Quotes and Sayings about Paradox

"We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy."
- Walter Anderson
(Related: Love, Trust, Joy)

"The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer."
- David Antin
(Related: Entertainment, Greece, Public, Talk, World)

"The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated."
- James A. Baldwin
(Related: Education, Society, Being, Paradox)

"The paradox of education is precisely this; that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated."
- James Baldwin
(Related: Education, Society, Being, Paradox)

"It is great good health to believe, as the Hindus do, that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one's dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical."
- Clive Barker
(Related: Health, Dreams, Gods, Desire, Want, World)

"Paradoxically, no such embargo exists for the drugs and therapies that have revolutionized the treatment of serious diseases although many of them were created with the same technologies."
- Paul Berg
(Related: Drugs, Treatment)

"It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self."
- Hugo Black
(Related: Happiness, Life, Purpose, First, Paradox, Pleasure, Self)

"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."
- Niels Bohr
(Related: Progress, Hope, Now, Paradox)

"Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life."
- Fernand Braudel
(Related: History, Life, Difficulties, May, Paradoxes, Respect, Unity)

"In its famous paradox, the equation of money and excrement, psychoanalysis becomes the first science to state what common sense and the poets have long known - that the essence of money is in its absolute worthlessness."
- Norman O. Brown
(Related: Money, Science, Common sense, Famous, First, Paradox, Poets, Psychoanalysis, State)

"It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave."
- Anatole Broyard
(Related: Love, American, Literature, Nostalgia, Paradoxes, Writers)

"It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them."
- Leo Buscaglia
(Related: Time, Connection, Learning, Parents, Play)

"The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
(Related: Life, Courage, Man, Order, Paradox)

"To be complex does not mean to be fragmented. This is the paradox and the genius of our Canadian civilization."
- Adrienne Clarkson
(Related: Genius, Civilization, Paradox)

"A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma."
- Marlene Dietrich
(Related: Father, Incompetence, Paradox, Sons)

"There is in my opinion a great similarity between the problems provided by the mysterious behavior of the atom and those provided by the present economic paradoxes confronting the world."
- Paul Dirac
(Related: Behavior, Opinion, Paradoxes, Present, Problems, World)

"Power is paradoxical."
- Friedrich Durrenmatt
(Related: Power)

"You are doomed to make choices. This is life's greatest paradox."
- Wayne Dyer
(Related: Life, Choices, Paradox)

"Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things."
- George Eliot
(Related: Quality, May, Order, Paradoxes, Play)

"But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy."
- George Eliot
(Related: Experience, Philosophy, Talk)

"Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself."
- T. S. Eliot
(Related: Experience, Paradox)

"Actions are always more complex and nuanced than they seem. We have to be willing to wrestle with paradox in pursuing understanding."
- Harold Evans
(Related: Actions, Paradox, Understanding)

"As an actor, there's a bit of you that's decided you want to be looked at and watched, but there's a paradoxical bit that wants to run away."
- Ralph Fiennes
(Related: Actor, Want)

"There is another interesting paradox here: by immersing ourselves in what we love, we find ourselves. We do not lose ourselves. One does not lose one's identity by falling in love."
- Lukas Foss
(Related: Love, Identity, Paradox)

"Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want."
- John Fowles
(Related: End, Passion, Want)

"The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent."
- Erich Fromm
(Related: Love, Mother, Help, Sense)

"In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two."
- Erich Fromm
(Related: Love, Paradox)

"By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox."
- Galileo Galilei
(Related: May, Paradox, Principles)

"A totally healthy actor is a paradox."
- Vittorio Gassman
(Related: Actor, Paradox)

"Some may claim that is it unscientific to speak of the operations of nature as miracles. But the point of the title lies in the paradox of finding so many wonderful things subservient to the rule of law."
- Elisha Gray
(Related: Nature, Law, Lies, May, Miracles, Paradox)

"The oblique paradox of propaganda is that the lie in the throat becomes, by repetition, the truth in the heart."
- John Grierson
(Related: Truth, Lie, Heart, Paradox, Propaganda, Repetition)

"The new formula in physics describes humans as paradoxical beings who have two complementary aspects: They can show properties of Newtonian objects and also infinite fields of consciousness."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Consciousness, Formula, Infinite, Physics)

"My book has a very simple surface, but there are layers of irony and paradox all the way through it."
- Mark Haddon
(Related: Irony, Paradox)

"The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it."
- Vaclav Havel
(Related: Literature)

"He would see civilization in danger of perishing under the oppression of a gigantic paradox: he would see multitudes of people starving in the midst of plenty, and nations preparing for war although pledged to peace."
- Arthur Henderson
(Related: Peace, War, People, Civilization, Danger, Nations, Oppression)

"It is a paradox that far too few Americans participate in the wonderful ritual of democracy that we call Election Day."
- Brad Henry
(Related: Americans, Day, Democracy, Paradox, Ritual)

"It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own."
- Herbert Hoover
(Related: Power, Free speech, Paradox)

"It was such a paradox for me that the only thing I know how to do is act, but that the first thing I abandoned while writing were the characters."
- Bryce Dallas Howard
(Related: Act, First, Paradox, Writing)

"Before I do a play I say that I hope it's going to be for as short a time as possible but, once you do it, it is a paradoxical pleasure. One evening out of two there are five minutes of a miracle and for those five minutes you want to do it again and again. It's like a drug."
- Isabelle Huppert
(Related: Time, Hope, Evening, Play, Pleasure, Want)

"Eroding solidarity paradoxically makes a society more susceptible to the construction of substitute collectives and fascisms of all kinds."
- Elfriede Jelinek
(Related: Society, Solidarity)

"Failures of perspective in decision-making can be due to aspects of the social utility paradox, but more often result from simple mistakes caused by inadequate thought."
- Herman Kahn
(Related: Thought, Decision, Mistakes, Paradox, Perspective, Result)

"But, I think that the reason I responded to this book, sort of paradoxically, is that it starts out like The Big Chill, sort of. Four friends, who are not quite happy with their life, and every year they get together for a week and look for some comfort from each other."
- Lawrence Kasdan
(Related: Life, Comfort, Friends, Reason)

"The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo."
- Soren Kierkegaard
(Related: Life, Thoughts, Nothing, Paradox, Paradoxes)

"Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor."
- Soren Kierkegaard
(Related: Paradox)

"The trick is the paradox - turning your story inside out. Now if it is something that appears to be of total normality and then suddenly turns inside out and is a different thing all together then that's fun to write."
- Nigel Kneale
(Related: Fun, Normality, Now, Paradox)

"Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found."
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
(Related: Change, Growth, Reform, Security)

"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive."
- Jack London
(Related: Life, Ecstasy, Forgetfulness, Living, Paradox)

"He was a great thundering paradox of a man."
- William Manchester
(Related: Man, Paradox)

"That's the great paradox of living on this earth, that in the midst of great pain you can have great joy as well. If we didn't have those things we'd just be numb."
- Kathy Mattea
(Related: Earth, Joy, Living, Pain, Paradox)

"That's a curious paradox that I don't think a lot of people out there know; that you get really scared before you go on. You come out in a nervous rash, and it's not like you actually love getting up there and showing off."
- Jacqueline McKenzie
(Related: Love, People, Paradox)

"The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late."
- Ogden Nash
(Related: Bed, Night, Regret)

"Surely the job of fiction is to actually tell the truth. It's a paradox that's at the heart of any kind of storytelling."
- Jeremy Northam
(Related: Truth, Heart, Fiction, Job, Paradox)

"Paradoxically, the people and state of Japan living on such moral props were not innocent but had been stained by their own past history of invading other Asian countries."
- Kenzaburo Oe
(Related: History, People, Countries, Living, Past, State)

"This year, we must address the Colorado Paradox. We have more college degrees per capita than any state. Yet we lag the nation in the percentage of students who go on to higher education."
- Bill Owens
(Related: Education, College, Nation, Paradox, State, Students)

"After an eternity of seeking the sudden threshold of seeing and finding leaves one filled with a strange paradox of ecstasy and grief. I was born to see."
- Joy Page
(Related: Ecstasy, Eternity, Grief, Paradox)

"There are many of these apparent philosophical paradoxes or contradictions which don't concern me anymore."
- Evan Parker
(Related: Concern, Paradoxes)

"The great paradox of the 21st century is that, in this age of powerful technology, the biggest problems we face internationally are problems of the human soul."
- Ralph Peters
(Related: Age, Technology, Soul, Paradox, Problems)

"The paradoxes of today are the prejudices of tomorrow, since the most benighted and the most deplorable prejudices have had their moment of novelty when fashion lent them its fragile grace."
- Marcel Proust
(Related: Fashion, Grace, Lent, Novelty, Paradoxes, Today, Tomorrow)

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."
- Daphne Rae
(Related: Love, Hurt, Paradox)

"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."
- Carl Rogers
(Related: Change, Paradox)

"Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(Related: Being, Man, May, Paradoxes)

"It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect."
- John Ruskin
(Related: Architecture, Truth, Paradox)

"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: End, Philosophy, Will, Worth)

"We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Education, Intelligence, Thought, Fact, Freedom, Obstacles)

"An intriguing paradox of the 1990s is that it isn't called a decade of greed."
- Paul Samuelson
(Related: Greed, Paradox)

"Paradoxical as it may seem, to believe in youth is to look backward; to look forward we must believe in age."
- Dorothy L. Sayers
(Related: Age, May, Youth)

"Morality without a sense of paradox is mean."
- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
(Related: Morality, Paradox, Sense)

"Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time."
- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
(Related: Time, Irony, Paradox)

"The paradox of anti-Semitism is that it is invariably up to the Jews to explain away the charges. The anti-Semite simply has to make them."
- Jack Schwartz
(Related: Paradox)

"It is a paradox that as we reach out prime, we also see there is a place where it finishes."
- Gail Sheehy
(Related: Paradox)

"Holland is a land of intense paradox. It is quite impossible, but it is there."
- M. E. W. Sherwood
(Related: Land, Paradox)

"The mind begins to boggle at unnatural substances as things paradoxical and incomprehensible."
- Robert South
(Related: Mind)

"The Clinton paradox: How could a president so intelligent, so compassionate, so public-spirited and so conscious of his place in history act in such a stupid, selfish and self-destructive manner?"
- George Stephanopoulos
(Related: History, Act, President, Public, Self)

"Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution."
- Edward Teller
(Related: May, Paradoxes, Solution)

"It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it."
- Arnold J. Toynbee
(Related: Life, Goal)

"The words of truth are always paradoxical."
- Lao Tzu
(Related: Truth, Words)

"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us."
- Paul Valery
(Related: Discovery, Folly, Metaphor, Oracle, Paradox, Proof, Spring)

"The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism."
- Earl Warren
(Related: Time, Failure, Nation, Paradox)

"If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly."
- Alan Watts
(Related: Mystics, Paradoxes, Study, Will, Zen)

"Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good."
- George Will
(Related: Mediocrity, Paradox, Politicians, Public)

"When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored."
- Wendell Willkie
(Related: Society, Opportunity, Freedom, Nations, Paradoxes, Talk)

"Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America - that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement."
- Thomas Wolfe
(Related: America, Paradox)