Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d’être to the imperfection of man and can attain their end, the elimination of man’s innate impulse to violence, only by recourse to violence, the very thing they are called upon to prevent.
The contradiction of hiring an agency of institutionalized violence to protect us from violence is even more foolhardy than buying a cat to protect one's parakeet.
There are two kinds of people: those who believe there are just two kinds of people . . . and . . . those . . . who . . . don't.
Spiritual concepts find their clearest expression through paradox and metaphor.
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
"We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way."
there is no paradox. there is only irony.
I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.
I believe in everything; nothing is sacred, I believe in nothing; everything is sacred, …Ha Ha Ho Ho Hee Hee
Paradoxically, as the mind becomes simpler, it can perceive greater complexity.
"The heart has its own reasons... The ways of the soul are filled with paradox."
~ Thomas Moore ~ From "Soul Mates"
"Perhaps there is a law operating in the universe that the one who bends his mind to a paradox ends up insolubly meshed within that paradox? Perhaps the universe purely operates on wit, and the best joke, inducing the longest fit of cosmic giggles, becomes the operative law at the next quantum mind-shift? If, as the physicist Arthur March puts it, "the world is inseparable from the observing subject and is accordingly not objectifiable," then perhaps undertaking the quest for prophetic knowledge, in itself, causes reality to shiver and shift, as new possibilities open like the petals of an extravagant, multidimensional flower? The message, as I apparently received it, that "a quest to understand prophecy has become the fulfillment of prophecy," suggested some such wild card hypothesis."
...once again we face a paradox, for it appears
that softening your heart and gently tending its wounds
will protect you from evil.
Building a fortress and defending yourself behind it will
only make you more vulnerable.
Healing your own heart is the single
most powerful thing you can do
to change the world.
Your own transformation will enable you to withdraw
so completely from evil
that you contribute to it by not one word, one thought, or one breath.
This healing process is like recovering your soul.
The world is illusory, Only Brahman is real, Brahman is the world
In summary, Jung's emphasis on archetypal wholeness leaves us in search of the hidden God (deus absconditus) in the psyche and nature?' The either-or paradoxes of the moral life are sublated to the both-and paradoxes of archetypal wholeness. This leaves a serious lacuna in the formation of Christian faith and identity. The cross of Christ is "an icon of paradox."" It embraces both-and and either-or. It symbolizes God's identifying with the weak and bringing strength from weakness. Christ, in his crucifixion, fully embraced the darkness of sin and evil but in his resurrection gave to humanity a clear choice of new life over death, the profundity of which Nicodemus could not comprehend (John 3: 1 - 10). The either-or paradox of good and evil impressed upon us by the resurrected Christ places moral choice at the center of our becoming formed in the image of Christ. The eschatological hope is that in the end all humanity will choose the new life given by Christ. Until then, the Christ image will reflect a perfected creation or wholeness that is yet to come.
I believe that we are neither a "self" nor "not a self," but that we are awareness residing as a body. This is the sort of apparent paradox about who we are that may not be solvable within the framework of what we call "Aristotelian two-valued logic" -- the logic system basic to all of Western analytical thought. In the two-valued logic, we frame our reality with questions like "Are we mortal or immortal?" "Is the mind or soul part of the body?" or "Is light made of waves or particles?" But none of these have "yes" or "no" answers. The exclusion of a middle ground between the poles of Aristotelian logic is the source of much confusion. Other logic systems have been suggested in Buddhist writings; the great second-century dharma master and teacher Nagarjuna introduced a four-valued logic system in which statements about the world can be (1) true, (2) not true, (3) both true and not true, (4) neither true nor not true -- which Nagarjuna believed was the usual case -- thereby illumination what is known as the Buddhist Middle Path. According to Nagarjuna, the Buddha first taught that the world is real. He next taught that it is unreal. To the more astute students, he taught that it is both real and not real. And to those who were furthest along the path, he taught that the world is neither real nor not real, which is what we would say today.
"Did God have a mother?" Children, when told that God made the heavens and the earth, innocently ask whether God had a mother. This deceptively simple question has stumped the elders of the church and embarrassed the finest theologians, precipitating some of the thorniest theological debates over the centuries. All the great religions have elaborate mythologies surrounding the divine act of Creation, but none of them adequately confronts the logical paradoxes inherent in the question that even children ask.
A language possesses utility only insofar as it can construct conventional boundaries. A language of no boundaries is no language at all, and thus the mystic who tries to speak logically and formally of unity consciousness is doomed to sound very paradoxical or contradictory. The problem is that the structure of any language cannot grasp the nature of unity consciousness, any more than a fork could grasp the ocean.
Love and relationships are truly one of the most paradoxical aspects of being human. For it is in love that we find the greatest of strengths and the deepest of sorrows. Love can seem to be so fleeting and unachievable yet it remains well within our reach if we only learn how to embrace it's power. To experience true love, we must be willing to open ourselves up and sacrifice part of our heart and part of our soul. We must be willing to give of ourselves freely, and we must be willing to suffer. It is only when we expose our inner selves to the white hot flame of rejection, that love can burn so brightly as to join to souls, melding the two into one, creating a bond that joins forever. It is from this bond that we draw strength eternal and power ever lasting. It is in this thing that we call love that we find the means to achieve greatness, both in ourselves and in our lives.
The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are . . . grandiose thoughts in embryo.
Take away paradox from the thinker and you have the professor.
The paradox in Christian truth is invariably due to the fact that it is the truth that exists for God. The standard of measure and the end is superhuman; and there is only one relationship possible: faith.
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." To this must certainly be added that other saying of one of the wittiest of men: "Good Americans when they die go to Paris."
It has always seemed somewhat paradoxical to me that we must constantly have the Lord command us to do those things which are for our own good.
The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
It is the paradox of life that the way to miss pleasure is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self.
It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.
But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.
