Paradox Quotes - page 2

The proposition of Mr. Ricardo, which states that a rise in the price of labour lowers the price of a large class of commodities, has undoubtedly a very paradoxical air; but it is, nevertheless, true, and the appearance of paradox would vanish, if it were stated more naturally and correctly. (Thomas Malthus)
In the potential of absurdity, hiding in the disparate combination of the various different subjects which in themselves are nothing but daily items equally in the exclusive representation of a normal item taken out of their usual context, is by far the most radical – in its effect comparable to a Japanese Zen koan - paradox to be witnessed, which modern art has produced, one of the most forceful impulses that generated from it. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense. View quote
Ursula K. Le Guin
Some paradox of our natures leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion. View quote
Lionel Trilling
The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains; this is the first paradox and inextricable knot of our nature. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities. Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being. View quote
Sri Aurobindo
As is by now well known, attempts to form social judgments by aggregating individual expressed preferences always lead to the possibility of paradox. View quote
Kenneth Arrow
Tragic paradox of freedom: the mediocre men who alone make its exercise possible cannot guarantee its duration. View quote
Emil Cioran
Failures of perspective in decision-making can be due to aspects of the social utility paradox, but more often result from simple mistakes caused by inadequate thought. View quote
Herman Kahn
Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually, genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole, of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made, not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right. (Norman Angell)
Our waking life's desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty. View quote
Cormac McCarthy
The most exquisite paradox... as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible. View quote
Ram Dass
By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox. View quote
Galileo Galilei
A society, in the process of moving forward, often appears to be tearing itself apart. Certainly, an age of rapid change, such as ours, produces many paradoxes. But perhaps the most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism. View quote
Earl Warren
New Orleans is a city of paradox. Sin, salvation, sex, sanctification, so intertwined yet so separate. View quote
Harry Connick
Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox in America--that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, this is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began. View quote
Thomas Wolfe
The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox. View quote
James Clavell
It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own. View quote
Herbert Hoover
The basic paradox about sex is that it always seems to be offering more than it can deliver. A glimpse of a girl undressing through a lighted bedroom window induces a vision of ecstatic delight, but in the actual process of persuading the girl into bed, the vision somehow evaporates. View quote
Colin Wilson
The "paradox" is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality "ought to be." (Richard Feynman)
The paradox in the evolution of French painting from Courbet to Cézanne is how it was brought to the verge of abstraction in and by its very effort to transcribe visual appearance with ever greater fidelity. View quote
Clement Greenberg
Gertrude Stein, all courage and will, is a soldier of minimalism. Her work, unlike the resonating silences in the art of Samuel Beckett, embodies in its loquacity and verbosity the curious paradox of the minimalist form. This art of the nuance in repetition and placement she shares with the orchestral compositions of Philip Glass. View quote
Elizabeth Hardwick
Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What a curious picture it is to find man, homo sapiens, of divine origin, we are told, seriously considering going underground to escape the consequences of his own folly. With a little wisdom and foresight, surely it is not yet necessary to forsake life in the fresh air and in the warmth of the sunlight. What a paradox if our own cleverness in science should force us to live underground with the moles. View quote
J. William Fulbright