Conundrums Quotes

• That's the conundrum of cartoon stripping, as opposed to political cartoons. When your anger is the driving force of your drawing hand, failure follows. The anger is OK, but it has to serve the interests of the heart, frankly.

  Berkeley Breathed

  Anger, Heart, Hands

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• Usually, the main problem with life conundrums is that we don't bring to them enough imagination

  Thomas Moore

  Imagination, Problem, Enough

  Thomas Moore (1992). “Care of the soul: a guide for cultivating depth and sacredness in everyday life”, Harpercollins

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• We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and postive action.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Motivational, Today, Complacency

  "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence". Speech at Riverside Church in New York City, April 4, 1967.

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• We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. . . . Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, 'Too late.' ... Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Beautiful, Struggle, Procrastination

  Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

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• I'm a conundrum. Or an enigma. I forget which.

  James A. Owen

  Forget, Enigma

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• One room is always enough for one person. Two rooms is not enough for two people. That is one of the conundrums in life.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Two, People, Literature

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• The conundrum of free will and destiny has always kept me dangling.

  William Shatner

  Destiny, Free Will

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• Dave Sim said in his latest thing of his, 'when you're on the right track, you'll know it, but until you get there, you have to believe you're on the right track'. Interesting little conundrum. It's not easy.

  Eddie Campbell

  Believe, Track, Interesting

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• We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Climate, Breaking Silence, Today

  Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

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• A lot of my books deal with very controversial issues that most people often don't want to talk about, issues that, in my country, are more likely to get put under the carpet than get discussed. And when you talk about moral conundrums, about shades of gray, what you're doing is asking the people who want the world to be black and white to realize instead that maybe it's all right if it isn't. I know you'll learn something picking up my books, but my goal as a writer is not to teach you but to make you ask more questions.

  Steven Tyler

  Country, Book, Black And White

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• It is not a matter of life and death. It is not that important. But it is a reflection of life, and so the game is an enigma wrapped in a mystery impaled on a conundrum.

  Peter Alliss

  Golf, Reflection, Games

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• These dilemmas present perhaps the most enduring conundrum of human history: can people derive their identity primarily by positive association or does life's meaning also require negative comparison to others?

  William J. Clinton

  People, Religion, Identity

  "My vision for peace" by Bill Clinton, www.theguardian.com. September 8, 2002.

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• Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death - ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.

  James A. Baldwin

  Passion, Army, Sacrifice

  "Letter from a Region of My Mind". The New Yorker, November 17, 1962. Republished in "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin as "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind", 1963.

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• Therefore bivouac we On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up Over the horizon like a boy On a fishing expedition.

  John Ashbery

  Morning, Sex, Boys

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

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• There's so much going on in Andrei [Bolkonsky]. He's wrangling with these big existential conundrums, and he tries out different routes to fulfillment. He tries falling in love, that doesn't work. He goes to war and searches for military glory, that doesn't work. He does the quiet life of a farmer. He's always active. That's what I loved about him, he's always looking, searching. He's really inquisitive.

  James Norton

  Falling In Love, Military, War

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Competition is a moral problem and an emotional tangle and a political conundrum.

  Valerie Miner

  Emotional, Political, Competition

  Valerie Miner (2014). “Rumors from the Cauldron: Selected Essays, Reviews, and Reportage”, p.36, Open Road Media

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• One has, you know, a window of opportunity somewhere between zip and a hundred to solve, or understand, or penetrate, or appreciate, or come to terms with the conundrum of being, this amazing circumstance in which we find ourselves, both individually and collectively.

  Terence McKenna

  Opportunity, Appreciate, Zips

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• America's the great conundrum and the great dream and the great fascination: the new land, the new world, the new temple, the new city, and the great mess. The most handguns, bombs, weaponry, violence, the cop of the world etcetera. All the contradictions. Mediocrity versus something like indigenous jazz, one of the most evolved sophisticated musical forms on the planet.

  Anne Waldman

  Dream, Land, Cities

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• Most of us don't have mothers who blazed a trail for us--at least, not all the way. Coming of age before or during the inception of the women's movement, whether as working parents or homemakers, whether married or divorced, our mothers faced conundrums--what should they be? how should they act?--that became our uncertainties.

  Anne Roiphe

  Mother, Women, Working Parents

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• The overflow of big money in politics drowns out the voices of everyday people. That is part of the conundrum in America: The more money you have the more speech you have. That leaves everyday people out of the equation.

  Nina Turner

  Voice, America, People

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• If Murakami's novels are grand enigmas, his stories are bite-sized conundrums. (...) The great pleasure of the new story collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, is watching Murakami come at his obsessions from so many different angles. There's a panoply of strangeness between these covers (.....) This collection shows Murakami at his dynamic, organic best. As a chronicler of contemporary alienation, a writer for the Radiohead age, he shows how taut and thin our routines have become, how ill-equipped we are to contend with the forces that threaten to disrupt us.

  Antoine Wilson

  Sleep, Age, Different

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• It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death-- ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.

  James A. Baldwin

  Passion, Darkness, Sake

  "Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

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• The ... problem that confronts homosexuals is that they set out to win the love of a "real" man. If they succeed, they fail. A man who "goes with" other men is not what they would call a real man. The conundrum is incapable of resolution, but that does not make homosexuals give it up.

  Quentin Crisp

  Real, Men, Winning

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• I think everybody has a hard time connecting, but as you get older and you want more and you expect more and you know more, it's just different. If you start wanting too much from it without it naturally unfolding, then that makes it bad. If you start not wanting anything, then you are not serious. I mean it's just this conundrum of issues.

  Uma Thurman

  Mean, Hard Times, Thinking

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• Of course the sands of Present Time are running out from under our feet. And why not? The Great Conundrum: 'What are we here for?' is all that ever held us here in the first place. Fear. The answer to the Riddle of the Ages has actually been out in the street since the First Step in Space. Who runs may read but few people run fast enough. What are we here for? Does the great metaphysical nut revolve around that? Well, I'll crack it for you, right now. What are we here for? We are here to go!

  Brion Gysin

  Running, Nuts, Feet

  Brion Gysin (2015). “Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader”, p.174, Wesleyan University Press

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