Popular quotes about Paradox! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is a paradox; as is a paradox why the number 1 is not prime if it has no other divisors besides himself.
Bertrand RussellOne 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 KierkegaardThe paradox of publicity is that even as we do it, we know it's killing off the chance of another reader happening across our book in the ideal state of innocence.
Emma DonoghueThe paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird.
Laura HillenbrandAn ability to embrace new ideas, routinely challenge old ones, and live with paradox will be the effective leader's premier trait.
Tom PetersIt's the "Success Paradox." When a set of behaviors has gotten you somewhere, you keep doing them even though the circumstances have changed.
Lewis SchiffThe paradox of romantic love -- that what one possesses, one can no longer desire -- was at work.
Elizabeth BowenIt is a tragic paradox that the very qualities that have led to man's extraordinary capacity for success are also those most likely to destroy him.
Anthony StorrChildhood hunger in America is as much a paradox as it is a tragedy. Why, in the wealthiest country in the world, should hunger darken the lives and dreams of 12 million children and their families? I believe that, when Americans learn the facts and understand how their involvement can make a difference, banishing childhood hunger will be a national, local and personal priority.
Martin Sheen... This is the paradox of vision: Sharp perception softens our existence in the world.
Susan GriffinThere is another interesting paradox here: by immersing ourselves in what we love, we find ourselves. We do not lose ourselves. One does not lose one's identity by falling in love.
Lukas FossFaith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but superior - yet in such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior, that the single individual as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute.
Soren KierkegaardWhen we begin to love and respect Great Mother Nature's gift to us of gayness, we'll discover that the bondage of our childhood and adolescence in the trials and tribulations of neitherness was actually an apprenticeship for teaching her children new cutting edges of consciousness and social change. In stunning paradox, our neitherness is our talisman, our fairie wand, our gift we bring to the hetero world to....transform their pain into healings; ...transform their tears to laughter: ...transform their hand-me-downs to visions of loveliness.
Harry HayThe novel...creates a bemusing effect. The short story, on the other hand wakes the reader up. Not only that, it answers the primitive craving for art, the wit, paradox and beauty of shape, the longing to see a dramatic pattern and significance in our experience.
V. S. PritchettUltimately, any character you write - no matter how fantastic or alien - is an extension of yourself. When our characters reflect the truth of our souls and psyches, they become real and compelling. The wonderful paradox is that the characters then take on lives of their own, separate from their creators. That's where the magic comes in.
J. M. DeMatteisA Dream of Undying Fame is a probing, elegant and balanced book. Louis Breger shows how Freud’s traumatic childhood shaped his ambitious, detached and authoritarian personality, and led to the betrayal of his mentor, Josef Breuer. Breger’s analysis exposes a fascinating paradox: Freud both invented psychoanalysis and impoverished its development. A must-read for everyone interested in how ideas can change the world.
Brenda WebsterEnhancement not only allows the possibilities of a healthy fullness and exuberance, but of a rather ominous extravagance, aberration, monstrosity ... This danger is built into the very nature of growth and life. Growth can become over-growth, life 'hyper-life' ... The paradox of an illness which can present as wellness - as a wonderful feeling of health and well-being, and only later reveal its malignant potentials - is one of the chimaeras, tricks and ironies of nature.
Oliver SacksI didn’t think any biography could do justice to one of the few honest-to-goodness geniuses of our time, a walking paradox who wore a cloak of complexity and elusiveness, but Lisa Rogak has done an exemplary job of it.
Otto PenzlerThat's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster.
Ted HughesThe rewards of freedom are always sweet, but its demands are stern, for at its heart is the paradox that the greatest enemy of freedom is freedom.
Os GuinnessThere are great jazz educators that I meet all the time. I met a guy named Paul Luchessi who has a high school jazz program in Fresno. And Bob Athayde who runs a junior high program in Lafayette, California. And man, we walked into these schools and Paul Luchessi said, "Jon is the composer of Paradox." A hundred or something kids started to applaud. "What? You guys know that? I'm so blown away.
Jon GordonThe paradox of innovation is that it is accepted as an innovation when it has become imitation.
Piero ScaruffiDespite the campaign rhetoric, the bureaucracies-big business and big government-are here to stay. The centralization effort cannot be checked. but it can be rationally directed towards our species goal: Space Migration, which in turn offers the only way to re-attain individual freedom of space-time and the small-group social structures which obviously best suit our nervous systems. It is another paradox of neuro-genetics that only in space habitats can humanity return to the village life and pastoral style for which we all long.
Timothy LearyMost marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want.
John FowlesAlthough this may seem a paradox, all exact science is based on the idea of approximation. If a man tells you he knows a thing exactly, then you can be safe in inferring that you are speaking to an inexact man.
Bertrand RussellPeople have traditionally turned to ritual to help them frame and acknowledge and ultimately even find joy in just such a paradox of being human - in the fact that so much of what we desire for our happiness and need for our survival comes at a heavy cost.
Michael PollanHackman's paradox: Groups have natural advantages: they have more resources than individuals; greater diversity of resources; more flexibility in deploying the resources; many opportunities for collective learning; and, the potential for synergy. Yet studies show that their actual performance often is subpar relative to "nominal" groups (i.e. individuals given the same task but their results are pooled.) The two most common reasons: groups are assigned work that is better done by individuals or are structured in ways that cap their full potential.
J. Richard HackmanThe paradox of faith is that when we conform our lives to Christ then we gain our true freedom. And its fruit is profound and lasting happiness.
Vincent NicholsOur waking life's desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty.
Cormac McCarthyIt is a paradox that far too few Americans participate in the wonderful ritual of democracy that we call Election Day.
Brad HenryEducation in the United States is a passion and a paradox. Millions want it, and commend it, and are busy about it. At the same time they degrade it by trying to get it free of charge and free of work.
Jacques BarzunIt is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.
Soren KierkegaardA city like London was always going to be a paradox, the best of it so very riddled with the opposite, so Swiss-cheesed with moral holes.
China MievilleTo live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How's that for a paradox?
Tom RobbinsAs you open your awareness, life will improve of itself, you won't even have to try. It's a beautiful paradox: the more you open your consciousness, the fewer unpleasant events intrude themselves into your awareness.
Thaddeus GolasLet us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right.
Norman AngellOut of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament....There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, that every man's heart desires
J. R. R. TolkienThe twisty nature of psychic attack - are you being attacked, or did you bring this attack on yourself? - speaks to me of an American cultural paradox we all grapple with. There's the rampant litigiousness of our society, and the desire to blame others for our misfortunes.
Heidi JulavitsNew Orleans is a city of paradox. Sin, salvation, sex, sanctification, so intertwined yet so separate.
Harry Connick, Jr.The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.
Laura HillenbrandAlong the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox—the single most worthy path of the fearless mind . . . .
Yevgeny ZamyatinActs of violence-- Whether on a large or a small scale, the bitter paradox: the meaningfulness of death--and the meaninglessness of killing.
Dag HammarskjoldI figured being a bed salesman was a job of biblically bad paradox. I mean, here he was, forced to stand for eight or nine hours a day, and the whole time he’s surrounded by beds. And not only that, he’s surrounded by shoppers who see the beds and can’t help but think, Man, I’d love to lie down on that bed for a second. So not only does he have to stop himself from lying down, but he has to stop everyone else from doing it, too. I knew if I were him, I would be desperate for human company.
Rachel Cohn