Paradoxical Quotes - Page 7

• I can't agree that what we're seeing is a matter of the American bourgeoisie confronting workers everywhere. It's more like the international plutocracy eliminating the American middle class while inadvertently creating a bourgeoisie in India, China, etc. I do agree that Soros's role is paradoxical, but if all billionaires (or even a few more) were like Soros, the dialectic would give us global social democracy PDQ.

  Hendrik Hertzberg

  Creating, Class, Giving

  Source: www.newyorker.com

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• The truth is paradoxical to the extent of being exactly contrary to the usual perception.

  Georges Bataille

  Perception, Usual, Truth Is

  Georges Bataille (1988). “The accursed share: an essay on general economy”

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• It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental time -- but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms . . .

  Midge Decter

  Children, Sound, Generations

  Midge Decter (1975). “Liberal parents, radical children”, Coward McCann

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• Man is a paradoxical being - the constant glory and scandal of this world.

  Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

  Men, World, Scandal

  "Forbes Book of Quotations: 10,000 Thoughts on the Business of Life". Book by Ted Goodman, 2016.

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• Misanthropes have some admirable if paradoxical virtues. It is no exaggeration to say that we are among the nicest people you are likely to meet. Because good manners build sturdy walls, our distaste for intimacy makes us exceedingly cordial "ships that pass in the night." As long as you remain a stranger we will be your friend forever.

  Florence King

  Friendship, Relationship, Wall

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• If you start from a position of I'm a no-hoper, in a paradoxical kind of way you are not risking being vulnerable.

  Philippa Perry

  Way, Kind, Vulnerable

  Source: bigthink.com

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• We're living history all the time, in the papers, in the news, you think about stuff and it goes into your brain and you think about it and it comes out somehow. You have an idea; you've heard a phrase, or you're angry, or something disturbs you, or something seems paradoxical to you, you explore that idea, much like a writer would explore maybe an idea through metaphor. Maybe artists use their vehicle to explore ideas, so I think the things that interest me are the kind of idea of continuous change and how nothing stays the same and it's always disintegrating into something more.

  Michael C. McMillen

  Artist, Thinking, Brain

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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• Walter Benjamin has this notion of the angel of history and in a way that's paradoxical itself. We don't have angels in history anymore. We don't believe in these mythical creatures anymore.

  Steve Stern

  Believe, Angel, Mythical Creatures

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Abraham responds "Here I am" when God asks him to sacrifice his son, and he answers "Here I am" when his son asks him about what is happening. It's a paradoxical moment. He can't be fully present for his God or his son.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Son, Sacrifice, Here I Am

  Source: www.nydailynews.com

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• It's paradoxical, that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn't appeal to anyone.

  Andy Rooney

  Funny Life, Ideas, Long

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• Pictures artists staged their own images or copied or cut out others already in existence. The viewer took them in separately, in sometimes paradoxical waves: an original image, then the manipulations of it, then the places where image and idea intersected. This created a crucial perceptual glitch that irony and understanding filled.

  Jerry Saltz

  Cutting, Artist, Ideas

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• I find myself unable to let go of the sense that human beings are somehow special, and that moment-to-moment human experience contains a certain unquantifiable essence. I still suspect there is something too quirky, too paradoxical, or too interpersonal to be imitated or re-created by machine life.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Letting Go, Essence, Special

  Douglas Rushkoff (2013). “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now”, p.162, Penguin

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• One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Passion, Thinking, Feelings

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• I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no matter what.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Writing, Humility, Artist

  "A Circle of Quiet (Crosswicks Journals, Book 1)". Book by Madeleine L'Engle, 1971.

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• The pain that we feel when we are making love with someone is that we know it will end. It's that paradoxical response of joy and suffering.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Pain, Joy, Making Love

  Source: www.scottlondon.com

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• The only people who can ever put ideas into context are people who don't care; the unbiased and apathetic are usually the wisest dudes in the room. If you want to totally misunderstand why something is supposedly important, find the biggest fan of that particular thing and ask him for an explanation. He will tell you everything that doesn't matter to anyone who isn't him. He will describe paradoxical details and share deeply personal anecdotes, and it will all be autobiography; he will simply be explaining who he is by discussing something completely unrelated to his life.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Ideas, People, Important

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• ...liberation from constraints that operate at the level of ordinary humanity---limits imposed by space and time, by the needs of the body, and by the opaqueness of the computer-like mind. All three examples [Jacob Lorber, Edgar Cayce, and Therese Neumann] illustrates the paradoxical truth that such 'higher powers' cannot be acquired by any kind of attack or conquest conducted by the human personality; only when the striving for 'power' has entirely ceased and been replaced by a certain transcendental longing, often called the love of God, may they, or may they not be 'added unto you.

  E. F. Schumacher

  Space, Personality, Humanity

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• How paradoxical it is to search reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory.

  Marcel Proust

  Memories, Reality

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• I don't consider China a communist state, no. I know that sounds paradoxical, but it's my view.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Views, Sound, Communist

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• It is a paradoxical statement, but it takes incredible personal discipline to play with great freedom.

  Dick Bennett

  Play, Discipline, Incredibles

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• This book is unique. I know of no other which so artfully tackles two of the greatest mysteries of modern science, quantum mechanics, and consciousness. It has long been suspected that these mysteries are somehow related: the authors’ treatment of this thorny and controversial issue is honest, wide-ranging, and immensely readable. The book contains some of the clearest expositions I have ever seen of the strange and paradoxical nature of the quantum world. Quantum Enigma is a pleasure to read, and I am sure it is destined to become a classic.

  George Greenstein

  Book, Unique, Two

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• The inclusion of consequences in the conception of what we have done is an acknowledgement that we are parts of the world, but the paradoxical character of moral luck which emerges from this acknowledgement shows that we are unable to operate with such a view, for it leaves us with no one to be.

  Thomas Nagel

  Character, Views, Psychology

  Thomas Nagel (2012). “Mortal Questions”, p.38, Cambridge University Press

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• Science now finds itself in paradoxical strife with society: admired but mistrusted; offering hope for the future but creating ambiguous choice; richly supported yet unable to fulfill all its promise; boasting remarkable advances but criticized for not serving more directly the goals of society.

  J. Michael Bishop

  Hope, Future, Science

  J. Michael BISHOP (2009). “How to Win the Nobel Prize”, p.11, Harvard University Press

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• It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest... The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance...

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Distance, Loneliness, Psychics

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• Truth is always paradoxical.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Truth Is

  Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861”, p.10, New York Review of Books

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