Paradox Quotes - Page 14

• It is a paradox that in our time of drastic rapid change, when the future is in our midst devouring the present before our eyes, we have never been less certain about what is ahead of us.

  Eric Hoffer

  Change, Time, Future

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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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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• The central paradox and challenge of marriage is that we have to make family out of someone we're not related to.

  Ruth Stout

  Challenges, Related

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• The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Discovery, Weapons, Facts

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• A woman’s beauty is supposed to be her grand project and constant insecurity. We’re meant to shellac our lips with five different glosses, but always think we’re fat. Beauty is Zeno’s paradox. We should endlessly strive for it, but it’s not socially acceptable to admit we’re there. We can’t perceive it in ourselves. It belongs to the guy screaming 'nice tits.

  Molly Crabapple

  Nice, Thinking, Guy

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• I don't believe in objectivity. I observe the observer's paradox every moment I'm filming. Your presence is changing everything; there's no mistaking it. And you have a responsibility.

  Lucy Walker

  Believe, Responsibility, Objectivity

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• Are we to assist it in gaining power in order to save our lives? Is that the paradox of our earthly situation?

  Philip K. Dick

  Order, Gaining Power, Life Is

  Philip K. Dick (2012). “The Man in the High Castle”, p.200, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The central paradox of motherhood is that while our children become the absolute center of our lives, they must also push us backout in the world.... But motherhood that can narrow our lives can also broaden them. It can make us focus intensely on the moment and invest heavily in the future.

  Ellen Goodman

  Children, Motherhood, Focus

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• It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  May, Mood, Application

  Alfred North Whitehead (1958). “An Introduction to Mathematics”, p.71, New York : Oxford University Press, 1958 [c1948]

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• That'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 Hughes

  Children, People, Walking Dead

  Ted Hughes, Christopher Reid (2008). “Letters of Ted Hughes”, Farrar Straus & Giroux

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• All through autumn we hear a double voice: one says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying. The paradox is exquisite. We feel what the Japanese call "aware"--an almost untranslatable word meaning something like "beauty tinged with sadness.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Sadness, Autumn, Meaning Something

  Gretel Ehrlich (1985). “The solace of open spaces”, Viking Pr

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• The further on we go, the more meaning there is, but the less articulable. You live your life and the older you get- the more specifically you harvest- the more precious becomes every ounce and spasm. Your life and times don’t drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable. The less explicable, the more meaning. The less like a mathematics equation (a sum game); the more like music (significant secret).

  Gregory Maguire

  Games, Live Your Life, Secret

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• 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 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 Hillenbrand

  Letting Go, Pain, War

  Laura Hillenbrand (2010). “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption”, p.366, Random House

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• In fact, every woman I met seemed disposable and replaceable. I was experiencing seducer's paradox: The better a seducer I became, the less I loved women. Success was no longer defined by getting laid or finding a girlfriend, but by how well I performed.

  Neil Strauss

  Girlfriend, Facts, Mets

  Neil Strauss (2011). “The Game”, p.154, Canongate Books

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• Paradox is an overrated threat. There is...a quality similar to inertia at work. Once an event has occurred, there is an extremely strong tendency for that event to occur. The larger, more significant, or more energetic the event, the more it tends to remain as it originally happened, despite any interference." I frowned. "There's...a law of conservation of history?

  Jim Butcher

  Strong, Law, Quality

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• Paradox - Truth standing on her head to get attention.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Attention, Standing

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• This Force, by troth, I'll never comprehend! It doth control and also doth obey? And 'tis within and yet it is beyond, 'Tis both inside and yet outside one's self? What paradox! What fickle-natur'd pow'r! Aye: frailty, thy name-- belike--is Force.

  Ian Doescher

  Self, Names, Fickle

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• This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement - that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it - that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.

  Walter Lippmann

  Freedom, Should Have, Humanity

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• It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self. As a matter of experience, we find that true happiness comes in seeking other things, in the manifold activities of life, in the healthful outgoing of all human powers.

  Hugh Black

  Happiness, Self, Missing

  Hugh Black (1901). “Culture and Restraint”

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• It 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 Jong

  Writing, Males, Fiction

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• Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.

  Laozi

  Inspiring, Spiritual, Strong

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• Here is the paradox of Christian living. We must give up control of self to gain self control.

  Andy Mineo

  Christian, Giving Up, Self

  FaceBook post by Andy Mineo from Jul 22, 2013

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• The paradox: there can be no pilgrimage without a destination, but the destination is also not the real point of the endeavor. Not the destination, but the willingness to wander in pursuit characterizes pilgrimage. Willingness: to hear the tales along the way, to make the casual choices of travel, to acquiesce even to boredom. That's pilgrimage -- a mind full of journey.

  Patricia Hampl

  Real, Journey, Boredom

  Patricia Hampl (1993). “Spillville: A Collaboration”, Milkweed Editions

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• The ocean is a place of paradoxes. It is the home of the great white shark, two-thousand-pound killer of the seas, and of the hundred-foot blue whale, the largest animal that ever lived. It is also the home of living things so small that your two hands might scoop up as many of them as there are stars in the Milky Way.

  Rachel Carson

  Stars, Ocean, Home

  Rachel Carson (2011). “Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson”, p.6, Beacon Press

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• As the humanities and liberal arts are downsized, privatized, and commodified, higher education finds itself caught in the paradox of claiming to invest in the future of young people while offering them few intellectual, civic, and moral supports.

  Henry Giroux

  Art, Offering, People

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