Treat with utmost respect your power of forming opinions, for this power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to nature and judgments that overthrow the rule of reason.

Marcus Aurelius  --  Meditations, 3.9

Contrary to what we usually believe . . . the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi  --  Flow

The whole recorded history of man is strewn with the wreckage of the great civilizations which have crumbled under price controls; and in forty centuries of human experience, there has never been – so far as I can discover - a single case where such controls have stopped, or even curbed for long, the forces of inflation. On the contrary, in every instance I can find, they have discouraged production, created shortages, and aggravated the very evils they were intended to cure.

Irving S. Olds

The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics.
Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.

Michael Crichton

Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, like men sent from God.

2 Corinthians 2:17 (NIV)

Ichabod, whose fears increased with the delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily with the contrary foot:

Washington Irving  --  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

"No, you didn’t," I said, just to be contrary.

Jerry Spinelli  --  Milkweed

Oh no, quite the contrary,

Fyodor Dostoyevsky  --  Crime and Punishment

His own father was a good man, and he would readily have fought any one who said the contrary.

George Eliot  --  The Mill on the Floss

From the very beginning of his illness ...  Ivan Ilych’s life had been divided between two contrary and alternating moods:

Leo Tolstoy  --  The Death of Ivan Ilych

Napoleon had denounced such ideas as contrary to the spirit of Animalism.

George Orwell  --  Animal Farm

But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary.

George Orwell  --  1984

contrary to my earlier impressions of him, i realize that dr. nemur is not at all a genius.

Daniel Keyes  --  Flowers for Algernon

For the most part things happened contrary to their orders.

Leo Tolstoy  --  War and Peace

set a deep glass of Rhenish wine on the contrary casket;

William Shakespeare  --  The Merchant of Venice

He warns me that money is not the most important thing, contrary to the popular view on campus.

Mitch Albom  --  Tuesdays with Morrie

I will answer them both, and contrary to the usual method, the last first,

Alexandre Dumas  --  The Count of Monte Cristo

Then on Saturday, unless you hear to the contrary, we shall meet at the 10:30 train from Paddington.

Arthur Conan Doyle  --  The Hound of the Baskervilles

On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything.

Arthur Conan Doyle  --  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile...

J.K. Rowling  --  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Still, I don’t want to moan and groan. On the contrary, I want to be brave!

Anne Frank  --  The Diary of a Young Girl

They did not blame him for what had happened; on the contrary, both thanked him for returning Cedric’s body to them.

J.K. Rowling  --  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

"On the contrary," said the dealer, "it is large and clumsy.

John Steinbeck  --  The Pearl

On the contrary, I think in time I shall get on with my scholars very well.

Charlotte Bronte  --  Jane Eyre

how could he mean to behave this way, contrary to the principle that had always governed his treatment of others—his sense of decency.

Laura Esquivel  --  Like Water for Chocolate

On the contrary, I felt very strong.

Elie Wiesel  --  Night

I say an inn, because Don Quixote called it so, contrary to his usual practice of calling all inns castles.

Miguel de Cervantes  --  Don Quixote

The old man, contrary to expectation, seemed to be on the way to recovery,

George Eliot  --  Silas Marner

She did not want to get up; not because she was still tired - on the contrary she was wonderfully rested

C.S. Lewis  --  Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia

You yourself don’t seem to trust your gift... On the contrary, I think you are a master of your craft,

Cornelia Funke  --  Inkheart

On the contrary, I feel extraordinarily lively.

Henrik Ibsen  --  A Doll’s House

I will, of course, pay nothing at all, on the contrary I will consider whether to proceed with some kind of action for damages from you

Franz Kafka  --  Metamorphosis

There are some laws and customs in this empire very peculiar; and if they were not so directly contrary to those of my own dear country, I should be tempted to say a little in their justification.

Jonathan Swift  --  Gulliver’s Travels

Meantime, we would take it for granted that all were friends, till they proved to the contrary.

Harriet Jacobs  --  Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Contrary to what everyone expected, Arcadio did not have him shot.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez  --  One Hundred Years of Solitude

There was nothing cheerful and joyous in the feeling; on the contrary, it was a new torture of apprehension.

Leo Tolstoy  --  Anna Karenina

Ginny did not seem at all upset about the breakup with Dean; on the contrary, she was the life and soul of the team.

J.K. Rowling  --  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

In order to secure my credit and character as a tradesman, I took care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal, but to avoid all appearances to the contrary.

Benjamin Franklin  --  The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

On the contrary, it is precisely reason, according to Aristotle, that is man’s most distinguishing characteristic.

Jostein Gaarder  --  Sophie’s World