Contrary To Popular Opinion Quotes

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Our first impressions stick with us the longest, but contrary to popular opinion, some people do change. The only problem is, they change faster than our prejudices do.
Ana Huang (Twisted Hate (Twisted, #3))
Contrary to popular opinion, leadership is not a reserved position for a particular group of people who were elected or appointed, ordained or enthroned. Leadership is self-made, self-retained, self-inculcated and then exposed through a faithful, sincere and examplary life.
Israelmore Ayivor
Make notes—I’ve lost more material than I’ve ever written. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not still up there in one’s brain. It’s in outer space and it ain’t coming back.
Judith Guest
Contrary to popular opinion, the most important characteristic of a godly mother is not her relationship with her children. It is her love for her husband. The love between husband and wife is the real key to a thriving family. A healthy home environment cannot be built exclusively on the parents' love for their children. The properly situated family has marriage at the center; families shouldn't revolve around the children.
John F. MacArthur Jr. (Twelve Extraordinary Women : How God Shaped Women of the Bible and What He Wants to Do With You)
This is listening as a martial art, balancing the subtle behaviors of emotional intelligence and the assertive skills of influence, to gain access to the mind of another person. Contrary to popular opinion, listening is not a passive activity. It is the most active thing you can do. Once
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
Contrary to popular opinion or the escapist trends of society, false hope is in no way better than a harsh truth. A harsh truth is painful to accept, but there's healing at the end. False hope, on the other hand, is a very dangerous thing that offers no reward. Not immediately, nor with the passage of time. It never pays off.
Northern Adams (Mickey and the Gargoyle)
The sand in the hourglass runs from one compartment to the other, marking the passage of moments with something constant and tangible. If you watch the flowing sand, you might see time itself riding the granules. Contrary to popular opinion, time is not an old white-haired man, but a laughing child. And time sings.
Vera Nazarian (The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)
Contrary to popular opinion, my dad was not a lazy man. He was not lazy at all, for instance, when it came to Going Places In His Truck. He was also very industrious about Preparing To Go Camping. And if something really interested him, he would work on it all day.
Haven Kimmel (A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small In Mooreland, Indiana)
Contrary to popular opinion, 'Leave it to Beaver' was not a documentary.
Stephanie Coontz (The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap)
Definitions, contrary to popular opinion, tell us nothing about things. They only describe people's linguistic habits; that is, they tell us what noises people make under what conditions.
S.I. Hayakawa (Language in Action)
Contrary to popular opinion, a man can shut love out if he wants to. But to do so, he must free himself not only from the woman who has bewitched him but also from the third person in the story, the ghost who has put temptation in his way.
Orhan Pamuk (Snow)
Contrary to popular opinion, manners are not a luxury good that's interesting only to those who can afford to think about them. The essence of good manners is not exclusivity, nor exclusion of any kind, but sensitivity. To practice good manners is to confer upon others not just consideration but esteem; it's to bathe others in a commodity best described by noted speller Aretha Franklin.
Henry Alford (Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That? A Modern Guide to Manners)
Contrary to popular opinion, we are all a vast brotherhood of human beings whose very survival hinges not on what we keep, but on what we give. And it is in the giving that we not only survive to live another day, but we thrive to celebrate another day.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Contrary to popular opinion, there's no mystery to writing well. It's a skill that just about anyone can learn, more craft than art.
Patricia T. O'Conner (Words Fail Me: What Everyone Who Writes Should Know about Writing (Harvest Book))
Contrary to popular opinion, listening is not a passive activity. It is the most active thing you can do.
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
Contrary to popular wisdom, bullies are rarely cowards. Bullies come in various shapes and sizes. Observe yours. Gather intelligence. Shunning one hopeless battle is not an act of cowardice. Hankering for security or popularity makes you weak and vulnerable. Which is worse: Scorn earned by informers? Misery endured by victims? The brutal May have been molded by a brutality you cannot exceed. Let guile be your ally. Respect earned by integrity cannot be lost without your consent. Don't laugh at what you don't find funny. Don't support an opinion you don't hold. The independent befriend the independent. Adolescence dies in its fourth year. You live to be eighty.
David Mitchell (Black Swan Green)
Contrary to popular opinion, all religions are not alike. Their followers see the world in very distinct ways. Their understandings of the human condition proceed from different assumptions, leading them to propose different remedies. If I had been able to resist the wisdom they offered me - if I had been able to keep my Christian glasses on, so that I only saw what those prescription lenses allowed me to see - then I might have emerged unchanged. But that is now how it went for me.
Barbara Brown Taylor (Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others)
centerpiece of this book, is called Tactical Empathy. This is listening as a martial art, balancing the subtle behaviors of emotional intelligence and the assertive skills of influence, to gain access to the mind of another person. Contrary to popular opinion, listening is not a passive activity. It is the most active thing you can do.
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
Contrary to popular opinion, leaders aren’t created out of fame. Fame is just a shadow. When you enter dark times in, it leaves you.
Israelmore Ayivor (Leaders' Ladder)
When people come to a conclusion that is contrary to popular opinion, there’s a calm resolution to them, for they are experiencing a short burst of pride. They have just captured an intellectual territory, and they will hold that territory.
Mike Klepper
Contrary to popular belief, not everyone is entitled to their opinion. If you don't know the facts, your opinion doesn't count.
Andy Rooney
1) Leopardskin is always a neutral. 2) You can get away with nearly anything if you wear the thing with black opaque tights and boots. 3) Contrary to popular opinion, a belt is often not a good friend to a lady. Indeed, in many circumstances, it acts merely as a visual aid to help the onlooker settle the question: "Which half is fatter - the bottom or the top?" 4) Bright red is a neutral. 5) Sellotape is NOT strong enough to mend a hole in the crotch of a pair of tights. 6) You should NOT buy an outfit if you have to strike a sexy pose in the changing-room mirror to make it look good. On the other hand, if you immediately start dancing the minute you put it on, buy it, however much it costs: unless it's lots, in which case, you can't, so don't. Fashion magazines will NEVER say, "Actually, don't buy it if you can't afford it." Neither will your friends. I am probably the only person who will EVER say it to you. You're welcome.
Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
Among the popular errors of modern times, an opinion prevails that miracles are events which transpire contrary to the laws of nature, that they are effects without a cause. If such is the fact, then, there never has been a miracle, and there never will be one. The laws of nature are the laws of truth. Truth is unchangeable, and independent in its own sphere. A law of nature never has been broken. And it is an absolute impossibility that such law ever should be broken.
Parley P. Pratt (Key to the Science of Theology)
Upon the whole, then, it appears, that no testimony for any kind of miracle has ever amounted to a probability, much less to a proof; and that, even supposing it amounted to a proof, it would be opposed by another proof; derived from the very nature of the fact, which it would endeavour to establish. It is experience only, which gives authority to human testimony; and it is the same experience, which assures us of the laws of nature. When, therefore, these two kinds of experience are contrary, we have nothing to do but subtract the one from the other, and embrace an opinion, either on one side, or the other, with that assurance which arises from the remainder. But according to the principle here explained, this subtraction, with regard to all popular religions, amounts to an entire annihilation; and therefore we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion.
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
There is nothing mystical about the power of pyramids. Pyramids are dams in the stream of time. Correctly shaped and orientated, with the proper paracosmic measurements correctly plumbed in, the temporal potential of the great mass of stone can be diverted to accelerate or reverse time over a very small area, in the same way that a hydraulic ram can be induced to pump water against the flow. The original builders, who were of course ancients and therefore wise, knew this very well and the whole point of a correctly-built pyramid was to achieve absolute null time in the central chamber so that a dying king, tucked up there, would indeed live forever—or at least, never actually die. The time that should have passed in the chamber was stored in the bulk of the pyramid and allowed to flare off once every twenty-four hours. After a few eons people forgot this and thought you could achieve the same effect by a) ritual b) pickling people and c) storing their soft inner bits in jars. This seldom works. And so the art of pyramid tuning was lost, and all the knowledge became a handful of misunderstood rules and hazy recollections. The ancients were far too wise to build very big pyramids. They could cause very strange things, things that would make mere fluctuations in time look tiny by comparison. By the way, contrary to popular opinion pyramids don’t sharpen razor blades. They just take them back to when they weren’t blunt. It’s probably because of quantum.
Terry Pratchett (Pyramids (Discworld, #7))
But as men farther exalt their idea of their divinity, it is their notion of his power and knowledge only, not of his goodness, which is improved. On the contrary, in proportion to the supposed extent of his science and authority, their terrors naturally augment; while they believe, that no secrecy can conceal them from his scrutiny, and that even the inmost recesses of their breast lie open before him. They must then be careful not to form expressly any sentiment of blame and disapprobation. All must be applause, ravishment, extacy. And while their gloomy apprehensions make them ascribe to him measures of conduct, which, in human creatures, would be highly blamed, they must still affect to praise and admire that conduct in the object of their devotional addresses. Thus it may safely be affirmed, that popular religions are really, in the conception of their more vulgar votaries, a species of dæmonism; and the higher the deity is exalted in power and knowledge, the lower of course is he depressed in goodness and benevolence; whatever epithets of praise may be bestowed on him by his amazed adorers. Among idolaters, the words may be false, and belie the secret opinion: But among more exalted religionists, the opinion itself contracts a kind of falsehood, and belies the inward sentiment. The heart secretly detests such measures of cruel and implacable vengeance; but the judgment dares not but pronounce them perfect and adorable. And the additional misery of this inward struggle aggravates all the other terrors, by which these unhappy victims to superstition are forever haunted.
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
The successful individual sales producer wins by being as selfish as possible with her time. The more often the salesperson stays away from team members and distractions, puts her phone on Do Not Disturb (DND), closes her door, or chooses to work for a few hours from the local Panera Bread café, the more productive she’ll likely be. In general, top producers in sales tend to exhibit a characteristic I’ve come to describe as being selfishly productive. The seller who best blocks out the rest of the world, who maintains obsessive control of her calendar, who masters focusing solely on her own highest-value revenue-producing activities, who isn’t known for being a “team player,” and who is not interested in playing good corporate citizen or helping everyone around her, is typically a highly effective seller who ends up on top of the sales rankings. Contrary to popular opinion, being selfish is not bad at all. In fact, for an individual contributor salesperson, it is a highly desirable trait and a survival skill, particularly in today’s crazed corporate environment where everyone is looking to put meetings on your calendar and take you away from your primary responsibilities! Now let’s switch gears and look at the sales manager’s role and responsibilities. How well would it work to have a sales manager who kept her office phone on DND and declined almost every incoming call to her mobile phone? Do we want a sales manager who closes her office door, is concerned only about herself, and is for the most part inaccessible? No, of course not. The successful sales manager doesn’t win on her own; she wins through her people by helping them succeed. Think about other key sales management responsibilities: Leading team meetings. Developing talent. Encouraging hearts. Removing obstacles. Coaching others. Challenging data, false assumptions, wrong attitudes, and complacency. Pushing for more. Putting the needs of your team members ahead of your own. Hmmm. Just reading that list again reminds me why it is often so difficult to transition from being a top producer in sales into a sales management role. Aside from the word sales, there is truly almost nothing similar about the positions. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on corporate responsibilities like participating on the executive committee, dealing with human resources compliance issues, expense management, recruiting, and all the other burdens placed on the sales manager. Again,
Mike Weinberg (Sales Management. Simplified.: The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team)
Our critique is not opposed to the *dogmatic procedure* of reason in its pure knowledge as science (for science must always be dogmatic, that is, derive its proof from secure *a priori* principles), but only to *dogmatism*, that is, to the presumption that it is possible to make any progress with pure (philosophical) knowledge from concepts according to principles, such as reason has long been in the habit of using, without first inquiring in what way, and by what right, it has come to posses them. Dogmatism is therefore the dogmatic procedure of pure reason, *without a preceding critique of its own powers*; and our opposition to this is not intended to defend that loquacious shallowness which arrogates to itself the name of popularity, much less that skepticism which makes short work of the whole of metaphysics. On the contrary, our critique is meant to form a necessary preparation in support of metaphysics as a thorough science, which must necessarily be carried out dogmatically and strictly systematically, so as to satisfy all the demands, no so much of the public at large, as of the Schools. This is an indispensable demand for it has undertaken to carry out its work entirely *a priori*, and thus to carry it out to the complete satisfaction of speculative reason. In the execution of this plan, as traced out by the critique, that is, in a future system of metaphysics, we shall have to follow the strict method of the celebrated Wolff, the greatest of all dogmatic philosophers. He was the first to give an example (and by his example initiated, in Germany, that spirit of thoroughness which is not yet extinct) of how the secure course of a science could be attained only through the lawful establishment of principles, the clear determination of concepts, the attempt at strictness of proof and avoidance of taking bold leaps in our inferences. He was therefore most eminently qualified to give metaphysics the dignity of a science, if it had only occurred to him to prepare his field in advance by criticism of the organ, that is, of pure reason itself―an omission due not so much to himself as to the dogmatic mentality of his age, about which the philosophers of his own, as well as of all previous times, have no right to reproach one another. Those who reject both the method of Wolff and the procedure of the critique of pure reason can have no other aim but to shake off the fetters of *science* altogether, and thus to change work into play, certainty into opinion and philosophy into philodoxy." ―from_Critique of Pure Reason_. Preface to the Second Edition. Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marcus Weigelt, based on the translation by Max Müller, pp. 28-29
Immanuel Kant
Contrary to popular opinion, then, Christianity is not a Western religion that destroys local cultures. Rather, Christianity has taken more culturally diverse forms than other faiths.25 It has deep layers of insight from the Hebrew, Greek, and European cultures, and over the next hundred years will be further shaped by Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Christianity may become the most truly “catholic vision of the world,”26 having opened its leadership over the centuries to people from every tongue, tribe, people and nation.
Timothy J. Keller (The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism)
Contrary to popular opinion, a home is not an asset for creating real wealth, it is a liability.22 Your home does not generate any income; it is a Money Pit. You have to pay the mortgage, utilities, maintenance, property taxes that continue to go up each year, and, insurance that tends to also increase annually. After so many years, kitchens need remodeling, carpets & flooring replaced, and, painting and decorating requiring new furniture to match the updated changes. And, the larger the home the more furniture that is needed to fill it up.
Robert G. Beard Jr. (The Best Kept Secret to Financial Freedom)
Contrary to some popular opinions and partial teachings, Zen is not, in the end, opposed to rational thought. But it does teach that we need to dig down beneath discursive reasoning by means of meditation, reconnecting intellectual knowledge to a deeper, more holistic wisdom.
Bret W. Davis (Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism)
Contrary to popular opinion, with God there is no such thing as mere forgiveness. There is only justice.
Jerry Bridges (The Gospel for Real Life: Turn to the Liberating Power of the Cross...Every Day)
might put it off and run when they got there, but contrary to popular opinion, beach running is only jolly fun for the first five miles or so. After that, the cute little waves become redundant, the sand reflects the sun up into the eyes blindingly, grains of sand slip annoyingly into the heel of the shoe or flip up on the back of the leg. Fifteen hot miles on a long, flat beach sounds like good sport only to those who haven’t actually done it. Also, the ocean is too infinite; the run seems as if it will never end.
John L. Parker Jr. (Once a Runner)
Contrary to popular opinion, the Old Testament is not a single book with one unified view of who God is and how life works.
Anonymous
Contrary to popular opinion, constant intense hard work is not always the key to getting what you want. At times, it is best to take a break or take time off to think and learn. Sometimes, you have to be willing to take a few steps backwards in order to be able to jump several feet ahead.
Anubhav Srivastava (UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life (What They Don't Want You to Know Book 1))
Contrary to popular opinion, This Author is aware that she is viewed as something of a cynic. But that, dear reader, could not be further from the truth. This Author likes nothing better than a happy ending. And if that makes her a romantic fool, so be it. Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers, 15 June 1814
Julia Quinn (The Viscount Who Loved Me (Bridgertons, #2))
Don’t look so shocked, Colonel,” the president chuckled. “Contrary to popular opinion, I can occasionally have a decent idea.” “Sorry sir, my surprise is more that I didn’t think of it,” she admitted. “You’d have gotten there,” he told her. “We just don’t have time for one person to have all the good ideas.
Evan Currie (Countdown to Apocalypse (Superhuman #2))
Contrary to popular opinion, screening doesn’t begin with a background check or an application; it begins with the initial contact. This is known as pre-screening
Brandon Turner (The Book on Managing Rental Properties: Find, Screen, and Manage Tenants With Fewer Headaches and Maximum Profits)
To hostage takers, victims were the best forms of insurance. As long as the hostages were still alive, they were like pawns protecting them from attack, a way of buying their way to freedom. For that reason, contrary to the popular opinion perpetrated by TV crime series, it was very rare for hostage situations to have fatal consequences. For the perpetrator, a dead hostage was useless
Sebastian Fitzek (Amokspiel)
God does not exalt His mercy at the expense of His justice. And in order to maintain His justice, all sin without exception must be punished. Contrary to popular opinion, with God there is no such thing as mere forgiveness. There is only justice.
Jerry Bridges (The Gospel for Real Life: Turn to the Liberating Power of the Cross...Every Day)
This is listening as a martial art, balancing the subtle behaviors of emotional intelligence and the assertive skills of influence, to gain access to the mind of another person. Contrary to popular opinion, listening is not a passive activity.
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
Contrary to popular belief, we do not have a creative right brain and an analytical left brain, nor do we have an artistic right brain and a mathematical left brain.
Albert Moukheiber (Your Brain Is Playing Tricks On You: How the Brain Shapes Opinions and Perceptions)
The truth is that in order for my freedom not to risk coming to grief against the obstacle which its very engagement has raised, in order that it might still pursue its movement in the face of the failure, it must, by giving itself a particular content, aim by means of it at an end which is nothing else but precisely the free movement of existence. Popular opinion is quite right in admiring a man who, having been ruined or having suffered an accident, knows how to gain the upper hand, that is, renew his engagement in the world, thereby strongly asserting the independence of freedom in relation to thing. Thus, when the sick Van Gogh calmly accepted the prospect of a future in which he would be unable to paint any more, there was no sterile resignation. For him painting was a personal way of life and of communication with others which in another form could be continued even in an asylum. The past will be integrated and freedom will be confirmed in a renunciation of this kind. It will be lived in both heartbreak and joy. In heartbreak, because the project is then robbed of its particularity — it sacrifices its flesh and blood. But in joy, since at the moment one releases his hold, he again finds his hands free and ready to stretch out toward a new future. But this act of passing beyond is conceivable only if what the content has in view is not to bar up the future, but, on the contrary, to plan new possibilities. This brings us back by another route to what we had already indicated. My freedom must not seek to trap being but to disclose it. The disclosure is the transition from being to existence. The goal which my freedom aims at is conquering existence across the always inadequate density of being.
Simone de Beauvoir (The Ethics of Ambiguity)
Contrary to popular opinion, the primary goal of relationships is not to make us happy. Relationships make us grow. That growth will, with time, naturally increase our happiness. Growth has a price, and that’s the bit we don’t like paying. It ranges from uncomfortable to downright tortuous depending on the issue, how deeply seated it is, how much work we have previously done on it, how resistant we are to working on it, and how much painful emotion is already attached to the issue from past experiences. At any price, it’s still a bargain.
Donna Goddard (Love's Longing)
Contrary to popular opinion, people who have money refuse to part with it, unless they absolutely have to do it.
Ilona Andrews (Small Magics (Kate Daniels #0.5; 5.3; 5.6 ))