The world is a contradiction; the universe a paradox.
The twisty nature of psychic attack - are you being attacked, or did you bring this attack on yourself? - speaks to me of an American cultural paradox we all grapple with. There's the rampant litigiousness of our society, and the desire to blame others for our misfortunes.
The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence.
It is a strange paradox: Humans drown in the water, fish drown in the land.
The paradox of innovation is that it is accepted as an innovation when it has become imitation.
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?
To speak of the impotence of power is no longer a witty paradox.
But in the West it is very easy to dissolve the ego. So whenever a Western seeker reaches an understanding that ego is the problem he can easily dissolve it, more easily than any Eastern seeker. This is the paradox - in the West ego is taught, in the East egolessness is taught. But in the West it is easy to dissolve the ego, in the East it is very difficult.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life, not life to years.
The old knowledge had been difficult but not distressing. It had been all paradox and myth, and it had made sense. The new knowledge was all fact and reason, and it made no sense.
I have a primary responsibility to myself; to make myself into the best person I can possibly be. Then and only then, will I have something worthwhile to share. - I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.
Here's the pay paradox that Why Men Earn More explains: Men earn more money, therefore men have more power; and men earn more money, therefore men have less power (earning more money as an obligation, not an option). The opposite is true for women: Women earn less money, therefore women have less power; and women earn less money, therefore women have more power (the option to raise children, or to not take a hazardous job).
One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.
The measure of your enlightenment is the degree to which you are comfortable with paradox, contradiction, and ambiguity.
It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect.
Two paradoxes are better than one they may even suggest a solution.
Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic].
There's obviously a lot of tragedy in comedy; I really enjoy the paradox of what a really good comedy is.
Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that there are paradoxes in mathematics.
There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.