Lord Acton Quotes

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

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

I think the phrase that resonates from 'Just One Year' is something I sort of live by: 'The truth and its opposite are flip sides of the same coin.'

I guess I found it useful to realise that everything is true at once, you know? You can pull back and say, 'Everything will be fine,' but you can also be in a situation and say, 'Not everything is going to be fine.'

Two seemingly incompatible conceptions can each represent an aspect of the truth ... They may serve in turn to represent the facts without ever entering into direct conflict.

For everything that you find dreadful, there's usually something that is rather marvelous as well.

Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you imagine

Everything is true and not true about everything. That’s one thing I’ve learned.

A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.

A master sees the bad in the good, and the good in the bad.

Truth is always paradoxical.

When I define polarities in my work, I actually create the space between things. I point to the question I am actually interested in, without naming it.

Everything in life is gray, you know.

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying 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.

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

Life is that perfect fine line between ironies.

Dramatically, I like darkness, I like conflict - but I don't see the world as defined by them.

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.

Duality is not a story. Duality is just a complexity.

I don't think there are in life, pure darkness or pure light. Everyone's got a little of everything.

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

The truth is balance. However the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.

To attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing the Darkness. It cannot be.