Stanislaw Jerzy Lec Quotes

We have shown that socialism is an incoherent combination of thesis and antithesis, which contradict and destroy one another. Catholicism, on the contrary forms a great synthesis which includes all things in its unity, and infuses them in its sovereign harmony

I am not by any means a philosopher, although I have worked with some talented people in the discipline. But certain philosophical concepts deeply inform the way I think about the world. The idea of 'opposing truths at extremes' is a powerful concept that I came to appreciate in my twenties.

Most thoughts are only profiles of thoughts. They must be inverted and synthesized with their antipodes. Thus many philosophical writings become very interesting which would not have been so otherwise.

All concord's born of contraries.

The demonstrable correlation of opposites is an image of the transcendental correlation of contradictories.

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

Everything contains its antithesis.

It is the fact of life that a truth emerges out of a conflict between two wrongs.

I'm fascinated by the yin and yang of everything.

It is not that I love contradictions: life is contradictory. Existence itself is possible only through contradictions.

If you have a correct statement, then the opposite of a correct statement is of course an incorrect statement, a wrong statement. But when you have a deep truth, then the opposite of a deep truth may again be a deep truth.

Poetry dovetails contradictions.

The French will always do exactly the opposite on what the United States wants regardless of what happens, so we're never going to have a consistent policy.

There is apparently no surer way of turning a thing into its opposite than by exaggerating it

All things come into being by conflict of opposites.

In the vocabulary of certain radical theorists contradictions are given the status of some deadly disease to which their opponents alone can succumb. But contradictions are the very stuff of life. If there had been a little dash of contradiction among the Gadarene swine some of them might have been saved from drowning.

Are not all things which have opposites generated out of their opposites?

You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth.

There is no idea that does not carry in itself a possible refutation, no word that does not imply its opposite.

Tension of opposites.

if you pursue the truth far enough you always wind up in the land of paradox. You reach a point where the apparent truth divides into two opposing truths and then you have to try to reach beyond them to grasp the ultimate truth, their synthesis.

Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the insight into necessity.

Stoicism is the wisdom of madness and cynicism the madness of wisdom.

Communism--the first expression of the social nature--is the first term of social development--the thesis; property, the reverse of communism, is the second term--the antithesis. When we have discovered the third term, the synthesis, we shall have the required solution.

History is the in-rushing toward what the Buddhists call the realm of the densely packed, a transformational realm where the opposites are unified.