Paradox Quotes - Page 24

• I have a principle I often invoke in class: comfortable people don't grow. Good teachers need to engage in the paradox of making students feel comfortable and uncomfortable in equal measure.

  Erica Brown

  Teacher, Class, People

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every moment is the paradox of now or never.

  Simon Van Booy

  Now Or Never, Moments

  Simon van Booy (2014). “The Secret Lives of People in Love”, p.53, Oneworld Publications

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Indeed, the great paradox of the writer's life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people.

  Betsy Lerner

  People, Trying, Life Is

  Betsy Lerner (2016). “The Forest for the Trees: An editor's advice to writers”, p.21, Pan Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• First law: The pesticide paradox. Every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffective.

  Boris Beizer

  Law, Use, Pesticides

  8 Copy quote

• Such is the demographic paradox of a junior physician's relationship with his patients: I worry about how to extend their lives. This anxiety inevitably shortens my own.

  Jacob M. Appel

  Worry, Anxiety, Physicians

  Jacob M. Appel (2014). “Phoning Home: Essays”, p.55, Univ of South Carolina Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is a paradox; as is a paradox why the number 1 is not prime if it has no other divisors besides himself.

  Bertrand Russell

  Numbers, Prime, Ifs

  6 Copy quote

• I have a primary responsibility to myself; to make myself into the best person I can possibly be. Then and only then, will I have something worthwhile to share.- I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.

  Mother Teresa

  Hurt, Responsibility, Share

  5 Copy quote

• I think that life is a paradox and you have to embrace that in your work and your belief systems... You can't be a literalist, and that's the trouble that people always find themselves in. That's why people always hit a wall with any of my stuff, because you can't take it literally.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Wall, Thinking, People

  Dazed & Confused Magazine, February 29, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The paradox is that by the time you get to be senior, the decisions that matter the most are the ones that would be best made made by people who are junior.

  Seth

  Senior, People, Decision

  4 Copy quote

• For 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 men’s 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, evil’s stranglehold will be easily broken.

  Andrew Bernstein

  Men, Errors, Evil

  6 Copy quote

• We have a tendency to assume people are a unity, and thus good people all good, etc. But the fact that Hitler was good to dogs and children isn't a paradox.

  Richard Posner

  Dog, Children, People

  20 Copy quote

• The deeper and richer a personality is, the more full it is of paradox and contradiction. It is only a shallow character who offers us no problems of contrast.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Character, Personality, Problem

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “A Circle of Quiet”, p.21, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A paradox is a seeming contradiction, always demanding a change on the side of the observer. If we look at almost all things honestly we see everything has a character of paradox to it. Everything, including ourselves.

  Richard Rohr

  Character, Looks, Sides

  7 Copy quote

• The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religious, Pluralism Is, Political

  Christopher Hitchens (2014). “Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere”, p.104, Atlantic Books Ltd

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Here's the pay paradox that Why Men Earn More explains: Men earn more money, therefore men have more power; and men earn more money, therefore men have less power (earning more money as an obligation, not an option). The opposite is true for women: Women earn less money, therefore women have less power; and women earn less money, therefore women have more power (the option to raise children, or to not take a hazardous job).

  Warren Farrell

  Jobs, Children, Men

  Warren Farrell (2005). “Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap--and what Women Can Do about it”, p.24, AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• But that is the way of the place: down our many twisting corridors, one encounters story after story, some heroic, some villainous, some true, some false, some funny, some tragic, and all of them combining to form the mystical, undefinable entity we call the school. Not exactly the building, not exactly the faculty or the students or the alumni - more than all those things but also less, a paradox, an order, a mystery, a monster, an utter joy.

  Stephen L. Carter

  School, Order, Joy

  "The Emperor of Ocean Park". Book by Stephen L. Carter, April 1, 2002.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox.

  James Clavell

  Littles, Eternal, Knows

  "Fictional character: Andre Delambre". "The Fly", July 16, 1958.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The proposition of Mr. Ricardo, which states that a rise in the price of labour lowers the price of a large class of commodities, has undoubtedly a very paradoxical air; but it is, nevertheless, true, and the appearance of paradox would vanish, if it were stated more naturally and correctly.

  Thomas Malthus

  Class, Air, Appearance

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1836). “Principles of Political Economy: Considered with a View to Their Practical Application”, p.88

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Think about the strangeness of today's situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Thinking, Hands, Years

  "Mapping Ideology" by Slavoj Žižek, p.1, 1994.

  117 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the potential of absurdity, hiding in the disparate combination of the various different subjects which in themselves are nothing but daily items equally in the exclusive representation of a normal item taken out of their usual context, is by far the most radical - in its effect comparable to a Japanese Zen koan - paradox to be witnessed, which modern art has produced, one of the most forceful impulses that generated from it.

  Antoni Tapies

  Art, Taken, Usual

  "Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 - 2003" by Antoni Tapies, Kunsthalle Emden, edited by Achim Sommer, Altana, (p. 28), 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You cannot do silhouettes in fantasy. Ah, no, you must be faithful. It is, the art, a, what you call, paradox. It is always that you must be simple, and then, if you are simple, you will stimulate the imagination of the observer.

  Ugo Mochi

  Art, Simple, Imagination

  52 Copy quote

• The absurdist is concerned with the search for meaning in the Universe. He believes this search to be meaningless--hence the disintegration of plot, character, and language in absurdist drama. Order is a falsehood that we, God, those who came before us, have imposed on a random universe. However, the absurdist is confronted with a curious paradox: though he believes the Universe to be meaningless, he cannot abandon the search for meaning--or he will die.

  Walter Wykes

  Drama, Believe, Character

  5 Copy quote

• The paradox of innovation is this: CEO's often complain about lack of innovation, while workers often say leaders are hostile to new ideas.

  Patrick Dixon

  Ideas, Leader, Innovation

  "Building a Better Business". Book by Patrick Dixon, 2005.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is one of the paradoxes of journalism: The more servile a reporter is toward his sources, the more authoritative he can appear in print.

  Andrew Ferguson

  Journalism, Source, Print

  "Scotty: All the News That's Fit to Schmooze". The Weekly Standard, February 24, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The deep paradox uncovered by AI research: the only way to deal efficiently with very complex problems is to move away from pure logic.... Most of the time, reaching the right decision requires little reasoning.... Expert systems are, thus, not about reasoning: they are about knowing.... Reasoning takes time, so we try to do it as seldom as possible. Instead we store the results of our reasoning for later reference.

  Daniel Crevier

  Moving, Knowing, Decision

  8 Copy quote