#1
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?".
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#3
“The beginning of the end,” “less is more,” “silence speaks volumes,” or “it is better to give than to receive.” While reading, we often come across phrases like these that just don’t make sense at first glance. However, after a careful look, we can understand what they are really trying to say.
That’s basically a paradox, which is a powerful literary device. Writers often use it to push readers to question their opinions and challenge their assumptions. It is generally defined as a statement or concept that seems contradictory, but, when inspected closely, reveals a deeper truth. Its ability to open a whole new door of meaning is what renders it so fascinating.
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When you look at the word’s etymology, Merriam-Webster sheds light on its Greek roots. These people were all too aware of how a paradox could take us outside our usual way of thinking. They basically combined the prefix “para” (meaning beyond or outside of) with the verb “dokein” (meaning to think), forming “paradoxos,” an adjective meaning “contrary to expectation.”
Latin speakers used that word as the basis for the noun paradoxum. Later, English speakers borrowed it in the 1500s as “paradox.” Research shows the earliest evidence for paradox dates to 1533, in the writing of Thomas More, a lord chancellor, humanist, and martyr.
#7
She's suggesting it's not about them but the song is entirely about them.
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"The Paradox of the Court, also known as the counterdilemma of Euathlus, is a very old problem in logic stemming from ancient Greece. It is said that the famous sophist Protagoras took on a pupil, Euathlus, on the understanding that the student pay Protagoras for his infrastructure after he wins his first court case. After instruction, Euathlus decided to not enter the profession of law, and Protagoras decided to sue Euathlus for the amount owed.
Protagoras argued that if he won the case he would be paid his money. If Euathlus won the case, Protagoras would still be paid according to the original contract, because Euathlus would have won his first case.
Euathlus, however, claimed that if he won, then by the court's decision he would not have to pay Protagoras. If, on the other hand, Protagoras won, then Euathlus would still not have won a case and would therefore not be obliged to pay.
The question is: which of the two men is in the right?" (from wikipedia).
We have come a long way from the 1500s. But we shouldn’t underrate the ability of a mind-bending paradox in today’s age of increasing totalitarian governments. Writers can use it to disrupt conventional thinking and make readers weigh opposing ideas at the same time. That makes paradox a tool for intellectual resistance. It can also make people question the “truth” these governments feed them.
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According to Alan Watt, a bestselling novelist and filmmaker, “For a writer who enjoys stretching the limits of language to reach the utmost bound of human thought, there is no better tool than the paradox.”
“A great paradox is both confounding and beautiful. It reminds us that there are limits to what logic can capture and that some aspects of truth are inherently contradictory. Language and argument are shorthands; they can never fully explain what they’re attempting to explain. Paradox reminds us that storytelling often lives beyond simple logic, in the tension between opposing ideas,” he adds.
#13
Swiss cheese as we all know has holes. Therefore, the more Swiss cheese you have, the more holes you have. However, the more holes you have, the less cheese you have because of it. In conclusion, the more cheese you have the less cheese you have.
Yes I know it's a joke paradox. I still love it because how stupid it is.
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#15
Your teacher says you'll have a test next week on a day that you won't be able to predict, not even the morning before the test. So all you know is that it will be one of the days from Monday to Friday.
But is Friday really possible? If it's Friday morning, and you haven't had the test yet, then you would be able to predict with absolute certainty that the test will be that same day, so there's no way the test can be on Friday. Clearly, it must be one of the days from Monday to Thursday.
But is Thursday really possible?
EDIT: Ok, seems like I have to add some clarifying information. **First:** By "predict", I mean "be absolutely certain that there is a test that day", not to just happen to guess right. **Second:** There are people claiming that the teacher is making an erroneous or logically false statement. That's not true. If the teacher gives the exam on Tuesday, then that's a day that the students can't predict. The teacher **doesn't claim** that a test would be unpredictable on any day next week, only that the test will be on a day that isn't predictable.
Whether it be Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson, many notable literary figures have used this device. However, legendary baseball player and coach Yogi Berra was another major personality famous for using paradoxes. In fact, his paradoxical statements were so impressive that they became famous as “Yogi-isms.”
For instance, when he said, “Baseball is ninety percent mental, and the other half is physical,” it might seem like a comic statement. But when you really try to understand him, it sounds like he was stressing that physical ability isn’t enough. And when he said, “The future ain’t what it used to be,” he was probably trying to say that what we envision isn’t what materializes.
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Example: a young man is trying to invent a time machine, but can't figure out how. One day a paranoid elderly man approaches him and gives him an old, tattered notebook that contains the detailed schematics and blueprints for designing a fully functional time machine. The young man quickly makes a copy of every page and puts them in a brand new, identical notebook, before the old one falls apart. He spends 50 years of his life building the time machine, and towards the end he begins to notice sketchy government agents following him around and monitoring him. He decides to fake his own d***h by going back in time, taking the time machine plans in the notebook with him so the government will never find them. He travels 50 years into the past and gives his younger self the notebook for safekeeping.
While his statements might sound comical, a closer look shows he was a total genius. On that note, here are some of my favorite Yogi-isms:
“It ain’t over till it’s over.”
“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”
“It gets late early out there.”
“If people don’t want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?”
“I didn’t really say everything I said.”
#19
The sequence of square numbers: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, etc clearly shows that there are a lot fewer square numbers than there are non-square numbers, as the distance between them gets increasingly longer.
But any number can be multiplied by itself and the result of this multiplication is a square number. So it must also be true that there are at least as many square numbers than there are non-square numbers.
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