say, anger, fits of passion, jealousy, hatred and slandering the brethren; in short, everything that is characteristic of the old man.

Poemen

#59. Contrary to all those times you've heard a writer confess at a reading that he writes fiction because he is a pathological liar, fiction writing is all about telling the truth.

Paul Harding

#60. Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of progress, is poison.

Simone Weil

#61. Every science in a certain degree starts from faith, and, on the contrary, faith, which does not lead to science, is mistaken faith or superstition, but real, genuine faith it is not.

Abraham Kuyper

#62. There's no sacrifice in eating well, there is no sacrifice in pleasure. To the contrary, the best-grown food is actually the tastiest.

Michael Pollan

#63. We humans are the only creatures on the planet capable of articulating worlds which are contrary, even in the most minor way, to reality. Every story, I think, begins there. With a dream. A fantasy.

L.M. Halloran

#64. They say that our sovereign is above his laws to his pleasure, and he may make it and break it as he pleases, without any distinction. The contrary is true, or else he should not have sworn to keep it.

Jack Cade

#65. It is not with low prices-but on the contrary-it is with improved quality we cannot only hold the market, but improve it.

Hans Wilsdorf

#66. Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.

Michael E. Gerber

#67. Thus the time we are given is not brief, but we make it so. We do not lack time; on the contrary, there is so much of it that we waste an awful lot.

Seneca.

#68. Contrary to popular belief, going shopping is really about stopping afterward for cheesecake.

Bonnie Jensen

#69. Political system is contrary to everything a feminine heart stands for. It lacks tenderness. It lacks poetry. It doesn't nurture. It doesn't love. And without those things, a woman's soul is bereft.

Marianne Williamson

#70. It was a difficult time to be Irish, a difficult time to be twenty-one years of age and a difficult time to be a man who was attracted to other men. To be all three simultaneously required a level of subterfuge and guile that felt contrary to my nature.

John Boyne

#71. Contrary to the vision of the left, it was the free market which produced affordable housing - before government intervention made housing unaffordable.

Thomas Sowell

#72. Art is harmony. Harmony is the analogy of contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, conditioned by the dominate key, and under the influence of a particular light, in gay, calm, or sad combinations.

Georges Seurat

#73. Hollywood is not stupid, contrary to popular belief; it's really a lot of intelligent people trying to figure things out.

Peter Berg

#74. Limits are possibilities ... Formal restrictions, contrary to what you might think, free you up by allowing you to concentrate on purer ideas ... You can be crippled by too many choices, especially if you don't know what your goals are.

Chip Kidd

#75. People say you can't have peace without a war, but on the contrary they say they don't support war. You can not, ever achieve happiness from focusing on suffering, you have to change your perspective. World peace starts with Inner peace.

Mark Ryan

#76. Matter is a term contrary to soul. But nonsoul is its contradictory. Whatever is not soul is nonsoul.

Virchand Gandhi

#77. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.

Aristotle.

#78. What praise is implied in the simple epithet useful! What reproach in the contrary.

David Hume

#79. Since faith rests upon infallible truth, and since the contrary of a truth can never be demonstrated, it is clear that the arguments brought against faith cannot be demonstrations, but are difficulties that can be answered.

Thomas Aquinas

#80. I understand you, and I shall not attempt to make you change your mind. I am too old to want to improve the world. I have told you what I think, and that is all. I shall remain your friend even if you act contrary to my convictions, and I shall help you even if I disagree with you.

Milan Kundera

#81. I do not believe that it is possible to teach a cat to obey; that is contrary to his nature.

Patricia Moyes

#82. Assuredly we bring not innocence not the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.

John Milton

#83. One [dogma] is that violence is caused by a deficit of morality and justice. On the contrary, violence is often caused by a surfeit of morality and justice, at least as they are conceived in the minds of the perpetrators.

Steven Pinker

#84. Only by using faith are we kept from practically losing it, and, on the contrary, to use faith is to lose the unbelief that hinders God's mighty acts.

George Muller

#85. This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused.

Elie Wiesel

#86. The only evidence to the contrary was the mute protest in your own bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in were intolerable and that at some other time they must have been different.

George Orwell

#87. It appears to me that one defeats God precisely by not trying to stand above God, but on the contrary by using God's own existence against God.

Lionel Suggs

#88. There are two contrary impulses which govern this man's brain-the one sane, and the other eccentric. They alternate at regular intervals.

Franz Schubert

#89. I claim that relativity and the rest of modern physics is not complicated. It can be explained very simply. It is only unusual or, put another way, it is contrary to common sense.

Edward Teller

#90. Obviously, I'm at the beginning of my career, contrary to what anyone else thinks. I'm 19 years old. In any other country, everywhere else, you're a prospect. And that's what I am right now in Europe. I'm a prospect. I'm not a seasoned veteran.

Freddy Adu

#91. Women talk about love and silent about lovers, men - on the contrary: Speaking of mistresses, but are silent about love.

Marina Tsvetaeva

#92. The next time someone asks for your opinion, and you know it's contrary to that person's viewpoint, take the risk of putting your perspective on the table rather than taking the path of least resistance by agreeing or saying you have no opinion.

Lois P Frankel

#93. Resentment is, in every stage of the passion, painful, but it is not disagreeable, unless in excess; pity is always painful, yet always agreeable; vanity, on the contrary, is always pleasant, yet always disagreeable.

Alec Douglas-Home

#94. May I say, finally, that I have no illusions of grandeur; quite to the contrary, I am very humble in my knowledge that through forty years of my life my life has been an open book of service to my fellow architects and for the public good.

Ralph Thomas Walker

#95. We have reached a situation where a theory has been accepted as fact by some, and possible contrary evidence is shunted aside. [This is] mythology rather than science.

Robert Shapiro

#96. The poetic image [ ... ] is not an echo of the past. On the contrary: through the brilliance of any image, the distant past resounds with echoes.

Gaston Bachelard

#97. Not a single illegal immigrant should or need enter the United States, not one. Contrary to the common wisdom, the borders are easy to seal, and controlling entry is hardly totalitarian.

Mark Helprin

#98. My doctor says that, contrary to conventional wisdom, she doesn't believe our memories flag because of a drop in estrogen but because of how crowded it in the drawers of our minds.

Anna Quindlen

#99. Many devout Muslims, particularly in the east, understood that attacking helpless people, nonbelievers or not, was contrary to the tenets of Islam. Still, a vast number of Muslims saw the pronouncement of jihad as an endorsement for killing and looting.

Eric Bogosian

#100. The American Left complains that we have no right to be the world's police force. On the contrary. We've been the world's janitor for almost a century, and after September 11, it became obvious it's better, safer, and more productive to change things instead of cleaning up after the mess.

Tammy Bruce