120 Quotes About Ambiguity

Unbidden, the lines from the Book of Job came to him: “Going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it”. He also remembered who it was that had said them.

The lights became stars, which became streaks in the grayspace, and then networks of fading shimmers

To remember that and the white look of the lavatory made him feel cold and then hot. There were two cocks that you turned and water came out: cold and hot. He felt cold and then a little hot: and he could see the names printed on the cocks. That was a very queer thing.

Even righteousness is an ambiguous thing.

The enemy of accountability is ambiguity

Mystics seem to have no shame about contradicting themselves left and right. They blithely proclaim that the cure for pain is in the pain itself and that the cry of longing is the sigh of merging. That's because the path of the mystic reconciles contradictory propositions (such as harrowing sorrow and radical amazement) and blesses us with an extended capacity to sit with ambiguity, to treasure vulnerability, to celebrate paradox as the highest truth.

I believe that when you step into uncharted territory, you are also stepping into total abandonment, potential humiliation, and a space where nothing is guaranteed; there’s no case study or roadmap. I have so much respect for anybody who will step away from what they can do in order to find what they must do. That’s a hallmark characteristic of entrepreneurs and artists. And it’s scary and exciting as all hell.

In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn't puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated. Fiction writers are particularly suspect because they write about human beings, and people are morally ambiguous. The aim of ideology is to eliminate ambiguity.

What does he mean by disgraceful propensities?""Weelll, I should imagine in that ingrown aristocracy it could mean anything from an improper preference for scotch whisky, to a practiced predilection for raping the cat."He chokes on his coffee.