Ontological Paradox Quotes

If there is existence, there must be non-existence. And if there was a time when nothing existed, there must have been a time before that - when even nothing did not exist. Suddenly, when nothing came into existence, could one really say whether it belonged to the category of existence or non-existence?

When we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind there is nothing but things.

In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.

When appearance and reality coincide, philosophy and literary criticism find themselves with nothing to say.

Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons.

I don’t have a body, I am a body.

Our place is somewhere between being and nonbeing - between two fictions.

Things don't exist until they exist.

Being is born of not being.

Well," Peter Van Houten said, extending his hand to me. "It is at any rate a pleasure to meet such ontologically improbable creatures." I shook his swollen hand, and then he shook hands with Augustus. I was wondering what ontologically meant. Regardless, I liked it. Augustus and I were together in the Improbable Creatures Club: us and duck-billed platypuses.

The only reality was nothingness, and over it a hypocrisy of words.

There are many of these apparent philosophical paradoxes or contradictions which don't concern me anymore.

Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me ... I should like to find a genuine loophole.