Paradox Quotes

Every moment is the paradox of now or never.

~ Simon Van Booy

In its quest to discover how the patterns of reality are organised, the story of modern science hints at a picture of a set of Chinese puzzle boxes, each one more intricately structured and wondrous than the last. Every time the final box appears to have been reached, a key has been found which has opened up another, revealing a new universe even more breathtakingly improbable in its conception. We are now forced to suspect that, for human reason, there is no last box, that in some deeply mysterious, virtually unfathomable, self-reflective way, every time we open a still smaller box, we are actually being brought closer to the box with which we started, the box which contains our own conscious experience of the world. This is why no theory of knowledge, no epistemology, can ever escape being consumed by its own self-generated paradoxes. And this is why we must consider the universe to be irredeemably mystical.

~ Bob Hamilton

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.

~ Michel De Montaigne

A fear of weakness only strengthens weakness.

~ Criss Jami

If you wait for the mango fruits to fall, you'd be wasting your time while others are learning how to climb the tree

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Friendship exhibits a glorious nearness by resemblance to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying Holy, Holy, Holy to one another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.

~ C.s. Lewis

Joshua to Angela: Please, Angela, do it for me… and you never know you just might have fun. She looked at him warily. I find that highly doubtful, Josh.Well how will you know unless you actually try it?I just know. Do you have to drink a hot fish milkshake to know you aren’t going to like it? She asked.

~ Patti Roberts

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

~ Stephen King

The modern West has been deeply split about freedom and responsibility. On the one hand, it has championed human freedom in many forms - human rights, sexual freedom, political liberty, freedom to choose in many spheres. On the other hand, many of its most intelligent members have not believed that people are free at all, and have devoted great efforts to show that really we are the product of our genes, our unconscious drives, our education, economic pressures, or other forms of conditioning.

~ David F. Ford

We exist only to exist.

~ Kamand Kojouri

Embrace contradictions for they make upall of life:You will eternally be looking for yourself andseeking ways to lose yourself.

~ Kamand Kojouri

A woman lives a life of contradictions wrapped inside paradoxes wrapped inside a big candy wrapper.

~ Boris Fishman

One of the great constants in life is change.

~ Heracleitus

Thus the little mermaid learned her world’s greatest paradox: that their currency was beauty, and their coin was body parts.

~ Esther Dalseno

Together, we form a necessary paradox; not a senseless contradiction.

~ Criss Jami

The entire contradictory package of Christianity was present in the Eucharist. A sign of unconditional acceptance and forgiveness, it was doled out and rationed to insiders; a sign of unity, it divided people; a sign of the most common and ordinary human reality, it was rarefied and theorized nearly to death.

~ Sara Miles

Some of the simplest of truths are also some of the most difficult of truths, but such is Christianity: 'If it's not about Christ, it's not about life.

~ Criss Jami

Paradoxes are what draws Wisdom like bees to honey! Hence, where there is no paradox (Complexity), there is no need for Wisdom....

~ Amit Chatterjee

The sacrifices we make to stay healthy, to look good, the tasty foods we skip, the guilt trips, the exercising - all these things require great discipline, care, and even a paradoxical, self-denying self-love of sorts in order to be properly executed. However it is regretful that so many of us today are not as passionate about our spiritual holiness as we are about our physical health. They are indeed both important - we should worship in every aspect of our lives - and one even, in a sense, entails the other. Although, this disproportion in said priorities is still very much expected: we humans have always taken a liking to trendiness and the temporal side of things, doing what is judged vainly in the eyes of man before that which is judged vitally and eternally in the eyes of God (i.e. cleaning the outside of one's cup while leaving a filthy inside). But in a way, it all goes to show that the man who fully hates discipline hates himself fully; for within the spirit is where The Holy One judges true wellness or malady.

~ Criss Jami

This Lord of natures today was transformed contrary to His nature; it is not too difficult for us to also overthrow our evil will. Hymns of the Nativity, Hymn 1:97, pg. 74 in Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns (New York: Paulist Press, 1989).

~ Ephrem The Syrian

Elric knew that everything that existed had its opposite. In danger he might find peace. And yet, of course, in peace there was danger. Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there was always a kind of truth. That was why philosophers and soothsayers flourished. In a perfect world there would be no place for them. In an imperfect world the mysteries were always without solution and that was why there was always a great choice of solutions.

~ Michael Moorcock

The contradiction is resolved when you realize that for Jesus peace seems to have meant not the absence of struggle, but the presence of love. -p83

~ Frederick Buechner

In the middle of the night, I saw chaos bleeding out of darkness and peace. Everything that was said and seen before seemed like a paradox. I saw the graves of lies breaking open and the truth crawling out silently into the cold hearts.

~ Akshay Vasu

Our cure for pain is the very root of it: Revenge.

~ Felix O. Hartmann

To be happy to be sad and sad to be happy is to sing an echo in that beautiful language called Sorrow.

~ Criss Jami

An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

~ Edith Wharton

The difference between time and money is that money can be stored for future use. Most people make the mistake of saving money by wasting their time.

~ J.r. Rim

The funny thing about the heart is a soft heart is a strong heart, and a hard heart is a weak heart.

~ Criss Jami

His mindIt says survival of the fittest butHis soulRevival of the idiotsSo good riddance, dancing

~ Criss Jami

Fathers are ironic, they want democracy in their country but dictatorship in their home.

~ Amit Kalantri

They say that family is the place of safety. But sometimes this is the greatest lie; family is not sanctuary, it is not safety and succour. For some of us, it is the secret wound. Sooner or later we pay for the woundings of our ancestors.

~ Nayomi Munaweera

Most people don't mind being stupid, insomuch that they do not appear stupid; appearance and being are seldom simultaneous, congruent, and conclusive.

~ Justin K. Mcfarlane Beau

Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the less gifted.

~ Isaiah Berlin

My son used to believe that he could look at a plane in flight and make it explode in midair by simply thinking it. He believed, at thirteen, that the border between himself and the world was thin and porous enough to allow him to affect the course of events. An aircraft in flight was a provocation too strong to ignore. He’d watch a plane gaining altitude after taking off from Sky Harbor and he’d sense an element of catastrophe tacit in the very fact of a flying object filled with people. He was sensitive to the most incidental stimulus and he thought he could feel the object itself yearning to burst. All he had to do was wish the fiery image into his mind and the plane would ignite and shatter. His sister used to tell him, Go ahead, blow it up, let me see you take that plane out of the sky with all two hundred people aboard, and it scared him to hear someone talk this way and it scared her too because she wasn’t completely convinced he could not do it. It’s the special skill of an adolescent to imagine the end of the world as an adjunct to his own discontent. But Jeff got older and lost interest and conviction. He lost the paradoxical gift for being separate and alone and yet intimately connected, mind-wired to distant things.

~ Don Delillo

Dune was a world of paradox now—a world under siege, yet the center of power. To come under siege, he decided, was the inevitable fate of power.

~ Frank Herbert

Glory: I look around at this world you're so eager to be a part of and all I see is six billion lunatics looking for the fastest ride out. Who's not crazy? Look around, everyone's drinking, smoking, shooting up, shooting each other, or just plain screwing their brains out 'cause they don't want 'em anymore. I'm crazy? Honey, I'm the original one-eyed chicklet in the kingdom of the blind, 'cause at least I admit the world makes me nuts.

~ Douglas Petrie

The world is a contradiction, the universe a paradox.

~ Kedar Joshi

Time goes fast, the world is one paradox full of answers and questions.

~ Deyth Banger

I believe that the world is one strong matrix, to get out of it you can't safe somebody unless you make it such way so you both die. I believe then... at that moment you are out of the Matrix, but it's just kind of paradox which is 50-50.

~ Deyth Banger

Here we have both a paradox, and a beautiful symmetry. It is a duality. I am the earth and you are the moon, and you are the earth and I am the moon.

~ Joshua Edward Smith