“If two opposite theories are propagated one will be wrong.”
Nahj al-Balagha
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Ali124
cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad 601–661Related quotes
“Nothing can be more idle than the opposition of theory to practice!”
Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman
Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Introduction, p. xxi
“Wonderful theory, wrong species.”
Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist
On Marxism, which he considered more suited to ants than to humans. <br class="br"> http://arts.independent.co.uk/books/news/article2886394.ece.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
"The Fundamentals of Theoretical Physics," (1940) as quoted in Out of My Later Years (1976)
1940s
“Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong.”
Mark Knopfler (1949) English guitarist
Industrial Disease
Song lyrics, Love over Gold (1982)
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
"The Nearest Star" (1989) (reprinted in The Secret of the Universe (1992), p. 82)
General sources
Kim Stanley Robinson book Green Mars
Source: Green Mars (1993), Chapter 8, “Social Engineering” (p. 410)
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change
Context: p>Two things of opposite natures seem to depend
On one another, as a man depends
On a woman, day on night, the imaginedOn the real. This is the origin of change.
Winter and spring, cold copulars, embrace
And forth the particulars of rapture come.</p
James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States
"Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White" http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/29/specials/baldwin-antisem.html in The New York Times (9 April 1967) <br class="br">Context: It is true that two wrongs don't make a right, as we love to point out to the people we have wronged. But one wrong doesn't make a right, either. People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.