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Station is the paradox of the world of my people, the limitation of our power within the hunger for power. It is gained through treachery and invites treachery against those who gain it. Those most powerful in Menzoberranzan spend their days watching over their shoulders, defending against the daggers that would find their backs. Their deaths usually come from the front." -Drizzt Do'Urden
R. A. SalvatoreThe most exquisite paradoxโฆ as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.
Ram DassThe paradox of acceptance: When our mind becomes less attached and dependent on things being a certain way our happiness in life dramatically improves.
Lee L JampolskyThe paradox is that, while a concern with past and future is obviously central to psychological functioning, to behave as though one were indeed in the past or future, as many do, pollutes the lively possibilities of existence.
Erving PolsterThe paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.
Cornel WestIt is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.
Erica JongThe psychedelic viewpoint is becoming more and more legitimate, but psychedelic drugs are not. That's the odd paradox of it.
Terence McKennaThere are still to be found visionary or designing men, who stand ready to advocate the paradox of perpetual peace between the states, though dismembered and alienated from each other.... The genius of republics, say they, is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men, and to extinguish those inflammable humours which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord.
Alexander HamiltonRisk always brings its own rewards: the exhilaration of breaking through, of getting to the other side; the relief of a conflict healed; the clarity when a paradox dissolves.
Marilyn FergusonShe was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox.
Truman CapoteInstead, over the past thirty years, in the world of action and adventure sports, in situations where asses really were on the line, the bounds of the possible have been pushed further and faster than ever before in history. We've seen near-exponential growth in ultimate human performance, which is both hyperbolic paradox and considerable mystery. Somehow, a generation's worth of iconoclastic misfits have rewritten the rules of the feasible, not just raising the bar but often obliterating it altogether. And this brings up one final question: Where-if anywhere-do our actual limits lie?
Steven KotlerAyla, I looked for you all my life and didn't know I was looking. You are everything I ever wanted, everything I ever dreamed of in a woman, and more. You are a fascinating enigma, a paradox. You are totally honest, open; you hide nothing: yet you are the most mysterious woman I've ever met.
Jean M. AuelDangerously wellโโ what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling โtoo well
Oliver SacksFor the first time in history, the rational and the good are fully armed in the battle against evil. Here we finally find the answer to our paradox; now we can understand the nature of the social power held by evil. Ultimately, the evil, the irrational, truly has no power. The evil menโs control of morality is transient; it lives on borrowed time made possible only by the errors of the good. In time, as more honest men grasp the truth, evilโs stranglehold will be easily broken.
Andrew BernsteinImagination, it turns out, is a great deal like reporting in your own head. Here is a paradox of fiction-writing. You are crafting something from nothing, which means, in one sense, that none of it is true. Yet in the writing, and perhaps in the reading, some of a character's actions or lines are truer than others.
Amy WaldmanThe dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, seems to betray an underlying paradox. Differentpoints of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparability.
Donald DavidsonOnly when you lift a burden, God will lift your burden. Divine paradox this! The man who staggers and falls because his burden is too great can lighten that burden by taking on the weight of another's burden. You get by giving, but your part of giving must be given first.
Spencer W. KimballI do my own thing. I'm very much in the paradox of things. I enjoy the little things in life, what's big is small and what's small is big. It might not be the coolest thing to do, but it's important to me.
Katerina GrahamIt is a paradox of Life that all species breed past mere replacement. Any paradise of plenty soon fills to become paradise no more.
David BrinOh my God, does art engender humanity? It awakens your humanity. But humanity has nothing to do with political theory. Political theory is in the interests of one group of humanity, or one ideal for humanity. But humanity-my heavens, that's what proper art renders. We have a paradox. Going into the deepest aspects of inner space connects you with something that is the most vital for the outer realm.
Joseph CampbellI threw up again that night, half-afraid that my eyeballs would explode. But it was, by far, more important that I get rid of dinner. Of course, by then, throwing up was the only way I knew how to deal with fear. That paradox would begin to run my life: to know that what you are doing is hurting you, maybe killing you, and to be afraid of that fact--but to cling to the idea that this will save you, it will, in the end, make things okay.
Marya HornbacherThat'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 shellsโhe becomes one of the walking dead, a monster.
Ted HughesI recently got back from Hiroshima and it was fascinating to me how the Japanese accommodate this paradox. We were talking about this word aware, which on the page looks like "aware," which speaks to both the pain and the beauty of our lives. Being there, what I perceived was that this is a sorrow that is not a grief that one forgets or recovers from, but it is a burning, searing illumination of love for the delicacy and strength of our relations.
Terry Tempest WilliamsAs with the onset of sudden celebrity, for the newly rich, the world often becomes a darker, narrower, less generous place; a paradox that elicits scant sympathy, but is nonetheless true.
Felix DennisThe 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 GuinnessLife is strong and fragile. It's a paradox... It's both things, like quantum physics: It's a particle and a wave at the same time. It all exists all together.
Joan JettThe central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual.
Pico IyerIt may be that the human race is not ready for freedom. The air of liberty may be too rarefied for us to breathe... The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
Steven PressfieldIt is a paradox. Life is that way. God designed it that way. I believe I met him once. He was full of mischief.
Christopher PikeTo be entirely free, and at the same time entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life.
Oscar WildeThe paradox of the prophet: his very success is his failure. The prophet whose time has come no longer shocks; he entertains.
Peter DruckerIn the rush to become all things to all people, the federal government has lost sight of its core responsibilities. As a result we're stuck in this frustrating paradox where Washington actually neglects things it's clearly supposed to be doing, while interfering in other areas where they are neither welcome nor authorized.
Rick Perry...once again we face a paradox, for it appears that softening your heart and gently tending its wounds will protect you from evil. Building a fortress and defending yourself behind it will only make you more vulnerable. Healing your own heart is the single most powerful thing you can do to change the world. Your own transformation will enable you to withdraw so completely from evil that you contribute to it by not one word, one thought, or one breath. This healing process is like recovering your soul.
Deepak ChopraThe universe (he said) offers a paradox too great for the finite mind to grasp. As the living brain cannot conceive of a nonliving brain โ although it may think it can โ the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite.
Stephen KingIt is a paradox that far too few Americans participate in the wonderful ritual of democracy that we call Election Day.
Brad HenryThat's an interesting paradox to think about. Make it legal and it's no good. Why? Because as long as it's illegal the people who come in do not qualify for welfare, they don't qualify for social security, they don't qualify for the other myriad of benefits that we pour out from our left pocket to our right pocket. So long as they don't qualify they migrate to jobs. They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take. They provide employers with the kind of workers that they cannot get. They're hard workers, they're good workers, and they are clearly better off.
Milton FriedmanEducation 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 BarzunTo meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with the nonhuman world and yet somehow survives still intact individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.
Edward AbbeyBut there's the paradox of fiction - why do you cry when a fake character dies? It's the basis of art. You engage with people who don't exist and care about them as you would your friends and relatives.
Michael GruberBy our very nature, we are a human paradox. We are a human being. The being is infinite and the human is very finite. We walk around like lightening in a bottle.
Mark NepoBut in the West it is very easy to dissolve the ego. So whenever a Western seeker reaches an understanding that ego is the problem he can easily dissolve it, more easily than any Eastern seeker. This is the paradox - in the West ego is taught, in the East egolessness is taught. But in the West it is easy to dissolve the ego, in the East it is very difficult.
RajneeshPaul Otrembaโs remarkable first book, The Currency, is an intriguing foray into lyric epistemology that tries to come to ter ms with the implacable, paradox-ridden nature of knowledge and experience. These are deeply felt, deeply meditated poems guided by a sensibility highly attenuated to the physical world. In their openness to friendship and love and in their fearless directness, they remind me of the work of Larry Levis and Jon Anderson. Like Levis and Anderson, Otremba promises to be an influential and important voice for his generation.
Michael CollierAlthough this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man. Every careful measurement in science is always given with the probable error ... every observer admits that he is likely wrong, and knows about how much wrong he is likely to be.
Bertrand Russell