Conundrums Quotes

One room is always enough for one person. Two rooms is not enough for two people. That is one of the conundrums in life. ~ Jeanette Winterson

conundrums in biology: this is the fact that our genes, which supposedly define us as a species, but also distinguish you or I or anyone else on the planet from each other, make up only 2 per cent of our DNA. The other 98 per cent had been written off as 'junk'; ~ John Parrington

As much as they deny it, I think people want to be scared. It's a phenomenon, why people want to be scared when there is so much violence and craziness in the world. People still really enjoy being scared. It's a conundrum to me. It's hard to explain. It's an unconscious thing, really, why people like that so much. ~ Dylan McDermott

It is a disturbing conundrum that true free will cannot exist without the possibility of suicide. Then again, it ain't over 'til it's over! ~ Yogi Berra

Usually, the main problem with life conundrums is that we don't bring to them enough imagination ~ Thomas Moore

What is our human dilemma? That the nature of life is problematic. Problems are not an exception; they are the norm. The world offers recurring and seemingly endless conundrums for us to deal with. We cannot stop problems, but we can end our suffering, and we can achieve true, lasting happiness by understanding the nature of our mind and changing the way we approach our emotional struggles. ~ Karuna Cayton

If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The only real philosophical answer is automatically self-contradictory: 'Only if I did not know that I was doing so.' To go through the entire experience once more would be banal and Sisyphean - even if it did build muscle - whereas to wish to be young again and to have the benefit of one's learned and acquired existence is not at all to wish for a repeat performance, or a Groundhog Day. And the mind ought to, but cannot, set some limits to wish-thinking. All right, same me but with more money, an even sturdier penis, slightly different parents, a briefer latency period ... the thing is absurd. I seriously would like to know what it was to be a woman, but like blind Tiresias would also want the option of re-metamorphosing if I wished. How terrible it is that we have so many more desires than opportunities. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Why would I what?" Will asked, wanting another bite of his burger. "Why would you risk your job teaching some stupid fantasy book?" "Because alternative universe literature promotes critical thinking, imagination, empathy, and creative problem solving. Children who are fluent in fiction are more able to interpret nonfiction and are better at understanding things like basic cause and effect, sociology, politics, and the impact of historical events on current events. Many of our technological advances were imagined by science fiction writers before the tech became available to create them, and many of today's inventors were inspired by science fiction and fantasy to make a world more like the world in the story. Many of today's political conundrums were anticipated by science fiction writers like Orwell, Huxley, and Heinlein, and sci-fi and fantasy tackle ethical problems in a way that allows people to analyze the problem with some emotional remove, which is important because the high emotions are often what lead to violence. Works like Harry Potter tackle the idea of abuse of power and - " Will stopped himself and swallowed. Everybody at the table, including Kenny, was staring at him in openmouthed surprise. "Anyway," he said before taking a monster bite of his cooling hamburger on a sudden attack of nerves, "iss goomfer umf." "It's good for us," Kenny translated, sounding a little stunned ~ Amy Lane

We've had exactly five balanced budgets since Alan Shepherd rode Freedom 7 in 1961. If we had put off space exploration until these earthbound social and economic conundrums were solved, our rocketry would be about where North Korea's is today. ~ Charles Krauthammer

There's so much going on in Andrei [Bolkonsky]. He's wrangling with these big existential conundrums, and he tries out different routes to fulfillment. He tries falling in love, that doesn't work. He goes to war and searches for military glory, that doesn't work. He does the quiet life of a farmer. He's always active. That's what I loved about him, he's always looking, searching. He's really inquisitive. ~ James Norton

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and postive action. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

There was no future, only present with conundrums, laughter, and happiness to a greater and more idyllic level. ~ Shreya Ganguly

Indeed, the big decisions in life are hardly ever clear - except for one. And that one is piercingly clear: life is a series of dilemmas, of options, of conundrums, of possibilities taken and not taken. Negotiating these moments well is of the essence of the life well lived. ~ Joan D. Chittister

Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic orbits of flying rocks (explaining our penchant for baseball). A cavewoman thinking too hard about what matter is ultimately made of might fail to notice the tiger sneaking up behind and get cleaned right out of the gene pool. Darwin's theory thus makes the testable prediction that whenever we use technology to glimpse reality beyond the human scale, our evolved intuition should break down. We've repeatedly tested this prediction, and the results overwhelmingly support Darwin. At high speeds, Einstein realized that time slows down, and curmudgeons on the Swedish Nobel committee found this so weird that they refused to give him the Nobel Prize for his relativity theory. At low temperatures, liquid helium can flow upward. At high temperatures, colliding particles change identity; to me, an electron colliding with a positron and turning into a Z-boson feels about as intuitive as two colliding cars turning into a cruise ship. On microscopic scales, particles schizophrenically appear in two places at once, leading to the quantum conundrums mentioned above. On astronomically large scales… weirdness strikes again: if you intuitively understand all aspects of black holes [then you] should immediately put down this book and publish your findings before someone scoops you on the Nobel Prize for quantum gravity… [also,] the leading theory for wha ~ Max Tegmark

It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death
ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us. ~ James Baldwin

A conundrum of music is that music brings people together, yet to become a skilled musician involves a certain amount of lonely time in which you're just figuring it out, practicing. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas

Life is not a straight forward plain ... no linear pattern, simply A to B, and on to C and inevitably ending us up at Z, where we are the inevitably tossed by angels into heaven or hell. Progression is immaterial, time relative. For Jacob, life ebbed and flowed into complex woven conundrums of interrelatedness, of stops and starts and intervening presents transforming over and into elaborate and repeating futures. He believed that at all times man existed with one foot in heaven, another in hell, and everywhere in between and within lay his soul. ~ Nancy Young

Dave Sim said in his latest thing of his, 'when you're on the right track, you'll know it, but until you get there, you have to believe you're on the right track'. Interesting little conundrum. It's not easy. ~ Eddie Campbell

He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension praeternatural. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Most of us don't have mothers who blazed a trail for us
at least, not all the way. Coming of age before or during the inception of the women's movement, whether as working parents or homemakers, whether married or divorced, our mothers faced conundrums
what should they be? how should they act?
that became our uncertainties. ~ Anne Roiphe

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood - it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." Martin Luther King, Jr. ~ Steven Pressfield

It is not a matter of life and death. It is not that important. But it is a reflection of life, and so the game is an enigma wrapped in a mystery impaled on a conundrum. ~ Peter Alliss

The notion of buildings that speak helps us to place at the very centre of our architectural conundrums the question of the values we want to live by - rather than merely of how we want things to look. ~ Alain De Botton

In Maureen Owen's perfectly titled Erosion's Pull, words and lines map, unmap, and revamp our everyday postcontemporary geographies: ironies and ambiguities, surrealistic conundrums, kaleidoscopic comedies, puzzlements, certain and uncertain loves and losses. ~ Susan Howe

China's environmental conundrums will not be solved by changes within government alone. New mechanisms are needed to allow the communities which may be affected by a given plan, and citizens concerned about the environment, to join in. ~ Ma Jun

Job tries to comfort himself with philosophical pessimism like the intellectuals of the nineteenth century. But God comforts Job with indecipherable mystery, and for the first time Job is comforted. . . . Job flings at God one riddle, God flings back at Job a hundred riddles, and Job is at peace. He is comforted with conundrums. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I'm a history geek and I love American history. It's so bizarre and so problematic and I love the many conundrums that it represents. You can go down so many black holes. ~ Matana Roberts

If Murakami's novels are grand enigmas, his stories are bite-sized conundrums. ( ... ) The great pleasure of the new story collection, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, is watching Murakami come at his obsessions from so many different angles. There's a panoply of strangeness between these covers ( ... ) This collection shows Murakami at his dynamic, organic best. As a chronicler of contemporary alienation, a writer for the Radiohead age, he shows how taut and thin our routines have become, how ill-equipped we are to contend with the forces that threaten to disrupt us. ~ Antoine Wilson

My grandfather understood one of the curious conundrums of globalization: exposure creates not only opportunity but competition, and it can make us question and eventually lose our standing in the world. ~ Alec J. Ross

In my approaching old age, I am now supposed to share with you what life has taught me, and in the end to encapsulate for you what is the meaning of life. From where I am now, I find that these conundrums are easily answered. First, life teaches us that, whether we perceive it as predestined or as random, it is beyond any person's control. Second, there is no template for the meaning of life. Instead, the meaning of life is what you choose to make it mean. In making your choice, when you reach my age, your journey becomes an affirmation of the warning that life is a consequence of our moral choices. ~ Miriam Defensor Santiago

Personally, I regard myself as an intellectual 'rebel,' kicking against the 'old colonialism-imperialism paradigm' which has landed Africa in a conundrum. ~ George Ayittey

I think it's a conundrum. If we have no laws on this, people take it to one extension further, does it have to be humans, you know? ~ Rand Paul

A lot of my books deal with very controversial issues that most people often don't want to talk about, issues that, in my country, are more likely to get put under the carpet than get discussed. And when you talk about moral conundrums, about shades of gray, what you're doing is asking the people who want the world to be black and white to realize instead that maybe it's all right if it isn't. I know you'll learn something picking up my books, but my goal as a writer is not to teach you but to make you ask more questions. ~ Steven Tyler

I was never really cut out to be a student, I prefer to actually work and get a project done and learn that way- but I have a huge respect for good teachers and even enjoy teaching ... I am a conundrum! ~ Holly Golightly