Quotes about paradox

To see a candle’s light, one must take it into a dark place.

"Noon sits at the Master's right hand, Dawn at his left. Dusk stands behind, in the shadows. Yet sometimes it is easier to see the light when you stand partly in the darkness."

The color we see is always the one being reflected, the one that doesn’t stay put and get absorbed. We see the rejected color, and say “an apple is red.” But in truth an apple is everything but red.

We are contrary creatures, us humans, but that isn't something we need be afraid of, or even much troubled by. And if you make a list of those people who worship consistency, you'll find they're one and all tyrants or would-be tyrants. Ruling over thousands, or over a husband or a wife, or some cowering child. Never fear contradiction, Cutter, it is the very heart of diversity.

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

“I'm afraid,” he said at last, “that the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can ever be known about the same Universe.”

National defense through war always involves some degree of national defeat. This paradox has been with us from the very beginning of our republic. Militarization in defense of freedom reduces the freedom of the defenders. There is a fundamental inconsistency between war and freedom.

Like all ardent agnostics, Martin was a religious man. ~ Ch. 16

Nothing is wholly obvious without becoming enigmatic. Reality itself is too obvious to be true.

The finest act of seeing is necessarily always the act of not seeing something else.

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.

I don't anticipate trouble and so I anticipate trouble.