Quotessence
Home / Topics / Contrary Quotes

Contrary Quotes

Browse 1748 quotes about Contrary.

Related topics

IfsMenPeopleThinkingWorldDoeBelieveShouldMayWayBeliefMeanEvidenceHumansHas BeensPersonsKnowsGivingOpinionReasonLawFirstsGovernmentIdeasStatesFactsMindMadeNeedsWould BeArtHeartSeemsContrary To Popular BeliefWantWellsSaidFeelingsIndividualMatterOrderCommonForceTryingDesireDespitePrinciplesMightSelfActionCoursesEndsWholeFeelsGivenLittlesPoliticalSpiritUseChristKindNaturalRunningChildrenCountryLibertyDifferentEvilLooksRealViewsVirtueAuthorityCasesChristianFormImportantProduceResultsScienceTwoValuesEffectsFoundHandsMomentsShowsSometimesSoulTurnsBookCertainDoctrineFacesInspirationalWarWritingArtistExistenceJusticemore

Contrary Quotes

“The constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming to enter into a novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of providing for the care and support of all those ... who by any form of calamity become fit objects of public philanthropy. ... I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States. To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”

StatesWholeGovernmentCareFormSpiritUnitedPowerUnited StatesSupportNovelFieldsObjectsTheoryFitAuthorityJudgmentLettersConstitutionAssumingUnionsCharityContraryWelfareProvidingPhilanthropyLegislationFederal GovernmentCalamitySubversivePropriety
Author:Franklin Pierce
Create image

“Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology - we are quite unable to imagine the contrary...”

IfsWorldMindSeemsConsciousnessImagineHappeningsEvidenceContraryBluntTautologyCircumstantial Evidence
Author:Erwin Schrodinger
Create image

“I HAVE no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, and often implied, especially in tales written to teach children to be good, that babies are born pretty much alike, and that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy, and man and man, are steady application and moral effort. It is in the most unqualified manner that I object to pretensions of natural equality. The experiences of the nursery, the school, the University, and of professional careers, are a chain of proofs to the contrary.”

MenChildrenSchoolBornNaturalDifferencesEffortMoralBoysCareersTeachWrittenObjectsBabyCreatingUniversityBe GoodProofContraryTalesChainsAgencyApplicationSteadySoleHypothesisPretensionNurseryImpliedUnqualifiedNo PatienceProfessional CareerI Have No Patience
Book:Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences
Create image

“Capital can seldom be made productive, without undergoing several changes both of form and of place, the risk of which is always more or less alarming to persons unaccustomed to the operations of industry; whereas, on the contrary, landed property produces without any change of either quality or position.”

PersonsMadeFormQualityRiskPositionProduceIndustryPropertyContraryOperationsProductive
Book:A treatise on political economy, or, the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth
Create image

“I'm fascinated by the period that goes from the Industrial Revolution to right after World War II. There's something about that period that's epic and tragic. There's a point after the industrial period where it seems like humanity's finally going to make it right. There were advances in medicine and technology and education. People are going to be able to live longer lives; literacy is starting to spread. It seemed like finally, after centuries of toiling and misery, that humanity was going to get to a better stage. And then what happens is precisely the contrary. Humanity betrays itself.”

PeopleWorldWarSeemsHappensAbleHumanityTechnologyCenturyStageRevolutionPeriodsMedicineMiseryStartingSpreadContraryWar Of The WorldsTragicFascinatedWorld War IiBetrayWorld War IEpicLiteracyIndustrial RevolutionToilingTechnology And EducationLonger Life
Author:Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Create image

“Mindfulness, though so highly praised and capable of such great achievements, is not at all a "mystical" state, beyond the ken and reach of the average person. It is, on the contrary, something quite simple and common, and very familiar to us.”

PersonsStatesSimpleCommonMeditationAchievementMindfulnessCapableAverageContraryFamiliarMysticalAverage PersonGreat Achievement
Book:The Heart of Buddhist Meditation: Satipaṭṭhāna : a Handbook of Mental Training Based on the Buddha's Way of Mindfulness, with an Anthology of Relevant Texts Translated from the Pali and Sanskrit
Create image

“The drug war has nothing to do with making communities livable or creating a decent future for black kids. On the contrary, prohibition is directly responsible for the power of crack dealers to terrorize whole neighborhoods. And every cent spent on the cops, investigators, bureaucrats, courts, jails, weapons, and tests required to feed the drug-war machine is a cent not spent on reversing the social policies that have destroyed the cities, nourished racism, and laid the groundwork for crack culture.”

WarWholeKidsCultureSocialBlackCommunityJusticeCitiesPolicyDrugCreatingWeaponsRacismTestsMachinesResponsibleCourtContraryDestroyedDecentNeighborhoodCracksJailCentsCopProhibitionDealerBureaucratsWar On DrugsInvestigatorsGroundworkSocial Policy
Book:No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays
Create image

“Pierre Trudeau was too much of a professional politician to be described as a good man, nor, it can be argued despite much pubilicity to the contrary, was he a particularly clever or even wise one. But he was a great man, perhaps the gratest Canada has produced in this century.”

MenToo MuchWiseCenturyPoliticianContraryCleverDespiteGreat MenCanadaGood Man
Book:The patriot game: Canada and the Canadian question revisited
Create image

“Still - and for all Obama's heavy hinting to the contrary - Islam has no "human rights." The ideas of individual rights and the dignity of man are distinctly Western, an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. And while dialogue is dignified; dhimmitude is not, even if it achieves a desired, if temporary, effect.”

IfsMenHumansStillsIdeasIndividualRightsAchieveEffectsEnlightenmentDignityIslamWesternHuman RightsHeavyContraryDialogueTemporaryIndividual Rights
Author:Ilana Mercer
Create image

“The world saw and understood that, when it comes to the normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations, they have to deal not just with Armenia with its three million population, but with the ten million Armenians. And let no one ignore the fact that, contrary to any slogans, the Armenian nation is united in its goals and is strong with its sons and daughters.”

WorldFactsThreeStrongNationsGoalUnitedDealsMillionsSawsSonTenDaughterUnderstoodRelationPopulationContrarySlogansTurkishSon And DaughterArmeniansArmenia
Author:Serzh Sargsyan
Create image

“Whenever someone sorrows, I do not say, “forget it,” or “it will pass,” or “it could be worse” - all of which deny the integrity of the painful experience. But I say, to the contrary, “It is worse than you may allow yourself to think. Delve into the depth. Stay with the feeling. Think of it as a precious source of knowledge and guidance. Then and only then will you be ready to face it and be transformed in the process.”

ThinkingMayFeelingsFacesProcessForgetReadySourceIntegritySorrowDepthPainfulDenyContraryGuidanceTransformedForget ItPainful Experiences
Author:Peter Koestenbaum
Create image

“Contrary to what we've been taught, genes do not determine physical and character traits on their own. Rather, they interact with the environment in a dynamic, ongoing process that produces and continually refines an individual”

CharacterIndividualProcessEnvironmentProduceTaughtDetermineContraryGenesTraitsOngoingCharacter Trait
Book:The Genius in All of Us: New Insights into Genetics, Talent, and IQ
Create image

“With each newly minted crisis, US leaders roll out the same time-tested scenario. They start demonizing a foreign leader ... charging them with being communistic or otherwise dictatorial, dangerously aggressive, power hungry, genocidal, given to terrorism or drug trafficking, ready to deny us access to vital resources, harboring weapons of mass destruction, or just inexplicably "anti-American" and "anti-West." Lacking any information to the contrary, the frightened public ... are swept along.”

GivenLeaderInformationReadyDrugWeaponsMassResourcesDestructionCrisisWestDenyTerrorismAccessContraryHungryFrightenedAggressiveLackingTestedScenariosWeapons Of Mass DestructionMass DestructionChargingTraffickingAnti-americanPower HungryDrug Trafficking
Author:Michael Parenti
Create image

“Now, which am I to believe, a book that any impostor might make and call the Word of God, or the creation itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? For the Bible says one thing; and the creation says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.”

BelieveBookMightPassionOne ThingCreationContraryMortalsWord Of GodAttributesAlmighty
Book:The Theological Works of Thomas Paine: To which are Added the Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar
Create image

“Despite my mentors advice that I would never go to heaven fishing with a weighted nymph and a float, I took it up. (As an aside, it is now amazing to me how much of the advice from my elders in those days has not come true. I have not gone blind or deaf, despite some early teen advice to the contrary. The only time I was ever involved in a car accident, I was taken to hospital, but no one seemed to take the slightest bit of notice as to whether I had on clean underwear or not. I have, as yet, been unable to test the nymph and heaven advice.)”

HeavenBitsGoneTakenSeaAdviceCarInvolvedRiversTestsBlindCleanFishesAccidentsContraryDespiteBoatLakesFishingHospitalsMentorOnly TimeDeafEldersFloatsUnderwearCar AccidentNymphsClean Underwear
Author:Tony Bishop
Create image

“Consultation and compliance can conduce little to the perfection of any literary performance; for whoever is so doubtful of his own abilities as to encourage the remarks of others, will find himself every day embarrassed with new difficulties, and will harass his mind, in vain, with the hopeless labour of uniting heterogeneous ideas, digesting independent hints, and collecting into one point the several rays of borrowed light, emitted often with contrary directions.”

WritingMindLittlesIdeasLightAbilityPerfectionPerformancesDifficultyIndependentContraryVainLabourHopelessRaysEmbarrassedRemarksCollectingHintsBorrowedDoubtfulComplianceUnitingConsultation
Book:Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings
Create image

“Contrary to received wisdom, the British are not an insular people in the conventional sense - far from it. For most of their early modern and modern history, they have had more contact with more parts of the world than almost any other nation - it is just that this contact has regularly taken the form of aggressive military and commercial enterprise.”

PeopleWorldFormNationsTakenModernMilitaryBritishContraryContactEnterpriseAggressiveConventionalBritish HistoryModern History
Book:Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837
Create image

“The phrase 'contrary to all expectations' rings through the story of the progress of human knowledge. It was 'contrary to all expectations' that the Earth was found to revolve around the sun, and not the other way round, and that a mould growing in one of Dr. Alexander Fleming's dishes was found to be capable of destroying bacteria. When in 1989 the spacecraft Voyager 2 got close enough to the planet Naptune to take detailed pictures of the surface, they were 'contrary to all expectations'.”

WayHumansEnoughStoriesEarthScienceFoundSunGrowingProgressPlanetsCapableExpectationsRoundsSurfaceContraryRingsPhrasesDestroyingDishesDrsMouldBacteriaHuman KnowledgeSpacecraft
Author:Anthony Terence Quincey Stewart
Create image

“Political monopoly and economic monopoly are two sides of the same coin, two heads of the same monster. Despite all the claims to the contrary, the essential ideology of Neo-Conservatism is to preserve the status quo, with all of its injustices. Its public relations experts call for "freedom and democracy" without a framework of higher values. They fail to comprehend the need for a paradigm of justice and therefore are blind to what concerns most of the people in the world. This failure is the taproot of terrorism.”

PeopleWorldNeedsTwoPoliticalValuesPoliticsSidesJusticeEconomyDemocracyFailingEconomicHigherEssentialsConcernClaimsRelationBlindInjusticeTerrorismContraryMonstersDespiteIdeologyPreservesExpertsLiberalismStatus QuoCoinsMonopolyConservatismFrameworkParadigmTwo SidesPublic RelationsTwo Heads
Author:Robert Dickson Crane
Create image

“The tumults in America I expected would have produced in Europe an unfavorable opinion of our political state. But it has not. On the contrary, the small effect of these tumults seems to have given more confidence in the firmness of our governments. The interposition of the people themselves on the side of government has had a great effect on the opinion here in Europe.”

PeopleStatesWisdomSeemsGovernmentAmericaPoliticalPoliticsGivenSidesOpinionEconomyEffectsEuropeExpectedContraryLiberalismFirmnessTumult
Book:Jefferson: Political Writings
Create image

“Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy, cannot be conducted in an institutional, juridical or political vacuum. On the contrary, it presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services.”

WellsWisdomPoliticalPoliticsIndividualEconomyEconomicActivityPropertyContraryLiberalismGuaranteesEfficientStableCurrencyVacuumsPublic ServicePrivate PropertyMarket EconomyIndividual Freedom
Book:The Encyclicals of John Paul II
Create image

“It is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.”

IfsFirstsWisdomSeemsPoliticsCommunityNaturalPrinciplesEconomyClearRightsConditionsMankindBenefitsMassFundamentalsPropertyContrarySocialismConfusionLiberalismGoodsMeant To BeDisorderIntroducingRejectedPrivate PropertyAlleviateFundamental PrinciplesNatural Rights
Book:A Light in the Heavens: Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII
Create image