Contradiction

“ This contradiction, which is a quintessence of all the other contradictions, is so terrible that to live and to take part in it is only possible if one does not think of it—if one is able to forget it. ”

“ When an illegitimate translation of the unextended into the extended, of quality into quantity, has introduced contradiction into the very heart of the question, contradiction must, of course, recur in the answer. ”

“ There will be, there must be, constant discussion, argument, contradiction,—for there are always conflicting opinions in every aspect of human affairs,—and it will be my work to put down all contradiction,—all opposition,—and to carry the People’s Cause with a firm hand. Yet—after all, if I succeed, it will be the King’s doing,—not mine! ”

“ When we judge a contradictory character, whether our own or another person’s, we are apt to proceed objectively; we ascertain in the individual the simultaneous existence of two governing ideas, one of which negatives the other; we rationally declare this to be illogical, because the principle of contradiction is the pith of all our affirmations, and the logic of the intellect rests on it. ”

“ Does it follow, as has been said with such ridiculous emphasis, that every truth, every idea, results from a contradiction,— that is, from a something which is affirmed and denied at the same moment and from the same point of view,—and that it may be necessary to abandon wholly the old-fashioned logic, which regards contradiction as the infallible sign of error? ”

“ Deny every thing, even the principle of contradiction, and consciousness still subsists; but deny the principle of contradiction, and every proposition is destroyed, every combination becomes absurd: analysis, and the relation of the predicate with the subject, are unmeaning words. ”

“ In this refusal to do justice there is contradiction; and as error exists where contradiction lies, it is precisely in that contradiction that we must seek the means of refuting error and assert the power of truth. ”

“ I have not only what is termed a liberty of contradiction, but what is termed a liberty of contrariety, a power to act one way, or the contrary: to deny this would be to contradict the uniform experience of all human kind. The soul is not necessitated to judge or act by any bodily impulse. ”

“ The reason of the contradiction is the fact that man is a contradiction. But man is more; he feels or knows himself as such, and this makes a vital difference; for to feel a contradiction is ipso facto to be above it. Otherwise, how would it be possible to feel it? A felt contradiction which does not imply, beside its two poles, an unity which includes and is above them, will, the more it is reflected on, the more be seen to be altogether unmeaning. ”

“ M. You do not perceive that you are asserting contradictions; for what is a greater contradiction, than that that should be not only miserable, but should have any existence at all, which does not exist? ”

“ What is essential to the principle of contradiction, is the exclusion of being by not-being, and of not-being by being. The formula must express this fact, this truth, which is presented by immediate evidence, and is contemplated by the intellect in a most clear intuition, admitting neither doubt nor obscurity of any kind. ”

“ But am I to interest you in philosophy? 15How shall I set before you the contradiction in the ideas of the multitude, which leads them to disagree about things good and evil, advantageous and disadvantageous, when you do not know what contradiction itself is? ”

“ Whatever be the object of which we treat, whatever the conditions under which we suppose it existent or possible, we say that while it is, it cannot not be; and while it is not it cannot be. We affirm, then, the law of contradiction, not only for our own conceptions, but also for things themselves; the intellect applies to every thing the law which it finds necessary to itself. ”

“ The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts. ”

“ This contradiction, like many other contradictions, is one which ought first of all to be registered as a mere fact; long before we attempt to explain why things contradict themselves, we ought, if we are honest men and good critics, to register the preliminary truth that things do contradict themselves. ”

“ If a ‘contradiction’ is real, it means either a difference of opinion between those who make the incompatible assertions, or, in the case of a real ‘self-​contradiction’, the uttering of ‘nonsense’ and a failure to propound a meaning at all. ”

“ A contradiction in terms is often little more than a truism turned inside out; we shall therefore group the two together, and with them certain other illogical expressions, due to a similar confusion of thought. ”

“ Our whole natural thinking, as shall be distinctly proved in the body of this work, consists of a series of judgments, each of which involves a mental contradiction,—in other words, controverts a necessary truth or law of reason. ”

“ The principle of non-contradiction does not mean Do not contradict yourself; produce a harmony, a system in your acts and yourself; realize yourself as an organic whole. That would be vague enough without further directions; but what our principle here says is not that. It says the act must not contradict itself. ”

“ In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat: but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards a victory. ”

“ “But we shall both be amply repaid for their discussion, if this truth remain with you—that an opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offence, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; ”

“ But now that the five things are said, now that the contradictions of experience have been seen to serve experience by giving it movement, unity, poise, practical reality and social character, somebody is sure to remark facetiously that on the evidence contradiction is something we should all cultivate assiduously, and [p.151] that henceforth to face both ways, the butt of so much opprobrium, should be one of man's greatest ideals; in brief, that the inconsistent creatures in politics, morals, and theology are the coming examples for mankind. ”

“ As no issue, moreover, can be more central or crucial than the meaning of the contradictions found to pervade our views of things, before completing our confession we shall allow ourselves some reflections, that should prove useful to us in the end, upon the possible worth of contradiction in human experience; for even to casual thinking contradiction, although good ground for scepticism, suggests some positive advantage and opportunity ”

“ To take a first step, then, contradiction is only difference, or contrast, at its limit. Naturally there is some opposition, some mutual resistance, in all difference, in that, for example, between one man and another, or one thing and another, between religion and art, red and green, or warm and hot, and often the difference or the opposition seems very slight ”

“ If truth then were nothing more than the absence of contradiction, it would be first of all necessary in the case of every-notion to examine whether it, taken individually, did not contain this sort of intrinsic contradiction. ”

“ Whoever denies the principle of contradiction can neither directly nor indirectly be refuted by any other.
Demonstration.—It would be amusing to hear the arguments directed against a man who admits both affirmation and negation to be at the same time possible; although forced to admit the affirmative, he will still hold the negative, and vice versa. It is impossible not only to argue, but even to speak, or to think on such a supposition. ”

“ Our reasonings are founded on two great principles, that of "Contradiction," by virtue of which we judge that to be false which involves contradiction, and that to be true which is opposed to, or which contradicts the false. ”

“ Next to those great political contradictions, which are subdivided into innumerable little ones, nothing more forcibly attracts our notice than the contradiction apparent in reference to some of our rites. ”

“ This state of inward contradiction can be put an end to only by the conviction that the free and diligent exertion of the intellect, instead of being a sin, is part of their responsibility—that Right and Reason are synonymous. ”

“ The principle of contradiction, indispensable condition of all certainty, of all truth, and without which the external world, and intelligence itself, would become a chaos, offers us a good example of the intrinsic value of purely intellectual conceptions independent of sensible intuition. ”

“ And in much the same way we may very profitably recognize contradiction or controversy, whether personal or social, as a necessary condition of all valid experience, but not on that account are we to cultivate what is contradictory, to be always blindly spoiling for a contradiction. Like crime or death, if directly courted, contradiction would lose its peculiar effectiveness. The both-sidedness or the all-sidedness, which at once develops and conserves human life, is only [p.152] that which is maintained with a tenacious, even with a would-be consistent loyalty to each and every side. ”

“ Negation itself, as we shall hereafter see, is known to us, but this it could not be were we to admit that the understanding knows nothing save inasmuch as it is being; in which case the indispensable condition of all cognition, the principle of contradiction, would deceive us. ”

“ The first of these opinions is set at rest by Proposition IV., which proves that a contradiction is involved in the supposition that material things, by and in themselves, or without a mind being known along with them, can be known by any intelligence. ”

“ Contradictions in Things and Men.
If any literary society is inclined to undertake a history of contradictions, I will subscribe for twenty folio volumes. The world displays nothing but contradictions. What would be necessary to put an end to them? To assemble the states-general of the human race. But, according to the nature and constitution of mankind, it would be a new contradiction were they to agree. Bring together all the rabbits in the world, and there would not be two different minds among them. ”

“ When facts conflict, contradict one another, melt into one another as the colours of the spectrum so insensibly that none can say where one begins and the other ends, contradictions in terms become first fruits of thought and speech. ”

“ He will not call contradiction the glue in one place and identity in another; that is too half-hearted. Contradiction must be a glue universal, and must derive its credit from being shown to be latently involved in cases that we hitherto supposed to embody pure continuity. Thus, the relations of an ego with its objects, of one time with another time, of one place with another place, of a cause with its effect, of a thing with its properties, and especially of parts with wholes, must be shown to involve contradiction. ”

“ One of these conditions is the principle of contradiction, which would, were it to fail, annihilate all knowledge. True, by a series of intellectual constructions one may ascertain the size of a sphere ”

“ Hence the contradictory of the commandment contains a simple contradiction directly it is made a rule universal; and the commandment itself is established as one of the principles for the harmony of individual wills.
“ ‘Thou shalt not tell a lie,’ as a rule of morality, may be expressed generally: thou shall not by thy outward act make another to believe thy thought to be other than it is. The contradictory made universal is: every man may by his outward act make another to believe his thought to be other than it is. Now this maxim also contains a contradiction, and is self-destructive. ”

“ But there are some people, that one may observe, possessed as it were with the spirit of contradiction, that steadily, and without regard to right or wrong, oppose some one, or, perhaps, every one of the company, whatever they say. ”

“ A thousand instances in contradiction to an assertion it were not worth while to contradict, were it not so generally popular, so highly sanctioned, and so eminently pernicious to every thing that is manly and noble in literature, rush to our memory. ”

“ Thus, not only does experience, in ways now coming to our view, teem with contradictions, and is contradiction a cause of doubt, but also experience so conditioned is social as well as individual, a matter of personal relations between man and man as well as a matter of the single person's inner responsibility. ”

“ I know nothing that can be said for our author, in excuse of so much confusion and self-contradiction, unless it be the particular hardships of his sect. The free-thinking few, he says, are forced into an outward compliance; and that which forces a man into a state of hypocrisy, may force him into a great deal of confusion and self-contradiction. ”

“ But if once we admit, that propositions, which in their literal sense appear plainly repugnant to one another, or to any known truth, are still to be literally understood and received, what possible limit can we set to the belief of contradictions? ”

“ The antithesis contradicts the thesis. The thesis is the Conception of Rights itself; the antithesis is a correct result obtained from that conception. The Conception of Rights is, therefore, involved in a self-contradiction. This contradiction must be canceled. ”