Human Paradox Quotes

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement.

It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.

Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.

It was sometimes difficult to reconcile a man's talents with his personality.

Isn’t everyone’s life a mass of contradictions?

When you're safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

The ugly is very appealing to man. It's instinct. One shrinks from the ugly, yet wants to look at it. There's a devilish fascination in it. We extract pleasure from horror.

We have an incredible capacity for the worst possible evil, all of us, it was that we also have this incredible capacity for good. And that is why we are all of us appalled when something bad happens. Because if the bad was the norm, we would just shrug our shoulders and say "well tough luck, this is how the cookie crumbles" kind of thing but none of us does that.

What is your greatest ambition in life?' 'To become immortal... and then die.

This, indeed, is one of the eternal paradoxes of both life and literature-that without passion little gets done; yet, without control of that passion, its effects are largely ill or null.

When we pray for death we really desire a fuller life.

We are by far the most contradictory of all primates. An animal with this much internal conflict has never lived on this earth.

Man is an intellectual animal, and therefore an everlasting contradiction to himself. His senses centre in himself, his ideas reach to the ends of the universe; so that he is torn in pieces between the two, without a possibility of its ever being otherwise.

Man is neither angel nor beast.

Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.

Man is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.

We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practice the very opposite of the democratic creed.... This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage.

We fear death, yet we long for slumber and beautiful dreams.

Mankind, by the perverse depravity of their nature, esteem that which they have most desired as of no value the moment it is possessed, and torment themselves with fruitless wishes for that which is beyond their reach.

We push time from us, and we wish him back; * * * * * * Life we think long and short; death seek and shun.

A phenomenon often seen. A sceptic adhering to a believer; that is as simple as the law of the complementary colours. What we lack attracts us. Nobody loves the light like the blind man.

(Man,) the glory and the scandal of the universe.

Sadly, the things that we have set out as being worth striving for are not ultimately the things that satisfy human longings. And why not? Because we are practically the ultimate paradox: the finite made for the infinite.

It is clear to me that people often want incompatible things. They want danger and excitement on the one hand, and safety and security on the other, and often simultaneously. Contradictory desires mean that life can never be wholly satisfying or without frustration.