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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• 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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• Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

  Sigmund Freud

  Creativity, Ideas, Innovation

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

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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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  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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Ambiguity is the devil's volleyball.

  Emo Philips

  Volleyball, Devil

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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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• 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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• The purpose of narrative is to present us with complexity and ambiguity.

  Scott Turow

  Purpose, Narrative, Complexity

  "'To hell with Perry Mason'". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. November 24, 2002.

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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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• 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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• The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.

  Marilyn Hacker

  Vocabulary, Important, Transition

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• I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

  Keith Richards

  Writing, Looks, Life Is

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• Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end.

  Gilda Radner

  Goodbye, Farewell, New Beginnings

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

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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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• Understand the causes of terror? Yes, we should try, but let there be no moral ambiguity about this: nothing could ever justify the events of September 11 and it is to turn justice on its head to pretend it could

  Tony Blair

  Justice, September 11, Trying

  Address at the Labour Party Conference, delivered 2 October 2001

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• During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.

  John le Carre

  War, Literature, Shade

  "John le Carré at the NFT". Interview with Adrian Wootton, www.theguardian.com. October 5, 2002.

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• When it appears as though the governors of the Federal Reserve believe that the end of the rate increases is near, that's very good news for investors. A lack of ambiguity from the Federal Reserve is always a little bit of a shocker.

  Hugh S. Johnson

  Believe, News, Littles

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