Paradoxical Quotes

• It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

  Arnold J. Toynbee

  Inspirational, Motivational, Believe

  Arnold J. Toynbee (1949). “Civilization on Trial”

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• It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.

  Leo Buscaglia

  Fun, Educational, Learning

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• We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

  Bertrand Russell

  Education, Art, Philosophy

  Bertrand Russell, Richard A. Rempel, Beryl Haslam (2000). “Uncertain Paths to Freedom: Russia and China, 1919-22”, p.356, Psychology Press

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• The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent.

  Erich Fromm

  Mom, Mother, Children

  unknown

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• The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Believe, Simple

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism”, p.20, Routledge

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• The world is a globe — the farther you sail, the closer to home you are.

  Terry Pratchett

  Funny, Travel, Home

  "The Ghost Girl and the Naked Savage" by James Hynes, www.nytimes.com. December 05, 2008.

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• You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.

  Margaret Atwood

  Attitude, Reality, Trying

  "Attitude". Margaret Atwood's commencement address at the University of Toronto, Canada, www.humanity.org. June 14, 1983.

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• Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he's destroying is this God he's worshipping.

  Hubert Reeves

  God, Nature, Men

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• If you can't solve a problem, it's because you're playing by the rules

  Paul Arden

  Breaking Rules, Problem, Paradox

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• The words of truth are always paradoxical. To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

  Laozi

  Mind, Surrender, Stills

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• The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.

  Carl Rogers

  Change, Appreciation, Hypnosis

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• That government is best which governs least.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Government

  Civil Disobedience (1849) See Ralph Waldo Emerson 29; O'Sullivan 1; Shipley 1

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• If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.

  Lyall Watson

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Wise

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• The hardest thing in photography is to create a simple image.

  Anne Geddes

  Photography, Simple, Creating

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• For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.

  Simon Wiesenthal

  Men, History, Evil

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• He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense is intended is a greater fool.

  Brigham Young

  Fool, Rage, Paradox

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• And now, any of those who refuse, or are unable, to prove they are citizens will receive free insurance paid for by those who are forced to buy insurance because they are citizens.

  Ben Stein

  Citizens, Prove, Refuse

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• It sounds paradoxical to say the attainment of scientific truth has been effected, to a great extent, by the help of scientific errors.

  Thomas Huxley

  Errors, Sound, Helping

  Method and Results The Progress of Science (p. 63)

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• Nothing puts life into men like a dying Savior.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Life, Death, Christian

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (2008). “Sermons on Women of the Bible”, p.274, Hendrickson Publishers

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• I want to learn how to hold the paradoxical poles of my identity together, to embrace the profoundly opposite truths that my sense of self is deeply dependent on others dancing with me and that I still have a sense of self when no one wants to dance.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Self, Opposites, Dancing

  Parker J. Palmer (2012). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.75, John Wiley & Sons

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  Quiet people have the loudest minds.

  Stephen Hawking

  Quiet People, Fearless, Mind

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• After you get what you want you don't want it.

  Irving Berlin

  Life, Desire, Want

  Song: After You Get What You Want

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• Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Time, Past, Gone

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.264

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• The mind begins to boggle at unnatural substances as things paradoxical and incomprehensible.

  Robert South

  Mind, Substance, Unnatural

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 579, Sermons, 1922.

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• So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.

  T. S. Eliot

  Evil, Wickedness, Way

  T.S. Eliot (2016). “The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 6: 1932–1933”, p.225, Faber & Faber

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