Tom Peters Quotes

I always look for contradiction in a character.

In contradiction and paradox, you can find truth.

Being ambivalent doesn't mean that you're a relevatist, that anything goes; it just means that you show the complexity of life. Life is always complex.

Nothing is ever simple. What do you do when you discover you like parts of the role you're trying to escape?

The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.

Everything's complicated, even those things that seem flat in their bleakness or sadness.

I like characters who are contradictory.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

The best ideas make you want to say 'yes' and 'no' in the same breath.

I think people have a hard time dealing with a bunch of things at once. They can't have something be disturbing and funny at the same time. They can't have that kind of combination. Which is weird to me because I feel complicated about most things.

In general, I like contradictions and complex situations.

In any case, I would never make a film that was only one thing. Even if it's my warmest, most romantic film, I still want it to have the more cynical view of things, showing the irony and absurdity of things that we consider normal.

We must learn to live with contradictions, because they lead to deeper and more effective understanding.

the truth is often a mixed message

There is always room for at least two truths.

He [Gen. Douglas MacArthur] was a great thundering paradox of a man, noble and ignoble, inspiring and outrageous, arrogant and shy, the best of men and the worst of men, the most protean, most ridiculous, and most sublime.

Which path do you intend to take, Nell?' said the Constable, sounding very interested. 'Conformity or rebellion?' Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.

Truth is always paradoxical.

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

I was partly old-fashioned and partly modern.

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

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

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.

A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.

Nothing is ever cut-and-dried. There's anguish behind everything.