Quote of the Day (12/18/08)

Common sense tells me that I am a man very similar to other men (adding that I am five-feet-ten, fortyish, gray-headed, around eleven stone, and so on), and that I know just what it is like here and now to be me, writing on this sheet of paper.

Consistent or inconsistent, no one is exempt from the mystery of the self. Probably we are all inconsistent. The world is just too complicated for a person to be able to afford the luxury of reconciling all of his beliefs with each other. Tension and confusion are important in a world where many decisions must be made quickly. Miguel de Unamuno once said, "If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing." I would say that we are all in the same boat as the Zen master who, after contradicting himself several times in a row, said to the confused Doko, "I cannot understand myself."
--Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid