“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”
“The unerring signs of truth and falsehood are clear, distinct consistency and contradiction. This is also the case with revelation, in so far as that it must, in common with other truths, be free from contradiction. And just as little as miracles can prove that twice two are five or that a triangle has four angles, can a contradiction lying in the history and dogmas of Christianity be removed by any number of miracles.”
Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, p. 75
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Hermann Samuel Reimarus 12
German philosopher 1694–1768Related quotes
The Foundations of Mathematics (1925)
King v. Burdett (1820), 1 St. Tr. (N. S.) 140.
Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, p. 75
“I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.”
Source: Violent Silence: Celebrating Georges Bataille
Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), III
Context: The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words. It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life — for home use, as it were — but that in public life all forms of violence — such as imprisonment, executions, and wars — might be used for the protection of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were diametrically opposed to any vestige of love.
“A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.”
Certain, possible, impossible: here we have the first indication of the scale that we need in the theory of probability.
4.464
Original German: Die Wahrheit der Tautologie ist gewiss, des Satzes möglich, der Kontradiktion unmöglich
Source: 1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)