Never take anyone’s advice.
How about this brilliancy from Einstein? “Never remember anything you can look up.” Becomes self-defeating by memorizing it, of course.
Courtesy of the Simpsons:
If you desire peace, you must prepare for war.
You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.
you can never know what you don’t know…ya know?
thanks, now I know where those quotes originated.
Are we talking “self-defeating” or “contradictory”? Most of the examples I’ve seen here seem contradictory or vaguely paradoxical, rather than self-defeating.
Certain noble principles can be self-defeating, even if they’re not contradictory. Examples:
Tolerance can be a self-defeating principle. If a society extends tolerance to people who don’t believe in tolerance, it risks its own destruction. (The English Catholics who founded Maryland offered tolerance to Protestants… and soon found that the colony was filled with Protestants who were NOT interested in granting tolerance to Catholics.)
Orwell noted that pacifism was, ultimately, a self-defeating principle. After all, there are only two possibilities:
-
Pacifists will have NO real impact on the policies of their country.
-
Pacifists will weaken the armed forces of their homelands, making them easy pickings for militaristc nations without any compunctions.
In short, pacifists either accomplish NOTHING or they help out foreign militarists (not exactly what they’d MEANT to accomplish, obviously).
(Insert Brand name)… is your only choice.
A ham sandwich is better than spiritual enlightenment.
Because nothing is better than spiritual enlightenment,
and a ham sandwich is better than nothing.
Yes, I know it’s equivocation.
Capitalism, in that the most successful capitalist ventures become monopolies, which then get to ignore the rules of competition, thus thumbing their noses at, well, Capitalism.
tpayne: Then why, oh why, have capitalist economies succeeded so spectacularly over the competition?
I ask merely for information.
Words do not exist.
Words cannot express what the meaning of this sentance.
Derleth, I don’t disagree, nor am I promoting (nor desirous of) an alternative. I am only making a point regarding capitalism’s logical conclusion.
tpayne, that isn’t Capitalism’s logical conclusion, any more than Stalinism is Communism’s logical conclusion.
This probably isn’t the place for an economics lecture, but look it up sometime.
I’d passed up this thread, because I couldn’t think of anything off-hand. Then my five-year-old son threw one at me last night. “Never say never, Daddy,” he said to me. I looked at him and deadpanned, “But you had to say ‘never’ twice just to tell me that!”
The Cincinnati Bengals
The Minnesota Vikings as well.
How about God is love, love is blind…you know the rest.