“Paradoxes explain everything. Since they do, they cannot be explained.”

—  Gene Wolfe

Volume 1, Ch. 9
Fiction, The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Paradoxes explain everything. Since they do, they cannot be explained." by Gene Wolfe?
Gene Wolfe photo
Gene Wolfe 102
American science fiction and fantasy writer 1931–2019

Related quotes

“Needless to say, there is no formal or mathematical content to ID—a “theory” that explains everything, explains nothing, and predicts nothing. ID cannot explain why millions of species were created and then became extinct. Even more importantly, it cannot explain “mistakes” in the design of living organisms such as us.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari (1948) Israeli computer scientist

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 2, “Just a Theory: What Scientists Do” (p. 39)

C.G. Jung photo

“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“Agree with everything, explain nothing, then do what is best for you.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

Robert Fulghum photo

“You can't always explain everything you do to everybody, you know.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986)

Michelangelo Antonioni photo

“You mustn't ask me to explain everything I do. I can't. That's that.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

Encountering Directors interview (1969)
Context: You mustn't ask me to explain everything I do. I can't. That's that. How can I say why at a certain moment I needed this. How can I explain why I needed a confusion of colors?

Jorge Majfud photo

“Terrorism is not justified with anything, but it’s explained with everything.”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

Hiedra (March 2015) https://issuu.com/revistahiedra/docs/hiedra_issuu/53

Donald Ervin Knuth photo

“Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do.”

Donald Ervin Knuth Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About

Foreword to the book A=B http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~wilf/AeqB.html (1996)
Source: Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About

Joseph Joubert photo

“You want to explain everything by the facts that are known to you. But the facts that are not known to you? What do they say?”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist
Willem de Sitter photo

“The inconsistency of first explaining matter by atoms and then explaining atoms by matter was only slowly realised, and it is only comparatively recently that we have come to see that there is nothing paradoxical in the fact that an atom or an electron, which are not matter, may have properties different from those of matter, and must be allowed to do things that a material particle could not do.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Edward Gorey photo

“Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is left after you have explained everything else.”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

Source: Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

Related topics