Paradox Quotes - Page 11

• Our waking life's desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Desire, Waking Life, World

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Cities of the Plain”, p.285, Pan Macmillan

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• Two wrongs don't make a right, but don't three lefts make a right? Two wrongs don't make a right, but don't two negatives make a positive?

  Andrew Clements

  Life, Negatives Make, Two

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• And nothing inspires as much shame as being a parent. Children confront us with our paradoxes and hypocrisies, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why — Why do we do this? Why don’t we do that? — and often there isn’t a good one. So you say, simply, because. Or you tell a story that you know isn’t true. And whether or not your face reddens, you blush. The shame of parenthood — which is a good shame — is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Children, Hypocrisy, Parent

  "Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, books.google.ru. March 4, 2010.

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• You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that, when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.

  Woody Allen

  Witty, Falling In Love, Children

  "Fictional character: Professor Levy". "Crimes and Misdemeanors", www.imdb.com. 1989.

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• I realise there's an innate paradox in promoting oneself on the one hand and saying, 'Oh, I don't want to be famous,' on the other.

  Romola Garai

  Hands, Want, Realising

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• Fighting for peace, is like f***ing for chastity

  Stephen King

  Fighting, Motto, Chastity

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• As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don't deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.

  Pema Chodron

  Buddhist, Mind, Suffering

  "When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times". Book by Pema Chodron, December 24, 1996.

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• Love delights in paradoxes. Saddest when it has most reason to be gay, sighs are the signs of its deepest joy, and silence is the expression of its yearning tenderness.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Love, Gay, Expression

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• It is a curious paradox that precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity, to those mysterious powers assumed by others; and in those regions of darkness and ignorance where man cannot effect even those things that are within the power of man, there we shall ever find that a blind belief in feats that are far beyond those powers has taken the deepest root in the minds of the deceived, and produced the richest harvest to the knavery of the deceiver.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Taken, Ignorance, Men

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• But what does he do to qualify as a sonovabitch?” Jenny asked. “Make me”, I replied. “Beg pardon?” “Make me”, I repeated. Her eyes widened like saucers. “You mean like incest?” she asked. “Don’t give me your family problems, Jen. I have enough of my own.” “Like what, Oliver?” she asked, “like just what is it he makes you do?” “The ‘right things’”, I said. “What’s wrong with the ‘right things’?” she asked, delighting in the apparent paradox.

  Erich Segal

  Mean, Eye, Giving

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• Acts of violence-- Whether on a large or a small scale, the bitter paradox: the meaningfulness of death--and the meaninglessness of killing.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Violence, Bitter, Killing

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• What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.

  John Cage

  Writing, Order, Play

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• Procrastinate now, don't put it off.

  Ellen DeGeneres

  Funny, Life, Procrastination

  "Ellen DeGeneres: Here and Now". Comedy, Documentary, www.imdb.com. 2003.

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• The motion of the mind is conveyed along a cloud of meaning.~ There is this paradox that we get to meaning only when we strip the meaning from symbols.

  David Berlinski

  Clouds, Mind, Symbols

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• New York city, the incomparable, the brilliant star city of cities, the forty-ninth state, a law unto itself, the Cyclopean Paradox, the inferno with no-out-of bounds, the supreme expression of both the miseries and the splendors of contemporary civilization, the Macedonia of the United States. It meets the most severe test that may be applied to definition of a metropolis - it stays up all night. But also it becomes a small town when it rains.

  John Gunther

  Stars, New York, Rain

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• I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Men, Prejudice, Be A Man

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Richard Lawrence Archer (1964). “Jean Jacques Rousseau: His Educational Theories Selected from Émile, Julie and Other Writings”, p.98, Barron's Educational Series

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• The cherished dream of every chessplayer is to play a match with the World Champion. But here is the paradox: the closer you come to the realization of this goal, the less you think about it.

  Mikhail Tal

  Dream, Thinking, Play

  Mikhail Tal (2011). “Tal-Botvinnik 1960: Match For the World Chess Championship”, p.9, SCB Distributors

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• If we have free will, by definition we cannot be granted it. We can't be given it. My [-audio-recording-distorted-] paradox states that 'Of course we have free will, we have no choice.' To say that it's a gift is to negate the whole concept of free will on its face. So, if that isn't self-evident, I can't think of anything that would meet the definition of being self-evident.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Thinking, Self, Choices

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• There’s obviously a lot of tragedy in comedy; I really enjoy the paradox of what a really good comedy is.

  Ellen Page

  Tragedy, Comedy, Enjoy

  "Ellen Page’s Greenest Day". Interview with Maddie Oatman, www.motherjones.com. September 11, 2010.

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• The paradox is that when resistance is fully accepted, the resistance disappears.

  Adyashanti

  Resistance, Accepted, Disappear

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• The Universe is very, very big. It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules. Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever. Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies. Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.

  Craig Ferguson

  Real, Mean, Love Is

  Craig Ferguson (2010). “Between the Bridge and the River: A Novel”, p.108, Chronicle Books

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• Resilience is based on the ability to embrace the extremes -- while no becoming an extremist. ... **Most companies don't do paradox very well.** (emphasis by author) [2002] p.25f

  Gary Hamel

  Resilience, Becoming, Embrace

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• Few things are more agreeable to self-love than revenge, and yet no cause so effectually restrains us from revenge as self-love. And this paradox naturally suggests another; that the strength of the community is not unfrequently built upon the weakness of those individuals that compose it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Revenge, Self, Community

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

  Mary Parker Follett

  Women, Opportunity, Democracies Have

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• I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear, that we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death--to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Hands, Dying, Liberty

  "Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 1" by Abraham Lincoln, New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1953.

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