120 Quotes About Ambiguity

Words are not only a clumsy and ambiguous means of communication, they are extraordinarily slow.

Unlike meaning, the truth always survives translation.

There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies.

If untruths become part of our language—untruths that in context are intended to be interpreted as polite expressions or figure of speech—then each person is left to decide for themselves the meaning of any sentence. And when language and meaning become subjective, society breaks down. The rule of law becomes a grey area. Commands become suggestions. And how do you keep anyone, including yourself, accountable for actions based on ambiguous language?

I can't be friends with a man who blows hot and cold with the same breath.

It took him almost a half hour to write a message of only five lines. It took yet another fifteen minutes to delete whatever might be construed as ambiguity, desperation, or references to a history that he no longer had access to. Finally, he took a deep breath and hit ‘send’.

Isn’t life a collection of weird quizzes with no answers to half the questions?

It was all very isolating to think about, what people use to define themselves and their actions. And at the end of the day, did it make people feel better? Maybe it did. Maybe it gave them something to grasp at in the ambiguous vein of life on Earth.

The mental mist of ambiguity and the fog of ambivalence hamper human existence.