Quotes on Opposition

Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as right in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as brute force.

Of course, we will face fear, experience ridicule, and meet opposition. Let us have the courage to defy the consensus, the courage to stand for principle. Courage, not compromise, brings the smile of God's approval.

Put light against light - you have nothing. Put dark against dark - you have nothing. It's the contrast of light and dark that each give the other one meaning.

The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is incomplete, or the subjective involves illusions that should be rejected.

Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. ~ Every class is unfit to govern ... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.

A good intention but fixed and resolute - bent on high and holy ends, we shall find means to them on every side and at every moment; and even obstacles and opposition will but make us "like the fabled specter-ships," which sail the fastest in the very teeth of the wind.

It really does no good to ask questions that reflect opposition to the will of God. Rather ask, What am I to do?

Not blind opposition to progress,but opposition to blind progress.

When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That's its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over, the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, it adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born.

Jesus resolved the false opposition between obedience and freedom and opened the path to freedom

Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

If you're going to have any kind of political opposition in the 21st century, then it has to be as fundamentally liquid as the rapidly changing society we're living in.

I realize that in this undertaking I place myself in a certain opposition to views widely held concerning the mathematical infinite and to opinions frequently defended on the nature of numbers.

When feminism does not explicitly oppose racism, and when anti-racism does not incorporate opposition to patriarchy, race and gender politics often end up being antagonistic to each other, and both interests lose.

I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words.

Your state is not at all to be measured by the opposition that sin makes to you, but by the opposition you make to it.

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it.

There is a tradition of opposition between adherents of induction and of deduction. In my view it would be just as sensible for the two ends of a worm to quarrel.

Consider the impasse of a one-God universe. He is all-knowing and all-powerful. He can't go anywhere, since He is already everywhere. He can't do anything, since the act of doing presupposes opposition. His universe is irrevocably thermodynamic, having no friction by definition. So, He has to create friction: War, Fear, Sickness, Death, to keep his dying show on the road.