Past Quotations

Are not all finite beings better pleased with motions relative than absolute?
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

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 (1888–1965)

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute. 
Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)

"The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little.  The eternal paradox."
James Clavell (b. 1924)

"The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, seems to betray an underlying paradox. Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparability. "
Donald Davidson (b. 1917), U.S. philosopher. Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, p. 184, Oxford University Press (1984).

"The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo."
 Soren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

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

"Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy."
  Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl, 1952

How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? 
If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. 
One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. 

Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. 
Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person. 

Dr. David M. Burns

Great is Wickedness—I find I often admire it, just as much as I admire goodness.
Do you call that a paradox? It certainly is a paradox.
The eternal equilibrium of things is great, and the eternal overthrow of things is great, And there is another paradox.

Walt Whitman, 1900, 
"Leaves of Grass"

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962) Danish physicist