Paradox Quotes - Page 12

• The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

  Mary Parker Follett

  Women, Opportunity, Democracies Have

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• That'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 Friedman

  Country, Jobs, Hard Work

  "Illegal Immigration: A Feature, Not A Bug, Said Milton Friedman" by Brian Doherty, reason.com. May 11, 2011.

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• Affirmations are like screaming that you're okay in order to overcome this whisper that you're not. That's a big contrast to actually uncovering the whisper, realizing that it's a passing memory, and moving closer to all those fears and all those edgy feelings that maybe you're not okay. Well, no big deal. None of us is okay and all of us are fine. It's not just one way. We are walking, talking paradoxes.

  Pema Chodron

  Inspirational, Memories, Moving

  "Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living". Book by Pema Chodron, 1994.

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• There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the militia that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or with raillery; whether to consider it as a mere trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians; as a disingenuous artifice to instil prejudices at any price; or as the serious.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Loss, Skills, Ideas

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2014). “The Federalist Papers”, p.135, Courier Corporation

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• The most fundamental paradox is that if we're never to use force, we must be prepared to use it and to use it successfully. We Americans don't want war and we don't start fights. We don't maintain a strong military force to conquer or coerce others. The purpose of our military is simple and straightforward: we want to prevent war.

  Ronald Reagan

  Strong, Military, War

  "The uncommon wisdom of Ronald Reagan: a portrait in his own words".

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• Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.

  Carl Sandburg

  Peace, Heart, Men

  CARL SANDBURG (1954). “ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE PRAIRIE YEARS AND THE WAR YEARS”

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• Now I existed solely thanks to the quantum paradox, my brain a collection of qubits in quantum superposition, encoding truths and memories, imagination and irrationality in opposing, contradictory states that existed and didn't exist, all at the same time.

  Robin Wasserman

  Memories, Data, Imagination

  Robin Wasserman (2011). “Shattered”, p.158, Simon and Schuster

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• The paradox is that we have this amazing capacity in our minds and hearts to learn and gain insights and then to build a kind of personal storehouse of knowledge. The underside is that those insights harden and fill the spaces in our hearts and minds. They become assumptions, conclusions and judgments.

  Mark Nepo

  Heart, Space, Mind

  Mark Nepo (2013). “Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: Staying Close to What Is Sacred”, p.284, Simon and Schuster

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• I was paralyzed with fear. It was unbearable to be among other kids who were just standing around being fine. It was one of the many inconveniences of this paradox I lived with -the more people I was surrounded by, the more frighteningly alone I felt.

  Sarah Silverman

  Kids, People, Unbearable

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• It was such a paradox for me that the only thing I know how to do is act, but that the first thing I abandoned while writing were the characters

  Bryce Dallas Howard

  Writing, Character, Firsts

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• I 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 Graham

  Things In Life, Important, Littles

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• I'm into paradoxes. I wanted to make an album about them, but the group told me I was a pretentious fart. They were right.

  Brian May

  Groups, Albums, Fart

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• After an eternity of seeking the sudden threshold of seeing and finding leaves one filled with a strange paradox of ecstasy and grief. I was born to see.

  Joy Page

  Grief, Finding The One, Strange

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• The grand paradox of our society is this:
  we magnify man’s right but we minimize his capacities.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Men, Society, Capacity

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• Society created the prison in its own image; will history, with its penchant for paradox, reverse those roles?

  Jessica Mitford

  Roles, Prison, Reverse

  Jessica Mitford (1973). “Kind and usual punishment: the prison business”, Not Avail

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• Like life and people, it is full of paradoxes. Etiquette is based on tradition, and yet it can change. Its ramifications are trivialities, but its roots are in great principles.

  Millicent Fenwick

  Roots, People, Principles

  Millicent Fenwick (1948). “Vogue's book of etiquette: a complete guide to traditional forms and modern usage”

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• That one individual should awaken in another memories that belong to still a third is an obvious paradox.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Memories, Individual, Should

  "Evaristo Carriego" by Jorge Luis Borges, (Ch. 2), 1930.

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• The Socratic teacher turns his students away from himself and back onto themselves; he hides in paradoxes, makes himself inaccessible. The intimate relationship between student and teacher here is not one of submission, but of a contest for truth.

  Karl Jaspers

  Teacher, Intimate Relationships, Students

  Karl Jaspers (1965). “The idea of the university”

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• To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Children, Heart, Soul

  "The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine". Book by Aiden Wilson Tozer, 1948.

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• It's such a paradox for them to say, "Oh, my God, I've thrown away my life," and continue to do that for the last month of their life. I shake them, physically shake them, and say, "What about now? What about now?"

  Patch Adams

  Healing, Health, Lasts

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• It is not, perhaps, unreasonable to conclude, that a pure and perfect democracy is a thing not attainable by man, constituted as he is of contending elements of vice and virtue, and ever mainly influenced by the predominant principle of self-interest. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted, that there never was that government called a republic, which was not ultimately ruled by a single will, and, therefore, (however bold may seem the paradox,) virtually and substantially a monarchy.

  Alexander Fraser Tytler

  Men, Self, Perfect

  " Universal History: From the Creation of the World to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. I" by Alexander Fraser Tytler, Petridge and Company, (p. 216), 1854.

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• Our equal and opposite needs for solitude and community constitute a great paradox. When it is torn apart, both of these life-giving states of being degenerate into deathly specters of themselves. Solitude split off from community is no longer a rich and fulfilling experience of inwardness; now it becomes loneliness, a terrible isolation. Community split off from solitude is no longer a nurturing network of relationships; now it becomes a crowd, an alienating buzz of too many people and too much noise.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Loneliness, Opposites, People

  Parker J. Palmer (2012). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.68, John Wiley & Sons

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• When 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 Hay

  Mother, Pain, Laughter

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• I'm a real paradox. Because I'm a very serious person, and I take my work very seriously. But I wrap it up in a court jester and a clown and make people laugh and make them feel good about themselves.

  Richard Simmons

  Real, Serious Person, People

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• Love delights in paradoxes. Saddest when it has most reason to be gay, sighs are the signs of its deepest joy, and silence is the expression of its yearning tenderness.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Love, Gay, Expression

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