#paradoxes

But if a role model in her seventies isn't layered with contradictions - as we all come to be - then what good is she? Why bother to cut the silhouette of another's existence and place it against our own if it isn't as incongruous, ambiguous, inconsistent, and paradoxical as our own lives are? ↗

— Molly Peacock

#artist #paradoxes #role-model #women #age

When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored. ↗

— Wendell Willkie

#become #clear #freedom #ignored #longer

There is in my opinion a great similarity between the problems provided by the mysterious behavior of the atom and those provided by the present economic paradoxes confronting the world. ↗

— Paul Dirac

#behavior #between #confronting #economic #great

Mike did not seem to grasp the idea of Creation itself. Well, Jubal wasn't sure that he did, either--he had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days--since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other--with, of course, a day off each year for sheer solipsist debauchery. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#hypotheses #indecision #paradoxes #solipsism #the-universe

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

No, I'm serious," Frankie insisted, fed up with being silenced. "Why didn't you just make me a normie?" Viktor sighed. "Because that's not who we are. We're special. And I'm very proud that. You should be, too." "Proud?" Frankie spat out the word as if it had been soaked in nail polish remover. "How can I be proud when everyone is telling me to hide?" "I'm telling you to hide so you'll be safe. But you can still feel proud of who you are," he explained, like it really was that simple. "Pride has to come from within you and stay with you, no matter what people say." Huh? Frankie crossed her arms and looked away. ↗

— Lisi Harrison

#danger #family-fights #hidden #mixed-messages #paradoxes

If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if it's done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#time-travel #uncertainty

...they say if you don't vote, you get the government you deserve, and if you do, you never get the results you expected. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#democracy-voting #election #elections #false-promises #government

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

— Edward Teller

#even #may #paradoxes #solution #suggest

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#being a man #forgive #i #make #man