The Wisdom of Paradoxical Quotation Pairs

Whenever I see inspirational mails with quotations (often conflicting ones) I used to get a bit confused....
Many quotations advise you to do Exactly opposing things and you agree with both views.
It's all a matter of perception/opinion or circumstance.
I've thought a lot about this and just wanted to share some of the thoughts.
Example:
1) "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, but the unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself - therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man." [Samuel Butler]
    Hmmm... Seeing something positive that can be done in something negative.

2)"The happiest people in the world are not those who have no problems, but those who learn to live with things that are less than perfect." [Anonymous]
    Ok. See something positive in something that can't be helped.
 But if you had to choose between Progress OR Happiness it's somewhat confusing.
Other Conflicting and Paradoxical common-sense advises but on the same topic:
1) "Look before you leap" or "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"
    Simple Interpretation: Be careful.
    Negative Interpretation: Don't take risks in anything.
2) "Luck favours the brave"
    Simple Interpretation: If you're brave, things will work out
    Negative Interpretation: Success is a matter of luck
    This was kind of confusing me for a long time as I could see the sense in both statements.
Then I found some quotations which seemed to join both these "opposites".
1) Unifying Interpretation:
    "Look before you Leap" i.e. look before but don't forget to take a leap also (if required)
2) Unifying Interpretation:
        "Brave are those who fight their Fear." i.e. NOT those who are ignorant of fear
    This allows the brave to attempt things other people don't even try.
    So they MAY choose a way of doing things which succeeds. This is the LUCK factor.
Rationale for Luck Factor:
1) Brave people fight their Fear.
2) People don't try new things because of Fear (=> So they have 0% chance of succeeding at it)
3) Brave people attempt things which other people don't.
4) Some Brave people may chance upon a way which succeeds. => %age of Success is between 0-100%
5) THAT is why you should fight your fear => so you can free your mind to do all kinds of approaches.
6) It increases chances of Success from Zero Percent to X%.
7) So you can Learn from Failure since you are being positive about it.
8) More importantly since Failure is also possible => makes your life more positive
9) And Use it later to increase your chances of Success
10) If you repeat this process over many such new things you will Average out.

Your performance would follow a Normal Distribution or Bell Curve i.e.
        a) 60% chance of moderate success in untried things over your lifetime.... NOT bad at all !!!
        b) And of course 20% chance of failure (from which you can learn something with a +ve attitude)
        c) And a further 20% chance of Super Successes!! NOT BAD AT ALL....
So if we add it all up we come up with:
        a) 80% chance of success (moderate or super)
        b) 20% chance of failure which again feeds into future successes due to what you learn from it.
This gives a very good picture of being innovative/fearless.
Then why is it that we don't follow this principle?
    a) It has more to do with Weightages we attach to Failure and Success.
    b) That is why most religions/philosophies ask you to be detached from Success/Failure i.e. give Equal or NO weightage.
Different cultures also seem to influence this:
    1) In India the Weightage applied by society to Failure "almost" outweighs any gain through Success.
        "If you don't succeed with a Nobel Prize its just a fluke"
        If you fail however it gives you the stamp of failure which becomes very hard to live down.
        Other peoples perception affects you and you start believing in the stamp/label you're given.
        A self fulfilling prophecy.
    2) From what I've heard/read about it -
        In the West esp. the U.S. people don't think much of an earlier failure so they keep trying.
        Sooner or later they find something that they can be good at.
        I heard of a truck driver/fitter who became programmers!! in the US/Israel.
        How many times would you hear that over here. It's seems to be not so rare there.

Backto the Tradeoff between Progress OR Happiness:
I've observed that Wisdom is in knowing when to apply which kind of CommonSense.
Wisdom deals with paradoxes esp. unifying opposites.
So let's attempt to unify these two opposites
One Interpretation could be:
1) To be happy - learn to accept things which are less than perfect.
2) To progress - learn to NOT accept things which are less than perfect
"Things you NEED to change be unreasonable about, otherwise accept them and move on to a happier life".
Key is to - "Choose your battles (time,place and scope)."
I know that this is a rather long winded and too detailed analysis of advice any grandma could give in seconds.
But then that's the problem with being too analytical.... you feel the need to break down things too much!! :-)