Quotes About Ambiguity

Speechwriter Barton Swaim cheerfully explains why the opaque may be a virtue. "Using vague, slippery or just meaningless language," he writes, "is not the same as lying: it's not intended to deceive so much as to preserve options, buy time, distance oneself from others, or just to sound like you're saying something instead of nothing.

There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.

Jerry looked at me and then laughed. Jerry was no dunce. He knew what was on my mind. Jerry was a strange friend. He wasn't an easy one to make friends with; neither was he stuck-up. He was just—particular. I don't know why he liked me, but if I could see far enough ahead, if I could only have known what Jerry and I—but we'll get to it when we get to it. It's bad enough we can look back and remember; it would be a lot worse if we knew what was coming.

I referred to the innate human need for what psychologist Arie Kruglanski was the first to label "cognitive closure," which he defined as "the individual's need for a firm answer to a question and aversion to ambiguity."[ 3]

Why do you want the world to be black and white? It's not.

real life is complicated, messy, unquantifiable, contextual, full of paradoxes and contradictions.

Fi . That's 'if' backwards. Griffiths . Nice ordinary name, but two more 'if's lurking at the heart of it. My name, literally, is as iffy as you can get. The only solid sound, the only one you can actually hang on to, is that opening G, and it's not to be trusted.

Aber vielleicht war es das alles zugleich, unter Vernachlässigung des Gesetzes des ausgeschlossenen Dritten und zur ewigen Beschämung derjenigen, die glaubten, etwas davon zu verstehen.

The world was a soup and thought was generally a fork: it seldom resulted in a good meal.

We can never tell what is in store for us.

Do you see things in black and white, or are there shades of gray for you?" "I hope there's gray...Black and white make things easier, but only if you don't want to think.

You are 27 or 28 right? It is very tough to live at that age. When nothing is sure. I have sympathy with you.

Just because I said that's what I want doesn't mean that's what I want. I mean, that's what I want but that doesn't mean that I'm necessarily ready for it.

I don't know whether to punch you or hug you.

after a kiss you can find yourself in that deserted place where even if it's not leading to anything, you and the other person have both admitted some thing that tugs at the friendship, pulling it out of shape.

The world is not always ours to understand....

When everything is bent into a jolly shape, everything feels more mournful than it should.

Instead of toggling between victory and defeat, we have to learn to live in the middle, in the gray area, where a real life can unfold on its own time.

Giddy's answer did not surprise her, even as it did. Knowing and not knowing.

So what are your poems about? They're about ... how nothing is about, they're not about about. --Heather McHugh, 20-200 on 747

You don't have to have clarity," he said, "to take a clear position.

Just when we think we've figured things out, the universe throws us a curveball. —Meredith Grey, Grey's Anatomy

She said that my good qualities were my bad qualities -- this I have come to realize is true of everyone. On the one hand, I was game, eager and perfectly ready to see what was in front of me. On the other hand, I had no sense of direction or destiny.

Her work had been going so well and now it was all going to end.