Paradox

“Paradox is the sharpest scalpel in the satchel of science. Nothing concentrates the mind as effectively, regardless of whether it pits two competing theories against each other, or theory against observation, or a compelling mathematical deduction against ordinary common sense.”

“I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't get us very far.”

“It seems a little paradoxical to construct a configuration space with the coordinates of points which do not exist.”

“Paradoxes often arise because theory routinely refuses to be subordinate to reality.”

“Since the beginning of time tricksters (the mythological origin of all clowns) have embraced life's paradoxes, creating coherence through confusion — adding disorder to the world in order to expose its lies and speak the truth.”

“The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox.”

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

“The Greeks observed a paradox about the dyad: While it appears separate from unity, its opposite poles remember their source and attract each other in an attempt to merge and return to the state of unity. The dyad simultaneously divides and unites, repels and attracts, separates and returns.”

“Paradox, a thing that seems strange, absurd and contrary to common Opinion: In Rhetorick, Paradoxon is something cast in by the by, contrary to the Opinion or Expectation of the Auditors, and otherwise call'd Hypomone.Paradoxol or Paradoxical, belonging to a Paradox, surprizing.”

“The best paradoxes raise questions about what kinds of contradictions can occur — what species of impossibilities are possible.”

“Paradox is thus a much deeper and universal concept than the ancients would have dreamed. Rather than an oddity, it is a mainstay of the philosophy of science.”

“The assumption that anything true is knowable is the grandfather of paradoxes.”

“A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.”

“These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i' the alehouse.”

“You undergo too strict a paradox,Striving to make an ugly deed look fair.”

“More than any other Hellenic thinker, Julian insisted on the virtue of paradox and on the importance of the search for religious truth.”

“PARADOX: A statement that reduces the matter at hand to complete obscurity while clarifying it. … Paradoxes are sensitive and can be routed by sneering.”

“Paradoxes explain everything. Since they do, they cannot be explained.”

“For thence, — a paradoxA brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.”

“Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my friend, the Historian, in one of his flashing moments: "Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries."”

“The mind begins to boggle at unnatural substances as things paradoxical and incomprehensible.”