Quotes About Paradox

Speech frightens me because, by never saying enough, I also say too much.

Our faith is not assured, because faith can never be, it must never be a certainty.

simply one problem among others.

For nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity--which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves--we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves. It is this power of revelation that is the business of the novelist, this journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence over other claims.

His touch could never fail to make me feel desire; yet his hot, sweet breath also made me want to vomit.

The paradox—and a fearful paradox it is—is that the American Negro can have no future anywhere, on any continent, as long as he is unwilling to accept his past. To accept one's past—one's history—is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it.

she was disquietingly fluid — fluid, without, however, being able to flow.

The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. --"The Negro Child—His Self-Image," in Saturday Review (New York, 21 Dec. 1963; repr. in The Price of the Ticket as "A Talk to Teachers," 1985)     Europe

Level 5 leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves.

Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.

Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They

Indeed, one of the crucial elements in taking a company from good to great is somewhat paradoxical. You need executives, on the one hand, who argue and debate—sometimes violently—in pursuit of the best answers, yet, on the other hand, who unify fully behind a decision, regardless of parochial interests.

The absence of Jesus is the mode of his presence.

The fatality rate is 100%. But then things get very weird.

The lesson here for me was that one sure way to be numbered among the dead would be to set out on a ruthless campaign never to make anything out of anything. The tragic irony of such an endeavor is that, should one succeed, one becomes someone who makes something out of the fact that he never makes anything out of anything! This maze suspiciously resembles the dilemma of the humble person who becomes proud about being humble.

Thirty-six. If you want to shrink something, you must first expand it. If you want to get rid of something, you must allow it to flourish. If you want to take something, you must allow it to be given. The soft will overcome the hard. The slow will beat the fast. Don't tell people the way, just show them the results.

If there is beauty, there is ugliness. If there is good, there is bad. Being and nonbeing and difficult and easy and high and low and long and short and before and after and need, depend, create and define each other.

Chaos is a creator of information—another apparent paradox.

It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew was wrong. The

Here was one coin with two sides. Here was order, with randomness emerging, and then one step further away was randomness with its own underlying order.

Hugo Gernsback invented pulp magazines and the grandfather paradox. Not bad for a charlatan.

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

I am somebody who has always struggled with uncertainty. And, of course, uncertainty is so core to life. I seek out knowledge to help me deal with that. But I'm also aware that knowledge can be really a double-edged sword.