Contradiction itself, far from always being a criterion of error, is sometimes a sign of truth.
Interpretation
Contradictions can reveal deeper truths rather than indicate mistakes.
This quote by Simone Weil suggests that encountering contradictions is not necessarily an indication of being wrong; instead, they may point towards a greater understanding of the complexity of truth. It challenges the notion that truth is always straightforward and invites us to embrace the ambiguity that often accompanies profound insights.
In practice
In a debate about morality, one could use this quote to illustrate that differing viewpoints may reveal deeper understandings rather than just conflicts.
The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.
The appetite for power, even for universal power, is only insane when there is no possibility of indulging it; a man who sees the possibility opening before him and does not try to grasp it, even at the risk of destroying himself and his country, is either
As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.
Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.
I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
How many people have been thus led, through lack of self-confidence, to stifle their most justified doubts?
That which lives on reason lives against the spirit.
Men have no special right because they belong to one race or another: the word man defines all rights.
These most crafty enemies [the devils] have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety, with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck, the sheep may be scattered.
Man only remains hypnotised with the false idea of an ego. When this ghost is off from us, all dreams vanish, and then it is found that the one Self only exists from the highest Being to a blade of grass.
If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.
Content if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view, The learn'd reflect on what before they knew.
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