Roger Penrose Quotes

Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.

There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

For every answer, I like to bring up a question. Maybe I'm related to Alfred Hitchcock or maybe I got to know him too well, but I think life should be that way.

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

In contradiction and paradox, you can find truth.

I love the unexplainable. It would be so boring to me if everything could be explained.

I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.

The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery.

The heart and the mind, what an enigma.

The truest sayings are paradoxical.

There are mountains hidden in mountains. There are mountains hidden in hiddenness. This is complete understanding.

I'm naturally attracted to something I don't understand because when you try to deal with something you don't understand, it opens a door into another world.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution.

It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them.

I opened up every can of worms I could. I got to the place where I would peel back one layer, and then another layer, and the stuff that would come up underneath was so inspiring, it made me want to write about it.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

You may find many contradictory statements and philosophies within my writings. However, to this I will say such is life, for life is full of contradictions.

I think we do good things and bad things, sometimes simultaneously - or they may be the same thing.

I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.

A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.

In any work you do, you can be profound one minute, and then you be superficial the next, and you can be smart and insightful and then insipid. There can be room for all that.

I always look for contradiction in a character.