Ambiguity Quotes

• There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.

  Thomas Reid

  Advancement, Speech Impediment, Greater

  Thomas Reid, Ronald E. Beanblossom, Keith Lehrer (1983). “Thomas Reid's Inquiry and Essays”, p.129, Hackett Publishing

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• Learning to live with ambiguity is learning to live with how life really is, full of complexities and strange surprises.

  James Hollis

  Strange, Surprise, Complexity

  James Hollis (2008). “What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life”, p.156, Penguin

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• Take advantage of the ambiguity in the world. Look at something and think what else it might be.

  Roger von Oech

  Thinking, Looks, World

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• The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure.

  Milan Kundera

  Pleasure, Greater

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  Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.

  Gilda Radner

  Life, Change, Goodbye

  Gilda Radner (2015). “It's Always Something”, p.254, Simon and Schuster

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• Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

  Sigmund Freud

  Creativity, Ideas, Innovation

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• What is important is to keep learning, to enjoy challenge, and to tolerate ambiguity. In the end there are no certain answers.

  Matina Horner

  Education, Women, Challenges

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• Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.

  Theodor Adorno

  Personality, Tolerance, Mark

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• A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

  Herman Melville

  Happiness, Smile, Laughter

  Herman Melville (1963). “Works”

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• The character of human life, like the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, the true and false, the creative and destructive forces-both individual and social.

  Paul Tillich

  Character, Evil, Creative

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• I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Fear, Explanation

  Abraham Lincoln (1992). “The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln”, Plume

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• What if rather than being disheartened by the ambiguity, the uncertainty of life, we accepted it and relaxed into it?

  Pema Chodron

  What If, Accepted, Uncertainty Of Life

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• Ambiguity is the devil's volleyball.

  Emo Philips

  Volleyball, Devil

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• Ambiguity is something that I really respond to. I like the complexity of it.

  Robert Redford

  Complexity

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• The mark of a mature, psychologically healthy mind is indeed the ability to live with uncertainty and ambiguity, but only as much as there really is. Uncertainty is no virtue when the facts are clear, and ambiguity is mere obfuscation when more precise terms are applicable.

  Julian Baggini

  Healthy, Mind, Obfuscation

  "What is this foolish lust for uncertainty?" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. October 28, 2011.

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• I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end.

  Gilda Radner

  Goodbye, Farewell, Perfect

  Gilda Radner (2015). “It's Always Something”, p.254, Simon and Schuster

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• If I take refuge in ambiguity, I assure you that it's quite conscious.

  Kingman Brewster, Jr.

  Conscious, Refuge, Ifs

  The New York Tribune, October 14, 1963.

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• As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Men, Long, Philosopher

  Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.61, Open Road Media

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• People are concrescences of ambiguity.

  Terence McKenna

  People

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• On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.

  Adam Smith

  Cities, Progress, Valleys

  Adam Smith (1978). “Powers of Mind”

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• The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.

  Frank Herbert

  Used, Carrie

  Frank Herbert (2008). “God Emperor of Dune”, p.120, Penguin

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• The goal is to live a full, productive life even with all that ambiguity. No matter what happens, whether the cancer never flares up again or whether you die, the important thing is that the days that you have had you will have lived.

  Gilda Radner

  Inspirational, Encouraging, Cancer

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• It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.

  John Updike

  Clash, Extremes

  John Updike, James Plath (1994). “Conversations with John Updike”, p.11, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• My path to wisdom began when I stopped pretending to know things I didn't know. When I explicitly admitted to the limits of my knowledge, stopped building on ambiguity and ignorance, and instead realized that I knew nothing, not even the things I thought I knew.

  Tucker Max

  Ignorance, Limits, Path

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• Ambiguity lurks in generality, and may thus become an instrument of severity.

  Felix Frankfurter

  May, Instruments, Generalities

  "McComb v. Jacksonville Paper Co., 336 U.S. 187". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. February 14, 1949.

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