Quotes About Paradox

Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything.

I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. You aren't really there at all. There isn't anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!

A paradox may be paradoctored.

The capacity of humans to believe in what seems to me highly improbable—from table tapping to the superiority of their children—has never been plumbed.

ago he had made a pact with himself to postulate a created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days—since each hypothesis, whole paradoxical, avoided the paradoxes of the other—with a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery.

Mike did not seem to grasp the idea of Creation itself. Well, Jubal wasn't sure that he did, either—he had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days—since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other—with, of course, a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery.

We lived like that "Happy Family" you sometimes see in traveling zoos: a lion caged with a lamb. It is a startling exhibit but the lamb has to be replaced frequently.

Ironia suprem? a vie?ii este c? nimeni nu scap? de ea cu via??

Zaslechl jsem, že bývaly bojové jednotky, s nimiž jejich kaplan nebojoval, ale nedokázal jsem si pÃ…â"¢edstavit, jak by to mohlo fungovat. Myslím tím, jak m?že kaplan žehnat n??emu, co nechce sám dÄ›lat?

Strangely, the best can come from this neglected quarter. We will go to almost any length to avoid this painful paradox; but in that refusal we only confine ourselves to the useless experience of contradiction. Contradiction brings the crushing burden of meaninglessness. One can endure any suffering if it has meaning; but meaninglessness is unbearable. Contradiction is barren and destructive, yet paradox is creative. It is a powerful embracing of reality.

While contradiction is static and unproductive, paradox makes room for grace and mystery.

One of the great paradoxes in romantic love is that it never produces human relationship as long as it stays romantic. It produces drama, daring adventures, wondrous, intense love scenes, jealousies, and betrayals; but people never seem to settle into relationship with each other as flesh-and-blood human beings until they are out of the romantic love stage, until they love each other instead of being "in love.

To advance from opposition (always a quarrel) to paradox (always holy) is to make a leap of consciousness. That leap takes us through the chaos of middle age and gives a vista that enlightens the remaining years of life. It is a valuable exercise to list the oppositions that we face, then try to restore them to the realm of paradox. We can start with these two sets of values: the everyday practical attitudes that nearly everyone agrees to and the religious instruction that we are given.

I must state again: Nothing exists in our human dimension without its opposite close by.

Guilt creates nothing; conscious work constructs a mandorla and is healing. The mandorla has no place for remorse. it asks conscious work of us, not self-indulgence. Guilt is also a cheap substitute for paradox. The energy consumed by guilty would be far better invested in the courage act of looking at two sets of truths that have collided in our personality. Guilty is also arrogant because it means we have taken sides in an issue and are sure that we are right.

The Buddhist says: the mountains are real. The mountains are not real. The mountains are both real and not-real. The mountains are neither real nor not-real.

The fruit is orange, to ordinary perception. The fruit is not orange, to Galileo's analysis. The fruit is both orange and not-orange, to those who recognize that the existential and the scientific grids each have a kind of validity. The fruit is neither orange nor not-orange, to those who recognize that all grids are human inventions.

Prof. Marcello Truzzi, sociologist, from Eastern Michigan University, was editor of the CSICOP journal when it was called the Zetetic. He had a difference of opinion with the Executive Council about whether dissenting views should be published. He says CSICOP isn't skeptical at all in the true meaning of that word but is an advocacy body upholding orthodox establishment views. In other words, their alleged skepticism has become, as my paradox suggests, just another dogmatic blind faith.

The path up is the path down. The way forward is the way back. The universe inside is outside but the universe outside is inside.

It is curious, in passing, that the Women's Liberation Movement, the latest and most revolutionary of these waves, is paradoxically more patrist than much of what preceded it

These thingamajigs act like waves part of the time and like particles part of the time. This basic paradox has remained all through the 94 years of development of quantum mechanics and gives great comfort to those of us who believe no one model or perspective ever shows all the truth or the only truth about anything. For further details see my book, Quantum Psychology.

Ezra Pound had the peculiar distinction of winning an award from the Library of Congress for writing the best poem of the year, in 1948, while government psychiatrists insisted he was insane.)

As Krishnamurti said to Rajneesh, "You want a Rolls Royce? Go to America. Over there, there's a Seeker born every minute." Rajneesh found so many seekers that he eventually owned 93 Rolls Royces.

As long as the Cold War exists, the New Irrationality will have its own kind of rationality, just as Establishment-salaried Rationality has its own irrationalism.