#paradox

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy. ↗

— George Eliot

#even #experience #human #human experience #incongruous

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things. ↗

— George Eliot

#dead #fingers #handle #happen #make

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress. ↗

— Niels Bohr

#how #making #met #now #paradox

The modern West has been deeply split about freedom and responsibility. On the one hand, it has championed human freedom in many forms - human rights, sexual freedom, political liberty, freedom to choose in many spheres. On the other hand, many of its most intelligent members have not believed that people are free at all, and have devoted great efforts to show that really we are the product of our genes, our unconscious drives, our education, economic pressures, or other forms of conditioning. ↗

— David F. Ford

#freedom #modernity #paradox #education

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

— Harold Evans

#always #complex #more #nuanced #paradox

Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life. ↗

— Fernand Braudel

#contradictions #despite #difficulties #everything #framework

Where consumption is both conspicuous and competitive, humanity will never run out of new wishes. All the while, industry creates new desires that are marketed, in the great fashion paradox, as both novelty and need. ↗

— James Buchan

#competitive #conspicuous #consumption #creates #desires

This is the kind of paradox, I think, of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now, and probably also a Western European, is that there are things we know are right, and good, and would be better for us to do, but constantly it's like "Yeah, but, you know, it's so much funnier and nicer to go do something else." and "Who cares?" and "It's all bullshit anyway. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#apathy #boredom #bullshit #europeans #goodness

As an actor, there's a bit of you that's decided you want to be looked at and watched, but there's a paradoxical bit that wants to run away. ↗

— Ralph Fiennes

#away #bit #decided #looked #paradoxical

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

— John Fowles

#end #marriages #most #paradox #passion