Top 100 Paradox That Quotes
#1. And that was the biggest paradox of all.
Amy Harmon
#2. They say that family is the place of safety. But sometimes this is the greatest lie; family is not sanctuary, it is not safety and succour. For some of us, it is the secret wound. Sooner or later we pay for the woundings of our ancestors.
Nayomi Munaweera
#3. Here is another paradox: We become better people only when we give up the quest to become better people. That
Charles Eisenstein
#4. Paradox as it may seem, we likewise find life meaningful only when we have seen that it is without purpose, and know the "mystery of the universe" only when we are convinced that we know nothing about it at all.
Alan W. Watts
#5. The quest for enlightenment illustrates the paradox of desire - the fact that you must have desire to be motivated to transcend being ruled by desire.
Paul O'Brien
#6. It's for sure that nobody wants to be played from somebody out son logically bets are something from paradox world.
Paradox is now the comming future, so get prepared.
Deyth Banger
#7. I advance it therefore [...] that the blacks [...] are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.
Thomas Jefferson
#8. The primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.
G.K. Chesterton
#9. When I moved to the United States [from Asia] in 2001, I experienced a more rigid concept of gender, but somehow I was allowed to change my name and my gender marker. Why is there that paradox? How do I get those two things to be the same?
Geena Rocero
#10. It's a wonderful paradox: only when you have a changeless sense of who you are, can real changes take place. It is the ground of your absolute value and everything that is truly worthwhile.
Ilchi Lee
#11. Novikov self-consistency principle, which states that any event that would cause a paradox has a zero probability of happening.
John McWilliams
#12. The central paradox and challenge of marriage is that we have to make family out of someone we're not related to ...
Ruth Stout
#13. In the context of stress, the great paradox of the modern age may be that there is not more hardship, just more news - and too much of it. The 24/7 streaming torrent of tragedy and demands flashing at us from an array of digital displays keeps the amygdala flying.
John J. Ratey
#14. To live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How's that for a paradox?
Tom Robbins
#15. Nobody deserves to go to the World Series more than the Chicago Cubs. But they can't go because that would spoil their custom of never going. It is an irreconcilable paradox.
Bill Bryson
#16. The hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#17. Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you.
Blaise Pascal
#18. The irony is that when we're standing across from someone who is hidden or shielded by masks and armor, we feel frustrated and disconnected. That's the paradox here: Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you. If
Brene Brown
#19. The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#20. An intriguing paradox of the 1990s is that it isn't called a decade of greed.
Paul Samuelson
#21. Florida is a paradox that way, one of the youngest states, yet with some of the oldest European settlements. And this particular section of the northeast shore was home to a couple of the earliest sixteenth-century Spanish and French fortifications.
Tim Dorsey
#22. The strange paradox of science is that it does not explain reality, it explains our fantasy. It is a beautiful thing.
Laren Grey Umphlett
#23. Love made room for conflict. It allowed for the expression of more than one view and invited the paradox that disagreement was vital to harmony. Love required accepting and meant changing oneself rather than demanding change of others.
Jo Goodman
#24. Progress is built, in effect, upon the foundations of necessary failure. That is the essential paradox of expert performance.
Matthew Syed
#25. The second paradox, and the subtler of the two, is that while information is ubiquitous in wealthy societies, it is often too hard to find, to make sense of, and to use.
John Palfrey
#26. The paradox is that we can become wiser and more compassionate and live more fulfilling lives by refusing to be who we have tended to be in the past. But we must also relax, accepting things as they are in the present, as we strive to change ourselves.
Sam Harris
#27. The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#28. The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.
Laura Hillenbrand
#29. The paradox is that by the time you get to be senior, the decisions that matter the most are the ones that would be best made made by people who are junior ...
Seth
#30. Sadly, the things that we have set out as being worth striving for are not ultimately the things that satisfy human longings. And why not? Because we are practically the ultimate paradox: the finite made for the infinite.
Desmond Tutu
#31. 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.
Hugo Black
#32. That's the news from Lake Woebegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
Garrison Keillor
#33. I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being me's no joke.
John Barth
#34. 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.
Robert Browning
#35. Decent folk had to let indecent folk do their thing; that was the paradox of decency.
Piers Anthony
#36. Two identical things do not exist at all, so there is no need to be 'somebody.' You just be yourself, and suddenly you are unique, incomparable. That's why I say that this is a paradox: those who search fail, and those who don't bother, suddenly attain.
Rajneesh
#37. The paradox of questioning is that simple questions can lead to detailed, on-target answers, but complicated questions get you single-word answers from a subject who doesn't want to talk, and unrestrained answers from a person who does.
James Pyle
#38. At which Charion Pratt blushed girlishly, to her own furious embarrassment, yet the eye she cast upon the little coxcomb was not unlike that which a certain toad had once cast upon her: for there is never anything but apparent paradox in the choices made by lovers.
Michael Moorcock
#39. The paradox in Christian truth is invariably due to the fact that it is the truth that exists for God. The standard of measure and the end is superhuman; and there is only one relationship possible: faith.
Soren Kierkegaard
#40. To this day the Oriental Orthodox Church asserts that after the incarnation Jesus was "one united dynamic nature": "at once God and human . . ." Ultimately, a Divine mystery - a paradox.
Amos Smith
#41. Birds that cannot fly high into the sky rejoice exceedingly and sing sweet melodies when they get to the top of the tallest tree on the highest mountain!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#42. It is a sad paradox that when male authors impersonate women ... they are said to be dealing with 'cosmic, major concerns' - but when we impersonate ourselves we are said to be writing 'women's fiction' or 'women's poetry.
Erica Jong
#43. At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about "a public debt being a public blessing"; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams.
Thomas Jefferson
#44. 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.
Colin Wilson
#45. Thanks to the discoveries of astronomers in the twentieth century, we now know that the heat death is a myth. The heat death can never happen, and there is no paradox.
Freeman Dyson
#46. 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.
Clayton Christensen
#47. As far as possible, Arianne realized, each soul had to be content alone before plunging into love, because one never knew when the other would move out of that love. It was the greatest paradox: Souls need each other, but they also need to not need each other.
Lauren Kate
#48. I never use paradox. The statements I make are wearisome and obvious common sense. I have even been driven to the tedium of reading through my own books, and have been unable to find any paradox. In fact, that thing is quite tragic, and some day I shall hope to write an epic called 'Paradox Lost'.
G.K. Chesterton
#49. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.
Soren Kierkegaard
#50. Nobody ever goes to that store to shop because it's too crowded.
Sol Luckman
#51. The sages advise us to study Torah lishma-"for its own sake" rather than to impress others with our scholarship. A paradox of parenting is that if we love our children for their own sake rather than for their achievements, it's more likely that they will reach their true potential.
Wendy Mogel
#52. Sometimes things seem out of our hands. They are, mostly. The great paradox is that this thing is totally out of our hands, or are we creating this as we go along? Then the issue is, "Who is the Creator.
Art Hochberg
#53. The paradox of Steve Jobs's career is that he had no interest in listening to consumers - he was famously dismissive of market research - yet nonetheless had an amazing sense of what consumers actually wanted.
James Surowiecki
#54. The tourist's paradox: how to find somewhere that's free of people exactly like us.
David Nicholls
#55. The paradox of friendship is that it is both the strongest thing in the world and the most fragile. Wild horses cannot separate friends, but whining words can. A man will lay down his life for his friend but will not sacrifice his eardrums.
Sydney J. Harris
#56. It is a paradox that far too few Americans participate in the wonderful ritual of democracy that we call Election Day.
Brad Henry
#57. Surely the job of fiction is to actually tell the truth. It's a paradox that's at the heart of any kind of storytelling.
Jeremy Northam
#58. There is an ironic paradox in that courage requires fear. Fear provides the opportunity for courage. However, one must be willing to face the hard demands of courage, confront that fear, and ultimately triumph over it.
Vincent B. "Chip" LoCoco
#59. The profound paradox is that the great man became more confident in his approach to others, including the man of his own Cabinet, but he recognized that his major confidence was not himself but in Another.
Elton Trueblood
#60. 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.
T. S. Eliot
#61. It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower.
William O'Neil
#62. Knowing that a paradox is required for life as we know it to exist allows me to give up trying constantly to understand it and instead just feel it and enjoy it.
Richard Brancatisano
#63. Here we discover the paradox of the contemplative life, that the desert of solitude can be the school where we learn to love others.
Kathleen Norris
#64. Without him, we are nothing, but the paradox is that we, the figments of another mind, will outlive the mind that made us, for once we are thrown into the world, we continue to exist forever, and our stories go on being told, even after we are dead.
Paul Auster
#65. The paradox of the English country house is that its state of permanent decline, the fact that its heyday is always behind it, is part of the seduction, just as it is part of the seduction of books in general.
Lev Grossman
#66. That's the point of Zeno's Paradox, isn't it? Whatever your goal, you're never more than halfway there.
Sam A. Patel
#67. I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
Plato
#68. 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.
Herbert Hoover
#69. Thus the little mermaid learned her world's greatest paradox: that their currency was beauty, and their coin was body parts.
Esther Dalseno
#70. But the paradox of pain is that it is only universal in retrospect. In the present, it is fiercely personal.
Glennon Doyle Melton
#71. Art has arrived at the paradox that tradition itself requires the occurrence of radical attacks on tradition.
Harold Rosenberg
#72. The paradox of vocation. We think that passion comes first, that our desire is primary; but if we are truly called, the work always comes before we are ready. We will have to act in spite of feeling unprepared.
Jeff Goins
#73. I've seen the future all my life,' she says. 'It tends to work as a paradox, in my experience. You find out something is going to happen, and then you do it because you know that's what happens. It's a chicken-or-the-egg scenario.
Cynthia Hand
#74. Yes, and you've never been able to understand the suggestiveness of paradox and contradiction. That's your problem. You live and breathe paradox and contradiction, but you can no more see the beauty of them than the fish can see the beauty of the water
Michael Frayn
#75. If it were worth while to argue a paradox, one might maintain that nature regards the female as the essential, the male as the superfluity of her world. Perhaps the best starting-point for study of the Virgin would be a practical acquaintance with bees, and especially with queen bees.
Henry Adams
#76. This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.
Yuval Noah Harari
#77. Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
Alan W. Watts
#78. Faith is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal
Soren Kierkegaard
#79. The country is an amazing paradox. In other lands, when a man eats to his fullest day after day, that man becomes fat ... sleepy ... piggish. But in this land ... it seems the more you have the more aggressive you become.
Stephen King
#80. Joy is that paradox where a man so trusts, is so enraptured, as to be caught up and lost in the other, while at the same time, being utterly known by the other, thus utterly himself.
Geoffrey Wood
#81. I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
Mother Teresa
#82. It is an interesting paradox that the more you surrender the credit for something you've done, the more memorable you become, and the more you actually end up receiving credit.
Dale Carnegie
#83. It is a great paradox and a great injustice that writers write because we fear death and want to leave something indestructible in our wake and, at the same time, are drawn to all the things that kill: whiskey and cigarettes, unprotected sex, and deep-fried burritos.
Ariel Gore
#84. Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, tells us that people become unhappy if they have too many options in life. The problem with options is that choosing any path can leave you plagued with self-doubt.
Scott Adams
#85. It is an odd paradox that a society, which can now speak openly and unabashedly about topics that were once unspeakable, still remains largely silent when it comes to mental illness
Glenn Close
#86. The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual.
Pico Iyer
#87. To be terrified and yet unafraid seems a great paradox of worship, but when one has tasted it, the notion of an eternity spent terrifyingly unafraid like that is remarkably appetizing.
Ben Palpant
#88. '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.
Garry Shandling
#89. The paradox is that God must destroy in us, all illusions of righteousness before he can make us righteous
Martin Luther
#90. You cannot do silhouettes in fantasy. Ah, no, you must be faithful. It is, the art, a, what you call, paradox. It is always that you must be simple, and then, if you are simple, you will stimulate the imagination of the observer.
Ugo Mochi
#91. 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.
Steve Erickson
#92. Paradox is a pointer telling you to look beyond it. If paradoxes bother you, that betrays your deep desire for absolutes. The relativist treats a paradox merely as interesting, perhaps amusing or even, dreadful thought, educational.
Frank Herbert
#93. The paradox is that when resistance is fully accepted, the resistance disappears.
Adyashanti
#95. He who writes must master the rules of grammar. He who shoots photographs needs only to follow the instructions as given by the camera ... This leads to the paradox that the more people shoot photographs, the less they are capable of deciphering them.
Vilem Flusser
#96. The greatest cause of evil included all human motives in one giant paradox. Good and bad were so inextricably mixed that we couldn't make them out; bad seemed to lead to good, and good motives led to bad. The paradox is that evil comes from man's urge to heroic victory over evil.
Ernest Becker
#97. It is a paradox of Life that all species breed past mere replacement. Any paradise of plenty soon fills to become paradise no more.
David Brin
#98. 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.
Morrissey
#99. Paradoxes are conflicting choices or conditions that demand equal attention.
Pearl Zhu
#100. A critical discourse that had respect for the mystery of art would look to the sense of life which finds expression in paradox, metaphor, tautology, and syntax.
Denis Donoghue
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