Paradox Quotes

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

Plato

Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.

The average human lifespan compared to the age of the universe is the same as comparing a blink of an eye to that human lifespan. Relatively speaking, short and long lifespans are the same. Both are non-existent compared to the infinite that’s ahead. Furthermore, we cannot change the past, and have no guarantees for the future. We are only in charge of the present. The present is nothing—and it is everything.

In order for a god to be all-knowing, he must know even the fact of his own omniscience. But can he do this? He may know the totality of facts constituting the world; call this Y. But in order to know that he has mastered Y, he must also know that 'There are no facts unknown to me' — and this is beyond Y.It seems impossible that a god (or anyone) could ever be sure that nothing exists beyond his ken. It makes no sense to imagine [a god] arriving at this limit, peering beyond it (at what?), and satisfying himself no further facts exist. But without this certainty he cannot be sure of his own omniscience, and so does not know everything.A theist might argue that his god has created all the facts in existence. But an omniscient god would have to be sure of even this — that he is the sole creator, and that there are no facts unknown to him. And how could he come to this knowledge?

Roland Puccetti

I don't know a lot of stuff. - First I know that there is Paradox! - Second it's like a faith! - And Third It can't be changed!(Paradox 2016 - Film)

We have not advanced very far in our spiritual lives if we have not encountered the basic paradox of freedom, to the effect that we are most free when we are bound. But not just any way of being bound will suffice; what matters is the character of our binding. The one who would like to be an athlete, but who is unwilling to discipline his body by regular exercise and by abstinence, is not free to excel on the field or the track. His failure to train rigorously and to live abstemiously denies him the freedom to go over the bar at the desired height, or to run with the desired speed and endurance. With one concerted voice the giants of the devotional life apply the same principle to the whole of life with the dictum: Discipline is the price of freedom.

Elton Trueblood

He came face-to-face with the rude paradox fame had dealt him: The secret of his extraordinary art had been his ability to observe human interaction anonymously, thereby gaining insight into the emotions on display in ordinary life--it was his ability to become a fly-on-the-wall that made him famous, and fame had destroyed his ability to become a fly-on-the-wall.

Such is the demographic paradox of a junior physician's relationship with his patients: I worry about how to extend their lives. This anxiety inevitably shortens my own.

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.

The worst mistake you can make, Kroeber taught, is to see another person through the lens of your prejudices. And the second-worst mistake is to think you aren't looking though the lens of your prejudices.

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain.(Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)

We fear what we long for. This is the paradox.

The many contradictions in our lives – such as being home while feeling homeless, being busy while feeling bored, being popular while feeling lonely, being believers while feeling many doubts – can frustrate, irritate, and even discourage us. They make us feel that we are never fully present. Every door that opens for us makes us see how many more doors are closed.But there is another response. These same contradictions can bring us into touch with a deeper longing, for the fulfillment of a desire that lives beneath all desires and that only God can satisfy. Contradictions, thus understood, create the friction that can help us move toward God.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

All their life, people work hard to earn money, and they never earn enough money to fulfill their dreams. Is this a paradox?

Paradox: Pinocchio says “My nose will grow" if it doesn’t he is lying but it didn’t grow and if it does he is telling the truth and it did?

Just as the truth can be buried under a rubble of lies,a lie can be buried under a rubble of truth.

Khang Kijarro Nguyen

Perhaps part of the uncanny allure of fashionable clothing resides in the paradoxical impact of its expressiveness: the act of covering up with mere dead matter--cloth, fur, leather, or even metal when it is ingeniously shaped to the purpose--appears to reveal something magical about the life inside.

Normality is the new eccentric.

Wyatt avoided the petty gunfights and headed to a saloon and rigged up a bunch of Molotov cocktails. Her firebombs against members of Tom and Vik's posse had destroyed the scenario's promise of so many wonderful gun duels. She'd killed most of their group, too, and shown everyone that she wasn't getting promoted only because of her programming skills. Her dislike of fighting had paradoxically turned her into a lethal killing machine.

I don't often agree with me either; there's much, in fact, with which I disagree. But that's probably because I'm so dashed ingenious that I haven't a clue what I'm saying.

That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.

Aristotle

...the existential paradox we all experience; we feel that we are immortal, yet we know that we will die.

Time becomes meaningless without memory.

This is the kind of paradox, I think, of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now, and probably also a Western European, is that there are things we know are right, and good, and would be better for us to do, but constantly it's like "Yeah, but, you know, it's so much funnier and nicer to go do something else." and "Who cares?" and "It's all bullshit anyway.

David Foster Wallace

In this temporal existence, perfection is an illusion, regardless of those who believe in its concept. Perfection is devoid of any value. Perfection, after all, implies you've reached the zenith. There is no possibility or potentiality. There is no room for imagination. There is no ability to visualize a concept. Perfection is limited by its own nature, which in short, is zero.

Here is a paradox: People who think imperfect are closer to perfection than their counterparts who claim that they're perfect or closer...

Assegid Habtewold

Here is the paradox of it: the more of an individual you become the more you realize we are interrelated, that success of one requires the success of all.

As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.

Charles Baudelaire

Starlight encased in flesh. Fire burning in so much water. Poetry living in hard spaces. oh, how the body loves

Lady Grey

The world makes, and hates, bachelors.

Justin K. McFarlane Beau

The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary.

Benjamin Franklin

Humanity goes to stupidy, this part is hard to be changed it's like paradox. You can't fight with paradox....Oh, you are genius, so genius with this stupidity!

Just because a path never existed, doesn't mean that it isn't there...

Nobody ever goes to that store to shop because it’s too crowded.

There are so many beautiful lives with wrong 'colors'!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Since, as is well know, God helps those who help themselves, presumably the Devil helps all those, and only those, who don't help themselves. Does the Devil help himself?

Douglas Hofstadter

There are those who are legitimately corrupt, who cannot admit that legitimacy allows them to corrupt legitimacy, and to legitimately corrupt others.

Justin K. McFarlane Beau

I'm no one... I don't want to be anyone. I stepped into singularity to exist within a void. I'm no one... However, I am becoming... Imagination. I am grabbing conception, and leaving humanity behind. Humans have lost their sight, and individuality makes people blind to the truth. It makes people believe that anything is possible. Only nothing is possible. But then again, my words are the words of no one.

Mathematics education is much more complicated than you expected, even though you expected it to be more complicated than you expected.

Edward Griffith Begle

His older self had taught his younger self a language which the older self knew because the younger self, after being taught, grew up to be the older self and was, therefore, capable of teaching.

Robert A. Heinlein

The man who is most aggressive in teaching tolerance is the most intolerant of all: he wants a world full of people too timid and ashamed to really disagree with anything.

The honourable are moved, by the nobility of another's sacrifice. The wicked are moved only by causing it.

Justin K. McFarlane Beau

The kingdom of God is an upside-down kingdom. It beckons us to gamble all, to trust radically, to come and die so that we might live--to give our lives away. Giving life away is a paradox. It's losing so we can win. It's giving so we can receive. It's risking for security. It's faith. The kingdom of God means living that tension.

Service that is purely self serving, becomes a vice.Do not serve, vice.

Justin K. McFarlane Beau

Our subject is, you see, impelled towards the good by, paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these the subject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude.

Anthony Burgess

Q: The Continuum didn't think you had it in you, Jean-Luc. But I knew you did...We wanted to see if you had the ability to expand your mind and your horizons. And for one brief moment, you did.Picard: When I realized the paradox.Q: Exactly. For that one fraction of a second, you were open to options you had never considered. That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebula, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.

Perhaps the saddest part of coexistence is the concept of interdependence being necessary for any form of solidarity to be realized. Being encouraged to lean on the weak, does not sound like a long term viable solution to attaining strength.

Justin K. McFarlane Beau

It was the discovery of the quantum universe that changed everything, and that universe was so small and so dynamic that it could not be observed directly. Trying to explain their insights, scientists looked at the language of mysticism. At the subatomic level, the parallels between quantum reality and mysticism were striking. For example, the behavior of light: in some contexts it acted like a wave, in others like a particle. Could it be both? Physicists had no concept for grasping this, so they dispensed with Western logic and embraced paradox. (This is important, too, for the notion of vampires being both living and dead.)

Katherine Ramsland

In the average, want overcomes reason. In the magnificent, reason is the want.

Justin K. McFarlane Beau

Each cherry took about three seconds to eat. Three seconds to eat, but at least five years in the making. It seemed unfair to the hard-working cherry tree. The least I could do was to devote my attention to the cherry in those three seconds, really appreciate the tartness of the skin and the faint crunching sound when I bite down. I guess it's called mindfulness. Or being in the moment, or making the mundane sacred. Whatever it is, I'm doing it more. Like the ridiculously extended thank-you list for my hummus, the fruit taboo made me more aware of the whole cherry process, the seed, the soil, the five years of watering and waiting. That's the paradox: I thought religion would make me live with my head in the clouds, but as often as not, it grounds me in this world.

A paradox is a storm that rains on itself.

Shannon L. Alder

Plot twist: everything goes exactly as planned.

Humility is, in a sense, admitting how egotistical you are.

It is odd that the Bible says, ‘God created man,’ whereas it is the other way round: man has created God. It is odd that the Bible says, ‘The body is mortal, the soul is immortal,’ whereas even here the contrary is true: the body (its matter) is eternal; the soul (the form of the body) is transitory.

Human hypocrisy: When one judges humanity as a whole, people have the habit of disagreeing, saying that everyone is different - unique. Yet people turn around and say that at the end of the day, everyone is the same. Ladies and gentlemen, the joyful paradoxical nature of humanity. If you really want to dismiss the paradox, show me that your an imaginary number, rather than a real number.

And he who wields white, wild magic gold is a paradoxFor he is everything and nothingHero and foolPotent, helplessAnd with one word of truth or treacheryHe will save or damn the earthBecause he is mad and saneCold and passionateLost and found

Stephen R. Donaldson

When every fact, every present or past phenomenon of that universe, every phase of present or past life therein, has been examined, classified, and co-ordinated with the rest, then the mission of science will be completed. What is this but saying that the task of science can never end till man ceases to be, till history is no longer made, and development itself ceases?

Sometimes I think I've figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in Florida, swamped by incongruity and paradox, and I have to start all over again.

We've eaten, but he looks hungry, and experience tells me that crazy takes a lot of calories to sustain.

To make a statement that one knows is false is more honest than to make a statement that one knows is true.

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