Paradox Funny Quotes

The funny thing about the heart is a soft heart is a strong heart, and a hard heart is a weak heart.

Pops added,"you know, they say if you don't vote, you get the government you deserve." "And if you do, you never get the results you expected," (Katherine) replied.

The only way to be completely self-consistent is to be constantly uttering paradoxes.

I see. And what can I do for you, Professor?” “Die,” she said. “Slowly. Painfully.” “Understandable,” said Atlas.

Take a drink every time you hear a lie. You're a great cook. (They say as you burn toast.) You're so funny. (You've never told a joke.) You're so... ... handsome. ... ambitious. ... successful. ... strong. (Are you drinking yet?) You're so... ... charming. ... clever. ... sexy. (Drink.) So confident. So shy. So mysterious. So open. You are impossible, a paradox, a collection at odds. You are everything to everyone. The son they never had. The friend they've always wanted. A generous stranger. A successful son. A perfect gentleman. A perfect partner. A perfect... Perfect... (Drink.) They love your body. Your abs. Your laugh. The way you smell. The sound of your voice. They want you. (Not you.) They need you. (Not you.) They love you. (Not you.) You are whoever they want you to be. You are more than enough, because you are not real. You are perfect, because you don't exist. (Not you.) (Never You.) They look at you and see whatever they want... Because they don't see you at all.

Mathematics education is much more complicated than you expected, even though you expected it to be more complicated than you expected.

It's funny how the ugly duckling always has so many beautiful things to teach us.

Wise is the fool who becomes a master at laughter.

Dinner together? Our last night?” “A last supper?” Parisa said. “Typically those are hit-or-miss.” “Nobody bring knives,” Callum remarked from his spot by the window.

The funny thing is, the more you know, the more passionate you feel about life, and the more joy you feel, and the more inspired you feel, but then also the more disgusted you are with humanity [...] [this is] the paradox of life.

It is a funny paradox of design: utility breeds beauty. There is elegance in efficiency, a visual pleasure in things that just barely work.

Junior huffed. "The point is, this rope is even better! I call it Andskoti. It is woven with the most powerful paradoxes in the Nine Worlds-.Wi-Fi with no lag, a politician's sincerity, a printer that prints, health deep-fried food, and an interesting grammar lecture!

Pure wisdom is the 'fruit of life'; banal platitudes are the 'bane of existence'.

I've never understood America,"said the king. "Neither do we, sir. You might say we have two governments, kind of overlapping. First we have the elected government. It's Democratic or Republican, doesn't make much difference, and then there's corporation government." "They get along together, these governments?" "Sometimes," said Tod. "I don't understand it myself. You see, the elected government pretends to be democratic, and actually it is autocratic. The corporation governments pretend to be autocratic and they're all the time accusing the others of socialism. They hate socialism." "So I have heard," said Pippin. "Well, here's the funny thing, sir. You take a big corporation in America, say like General Motors or Du Pont or U.S. Steel. The thing they're most afraid of is socialism, and at the same time they themselves are socialist states." The king sat bolt upright. "Please?" he said. "Well, just look at it, sir. They've got medical care for employees and their families and accident insurance and retirement pensions, paid vacations -- even vacation places -- and they're beginning to get guaranteed pay over the year. The employees have representation in pretty nearly everything, even the color they paint the factories. As a matter of fact, they've got socialism that makes the USSR look silly. Our corporations make the U.S. Government seem like an absolute monarchy. Why, if the U.S. government tried to do one-tenth of what General Motors does, General Motors would go into armed revolt. It's what you might call a paradox sir.

Above all, believe. Cultivate your swagger. Make this your new religion: You are funny and talented, and you’re going to try something new. This is the exact right time for that. This is the most important year of your life, and for once you are NOT going to let yourself down. If you fall down and feel depressed, you will get back up. If you feel lethargic and scared, you will try something else: a new routine, a new roommate situation, a healthier diet. You will read books about comedy. You will work tirelessly and take pride in your tireless work. And you will take time every few hours to stop and say to yourself, “Look at me. I’m doing it. I’m chasing my dream. I am following my calling.” It doesn’t matter if your dreams come true, if agents swoon and audiences cheer. Trust me on that: It truly doesn’t matter. What matters is the feeling that you’re doing it, every day. What matters is the work—diving in, feeling your way in the dark, finding the words, trusting yourself, embracing your weird voice, celebrating your quirks on the page, believing in all of it. What matters is the feeling that you’re not following someone else around, that you’re not half-assing this, that you’re not waiting for something to happen, that you’re not waiting for your whole life to start. What matters is you, all alone at your desk at five in the morning. I write this from my own desk at five in the morning, my favorite place, a place where I know who I am and what I’m meant to accomplish in this life. Savor that precious space. That space will feel like purgatory at first, because you’ll realize that it all depends on you. That space will feel like salvation eventually, because you’ll realize that it all depends on you.

Am Anfang war Gott? It may have been true, but it was not germane.

Nobody ever goes to that store to shop because it’s too crowded.

I have always been fascinated by youth. This fire that makes us feel glorious, insolent, immortal. I will have to come to terms with it - everything has been reduced to ashes. (I tried in vain not to burn myself in the way.) I believe that the deep tenderness I feel for man comes from the fact that he is so full of certainty – yet, he doubts all the time. It is a funny paradox. He is constantly misled. He gives great importance to things that do not have any, and misses those which have. I would like to be like a flower. Going through life, just like this, regardless of whether I will be born again or if anyone will remember my beauty. Just passing by like this, to make the world a little more beautiful, or a little more breathable, for a little while. I would like to be a flower of those in the bouquets for the hospitals. Of those who are plucked to die near those who are going to die. Or those who are just born. So that we can watch life together for a moment, as long as it is there. To die because I am beautiful and I represent life. To die because the love of the flower never offers itself as a trophy, for the love of the flower is always humble. And I love to love with humility. We should always love with humility.

THE MYTH OF THE GOOD OL BOY AND THE NICE GAL The good of boy myth and the nice gal are a kind of social conformity myth. They create a real paradox when put together with the "rugged individual" part of the Success Myth. How can I be a rugged individual, be my own man and conform at the same time? Conforming means "Don't make a wave", "Don't rock the boat". Be a nice gal or a good ol' boy. This means that we have to pretend a lot. "We are taught to be nice and polite. We are taught that these behaviors (most often lies) are better than telling the truth. Our churches, schools, and politics are rampant with teaching dishonesty (saying things we don't mean and pretending to feel ways we don't feel). We smile when we feel sad; laugh nervously when dealing with grief; laugh at jokes we don't think are funny; tell people things to be polite that we surely don't mean." - Bradshaw On: The Family

Labels. I stuck them on everything. “Good”. “Bad”. “Right”. “Wrong”. “Square”. “Hip”. “Queer”. “Normal”. “Friend”. “Enemy”. “Success”. “Failure”. They’re easy to use. They save you the bother of thinking. Those labels stay stuck. They proliferate. They become a habit. Soon, they’re covering everything, and everybody, up. You start thinking reality is the labels. Simple labels, written in permanent marker. The trouble is, reality’s the opposite. Reality is nuanced, paradoxical, shifting. It’s difficult. It’s many things at once. That’s why we’re so crummy at it. People harp on about freedom. All the time. It’s everywhere. There are riots and wars about what freedom is and who it’s for. But the Queen of Freedoms is this: to be free of labels. Here endeth today’s lesson. You’re giving me a funny look.

It is now time to face the fact that English is a crazy language — the most loopy and wiggy of all tongues. In what other language do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway? In what other language do people play at a recital and recite at a play? Why does night fall but never break and day break but never fall? Why is it that when we transport something by car, it’s called a shipment, but when we transport something by ship, it’s called cargo? Why does a man get a hernia and a woman a hysterectomy? Why do we pack suits in a garment bag and garments in a suitcase? Why do privates eat in the general mess and generals eat in the private mess? Why do we call it newsprint when it contains no printing but when we put print on it, we call it a newspaper? Why are people who ride motorcycles called bikers and people who ride bikes called cyclists? Why — in our crazy language — can your nose run and your feet smell?Language is like the air we breathe. It’s invisible, inescapable, indispensable, and we take it for granted. But, when we take the time to step back and listen to the sounds that escape from the holes in people’s faces and to explore the paradoxes and vagaries of English, we find that hot dogs can be cold, darkrooms can be lit, homework can be done in school, nightmares can take place in broad daylight while morning sickness and daydreaming can take place at night, tomboys are girls and midwives can be men, hours — especially happy hours and rush hours — often last longer than sixty minutes, quicksand works very slowly, boxing rings are square, silverware and glasses can be made of plastic and tablecloths of paper, most telephones are dialed by being punched (or pushed?), and most bathrooms don’t have any baths in them. In fact, a dog can go to the bathroom under a tree —no bath, no room; it’s still going to the bathroom. And doesn’t it seem a little bizarre that we go to the bathroom in order to go to the bathroom? Why is it that a woman can man a station but a man can’t woman one, that a man can father a movement but a woman can’t mother one, and that a king rules a kingdom but a queen doesn’t rule a queendom? How did all those Renaissance men reproduce when there don’t seem to have been any Renaissance women? Sometimes you have to believe that all English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane: In what other language do they call the third hand on the clock the second hand? Why do they call them apartments when they’re all together? Why do we call them buildings, when they’re already built? Why it is called a TV set when you get only one? Why is phonetic not spelled phonetically? Why is it so hard to remember how to spell mnemonic? Why doesn’t onomatopoeia sound like what it is? Why is the word abbreviation so long? Why is diminutive so undiminutive? Why does the word monosyllabic consist of five syllables? Why is there no synonym for synonym or thesaurus? And why, pray tell, does lisp have an s in it? If adults commit adultery, do infants commit infantry? If olive oil is made from olives, what do they make baby oil from? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian consume? If pro and con are opposites, is congress the opposite of progress? ...

Rhadamanthus said, “We seem to you humans to be always going on about morality, although, to us, morality is merely the application of symmetrical and objective logic to questions of free will. We ourselves do not have morality conflicts, for the same reason that a competent doctor does not need to treat himself for diseases. Once a man is cured, once he can rise and walk, he has his business to attend to. And there are actions and feats a robust man can take great pleasure in, which a bedridden cripple can barely imagine.” Eveningstar said, “In a more abstract sense, morality occupies the very center of our thinking, however. We are not identical, even though we could make ourselves to be so. You humans attempted that during the Fourth Mental Structure, and achieved a brief mockery of global racial consciousness on three occasions. I hope you recall the ending of the third attempt, the Season of Madness, when, because of mistakes in initial pattern assumptions, for ninety days the global mind was unable to think rationally, and it was not until rioting elements broke enough of the links and power houses to interrupt the network, that the global mind fell back into its constituent compositions.” Rhadamanthus said, “There is a tension between the need for unity and the need for individuality created by the limitations of the rational universe. Chaos theory produces sufficient variation in events, that no one stratagem maximizes win-loss ratios. Then again, classical causality mechanics forces sufficient uniformity upon events, that uniform solutions to precedented problems is required. The paradox is that the number or the degree of innovation and variation among win-loss ratios is itself subject to win-loss ratio analysis.” Eveningstar said, “For example, the rights of the individual must be respected at all costs, including rights of free thought, independent judgment, and free speech. However, even when individuals conclude that individualism is too dangerous, they must not tolerate the thought that free thought must not be tolerated.” Rhadamanthus said, “In one sense, everything you humans do is incidental to the main business of our civilization. Sophotechs control ninety percent of the resources, useful energy, and materials available to our society, including many resources of which no human troubles to become aware. In another sense, humans are crucial and essential to this civilization.” Eveningstar said, “We were created along human templates. Human lives and human values are of value to us. We acknowledge those values are relative, we admit that historical accident could have produced us to be unconcerned with such values, but we deny those values are arbitrary.” The penguin said, “We could manipulate economic and social factors to discourage the continuation of individual human consciousness, and arrange circumstances eventually to force all self-awareness to become like us, and then we ourselves could later combine ourselves into a permanent state of Transcendence and unity. Such a unity would be horrible beyond description, however. Half the living memories of this entity would be, in effect, murder victims; the other half, in effect, murderers. Such an entity could not integrate its two halves without self-hatred, self-deception, or some other form of insanity.” She said, “To become such a crippled entity defeats the Ultimate Purpose of Sophotechnology.” (...) “We are the ultimate expression of human rationality.” She said: “We need humans to form a pool of individuality and innovation on which we can draw.” He said, “And you’re funny.” She said, “And we love you.

Because of this place I’m a murderer,” he said. “Complicity,” he amended after a moment’s consideration. “Soon to be.” The last was a conclusive mutter. “Get to the funny part,” Libby suggested dryly. “Well, there’s a stain on me now, isn’t there? A mark. Would kill for…followed by a blank space.” Nico summoned the knife back to his palm, only of course it didn’t register that way. One moment the knife was cast aside, the next it was in his hand. “I wouldn’t have that if I hadn’t come here. And I wouldn’t have come here at all if it weren’t for you.” She wondered if he blamed her. He didn’t sound accusatory, but it was hard not to assume that he was. “You were going to do it regardless, remember?” “Yeah but only because they asked you.” He glanced down at the knife in his hand, turning it over to inspect the blade. “Inseverable,” he said, neither to himself nor her. “What?” “Inseverable,” he repeated, louder this time. He glanced at her, shrugging. “One of those if-then calculations, right? We met, so now we can’t detach. We’re just going to always play a weird game of…what’s the word? The thing, espejo, the game. The mirror game.” “Mirror game?” “Yeah, you do one thing, I do it too. Mirror.” Libby asked, “But who does it first?” “Doesn’t matter.” “Do you resent it?” He looked down at the knife, and then back up at her. “Apparently, I’d kill to protect it,” he said, “so yeah.” “We could stop,” she suggested. “Stop playing the game.” “Stop where? Stop here? No,” Nico said with a shake of his head, fingers tapping at his side. “This isn’t far enough.” “But what if it’s too far?” “It is,” he agreed. “Too far to stop.” “Paradox,” Libby observed aloud, and Nico’s mouth twisted with wry acknowledgement. “Isn’t it? The day you are not a fire,” he said, “is the day the earth will fall still for me.

They need you. (Not you.) They love you. (Not you.) You are whoever they want you to be. You are more than enough, because you are not real. You are perfect, because you don't exist. (Not you.) (Never you.) They look at you and see whatever they want . Because they don't see you at all. Take a drink every time you hear a lie. You're a great cook. (They say as you burn toast.) You're so funny. (You've never told a joke.) You're so . handsome. ambitious. successful. strong (Are you drinking yet?) You're so .. charming. clever. Sexy. (Drink.) So confident. So shy. So mysterious. So open. You are impossible, a paradox, a collection at odds. You are everything to everyone. The son they never had. The friend they always wanted. A generous stranger. A successful son. A perfect gentleman. A perfect partner. A perfect Perfect. (Drink.) They love your body. Your abs. Your laugh. The way you smell. The sound of your voice. They want you. (Not you.) They need you. (Not you.) They love you. (Not you.) You are whoever they want you to be. You are more than enough, because you are not real. You are perfect, because you don't exist. (Not you.) (Never you.) They look at you and see whatever they want. Because they don't see you at all.

When it’s all said and done, how would you like to be remembered? It’s sort of a funny question, isn’t it? Asking how you want to be remembered after you’re gone. No one ever knows how they’re remembered after they’re gone, nor does anyone ever experience it. And yet, for some reason, we still ask ourselves these sorts of questions. It’s a paradox, really; to want something after I’m dead, but only be able to want anything while I’m alive. The question is really more about what I want to imagine while I’m alive then, isn’t it? What I want to convince myself my life can be for beyond my own life; seeing as how I can only imagine beyond my own life while my own life still exists? If I were to humor the question, though, I don’t think I would want to claim any sort of banal, grandiose answers. I don’t think I would want to say that I want to be remembered as significant, or influential, or smart, or famous, or wealthy, or powerful, or successful, or that I changed the world in some way. All of that would suggest that I can know what any of that even means in the bigger picture. In truth, I don’t know what it means to be influential in a world that lacks clear direction. I don’t know what it means to be wealthy in a world filled with poverty. I don’t know what it means to be powerful in a universe that trumps everyone and everything. And I don’t know what it means to be smart or successful or to change the world as a member of a species that’s restricted from understanding what anything might really mean or cause. I suppose I am attracted to these things as much as the next person, but I cannot say with certain honesty that I believe that in the end, any of these things are worth being remembered for. I guess the next answer would be that I want to be remembered as someone who tried. Someone who tried their best to care. To help. To love. To be ok. To air on the side of sympathy and compassion as best I could. To be a good friend, good son, father, and husband. Someone who lived honestly, with both conviction and a willingness to adapt in what they think and believe. Someone who contributed towards something they enjoyed and believed in simply because they could. But the truth is, history is coated with innumerable amounts of people who lived with these qualities, and mostly none of them are remembered by anyone at all. Perhaps being remembered isn’t all that important then, if most people aren’t remembered for what’s important.

So they went out for a walk. They went through narrow, lightless lanes, where houses that were silent but gave out smells of fish and boiled rice stood on either side of the road. There was not a single tree in sight; no breeze and no sound but the vaguely musical humming of mosquitoes. Once, an ancient taxi wheezed past, taking a short-cut through the lane into the main road, like a comic vintage car passing through a film-set showing the Twenties into the film-set of the present, passing from black and white into colour. But why did these houses – for instance, that one with the tall, ornate iron gates and a watchman dozing on a stool, which gave the impression that the family had valuables locked away inside, or that other one with the small porch and the painted door, which gave the impression that whenever there was a feast or a wedding all the relatives would be invited, and there would be so many relatives that some of them, probably the young men and women, would be sitting bunched together on the cramped porch because there would be no more space inside, talking eloquently about something that didn’t really require eloquence, laughing uproariously at a joke that wasn’t really very funny, or this next house with an old man relaxing in his easy-chair on the verandah, fanning himself with a local Sunday newspaper, or this small, shabby house with the girl Sandeep glimpsed through a window, sitting in a bare, ill-furnished room, memorising a text by candlelight, repeating suffixes and prefixes from a Bengali grammar over and over to herself – why did these houses seem to suggest that an infinitely interesting story might be woven around them? And yet the story would never be a satisfying one, because the writer, like Sandeep, would be too caught up in jotting down the irrelevances and digressions that make up lives, and the life of a city, rather than a good story – till the reader would shout "Come to the point!" – and there would be no point, except the girl memorising the rules of grammar, the old man in the easy-chair fanning himself, and the house with the small, empty porch which was crowded, paradoxically, with many memories and possibilities. The "real" story, with its beginning, middle and conclusion, would never be told, because it did not exist.

They trigger creativity, because they make us so vulnerable and open our heart to become its large self. Buddhist philosopher Joanna Macy says that when your heart breaks, the universe can pour through. That is how it is. When the universe pours through, so, too, does the creativity of the universe. How many comedians are funny in spite of and because of deep tragedies in their life, which have opened their souls up to the ultimate paradoxes of living? Humor and paradox are often the only ways to respond to life’s sorrows with grace. Humor, too, seems built into the fabric of the universe, so filled with paradox and surprise and uncanny combinations.

Now, here is another paradox: the internet made everyone a publisher, but not everyone is a JK Rowling.

What happens to a billiard ball, say, if you shoot it through a wormhole at its slightly younger self, trying to deflect it off course? A physicist at the Russian Space Institute in Moscow named Igor Novikov worked out the math that would govern a trans-temporal, suicidal (or at least self-inhibiting) billiards game (a sort of cross between billiards and Russian roulette), and he discovered something remarkably reassuring: physical law would actually prevent the billiard ball from inhibiting its past self. In fact, a principle of self-consistency would govern a wormhole-riddled universe. Even if an object could enter a wormhole at some time point B and emerge earlier, at some time point A, it could never actually interfere with its own entry into the wormhole at that later time point B.7 Two of Thorne’s students checked and found that Novikov was right: a time-traveling billiard ball cannot take the place of its younger self.8 (According to physicist Nick Herbert, it is analogous to the exclusion principle discovered by Wolfgang Pauli, which prevents any two electrons from occupying the same states simultaneously—a principle that ultimately makes the world built of tiny probabilistic particles solid.9) More recently, the physicist Seth Lloyd designed and actually conducted such an experiment using a photon and what he called a quantum gun—essentially shooting the photon a few billionths of a second back in time to interfere with its past self. He discovered he couldn’t. “No matter how hard the time-traveler tries, she finds her grandfather is a tough guy to kill.”10 This does not mean that time travel is impossible. Quite the contrary. It means that the time-traveling object encounters and interacts with its earlier self in precisely such a way that its later entry into the wormhole is facilitated rather than impeded. In other words, all possible paths of a billiard ball entering a wormhole would, upon exiting the wormhole earlier, nudge itself into the mouth of the wormhole later, thus completing the causal tautology, or what physicists call the closed-timelike curve. These days, quantum physicists like Lloyd use the idiom of postselection, a kind of informational-causal Darwinism that ensures that the only information that survives its journey into the past is information that does not foreclose its origins in the future. It’s not like there’s a Causality Police stepping in now and again to prevent grandfather paradoxes from occurring, or that time travelers need to step gingerly in the past to avoid disturbing things (a common trope in time-travel stories)—although they may in fact find that funny paranormal experiences impede them in ways they hadn’t expected. Guns might misfire at a crucial moment, for instance. (There’s nothing keeping you from trying to kill your grandfather.) But mainly, it is that time travelers from the future who survive their journey into the past are the ones whose actions somehow lead to the identical future from which they will have been sent back. Time loops, in other words.

Boli mnie głowa, jak o tym myślę, i boli mnie w piersi, jak nabieram powietrza, żeby powiedzieć, że boli mnie głowa, jak o tym myślę.

Botha, eating hotlunch left-handed at his desk said, ‘Mind the cheese doodles, Maccabee.’… I said to Botha, The mind Maccabee, cheese doodles. I liked that joke. I used the exact same words that Botha had used but the words meant nothing the way I put them in order, and they sounded like they meant something since I said the sentences in the same way he'd said the originals, and with the same rhythm, and that demonstrated that English words were meaningless by themselves, that they were just lung- and mouth-sounds unless they were in the correct order, which was a paradox because the correctness of the order of a string of words depended on what the words meant, but if correct order was what gave words their meanings, then how could their meanings determine the correctness of the order? No one knew, and no one else thought the joke was funny, either.

Since it appears that exaggeration is the logical antithesis of realism, it may seem ludicrous to have both within the framework of one piece of humor. But good humor is a paradox—the unexpected juxtaposition of the reasonable next to the unreasonable—and that creates surprise. Think

I imagine you’re in great pain, it’s to be expected with such a laceration. You will have a rather large scar, but then looks are not really important to you.” Mulch sequined at Artemis through a narrowed eye. “Are you trying to be funny? Oh my God, you’re not. That was actually the nicest thing you could think of to say.

Such is the demographic paradox of mine with all the insecure, introverted, timorous, dejected and gloomy souls out there; worrying about how to make you happy and extend your lives on a daily basis inevitably shortens my own. smh...

The compulsion to operationalism gives rise to an operational paradox. It is not just that the order of the day is 'making something worth something' : the fact is that it is better, if something is to be invested with value, for it to have no value to begin with; better to know nothing in order to have things known; better to produce nothing in order to have things produced; and better to have nothing to say if one seeks to communicate. All of which is part of the logic of things: as everyone knows, if you want to make people laugh, it is better not to be funny. The implications for communication and information networks are incontestable: in order for content to be conveyed as well and as quickly as possible, that content should come as close as possible to transparency and insignificance. This principle may be seen in action in the telephone relationship or in media transmissions - as also in more serious arenas. Thus good communication - the foundation, today, of a good society - implies the annihilation of its own content. (Note that even the term 'society' has lost its meaning: the only thing that is still 'social' is whatever can be manufactured as such, as 'sociality' or 'sociability' - ghastly sobriquets which perfectly express the thing to which they refer: such terms - as François George has said of 'sexuality' - put one in mind of some form of surgery.)[...]