Dilemma Quotation Quotes

Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely that man was created in God's image. Either/or: either man was created in God's image - and has intestines! - or God lacks intestines and man is not like him. The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the Great Gnostic master Valentinus resolved the damnable dilemma by claiming that Jesus "ate and drank, but did not defecate." Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the creator of man.

Millions of business people are each constantly forced to choose between their desire to not be a bad person and their desire to be a good business person, that is to say, to make as much money as they possibly can by maximizing their revenue while minimizing the cost of producing whatever it is that they sell.

And the conclusion is: Survive to reach it! Survive! At any price! This is simply a turn of phrase, a sort of habit of speech: "at any price." But then the words swell up with their full meaning, and an awesome vow takes shape: to survive at any price. And whoever takes that vow, whoever does not blink before its crimson burst—allows his own misfortune to overshadow both the entire common misfortune and the whole world. This is the great fork of camp life. From this point the roads go to the right and to the left. One of them will rise and the other will descend. If you go to the right—you lose your life, and if you go to the left—you lose your conscience.

Going through all these quotations, it may be thought that the critics are justified in charging Zen with advocating a philosophy of pure negation, but nothing is so far from Zen as this criticism would imply. For Zen always aims at grasping the central fact of life, which can never be brought to the dissecting table of the intellect. To grasp this central fact of life, Zen is forced to propose a series of negations. Mere negation, however, is not the spirit of Zen, but as we are so accustomed to the dualistic way of thinking, this intellectual error must be cut at its root. Naturally Zen would proclaim, "Not this, not that, not anything." But we may insist upon asking Zen what it is that is left after all these denials, and the master will perhaps on such an occasion give us a slap in the face, exclaiming, "You fool, what is this?" Some may take this as only an excuse to get away from the dilemma, or as having no more meaning than a practical example of ill-breeding. But when the spirit of Zen is grasped in its purity, it will be seen what a real thing that slap is. For here is no negation, no affirmation, but a plain fact, a pure experience, the very foundation of our being and thought. All the quietness and emptiness one might desire in the midst of most active mentation lies therein. Do not be carried away by anything outward or conventional. Zen must be seized with bare hands, with no gloves on.

Life has an amazing ability to make our choices terribly difficult: For example, sometimes it makes the port wonderful, but it also makes the sea wonderful, leaving the person stuck in the dilemma of whether to stay in the port or go to the sea!

Yes, the train wants to leave the path drawn for it, because he wants to be free, but that would be the end of his life! The poor train lives with this dilemma all his life!

Julia looked at her watch. "Lunchtime," she announced, opening the picnic basket she had packed at the bed and breakfast. "Anybody besides me hungry?" "I'm always hungry," Giordino called out from the back of the boat. "Amazing." Pitt shook his head incredulously. "At twelve feet away, outside in a breeze with the roar of the outboard motor, he can still hear the mere mention of food." "What delicacies have you prepared?" Giordino asked Julia, having dragged himself to the cabin doorway. "Apples, granola bars, carrots, and herbal ice tea. You have your choice between hummus and avocado sandwiches. It's what I call a healthy lunch." Every man on the boat looked at each of the others with utter horror. She couldn't have received a more unpalatable reaction if she had said she was volunteering their services as diaper changers at a day care center. Out of deference to Julia none of the men said anything negative, since she went to the bother of fixing lunch. The fact that she was a woman and their mothers had raised them all as gentlemen added to the dilemma. Giordino, however, did not come from the old school. He complained vociferously. "Hummus and avocado sandwiches," he said disgustedly. "I'm going to throw myself off the boat and swim to the nearest Burger King...

British writer George Bernard Shaw as having said, "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the circumstances. Unreasonable people adapt the circumstances to themselves. Progress depends on unreasonable people." I think it is appropriate to mention this quotation again here because it highlights the dilemma that confronts us when we seriously consider making fundamental changes in how we live, how we work, our business culture and our practices for coordination. It suggests that if we expect anything to change, we need to be unreasonable. More specifically, we need to make unreasonable commitments. If we only commit to what we think is reasonable or feasible, we are, by definition, making commitments to more of the same—to living in the cultural drift. "Reasons" are, by definition, products of past experience and common understandings for why things happen and what is or is not possible. Being unreasonable is not the same as being unrealistic. Being unreasonable means acting in a manner that is inconsistent with conventional wisdom and common sense. Any example of significant change began with someone making a commitment to a possibility that was viewed as unreasonable or impossible at the time. Commitment is the difference between living in a context of responsibility for creating the future versus living in a context of reasonableness in which we must cope with whatever the circumstances give us.