Paradox Quotes - Page 26

• 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

• There's a thing that if you - somebody in faith is always troubled by doubt, and somebody by doubt is always wanted by faith. So it's a kind of paradox.

  Anthony Hopkins

  Doubt, Kind, Wanted

  "Actor Sir Anthony Hopkins". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. January 27, 2011.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].

  Gregory Bateson

  Logic, Ignored, Models

  10 Copy quote

• If this were the time or the place to uphold a paradox, I am half inclined to state that Norfolk is one of the most beautiful of counties.

  Virginia Woolf

  Beautiful, Half, States

  Virginia Woolf, Jan Morris (1993). “Travels with Virginia Woolf”, Random House (UK)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do not regret my youth and its beliefs. Up to now, I have wasted my time to live. Youth is the true force, but it is too rarely lucid. Sometimes it has a triumphant liking for what is now, and the pugnacious broadside of paradox may please it. But there is a degree in innovation which they who have not lived very much cannot attain. And yet who knows if the stern greatness of present events will not have educated and aged the generation which to-day forms humanity's effective frontier? Whatever our hope may be, if we did not place it in youth, where should we place it?

  Henri Barbusse

  Regret, Greatness, Humanity

  "Light" by Henri Barbusse, (Ch. XXII), 1919.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

• He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

  Douglas Adams

  Reality, Afterlife, Religion

  Douglas Adams (2009). “Life, the Universe and Everything”, p.138, Pan Macmillan

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.

  Yogi Berra

  Funny, Sports, Lying

  21 Copy quote

• There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

  Jack London

  Alive, Mark, Ecstasy

  Jack London (1903). “Call of the Wild”, p.83

  44 Copy quote

  Show source

• The paradoxes of today are the prejudices of tomorrow, since the most benighted and the most deplorable prejudices have had their moment of novelty when fashion lent them its fragile grace.

  Marcel Proust

  Fashion, Grace, Prejudice

  Marcel Proust (1957). “Pleasures and days: and other writings”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• An intriguing paradox of the 1990s is that it isn't called a decade of greed.

  Paul Samuelson

  Greed, Intriguing, Materialism

  53 Copy quote

• One of the best paradoxes of leadership is a leader's need to be both stubborn and open-minded. A leader must insist on sticking to the vision and stay on course to the destination. But he must be open-minded during the process.

  Simon Sinek

  Leader, Vision, Needs

  "The Paradoxes Of Leadership: Simon Sinek". www.askmen.com.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• The paradox of Steve Jobs's career is that he had no interest in listening to consumers - he was famously dismissive of market research - yet nonetheless had an amazing sense of what consumers actually wanted.

  James Surowiecki

  Jobs, Careers, Listening

  "Apple: What Happens Now?". www.newyorker.com. August 24, 2011.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

  Tennessee Williams

  Lonely, Loneliness, Selfish

  Tennessee Williams (2008). “Camino Real”, p.8, New Directions Publishing

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored.

  Wendell Willkie

  Freedom, Opportunity, Society

  Wendell L. Willkie (1943). “Prefaces TO PEACE”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Don't believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose.

  Douglas Adams

  Believe, Wells, Including

  11 Copy quote

• And this is the strangest of all paradoxes of the human adventure; we live inside all experience, but we are permitted to bear witness only to the outside. Such is the riddle of life and the story of the passing of our days.

  Howard Thurman

  Adventure, Stories, Bears

  Howard Thurman (1981). “With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman”, p.291, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, True Life, Life Is

  Thomas Merton (2008). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.35, Sounds True

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is nothing absolute and final. If everything were ironclad, all the rules absolute and everything structured so no paradox or irony existed, you couldn't move. One could say that man sneaks through the crack where paradox exists.

  Itzhak Bentov

  Spiritual, Moving, Men

  Itzhak Bentov (2000). “A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness: A Cosmic Book on the Mechanics of Creation”, p.78, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.

  Ogden Nash

  Morning, Regret, Sleep

  64 Copy quote

• A paradox: the same century invented history and photography. But history is a memory fabricated according to positive formulas, a pure intellectual discourse which abolishes mythic time; and the photograph is a certain but fugitive testimony.

  Roland Barthes

  Photography, Memories, Intellectual

  13 Copy quote

• The paradox of innovation is that it is accepted as an innovation when it has become imitation.

  Piero Scaruffi

  Innovation, Imitation, Accepted

  47 Copy quote

• It is an odd paradox that a society, which can now speak openly and unabashedly about topics that were once unspeakable, still remains largely silent when it comes to mental illness.

  Glenn Close

  People, Society, Actresses

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

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• Exile is a dream of a glorious return. Exile is a vision of revolution: Elba, not St Helena. It is an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back. The exile is a ball hurled high into the air.

  Salman Rushdie

  Dream, Air, Vision

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Epidemics, Order, Movement

  "How to start an epidemic" by Malcolm Gladwell, www.theguardian.com. 2000.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source