Paradox Quotations

Some may claim that is it unscientific to speak of the operations of nature as miracles. But the point of the title lies in the paradox of finding so many wonderful things subservient to the rule of law.

Actions are always more complex and nuanced than they seem. We have to be willing to wrestle with paradox in pursuing understanding.

'The Larry Sanders Show,' it's actually about love, which would sound like a paradox at first. But if that love didn't exist, the darker attitudes would not play. You would have a one-dimensional, cynical show, which I don't think the show was.

It's a paradox to be an actress, living in the city, taking planes all the time, trying to find the right balance in this life, which is not so eco-friendly, and still try to respect the environment.

The oblique paradox of propaganda is that the lie in the throat becomes, by repetition, the truth in the heart.

The paradox of endurance sports is that an athlete can never work as hard as he wants, because if he pushes himself too far, his hematocrit will fall.

The paradox of being in an industry where other people are usually the gatekeepers: publishers, editors - there are a lot of barriers to having control over your career. But coming out of hip-hop, the mindset was always to create your own.

It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.

The paradox of education is precisely this; that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

But I will say that most comedians are the saddest people I know. That is the biggest paradox to me.

After an eternity of seeking the sudden threshold of seeing and finding leaves one filled with a strange paradox of ecstasy and grief. I was born to see.

Have you ever struggled to find work or love, only to find them after you have given up? This is the paradox of letting go. Let go, in order to achieve. Letting go is God's law.

There's obviously a lot of tragedy in comedy; I really enjoy the paradox of what a really good comedy is.

Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want.

Two paradoxes are better than one they may even suggest a solution.

The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism.

There are many of these apparent philosophical paradoxes or contradictions which don't concern me anymore.

I don't really read 'business books,' and I didn't think 'The Paradox of Choice' was a business book. I'm very surprised and gratified that the business world thought it was one.

It is a paradox that as we reach out prime, we also see there is a place where it finishes.

Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America - that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement.

In reality, both religion and science are expressions of man's uncertainty. Perhaps the paradox is that certainty, whether it be in science or religion, is dangerous.

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

The paradox is that when we model future designs on past successes, we are inviting failure down the line; when we take into account past failures and anticipate potential new ways in which failure can occur, we are more likely to produce successful designs.

That's a paradox I've noticed, too: The news business held little romance for me, yet writing about it somehow stirred my affections.

I realise there's an innate paradox in promoting oneself on the one hand and saying, 'Oh, I don't want to be famous,' on the other.

The paradox explored in my book 'The Innovator's Dilemma' is that successful companies can fail by making the 'right' decisions in the wrong situations.

The paradox of modernism is, writers make the decision to work with the continuous present, and to work with... stream of consciousness, as it's called, for emotional reasons, and the main emotional reason is verisimilitude. I mean, this is what surprises people: Life is not in the simple past.

The Spartans were a paradoxical people. They were the biggest slave owners in Greece. But at the same time, Spartan women had an unusual level of rights. It's a paradox that they were a bunch of people who in many ways were fascist, but they were the bulwark against the fall of democracy.

My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.

What are the sources of poetry? Love and death and the paradox of love and death. All poetry from the beginning is about Eros and Thanatos. Those are the only subjects. And how Eros and Thanatos interweave.

If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

The paradox is that I have no love for myself as a human being, but I have immense pride in the music I make, and I believe it has an important place. Others do, too, and the thousands of people with Morrissey tattoos certainly proves something.

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.

My greatest sense of accomplishment has come from having two amazing sons, but it's also a paradox in that the times when I felt like the biggest failure have been times when I felt like, as a parent, I wasn't making the right decisions or succeeding in the way that I should.

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.

'm really proud of 'Sad, Sad World' because it manages to state a very complex paradox of an emotion that I experienced when I had children, which is this great happiness and this great intensity, but with that intensity comes a deeper understanding of the world.

The paradox of romantic love -- that what one possesses, one can no longer desire -- was at work.

The measure of your enlightenment is the degree to which you are comfortable with paradox, contradiction, and ambiguity.

Given the complexity and paradox of family business environment, how is that some firms manage to survive beyond centuries? Family businesses are under threat from both the sides, family as well as business.

There is a paradox because I think you've struck a chord there that we ought to simply pursue - it is true that music is a form of communication.

There is a paradox in pride: it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.

I'm sort of playing a hunch as much as anything. That's the paradox of coaching. You have to coach for the moment to get wins, but you have to invest when you can in the future.

We don't have all the answers. We think our work has pointed out that the mammography paradox is real. We are confident we understand what causes it. We have identified a problem -- a mechanism that is testable. We have not found a solution. But identifying the problem is a major step in the right direction.

It is a tragic paradox that the very qualities that have led to man's extraordinary capacity for success are also those most likely to destroy him.

There are very few events that have significant reach anymore. That's the paradox of Super Bowl advertising -- why does a 30-second spot cost $2.5 million? There is a pool of money which has remained pretty much the same that is willing to bid for those programs.

There's a thing that if you - somebody in faith is always troubled by doubt, and somebody by doubt is always wanted by faith. So it's a kind of paradox.

It is one of the paradoxes of journalism: The more servile a reporter is toward his sources, the more authoritative he can appear in print.

A paradox arises: the only way to meaning in freedom is through boundaries. The only way that boundaries make any sense at all is through freedom.

This is the greatest paradox: the emotions cannot be trusted; yet it is the emotions that tell us the greatest truths.

There's a paradox in every paradigm.

It is not paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications.

We are witnessing a paradox - many new faces have come to power, but the face of power has not changed,

The most exquisite paradox; as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all.

One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner either.

The only laws are paradox, humor and change.

Even in pure mathematics they can't remove all paradox, and the rest of us should also recognize we are going to have to endure a lot of paradox, like it or not.

To fear and not be afraid- that is the paradox of faith.

Evey Hammond: Who are you? V: Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask. Evey Hammond: Well I can see that. V: Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is

To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love.

A paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention.

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.

So much of life is paradox. So much of life is neither one thing nor the other... it's both things at the same time.

Based on our recently released Customer Contact Center study, the most important drivers for these centers are cost and customer satisfaction -- factors that are not necessarily compatible, and may even be in conflict at times. The impact of this paradox ripples throughout the enterprise. Companies must consider the implications and how they will balance the conflict.

The paradox about narcissism is that we all have this streak of egotism. Eighty percent of people think they're better than average.

The paradox is, I can't miss the good things about my father while he is alive, but I will of course miss him... when he is dead.

The paradox is that people are consuming our stuff with tremendous hunger, but at the same time, people are complaining.

The paradox of this vice president is the things that made him so valuable in the beginning and so important to the president - his willingness to take the lead and be a strong visible advocate on some issues - have come back to haunt him. It's almost like everything that's bad in the administration has come back to stick to Dick Cheney .

If you're expecting the constituency during the course of your campaign to get out and vote and you haven't done it yourself, it's almost a paradox here, why would I vote if he didn't vote kind of thing.

A paradox exists in the world of mergers and acquisitions. Other studies that have looked at M&A deals in the past 20 years have found that deals in earlier M&A cycles destroyed, rather than created, shareholder value. Yet to grow to be an organization operating on a global scale, it is almost impossible to do so quickly enough through organic growth alone. Mergers and acquisitions have in many ways become necessary. Interestingly, evidence is now mounting that the deals conducted in the current merger wave may be different. Across a broad range of industries throughout the world, lessons learned are being applied.

They are insidious, ... a vast paradox of personalities and groups, some spontaneous, some very methodical, yet they are all intent on doing us harm.

Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].

The paradox of anti-Semitism is that it is invariably up to the Jews to explain away the charges. The anti-Semite simply has to make them.

Gas prices are the classic pocketbook issue for the average person and the average family, and these are things that they notice very much. It helps explain the paradox we see in the polls: The economy is very good, but right now a majority of people say it isn't. The hurricane, and its aftermath, will only exacerbate this problem.

All this talk about writing is a little bit moot, because it is almost an unthinking process. It is actually a paradox because you are constantly making choices.

You could have the paradox of lifetime job guarantees and far fewer workers.

In a state like Pennsylvania, the paradox is, to win, you have to get the conservative Democrats in the west, but you still have to do well with the collar-county moderates in the east. [Mitt] Romney did fine with the moderates, but not the conservative Democrats. Trump is doing well with the conservative Democrats. Now Trump has to seal the deal with the moderates in the east.

The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox.

It is a paradox that in our time of drastic rapid change, when the future is in our midst devouring the present before our eyes, we have never been less certain about what is ahead of us.

Dangerously well’— what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling ‘too well

The paradox of communism in power was that it was conservative.

That one individual should awaken in another memories that belong to still a third is an obvious paradox.

A street is a story in asphalt - so it's a paradox that the streets are the one place where the movies play fast and loose with continuity, something to which L.A. streets lend themselves as naturally as does the city's psyche.

Each soul which believes it is its own eternal evil will eternally seek its good, but the great paradox is that in order to find each other one should look for the Good and the other for the Evil because they cannot both have the same sense because they are the opposite of each other. The soul mates cannot have the same sign, but, in order to be pairs, they will have to attract, and of they both were Good, they would reject. Thus, every soul mate is the opposite of the other one.

That's a curious paradox that I don't think a lot of people out there know; that you get really scared before you go on. You come out in a nervous rash, and it's not like you actually love getting up there and showing off.

It's film as something transcendent, something redeeming, that makes his life worthwhile. It's a tremendously life-affirming film. And yet it's about not making a film. It's a wonderful paradox that you get a great film about someone failing to make a film.

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.

There is this paradox in pride it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so

For thence - a paradox Which comforts while it mocks, - Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale

I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.

The best reaction to a paradox is to invent a genuinely new and deep idea.

I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.

Ayla, I looked for you all my life and didn't know I was looking. You are everything I ever wanted, everything I ever dreamed of in a woman, and more. You are a fascinating enigma, a paradox. You are totally honest, open; you hide nothing: yet you are the most mysterious woman I've ever met.

All wisdom ends in paradox.

Art has arrived at the paradox that tradition itself requires the occurrence of radical attacks on tradition.

I am Dead, but it's not so bad. I've learned to live with it.

Thinking about language, while thinking _in_ language, leads to puzzles and paradoxes.

I'll just take amusement at being a paradox.

[Paradox is] truth standing on its head to gain attention.

Resilience is based on the ability to embrace the extremes -- while no becoming an extremist. ... **Most companies don't do paradox very well.** (emphasis by author) [2002] p.25f

Here we have the paradox, the potentially tragic paradox, that our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness, but any particular person is not a necessary part of our being.