Quotes About Paradox

Der Mensch ist für mich ein Wesen, das nur durch paradoxe, komödiantische Mittel, Formen, dargestellt werden kann, denn der Mensch geht nicht auf wie eine Rechnung, und wo der Mensch so aufgeht, ist die Rechnung sicher gefälscht.

Power is paradoxical.

You have a head and a heart? Reveal only one of them, I say; If you reveal both at once, doubly they'll damn you, for both.

Only idiots fail to contradict themselves three times a day.

Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.

'Evil men have no songs.' How is it that the Russians have songs?

A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch. Hence it is the greatest paradox in literature, the imperishable in the midst of change, the nourishment which always remains highly valued, as salt does, and never becomes stupid like salt.

The living is a species of the dead and not a very attractive one.

L'homme moderne, voulant échapper à tous les maux, tombe finalement dans tous.

S'il est des hommes apparemment bornés qui sont saints, et des hommes apparemment saints qui en réalité sont bornés, et s'il est des poissons qui volent et des oiseaux qui nagent, — si Dieu aime, dans sa création, ce jeu de compensations, de surprises, ce jeu de cache-cache où tout peut être tout, — c'est en vertu de son infinité qui ne saurait s'arrêter à des limites.

The state of ambiguity - that messy, greasy, mixed-up, confused, and awful situation you're living through right now - is enlightenment itself.

If a tree falls in the forest and it hits a mime, would he make a noise?

You can master tantric yogic poly-orgasmic Wonder Sex but you're still gonna die alone.

My last conscious thought was that although I lay in squalor, my mouth was minty fresh.

On the back of every right, there's a wrong looming.

It was strange, how easily and quickly protection could cause destruction. Sometimes, Vasher wondered if the two weren't really the same thing. Protect a flower, destroy pests who wanted to feed on it. Protect a building, destroy the plants that could have grown in the soil. Protect a man. Live with the destruction he creates.

It's like a banana farm for guns!

Sometimes, the answers we need don't match the questions we're asking.

Oh, but I'm a scholar. I enjoy things with curious properties, and stupidity is most interesting. The more you study it, the further it flees—and yet the more of it you obtain, the less you understand about it!

Zane didn't make sense. He didn't have to. That was, perhaps, one of the advantages of being insane.

He was protecting. He was saving. Yet he was killing. How could something so terrible be so beautiful at the same time?

A prisoner could be convinced that they lived in a paradise, if the prison was pretty enough.

Of all the people in the world, he had the least right to be difficult. It was just that … well, he was probably the world's only god who didn't believe in his own religion.

You like lies?" Shallan asked. "Good lies," Pattern said. "That lie. Good lie." "What makes a lie good?" Shallan asked, taking careful notes, recording Pattern's exact words. "True lies." "Pattern, those two are opposites." "Hmmmm . . . Light makes shadow. Truth makes lies. Hmmmm.