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Opposites Quotes

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Opposites Quotes

“The purpose of scientific method is to select a single truth from among many hypothetical truths. That, more than anything else, is what science is all about. But historically science has done exactly the opposite. Through multiplication upon multiplication of facts, information, theories and hypotheses, it is science itself that is leading mankind from single absolute truths to multiple indeterminate, relative ones.”

Done Facts Purpose Mankind Information Theory Opposites Absolutes Method Relative Multiple Hypothesis Select Scientific Method Absolute Truth Hypothetical Multiplication

Author:Robert M. Pirsig

“It occurred to me that nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting, so I devised a method of cleaning off the page opposite the editorial, which became the most important in America and thereon I decided to print opinions, ignoring facts.”

Important Facts America Interesting Opinion Pages Decided Opposites Method Print Cleaning Editorials Ignoring Facts

Author:Herbert Bayard Swope

“The selective winnowing of time leaves only a few recognizable individuals behind for the historian to light on. Thus the historian who finds the human being more interesting than what the human being has done must inevitably endow the comparatively few individuals he can identify with too great an importance in relation to their time. Even so, I prefer this overestimate to the opposite method which treats developments as though they were the massive anonymous waves of an unhuman sea or pulverizes the fallible surviving records of human life into the grey dust of statistics.”

“The comparison between Coleridge and Johnson is obvious in so far as each held sway chiefly by the power of his tongue. The difference between their methods is so marked that it is tempting, but also unnecessary, to judge one to be inferior to the other. Johnson was robust, combative, and concrete; Coleridge was the opposite. The contrast was perhaps in his mind when he said of Johnson: "his bow-wow manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced.”

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

“Those who are guilty of the argumentum ad ignorantiam profess belief in something because its opposite cannot be proved ... In the realm where "prejudice" is now most an issue, it normally takes a form like this: you cannot prove by the method of statistics and quantitative measurement that men are not equal. Therefore all men are equal. ... You cannot prove again by the methods of science that one culture is higher than another. Therefore the culture of the Digger Indians is just a good as that of Muncie, Indiana, or thirteenth-century France.”

Men Form Culture Belief Issues Century Higher Prove Equal Opposites Prejudice Method Guilty France Realms Statistics Ads Measurement Indiana

Author:Richard M. Weaver

“Without precisely defined sources, methods, and concepts, it is possible to see absolutely everything and its opposite.”

Source Concepts Opposites Method Defined

Author:Thomas Piketty

“Very well, then: why are you attached to any one book, or to the words and ways of one saint when he himself tells you to let them go and walk in simplicity? To hang on to him as if to make a method of him is to contradict him and to go in the opposite direction to the one in which he would have you travel.”

Ifs Way Wells Book Walks Opposites Method Simplicity Saint

Author:Thomas Merton

“Here's a foolproof method for keeping America safe. Always do the exact 180-degree opposite of whatever [Jimmy] Carter says, as quickly as possible.”

America Safe Degrees Opposites Method Jimmy Carter Foolproof

Author:Ann Coulter

“Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.”

Study Opposites Method Competitors

Book:The Unpublished David Ogilvy

Source: The Unpublished David Ogilvy

“Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one's opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth.”