Contraries Quotes

“Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delights of presence best known by the torments of absence.”
― Alcibiades

“I've come to suspect that whenever any ability is difficult to learn and rarely performed well, it's probably because contraries are called for - patting the head and rubbing the belly. Thus, good writing is hard because it means trying to be creative and critical; good teaching is hard because it means trying to be ally and adversary of students; good evaluation is hard because it means trying to be subjective and objective; good intelligence is rare because it means trying to be intuitive and logical.”
― Peter Elbow, Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching