Paradoxes Quotes

This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power. (Žižek, S. Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks. London Review of Books 33.2 (2011): 9-10. )

~ Slavoj Žižek

This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power.

~ Slavoj Žižek

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

~ Niels Bohr

Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them.

~ Oscar Wilde

It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the reader.Moral: there exist obsessive ideas, they are never personal; books talk among themselves, and any true detection should prove that we are the guilty party.

~ Umberto Eco

Force is often used to enforce peace and an A bomb did bring world war 2 to a shuddering halt. The funniest people sometimes commit suicide and good souls often break a zillion hearts. That’s just who were are…sinners and saints in equal measure, our contradictions continually shaping our humanity and if we deny these paradoxes, we deny the existence of the very evolution that got us here.

~ Nidhie Sharma

It's funny how the ugly duckling always has so many beautiful things to teach us.

~ Curtis Tyrone Jones

But if a role model in her seventies isn't layered with contradictions - as we all come to be - then what good is she? Why bother to cut the silhouette of another's existence and place it against our own if it isn't as incongruous, ambiguous, inconsistent, and paradoxical as our own lives are?

~ Molly Peacock

So for me the essence of life is very simple. It is just this, awareness that allows us to trust in our own truths (without feeling any need to convince others), living gracefully amidst the chaos, maintaining a sense of balance (not being pulled around by the supposed opposites or false paradoxes), and being able to choose how we direct our lives.

~ Julia Woodman

A deeper thought on the surface is exactly the paradox we need.

~ Nema Al-Araby

the fighting machines that kept the country safe, and, the coffers full.

~ Julia Fierro

...they say if you don't vote, you get the government you deserve, and if you do, you never get the results you expected.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

I'm a kindhearted but highly competitive pragmatist. When I seek to win something, I always make certain it's never at the expense of anything more serious than the inadequate efforts of others.

~ Jonathan Kieran

Paradoxes are less paradoxical in their reference to truth than most of the most plausible axioms.

~ Raheel Farooq

Intelligence is to spot paradoxes. Wisdom is to live by them.

~ Raheel Farooq

If wool shrinks when you wash it, why don't sheep get smaller when it rains?

~ Ron Brackin

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

~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Authenticity is not possible without embracing the “and” within us. Our minds like to categorize things into neatly labeled boxes. Am I right, or is she right? Let’s stretch our minds to I can be right and so can she. Embracing the “and” is like yoga for the brain. When we train ourselves to hold paradoxes by stretching ourselves out of the boxes our minds create, we stretch into new possibilities and adapt more quickly in a fast-changing world.

~ Henna Inam

If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if it's done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.

~ Douglas Adams

It would distort markets. Besides, if I bought a load of gold when I thought the price was going up, then it would drive up the price at that point. When I came to sell in the future it would depress the price. Thus, I wouldn't make the killing I thought I would, would I?Yeah, but futures contracts.Same thing, dear boy.Art, then.If I bought Constable's Hay Wain direct from the artist it wouldn't have the same cachet as it does today. The absence of that piece from the market might mean that all of his work was devalued.Yeah, but you could bring another piece back.Ah, then the paint and canvas wouldn't age correctly. For older objets d'art, the carbon dating would show it was younger than it should be. Sorry, Kevin. You're not going to get rich by temporal smuggling or speculation.

~ Mark Speed