Balance

 A Whiter Shade of Pale

And so it was that later

As the miller told his tale

That her face, at first just ghostly,

Turned a whiter shade of pale

Saying that things are not all black or all white, is acknowledging that there are shades.

As we get more experienced, we realize that there are gradations between the extreme, binary, cases.  Things are not either 100% or 0%. Percentages between 100% and 0% need to  be considered.  

In Microsoft Office, colors are represented as combinations of  values of Red, Green and Blue. The values are a number between 0 and 255, a computer byte.  The binary equivalent of 0% of a  byte is 00000000.  Black is 0 Red, 0 Green,
0 Blue.  The binary equivalent of 100% of a byte, 255, is 11111111.  White is  255 Red, 255 Green, 255 Blue. Halfway between these points, 50%, would be either binary 10000000 for 128, or binary 01111111 for 127, e.g. there are  binary equivalents only for integers,  not for 127.5. The color for 128 Red, 128 Green, 128 Blue is, not surprisingly, gray, a balance between black and white.

If pale, 99% white, is 252 Red, 252 Green. 252 Blue, then a whiter shade of pale is 253 Red, 253 Green, 253 Blue. Doesn’t sound as poetic, does it?  I kinda like Procul Harum’s way of saying it better, too!