
“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”
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
“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”
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)