The words of truth are always paradoxical.

We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically if we cannot trust neither can we find love or joy.

Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then only a few feet away in the cookbook section just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

Power is paradoxical.

The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and in a sense tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother and to become fully independent.

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.

Before I do a play I say that I hope it's going to be for as short a time as possible but once you do it it is a paradoxical pleasure. One evening out of two there are five minutes of a miracle and for those five minutes you want to do it again and again. It's like a drug.

But human experience is usually paradoxical that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

It is great good health to believe as the Hindus do that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one's dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical.