Quotes About Paradox

There are two sorts of truth: trivialities, where opposites are clearly absurd, and profound truths, recognised by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth

I am astonished, disappointed, pleased with myself. I am distressed, depressed, rapturous. I am all these things at once and cannot add up the sum.

Love is an open secret, the most obvious thing in the world and the most hidden, with no why to how it keeps its mystery.

Even this is paradoxical because even though the ego does all the spiritual practice in the beginning, it's the Truth that has orchestrated it all.

The wisest of the wicked schemes are actually foolish.

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable.

The Germans only have one player under 22, and he's 23!

To answer that question honestly, I'd have to lie to you.

La idea de crear una sociedad pacífica por medio de un conflicto armado parecía estar irremediablemente condenada al fracaso por su misma contradicción.

Charles II once invited the members of the Royal Society to explain to him why a dead fish weighs more than the same fish alive; a number of subtle explanations were offered to him. He then pointed out that it does not.

And he began to see his world as an amusing place where ridiculous things happened and where a man or woman could obey all the rules and avoid all the perils but still fall into some absurd situation at which their neighbors and the spirits themselves had to laugh and not furtively either but with great guffaws. The world was tragic, and fine men and strong animals died arbitrarily, but it was also so preposterous that sometimes the crests of mountains seemed to bend together in laughter.

Even monsters are beautiful.

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?

The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks. How nonphysicists would scoff if they were able to follow the odd course of developments!

The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks.

I am very conscious of the fact that our feelings and strivings are often contradictory and obscure and that they cannot be expressed in easy and simple formulas.

This is the paradox presented by every general library: that if, to a lesser or greater extent, it intends to accumulate and preserve as comprehensive as possible a record of the world, then ultimately its task must be redundant, since it can only be satisfied when the library's borders coincide with those of the world itself.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.

There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.

We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.

The firelight touches and transfigures her face, and we see, concretely illustrated, the impossible paradox and supreme truth—that perception is (or at least can be, ought to be) the same as Revelation, that Reality shines out of every appearance, that the One is totally, infinitely present in all particulars.

The truth is paradoxical; but man's passion for rational coherence is even stronger than his love of truth.

Simplicity is no virtue unless you are potentially complicated.