E.T. Jaynes · 753 pages
Rating: (427 votes)
“A paradox is simply an error out of control; i.e. one that has trapped so many unwary minds that it has gone public, become institutionalized in our literature, and taught as truth.”
“if fallacious reasoning always led to absurd conclusions, it would be found out at once and corrected. But once an easy, shortcut mode of reasoning has led to a few correct results, almost everybody accepts it; those who try to warn against it are not listened to.”
“something which is absurd or logically contradictory, but which appears at first glance to be the result of sound reasoning.”
“Not only in probability theory, but in all mathematics, it is the careless use of infinite sets, and of infinite and infinitesimal quantities, that generates most paradoxes.”
“passage to a limit should always be the last operation, not the first.”
“What no one tells you is that the road to accomplishing your goals isn’t a straight line; it looks more like a corn maze. You stopped, you went, you backed up, and took a few wrong turns along the way, but the important thing you had to remember was that there was an exit. Somewhere.”
“He has about him still a kind of terrible beauty, as dangerously beguiling as the grandeur of a storm rushing across the sea.”
“You speak like a jealous lover."
-Fola to Broichan”
“We all have stories we tell ourselves. We tell ourselves we are too fat, or too ugly, or too old, or too foolish. We tell ourselves these stories because they allow us to excuse our actions, and they allow us to pass off the responsibility for things we have done - maybe to something within our control, but anything other than the decisions we have made...And it is past time, I think, for you to stop telling that particular story, and tell the story of yourself. Stop defining yourself in terms of them. You don't just have to exist in the empty spaces they leave. There are times in our lives when we have to realize our past is precisely what it is, and we cannot change it. But we can change the story we tell ourselves about it, and by doing that, we can change the future.”
“Robert, I’m sorry that you feel so strange, but I’m not sorry that you’re feeling it because of me,” I whispered, my heart feeling a familiar twinge as I continued, “but even if you hadn’t felt it, it would not change the way I feel about you.”
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