Quotes About Ambiguity

It's always fifty-fifty, Pete. Like tossing a coin. Either I'm wrong, or I'm right, either you bring us back, or you don't, either Deputy Chiefs are what they say they are, or they're not. Always fifty-fifty. One thing or the other is always true.

Could a person believe so strongly one way, yet take the opposite route?

Hope is ambiguous, but fear is precious.

I don't remember lighting this cigarette and I don't remember if I'm here alone or waiting for someone.

This again is a probabilistic process whose future is difficult to predict but whose past is easy to understand.

first no one knew exactly how to interpret

Random events often look like nonrandom events, and in interpreting human affairs we must take care not to confuse the two.

Just as, looking at a Rorschach blot, you might see Madonna and I, a duck-billed platypus, the data we encounter in business, law, medicine, sports, the media, or your child's third-grade report card can be read in many ways. Yet interpreting the role of chance in an event is not like intepreting a Rorschach blot; there are right ways and wrong ways to do it.

After the event, of course, a signal is always crystal clear; we can now see what disaster it was signaling…. But before the event it is obscure and pregnant with conflicting meanings."6

Scully could see that Mulder might be a nice guy. Well-meaning. Talented. With his heart in the right place. But his head was definitely screwed on wrong.

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. 'Which road do I take?' she asked. 'Where do you want to go?' was his response. 'I don't know,' Alice answered. 'Then,' said the cat, 'it doesn't matter.

A dream is not reality but who's to say which is which?

Well, then,' the Cat went on, 'you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.

If there's no meaning in it, said the King, that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. And yet I don't know, he went on [...]; I seem to see some meaning in them, after all.

Then it doesn't matter which way you walk...-so long as I get somewhere.

For instance, take the two words fuming and furious. Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards fuming, you will say fuming-furious; if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards furious, you will say furious-fuming; but if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say frumious.

it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don't exactly know what they are!

To begin with, said the Cat, a dog's not mad. You grant that? I suppose so, said Alice Well, then, the Cat went on, you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad. I call it purring, not growling, said Alice. Call it what you like, said the Cat.

Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?' and sometimes, 'Do bats eat cats?' for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question, it didn't much matter which way she put it.

Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don't exactly know what they are!

The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I— I hardly know, sir, just at present — at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.

Poderia me dizer, por favor, que caminho devo tomar para ir embora daqui?" "Depende bastante de para onde quer ir, respondeu o Gato." "Não me importa muito para onde, disse Alice." "Então não importa que caminho tome, disse o Gato." "Contanto que eu chegue a algum lugar, Alice acrescentou à guisa de explicação." "Oh, isso você vai conseguir, afirmou o Gato, desde que ande bastante.

You look a little shy; let me introduce you to that leg of mutton,' said the Red Queen. 'Alice—Mutton; Mutton—Alice.' The leg of mutton got up in the dish and made a little bow to Alice; and Alice returned the bow, not knowing whether to be frightened or amused.