Ontological Oxymoron Quotes

Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons. ~ Peter Kreeft

Bunnu was no amateur when it came to escape. And even in his drowsiest moments, he understood implicitly that to forget his circumstances, even for a short while, meant first to forget himself. Who he was and why he was - to strip it all bare and start from scratch, as it were. In his nearly 250 years of life and, now, as an old emaciated man completely estranged from his family and closest friends - albeit more by circumstance than by choice - he understood the importance of this process and revered it, for there were far greater things to be done and achieved in the dark, uncertain areas of existence than in those circumscribed - and thereby strained - by comprehensibility. ~ Ashim Shanker

An oxymoron? What's that? A moron who studies at Oxford? ~ Johnny Carson

Displacement results in a tenuous relationship with the past, with the self that used to exist and operate in a different place, where the qualities that constituted us were in no need of negotiation. Immigration is an ontological crisis because you are forced to negotiatet the conditions of your selfhood under pereptually changing existential circumstances. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

This one god could be of the deistic or pantheistic sort. Deism might be superior in explaining why God has seemingly left us to our own devices and pantheism could be the more logical option as it fits well with the ontological argument's 'maximally-great entity' and doesn't rely on unproven concepts about 'nothing' (as in 'creation out of nothing'). A mixture of the two, pandeism, could be the most likely God-concept of all. ~ Raphael Lataster

Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial. ~ George Will

When it comes to the real operational issues that govern our understanding of physical reality, ontological definitions of classical philosophers are, in my opinion, sterile. ~ Lawrence M. Krauss

'Feminist comedy,' practically an oxymoron, had a couple of good years after WWII. Chalk it up to the forced female autonomy that occurred during wartime, when Rosie the Riveter went to work in the factories, constructing the Allies' war machines while taking charge of the finances, the home, and the children. ~ Grace Slick

Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this complexity possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word. ~ George F. R. Ellis

A lifestyle involves a cluster of habits and orientations, and hence has a certain unity - important to a continuing sense of ontological security - that connects options in a more or less ordered pattern. ( ... ) [T]he selection or creation of lifestyles is influenced by group pressures and the visibility of role models, as well as by socioeconomic circumstances. ~ Anthony Giddens

Cats were not and are not tool makers the way humans became toolmakers. They are specifically adapted as obligate carnivores, This means the vegetarian cat is an oxymoron at best and a blatant lie at worst. Cats need meat. The concept of a Garden of Eden would be rather atrocious to them. ~ Leviak B. Kelly

The non-commutativity of the underlying process produces an ontological complementarity. This must be contrasted to Bohr's epistemological complementarity. ~ Basil Hiley

You coordinate intel from the alphabet soup that serves our great nation's intelligence community. Oxymoron if ever I heard one. Now, I know I'm an ignorant yokel compared to a fancy DC suit like yourself. But that is your job description, yes?"
"Yes, but - "
"So there's a question on my mind, John. How the hell did you coordinate this into such a colossal goddamn shit-show on wheels? ~ Andrew Warren

...one lives convinced his friends are there, that contact does exist, that agreements or disagreements are profound and lasting. How we all hate each other, without being aware that endearment is the current form of that hatred, and how the reason behind profound hatred is this excentration, the unbridgeable space between me and you, between this and that. All endearment is an ontological clawing, yes, an attempt to seize the unseizable... ~ Julio Cortazar

The digital age is for me in many ways about temporal wounding. It's really messed up our ontological clocks. ~ Masha Tupitsyn

The whole notion of passwords is based on an oxymoron. The idea is to have a random string that is easy to remember. Unfortunately, if it's easy to remember, it's something nonrandom like 'Susan.' And if it's random, like 'r7U2*Qnp,' then it's not easy to remember. ~ Bruce Schneier

It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological erasure. ~ David Foster Wallace

I learned why 'out riding alone' is an oxymoron: An equestrian is never alone, is always sensing the other being, the mysterious but also understandable living being that is the horse. ~ Jane Smiley

And there's no figuring out the unknowable. And there's some kind of oxymoron in that that's more moron than anything else. ~ Sarah Mussi

Let us talk about oxymoron, common sense, for instance. ~ Lois Greiman

In living things, nature springs an ontological surprise in which the world-accident of terrestrial conditions brings to light an entirely new possibility of being: systems of matter that are unities of a manifold, not in virtue of a synthesizing perception whose object they happen to be, nor by the mere concurrence of the forces that bind their parts together, but in virtue of themselves, for the sake of themselves, and continually sustained by themselves. Here wholeness is self-integrating in active performance, and form for once is the cause rather than the result of the material collections in which it successively subsists. Unity here is self-unifying, by means of changing multiplicity. Sameness, while it last, (and it does not last inertially, in the manner of static identity or of on-moving continuity), is perpetual self-renewal through process, borne on the shift of otherness. This active self-integration of life alone gives substance to the term "individual": it alone yields the ontological concept of an individual as against a merely phenomenological one. The ontological individual, its very existence at any moment, its duration and its identity in duration is, then, essentially its own function, its own concern, its own continuous achievement. In this process of self-sustained being, the relation of the organism to its own concern, its own continuous achievement.
In this process of self-sustained being, the relation of the organism to its material substance is ~ Hans Jonas

If Lincoln were alive today he'd be turning over in his grave. ~ Gerald R. Ford

- activity holidays are a whatsit. Contradiction in terms."
"Oxymoron."
I flipped him a finger. "Same to you with knobs on. ~ J.L. Merrow

And then I go over to the Delta Help Desk, which is an oxymoron, and I go, "Can I please go home on an airplane?" and they go "No! In fact, we"re gonna frame you for murder, and you're gonna go to jail for thirty years!"
And I go, "Why are you doing this to me?!"
And they go, "Because we're Delta Airlines, and life is a fucking nightmare! ~ John Mulaney

Mothering Oxymoron: Reminding the kids to not talk with food in their mouths, yet I have food in my mouth while trying to correct them in the moment. ~ Mommy Moo Moo

The Term "a Criminal Lawyer" Is the Opposite of an Oxymoron ~ Carsten Stroud

Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron. ~ Peter Thiel

I took the stairs two at a time. There's a time for decorum and a time to run like a crazed vorpal's after you, except a crazed vorpal's an oxymoron. This was the time to run. ~ L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Dying isn't the only way into the Underworld, but it's the safest.
Well, that sounded like an oxymoron if I'd ever heard one. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Fresh ideas from this group was virtually an oxymoron, Marlys thought, wriggling her butt against the comfortless chair. ~ John Sandford

The wild, unrestricted love of God is not simply an inspiring idea. When it imposes itself on mind and heart with the stark reality of ontological truth, it determines why and at what time you get up in the morning, how you pass your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, and who you hang with; it affects what breaks your heart, what amazes you, and what makes your heart happy. ~ Brennan Manning

When the sun comes up, Justineau is silently amazed. It seemed entirely plausible that this ontological impasse would go on for ever. Through ~ M.R. Carey

Ontological necessity is not a property that can intelligibly attach to any nature other than God's. ~ David Bentley Hart

For many people - from secular feminists to observant Jews - the notion of a feminist Judaism is an oxymoron. ~ Judith Plaskow

There's a FEW THINGS you need to get STRAIGHT about being GAY..."
"That's an OXYmoron."
"You'll be an OXYmoron if you don't listen. GAY men SUCK and FUCK. They don't go around falling in LOVE. At least not with every TOM, DICK and HARRY. ~ Giorge Leedy

Emotional, physical, and spiritual estrangement and ontological and religious doubt inform my personality, my thoughts, and my characters, which are, more often than not, masks for my own being and my being in the world - a world that frightens me insofar as I don't understand it. ~ Norman Lock

From The Twelve Enlightenments
Observe your own body. It breathes. You breathe when you are asleep, when you are no longer conscious of your own ideas of self-identity. Who, then, is breathing? The collection of information that you mistakenly think it's you is not the main protagonist in this drama called the breath. In fact, you are not breathing; breath is naturally happening to you. You can purposely end your own life, but you cannot purposely keep your own life going. The expression, "My life" is actually an oxymoron, a result of ignorance and mistaken assumption. You don't posses life; life expresses itself through you. Your body is a flower that life let bloom, a phenomenon created by life. ~ Ilchi Lee

I find nothing more depressing than optimism. ~ Paul Fussell

What Zen communicates is an awareness that is potentially already there but is not conscious of itself. Zen is then not Kerygma but realization, not revelation but consciousness, not news from the Father who sends His Son into this world, but awareness of the ontological ground of our own being here and now, right in the midst of the world. ~ Thomas Merton

In any event, whether a supernatural tale remains altogether fantastic or eventually modulates to the uncanny or the marvelous, the reader is faced with disconcerting ontological and perceptual problems.
Indeed, the disorienting effect of the supernatural encounter in fiction seems to reflect some deeper disorientations in the culture at large. ~ Howard Kerr

Why do people always say change is the only constant? It so sounds Oxymoron ~ Bhavik Sarkhedi

The most formidable way to lead is to serve. And while the perplexing oxymoron of such a grinding statement absolutely cripples us, it birthed a Savior. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The Sherwood Forest Chronicles
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1. If Robin Hood steals from the rich, doesn't that make them poor? Does he give them their money back? I mean, what the point of robbing to begin with if your mission statement is logically flawed?
2. If the Sheriff of Nottingham is such an asshole, why isn't he the Prime Minister of Nottingham?
3. Why don't I see elves here? Did all the elves of Sherwood Forest migrate to New Zealand to become extras on the Peter Jackson's Hobbit films?
4. Does Little John even know what an oxymoron is?
5. If Smokey the Bear came to Sherwood Forest to make a public service announcement about preventing forest fires, would he leave with arrows in his ass or would the Merry Men feast on bear meat for several days? And what makes the Merry Men merry in the first place?
6. What do you think? Does Robin Hood shop at Walmart or Target? ~ Beryl Dov

Subtly but definitively? Isn't that an oxymoron, you moron? ~ Lauren Gallagher

It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do. ~ William Safire

That's when I realize that if anyone's an oxymoron, it's me. Or maybe it's anyone who claims to follow Jesus. ~ Rachel Held Evans

We commonly speak as though a single 'thing' could 'have' some characteristic. A stone, we say, is 'hard,' 'small,' 'heavy,' 'yellow,' 'dense,' etc.

That is how our language is made: 'The stone is hard.' And so on. And that way of talking is good enough for the marketplace: 'That is a new brand.' 'The potatoes are rotten.' 'The container is damaged.' ... And so on.

But this way of talking is not good enough in science or epistemology. To think straight, it is advisable to expect all qualities and attributes, adjectives, and so on to refer to at least -two- sets of interactions in time. ...

Language continually asserts by the syntax of subject and predicate that 'things' somehow 'have' qualities and attributes. A more precise way of talking would insist that the 'things' are produced, are seen as separate from other 'things,' and are made 'real' by their internal relations and by their behaviour in relationship with other things and with the speaker.

It is necessary to be quite clear about the universal truth that whatever 'things' may be in their pleromatic and thingish world, they can only enter the world of communication and meaning by their names, their qualities and their attributes (i.e., by reports of their internal and external relations and interactions). ~ Gregory Bateson

Honest dishonesty. That's quite the oxymoron – but I like the originality that you've brought to bear in the art of rationalization. Maybe you should consider becoming a lawyer," he added jokingly. ~ Zack Love

In a sane world, a term like "chronic crisis" would be instantly seen by anone as an oxymoron. Nevertheless, that's the state that many of us Western Worlders live in, provoking crisis after crisis so that we can justify our dis-ease rather than addressing that directly. ~ Anthony D. Ravenscroft