If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don’t. It’s like...

This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to...

And this is the strangest of all paradoxes of the human adventure; we live inside all experience, but we are permitted to bear witness only to the outside. Such is the riddle of life and...

It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the...

I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.

I’m a kindhearted but highly competitive pragmatist. When I seek to win something, I always make certain it’s never at the expense of anything more serious than the inadequate efforts of others.

No, I’m serious,” Frankie insisted, fed up with being silenced. “Why didn’t you just make me a normie?”Viktor sighed. “Because that’s not who we are. We’re special. And I’m very proud that. You should be,...

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

A deeper thought on the surface is exactly the paradox we need.

Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them.

But if a role model in her seventies isn’t layered with contradictions – as we all come to be – then what good is she? Why bother to cut the silhouette of another’s existence and...

Paradoxes are less paradoxical in their reference to truth than most of the most plausible axioms.

Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution.

Intelligence is to spot paradoxes. Wisdom is to live by them.