Quotes about Ambiguity

We tend, today, to want to have a road map of exactly where we are going. We want to know whether or not we have succeeded in everything we do. It's all right to want to know—we wouldn't be human if we didn't—but we also have to understand that a lot of the time we aren't going to know.

you don't have to understand things for them to be.

The line between failure and success is so fine. . . that we are often on the line and do not know it.

I will always be the virgin-prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman.

The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy.

You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.

I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.

We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us.

Those people have seen something. What it is I do not know and I can not care to know. (on flying saucers)

In short, good leaders must have a certain capacity for non-polarity thinking and full-access knowing (prayer), a tolerance for ambiguity ( faith), an ability to hold creative tensions (hope), and an ability to care (love) beyond their own personal advantage.

I worry about "true believers" who cannot carry any doubt or anxiety at all, as Thomas the Apostle and Mother Teresa learned to do. People who are so certain always seem like Hamlet's

Every resurrection story seems to strongly affirm an ambiguous—yet certain—presence in very ordinary settings, like walking on the road to Emmaus with a stranger, roasting fish on the beach, or what appeared like a gardener to the Magdalene