“Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.”
Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher
As translated by Philip Wheelwright in Heraclitus (1959) https://archive.org/details/heraclitus00whee <br class="br">Disputed
“Everything that is harmoniously constituted is knit together out of opposites…”
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)
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Ancient Greek mathematician 60–120Related quotes
“Affluence separates people. Poverty knits 'em together.”
Ray Charles (1930–2004) American musician
Roughing It, p. 155
Brother Ray : Ray Charles' Own Story (1978)
Context: Affluence separates people. Poverty knits 'em together. You got some sugar and I don't; I borrow some of yours. Next month you might not have any flour; well, I'll give you some of mine.
That's how my band made it. We swam through a lot of shit together, we swallowed a lot of pride, but we managed to do what we needed to do.
“One should be in harmony with, not in opposition to, the strength and force of the opposition.”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 20
Context: One should be in harmony with, not in opposition to, the strength and force of the opposition. This means that one should do nothing that is not natural or spontaneous; the important thing is not to strain in any way.
“Opposites and contradictions, that is our harmony.”
Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter
German original: Gegensätze und Widerspruche, dass ist unsere Harmonie.
short quote, 1911; as cited in schönberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; ed. Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), 2003, p. 9, note 1
1910 - 1915
“Opposites work together in the very opposite of the way they seem… They work together in teams.”
Howard Bloom (1943) American publicist and author
Brace Yourself: The Five Heresies
The God Problem: How a Godless Cosmos Creates (2012)
“But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. The idealists are usually not realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self-assertive humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony. The philosopher Hegel said that truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in the emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.
“O death that dividest brothers knit together in love, how cruel, how ruthless you are so to sunder them!”
O mors quae fratres dividis, et amore societos, crudelis ac dura dissocias.
Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church
Letter 60; Translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W.G. Martley. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001.htm <br class="br">Letters
Robin Sloan (1979) American writer
Source: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012), Chapter 16 “Codex Vitae” (p. 141)
“The opposite of loneliness, it's not togetherness. It is intimacy.”
Richard Bach book The Bridge Across Forever
The Bridge Across Forever (1984)