Quotes About Paradox

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.

When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.

He was seeing the final contradiction, the grotesque absurdity at the end of the irrationalists' game

Nefertiti is a face without a queen; Cleopatra is a queen without a face.

I always thought there would be ice in hell

Anyhow, the criterion of common sense was never applicable to the history of the human race. Averroës, Kant, Socrates, Newton, Voltaire, could any of them have believed it possible that in the twentieth century the scourge of cities, the poisoner of lungs, the mass murderer and idol of millions would be a metal receptacle on wheels, and that people would actually prefer being crushed to death inside it during frantic weekends exoduses instead of staying, safe and sound, at home?

But how can I use a method to discredit that very method, if the method is discreditable?

And then there were the imaginary dragons, and the a-, anti- and minus- dragons (colloquially termed nots, noughts and oughtn'ts by the experts), the minuses being the most interesting on account of the well-known dracological paradox: when two minuses hypercontiguate (an operation in the algebra of dragons corresponding roughly to simple multiplication), the product is 0.6 dragon, a real nonplusser.

siempre y en todas partes es lo mismo que nunca y en ningún lugar.

Barry was born clever enough at gaining a fortune, but incapable of keeping one. For the qualities and energies which lead a man to achieve the first are often the very cause of his ruin in the latter case.

Postmodernism is the Enlightenment gone mad.

There's a kind of Gödel's Theorem in human affairs: Every attempt to systemize life or to govern it by a set of axioms rich enough to encompass the totality of experience leads to a contradiction.

Love is not only an energizing force, but an individualizing force. It dissolves separation and yet creates individuality. It is, again, the primal paradox.

Oh, just some crap about the essential paradox of man: How we refuse to juxtapose the absolute to the relative, and some other some-such about paradox as an ontological definition which expresses the relation between an existing cognitive spirit and eternal truth—You know, bullshit.

War creates many strange juxtapositions, perhaps none stranger than this: men who are doing their utmost to kill other men can transform in a split second into lifesavers. Soldiers who encounter a wounded man (often an enemy) become tender, caring angels of mercy. The urge to kill and the urge to save sometimes run together simultaneously.

Not only are we inescapably alone in the realms of our private thoughts, perceptions and feelings, but we are also, paradoxically, inescapably together in a world with others.

A lot of it is good, but a lot of it is bad. Again, I don't know why this always happens.

If you're saying farewell to your arms, what do you use to wave goodbye?

The next sentence is false. The previous sentence is true. I'll wait while your heads explode.

What punishments of God are not gifts

He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid.

It was surprising that Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process in the midst of so much devilment.

It was wrong to do this, said the angel. You should live like a flower, Holding malice like a puppy, Waging war like a lambkin. Not so, quoth the man Who had no fear of spirits; It is only wrong for angels Who can live like the flowers, Holding malice like the puppies, Waging war like the lambkins.

the conflicts made him an indecisive mediator - a man, as someone had once observed, who couldn't keep his feet out of the shit on either side because he couldn't get the fencepost out of his ass.