#contradictions

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it. ↗

— Eric Hobsbawm

#contradictions #historians #justifies #makes #nation

Double standards are inspiration to men of letters, but they are apt to be fatal to politicians. ↗

— Henry Adams

#paradox #education

Now there are some, and I don't just mean Communists like you, but thinking men of all political parties, who think that not many of these gods actually exist. Some believe that none of them exist. There's just us and an ocean of darkness around us. I'm no philosopher or poet, how would I know the truth? It's true that all these gods seem to do awfully little work - much like our politicians - and yet keep winning reelection to their golden thrones in heaven, year after year. That's not to say I don't respect them, Mr. Premier! Don't you ever let that blasphemous idea into your yellow skull. My country is the kind where it pays to play it both ways: the Indian entrepreneur has to be straight and crooked, mocking and believing, sly and sincere, at the same time. ↗

— Aravind Adiga

#contradictions #entrepreneur #god #gods #men

Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life. ↗

— Fernand Braudel

#contradictions #despite #difficulties #everything #framework

Do you think when two representatives holding diametrically opposing views get together and shake hands, the contradictions between our systems will simply melt away? What kind of a daydream is that? ↗

— Nikita Khrushchev

#between #contradictions #daydream #diametrically #get

I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for contradictions. ↗

— Maxine Hong Kingston

#i #large #learned #make #mind

As human beings, of course, we're all compromised and complex and contradictory and if a screenplay can express those contradictions within a character and if there's room for me to express them, that's a part I'd love to play, so much more than a character who is heroic and one-dimensional. ↗

— Hugo Weaving

#character #complex #compromised #contradictions #contradictory

I'm an alien in my own world, a writer without words, a musician without a piano, a magician without a wand. I am fooled by infinite words that rush in my blood, yet imprisoned by the very thoughts of silence. I'm a gray green fallow leaf on trees and abandoned on the streets, a never-ending spring season and an eternal autumn. I'm the golden of the sun and the silver of the moon, the fog of dawn and the amber of dusk. I'm the white and the red flag , the obedient and the rebel. I am the coward in the brave, and the child in the man. I am, but a writer. ↗

— Nema Al-Araby

#suffering #writer #musician

The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles. ↗

— Harrison Birtwistle

#built-in #contradictions #different #different angles #many

I'm full of contradictions. ↗

— Juliana Hatfield

#full #i