Quotes About Ambiguity

If negative meant positive we'd be heroes.

One is least sure of one's self, sometimes, when one is most positive.

As an actor, you know, I love not being pigeonholed, which is great. No one really knows who I am. So that's a positive.

Art is a house that tries to be haunted.

Not getting a straight answer is a straight answer.

life is hard to explain, difficult to understand but you still need life.

To be first in the Middle East is not enough. We must raise ourselves to the level of a great world power.

An order that can be misunderstood, will be misunderstood.

Men seldom rise from low condition to high rank without employing either force or fraud, unless that rank should be attained either by gift or inheritance.

You know, kid, ethics isn't about choosing between right and wrong; it's about choosing between grey and grey. It's about choosing between two equally desirable but mutually exclusive courses of action. Freedom or security? Courage or comfort? Self-examination or blissful happiness? Column A or Column B?

The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer.

That day at chemo, we talked once more about the ending of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. "I just really want to know which character dies. I've read the ending again and again," I said. "I hate not knowing." "I do too. That's why I always read endings first. But sometimes you just can't know what's going to happen, even when you know everything there is to know. So you prepare for the worst but hope for the best.

No escape--like life itself.

Working behind the scenes to advance his candidacy, Hamilton seemed unfazed by the fact that virtually all other commissions were going to native New Yorkers of wealth and social position. Here was a bastard, a newcomer who had arrived as an orphaned immigrant little more than three years earlier. But he was a nova whose writing, speaking, and fighting talents had dazzled more timid men with better claims on command.

You're a true poet: but, my dear, If you would hold the public ear, Remember to be not too clear. Be strange, be verbally intense; Words matter ten times more than sense; In clear streams, under sunny skies, The fish you angle for won't rise; In turbid water, cloudy weather, They'll rush to you by shoals together.

There are only two kinds of investors: those who don't know where the market is headed, and those who don't know that they don't know. Then again, there is a third kind: those who know they don't know, but whose livelihoods depend on appearing to know.

The most universal and effectual way of discovering the true meaning of a law, when the words are dubious, is by considering the reason and spirit of it.

There is no idea so right that there is nothing wrong about it, And nothing so wrong that there isn't something right about it. ~William Blake~

There are things in life we don't understand, and when we meet them, all we can do is let them alone.

Maybe this is what life is like - we try to see clearly but what we see is never clear and is never going to be. The more we strive the murkier it becomes. All we are left with are approximations, nuances, multitudes of plausible explanations. Take your pick.

Lacking clear systems and signals, the neutral zone is a chaotic time, but this lack is also the reason the neutral zone is more hospitable to new ideas than settled times. Because the neutral zone automatically puts people into Bessemer's situation, it is a time that is ripe with creative opportunity.

restrain the natural impulse in times of ambiguity and disorganization to push prematurely for certainty and closure. It is tempting to rally around, to have "everyone pulling together," in the neutral zone, but be careful that you don't unwittingly squeeze out dissent or other ways of thinking.

Review policies and procedures to see that they are adequate to deal with the confusing fluidity of the neutral zone. The "rules" under which you operate were set up to govern ongoing operations when things weren't changing as much as they are now.

Given the ambiguities of the neutral zone, it is easy for people to become polarized: some want to rush forward and others want to go back to the old ways.