Ambiguity Quotes - Page 7

• Yeah, we should all line up along the Bosphorus Bridge and puff as hard as we can to shove this city in the direction of the West. If that doesn't work, we'll try the other way, see if we can veer to the East. It's no good to be in between. International politics does not appreciate ambiguity.

  Elif Safak

  Bridges, Cities, Appreciate

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• The ideal trademark is one that is pushed to its utmost limits in terms of abstraction and ambiguity, yet is still readable. Trademarks are usually metaphors of one kind or another. And are, in a certain sense, thinking made visible.

  Saul Bass

  Thinking, Limits, Kind

  "Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design by Jennifer Bass and Pat Kirkham - review" by Philip French, www.theguardian.com. October 29, 2011.

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• But I hope that by the decision and authority of wise princes that sometime devout and learned men from the churches of other nations and of ours may be summoned together to deliberate about all the controversies and that there be handed down to posterity one harmonious, true, and clear form of doctrine, without any ambiguity. Meanwhile, as far as possible, let us encourage the union of our churches with measured advice.

  Philipp Melanchthon

  Wise, Men, Decision

  "The Peter Martyr Library: Dialogue on the Two Natures in Christ" translated and edited by John Patrick Donnelly, Pietro Martire Vermigli, Thomas Jefferson University Press, vol. 2, (p. 167), 1995.

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• Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic un-interestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we're dead we're dead?

  John Updike

  Atheist, Humanity, Intellectual

  John Updike (2012). “Self-Consciousness: Memoirs”, p.141, Random House

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• It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There are more than seven-times-seven types of ambiguity in science, awaiting analysis. The poetry of Wallace Stevens is crystal-clear alongside the genetic code.

  Lewis Thomas

  Nature, Teaching, Science

  Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam

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• Questions that pertain to the foundations of mathematics, although treated by many in recent times, still lack a satisfactory solution. Ambiguity of language is philosophy's main source of problems. That is why it is of the utmost importance to examine attentively the very words we use.

  Giuseppe Peano

  Philosophy, Science, Foundation

  "The Principles of Arithmetic, presented by a new method". Book by Giuseppe Peano, 1889.

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• We have to live with ambiguity. We have to give ourselves over to it. The question is: How? How are we going to live in a universe where important questions will always go unanswered?

  John Green

  Real, Giving, Important

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• The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstance whether created by others or by one's own human failings. They are the only consistent art in the United States which constantly remind us of our limitations while encouraging us to see how far we can actually go. When understood in their more profound implication, they are a corrective, an attempt to draw a line upon man's own limitless assertion.

  Ralph Ellison

  Music, Art, Men

  Ralph Ellison (2011). “Shadow and Act”, p.245, Vintage

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• So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations, that every war must appear to be a war of defence against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about whom the public is to hate. Guilt and guilelessness must be assessed geographically and all the guilt must be on the other side of the frontier.

  Harold Lasswell

  War, Hate, Guilt

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• I get a lot of people complaining about my ambiguity, often in cases which there is nothing ambigous at all. As far as I can see, people read it when they were half stoned and listening to the TV. Then they come back and say gee, it's impossible to figure out what's going on in a story.

  Gene Wolfe

  Writing, People, Listening

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• Yet Gotama's Dhamma is more than just a series of axioms. It is to be lived rather than simply adopted and believed in. It entails that one embrace this world in all its contingency and specificity, with all its ambiguity and flaws.

  Stephen Batchelor

  World, Flaws, Embrace

  Stephen Batchelor (2010). “Confession of a Buddhist Atheist”, p.246, Spiegel & Grau

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• American movie audiences now just don’t seem to be very interested in any kind of ambiguity or any kind of real complexity of character or narrative - I’m talking in large numbers, there are always some, but enough to make hits out of movies that have those qualities. I think those qualities are now being seen on television and that people who want to see stories that have those kinds of qualities are watching television.

  Steven Soderbergh

  Real, Character, Thinking

  "Steven Soderbergh Hints at Switch to Television". www.hollywoodreporter.com. June 29, 2012.

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• An educated man must have a "curiosity in exploring the unfamiliar and unexpected, an open-mindedness in entertaining opposing points of view, tolerance for the ambiguity that surrounds so many important issues, and a willingness to make the best decisions he can in the face of uncertainty and doubt".

  Derek Bok

  Men, Views, Issues

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• There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. To this chiefly it is owing that we find sects and parties in most branches of science [and politics]; and disputes that are carried on from age to age, without being brought to issue.

  Thomas Reid

  Party, Issues, Age

  Thomas Reid, Ronald E. Beanblossom, Keith Lehrer (1983). “Thomas Reid's Inquiry and Essays”, p.129, Hackett Publishing

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• Meaning lies in the confrontation of contradiction - the coincidencia apositorum. That’s what we really feel, not these rational schemes that are constantly beating us over the head with the “thou shalts” and “thou should”, but rather a recovery of the real ambiguity of being and an ability to see ourselves as at once powerful and weak, noble and ignoble, future-oriented, past-facing.

  Terence McKenna

  Powerful, Real, Lying

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• I think whenever people talk about the 'Anna Sui woman,' they're talking about someone that's probably kind of more downtown, and there's always like this ambiguity: Is she a good girl, or a bad girl?

  Anna Sui

  Girl, Thinking, Talking

  "Fashion's Anna Sui: Stepping Forward". Interview with Rita Braver, www.cbsnews.com. March 08, 2009.

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• Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when you write, you put into every sentence an overflow of meaning, and you create in every sentence as many resonances and double meanings and ambiguities as you can possibly pack in there, so that people can read it again and get something new each time.

  Hilary Mantel

  Book, Writing, People

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• There is no reason to believe that in the face of statutory ambiguity, the meaning of federal law should be settled by the inclinations and predispositions of federal judges. The outcome should instead depend on the commitments and beliefs of the President and those who operate under him.

  Cass Sunstein

  Believe, Commitment, Law

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• If I am truly honest, I have to acknowledge that the demands I am so convinced are coming from the outer world are, in fact, coming from that perpetually unfinished part of me-the pulls and tugs originating from my own ambiguity.

  Joan Anderson

  Change, World, Demand

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• The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won. Absurdity challenges every ethics; but also the finished rationalization of the real would leave no room for ethics; it is because man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure and outrageousness, to save his existence.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Confused, Real, Men

  Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.120, Open Road Media

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• In this world that God (or Mother Nature) created, it is always hazard and novelty-hazard and novelty-which assert themselves, thereby rendering notions of fixity absurd. Incongruously enough, however, when we allow ourselves to fully accept uncertainty, to embrace and cultivate it even, then we actually can begin to feel within ourselves the presence of an Absolute. The person who cannot welcome ambiguity cannot welcome God.

  Tom Robbins

  Mother, Hazards, World

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• Widespread state control over art and culture has left no room for freedom of expression in the country. For more than 60 years, anyone with a dissenting opinion has been suppressed. Chinese art is merely a product: it avoids any meaningful engagement. There is no larger context. Its only purpose is to charm viewers with its ambiguity.

  Ai Weiwei

  Meaningful, Country, Art

  "China's art world does not exist" by Ai Weiwei, www.theguardian.com. September 10, 2012.

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• We all hate moral ambiguity in some sense, and yet it is also absolutely necessary. In writing a story, it is the place where I begin.

  Amy Tan

  Motivation, Hate, Inspiration

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• Bill Clinton pandered by telling you what you wanted to hear. John Kerry panders by never telling you what you don't want to hear. This is negative pandering; he talks a lot without really ruling anything out so you can draw your own conclusions.....Kerry has been talking for years, and yet such is the thicket of his verbiage that he has achieved almost complete strategic ambiguity.

  David Brooks

  Talking, Years, Interesting

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• A painting is an object which has an emphatic frontal surface. On such a surface, I paint a black band which does not recede, a color band which does not obtrude, a white square or rectangle which does not move back or forth, to or fro, or up or down; there is also a painted white exterior frame band which is edged round the edge to the black. Every part is painted and contiguous to its neighbor; no part is above or below any other part. There is no hierarchy. There is no ambiguity. There is no illusion. There is no space or interval (time).

  Jo Baer

  Moving, Squares, Color

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