Over the years, intellectuals have especially loved self-contradictory humor. In the 1920s, the Danish physicist Niels Bohr demonstrated this time and time again. Shortly after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1922, Bohr invited a number of people to his country cottage. One guest, noticing a horseshoe hanging on a wall, teasingly asked, “Can it be that you, of all people, believe a horseshoe will bring you good luck?” Bohr replied: “Of course not, but I understand it brings you luck whether you believe it or not.” In perhaps his best-known observation, Bohr once said:
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
This remark, which became a kind of signature line for Bohr, doesn’t contain an internal contradiction so much as it contradicts the normal order of things—or in this case, the way things are most commonly viewed. Normally, we would say that people think more clearly than they talk. Bohr turned that idea around to describe the problems that can occur when people who are verbally facile can sound good even when they lack a full understanding of what they’re talking about. The problem is especially apparent with politicians. In a 1987 article, the New York Times attributed a nearly identical observation to White House chief of staff, Howard H. Baker: “Never speak more clearly than you think.”
Here’s yet another example from a Nobel Prize–winning physicist, Paul Dirac:
Never believe an observation until it has been proven by theory.
Normally, scientists don’t believe a theory until it’s been proven by observation. By spinning that notion around, Dirac found a clever way to critique scientists who become so enamored with the beauty of their theories that they ignore or explain away evidence of a contrary nature. His saying has become one of the scientific world’s most popular quotations.
Continuing our look at contributions from Nobel laureates, Bertrand Russell once proposed ten principles and rules of conduct that he would “wish to promulgate as a teacher.” Some were phrased positively (“Be scrupulously truthful”) and some negatively (“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion”). But perhaps the best one was expressed paradoxically:
Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
By referring to the end of thinking as a success, and not the tragedy that it truly is, Russell was offering a thought that fits perfectly into our present discussion—and in the process created one of the most powerful admonitions ever delivered.
The love of paradoxical humor is not restricted to intellectuals. The favorite joke of professional golfer Ken Venturi was:
There are two great rules of life:
never tell everything at once.
By stating that there were two rules of life, and then stopping after only one, Venturi was employing a beautiful self-contradiction—and proving that cerebral humor is not the sole province of brainiacs.
In the remainder of the chapter, I’ll present more admonitions and rules of living that fit into the oxymoronic and paradoxical domain. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys ideaplay as well as wordplay, you can expect to have a good time.
Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.ANONYMOUS
This saying was likely inspired by a well-known passage from the Talmud: “If you add to the truth, you subtract from it.”
Never do anything for the first time.ANONYMOUS
This saying, often called “a bureaucrat’s maxim,” emerged in England after WWII and quickly caught on in America. The saying captures a stereotype about bureaucrats: they are so interested in preserving the status quo—and, of course, their jobs—that they are opposed to any and all forms of progress. In 1961, the saying was presented as “the motto of the world’s unhappiest man” in Advise and Consent, playwright Loring Mandel’s dramatization of Allen Drury’s 1959 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel.
Never let your sense of morals keep you from doing what is right.ISAAC ASIMOV, from a character in Foundation’s Edge (1982)
Never pray for justice. You just might get some.MARGARET ATWOOD, in Cat’s Eye (1988)
Never be naïve, no matter how naïve you are.RUSSELL BAKER
Another important rule of affair-having:
Never be discreet at the office.DAVE BARRY, in his 1987 book Dave Barry’s
Guide to Marriage and/or Sex
Even though office affairs are generally conducted discreetly, everybody seems to know about them. Barry offers a novel solution to the problem.
Never bet on a sure thing
unless you got enough money to get you back home.GENE BARRY, in a 1959 episode of
the TV western series Bat Masterson
If it was a “sure thing,” of course, one wouldn’t have to worry about money to get back home, so this was Masterson’s way of sending an important oxymoronic message: a sure thing is rarely a sure thing. From 1958 to 1961, Barry played “Bat” Masterson, a dapper western gunman-turned-lawman. According to NBC publicists, Masterson’s nickname came from his fondness for batting bad guys over the head with his gold-knobbed cane (it was not true, but it did give the television series a new plot element).
Never forget what you need to remember.GARRETT BARTLEY
Never answer an anonymous letter.YOGI BERRA
Many of Berra’s best lines were not intended to be funny, and this one was clearly not a deliberate attempt at paradoxical phrasing. File this under inadvertent oxymoronica.
Never work before breakfast;
if you have to work before breakfast, get your breakfast first.JOSH BILLINGS (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Never give up your right to be wrong.DR. DAVID D. BURNS
The right to be wrong phrase shows up fairly frequently in human discourse, but rarely is it expressed so provocatively. Burns, the author of Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (1980), believed that perfectionism and the fear of making mistakes stopped people from growing. He wrote: “Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.”
Never give up on an idea
simply because it is bad and doesn’t work.GEORGE CARLIN, in Brain Droppings (1997)
This was one of a number of “Rules to Live By” that Carlin offered in the book. With heavy irony, he added: “Cling to it even when it is hopeless. Anyone can cut and run, but it takes a very special person to stay with something that is stupid and harmful.”
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.CLAUD COCKBURN
Cockburn (pronounced KOE-burn) was an Oxford-educated English journalist who aroused controversy because of his Communist sympathies. Under his own name and some pen names, he wrote a number of nonfiction works and novels, including Beat the Devil, which was ultimately adapted by Truman Capote into a 1953 Humphrey Bogart film, directed by John Huston. This quotation is usually attributed directly to Cockburn, but he was simply passing along a line he heard (some sources attribute it to Otto von Bismarck, but there is no evidence he ever said it). In Yes, Prime Minister (1986), Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn wrote: “The first rule of politics: Never Believe Anything Until It’s Been Officially Denied.”