Quotes About Paradox

Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer.

that when the Platypus was discovered, scientists said it was a paradox. But Pirsig's point was it was never a paradox or an oddity. It didn't make sense only to the scientists because they viewed the nature of animals according to their own classification, when nature did not have any.

what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn't want that because it is all around

Mu means "no thing." Like "Quality" it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, "No class; not one, not zero, not yes, not no." It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is in error and should not be given. "Unask the question" is what it says.

we don't usually see that there's a third possible logical term equal to yes and no which is capable of expanding our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don't even have a term for it, so I'll have to use the Japanese mu.

Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. That is why Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it we are defining something less than Quality itself.

We have multiple dichotomies in our heads, and ones that seem inevitable and crucial can, under the right circumstances, have their importance evaporate in an instant.

Complex and original people know that truth is rarely simple, almost never all of this or all of that, but elusive minglings and mixtures, evolving shapes, with tinctures of irony and paradox.

I dont believe in the Devil, but if I did I should think of him as the trainer who drives Heaven to break its own records.

He felt himself, in a way, torn between two worlds: a solid, bourgeois world where ultimately everything was ordered and rational, as he was accustomed to from home, and an untrammelled one full of darkness, blood, and undreamt-of surprises.

Les idéaux ont de curieuses qualités, entre autres celle de se transformer brusquement en absurdité quand on s'essaie de s'y conformer strictement.

Ideals have curious properties, and one of them is that they turn into their opposites when one tries to live up to them.

Progress would be wonderful — if only it would stop.

A]lles ist moralisch, aber die Moral selbst ist nicht moralisch!

Whoever cannot say "Yes" to life should at least utter the "No" of the saint.

How life is strange and changeful, and the crystal is in the steel at the point of fracture, and the toad bears a jewel in its forehead, and the meaning of moments passes like the breeze that scarcely ruffles the leaf of the willow.

El hombre es concebido en pecado y nace en medio de la corrupción, y pasa del pestazo de los pañales al hedor del sudario. Siempre hay algo.

The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him.

Living, we fret. Dying, we live.

In life, as in dreams, however, things often go by contraries

Perhaps the god who had made the Cat People intended them as a joke. They had schools, but no education; politicians but no government; people, but no personal integrity; faces, but no concept of face. One had to admit that their god had gone a little too far with his little joke.

Remember the Finagle Laws. The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. The universe is hostile. But

Remember the Finagle Laws. The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. The universe is hostile.

The problem with being consistent is that there are lots of ways to be consistent, and they're all inconsistent with each other