The opposites.

Dickens was saying something very simple, by the use of contrasts or opposites.

How do we create an idea which is both tolerant to individuality, and also to collectivity, without polarizing the two into two different opposites?

The conventional view is that a reasonable, balanced approach entails some of each. But, as Friedman would have argued, the two methods should be considered polar opposites.

And I know the point of this conference is to celebrate things that are near and dear to us, but I also know that clean and dirty aren't opposites.

The future is marked by pairs of opposites integration and disintegration stability and instability wealth and poverty health and incurable disease the opening and closing of borders democracies and dictatorships inter alia.

But nothing more clearly demonstrates that science and creationism are polar opposites than the latter s assumption that disagreement signals failure. In fact, disagreement and the deeper insights that result from it enables new approaches to scientific understanding.

Most presentations indicated that the enshrining of devolution in a constitution was in most cases viewed as tantamount to a reduction in the powers of central government, whereas in fact , decentralization and centralization should not be seen as opposites but rather as complementary components.

Mao famously speculated on the nature of contradictions in a 1937 essay The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the fundamental law of nature and of society. One wonders, though, if even he could have grasped, much less managed, the contradictions of communist capitalism.