Opposites Quotations

When I was fourteen and first started going out, I always wanted to be the opposite of everyone else. So I would go to the club in a polo T-shirt and pants and sneakers and a hat on backward, just so I would not be dressed like other girls.

The mark of a living thing is to be involved in opposites (impossibilities): the living cell that has to be continually adapting itself to stay alive, with its identity.

Diplomacy in a sense is the opposite of writing. You have to disperse yourself so much: the lady who comes in crying because shes had a fight with the secretary; exports and imports; students in trouble; thumbtacks for the embassy.

I love my accent, I thought it was useful in Gone In 60 Seconds because the standard villain is upper class or Cockney. My Northern accent would be an odd clash opposite Nic Cage.

A person with grace is somebody who's socially graceful or is a classy person, but sometimes you just feel the opposite of that, and you just feel like a jerk and a loser and a weirdo.

In America right now, we use words like 'smart' to talk about bombs. American rhetoric is grounded in ideas of capital-G Good, capital-E Evil, and it's very clear who is on which side. But in a book you can do just the opposite. You can use all lower-case words.

Economic growth and environmental protection are not at odds. They're opposite sides of the same coin if you're looking at longer-term prosperity.

A sister is both your mirror - and your opposite.

The anger and the brutality against everything can readily from one hour to the next be transformed into its opposite.

Computers and electronic music are not the opposite of the warm human music. It's exactly the same.

I sort of jumped out of movies and into the lifeboat of comics. I loved it right away. It was the opposite of film school. Whatever was in my imagination could end up in the finished product. There were just no limitations.

Economy, prudence, and a simple life are the sure masters of need, and will often accomplish that which, their opposites, with a fortune at hand, will fail to do.

The New York Times' was enigmatic: 'Some unimaginable gravitational force is pulling our entire galaxy in the opposite direction.' End of article. If you stop and think about that, we are recreating ourselves.

The satirical direction I have chosen is an indication of my disappointment in man, which is the opposite way of saying that I have high expectations for the human race.

People instantly assume you can't have a platonic friendship with someone of the opposite sex. I think this may be specific to L.A.—or America.

The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.

My acting teacher used to say that people reveal themselves in their opposites.

In society, one doesn't tell the truth, one tells the exact opposite.

I hate being forced to do things. I hate people telling me what to do, so I'll do the complete opposite. It's a bit self-destructive sometimes.

Anyone who is interested in the psychology of children will have observed that whereas one child will resist temptation or seduction, another will easily yield to it. There are children who will hardly oppose any resistance to the invitation of an unknown person to follow him; others who react in an opposite way in the same circumstances.

Martin Freeman is a genius, he really is. He gives you every color of the rainbow in every take and it's wonderful just to play off of him and opposite him.

My sister and I are opposites in many ways. She is six feet tall, while I'm five feet four.

Some comics really thrive on being disrespectful, especially toward women, and it's somehow understood as edgy, but I'm the opposite. I've never liked curse words for that reason.

Barcelona is a very old city in which you can feel the weight of history; it is haunted by history. You cannot walk around it without perceiving it. In Los Angeles, it is quite the opposite: it is an older city than it might seem to be, but you don't perceive this -- every day you get out of your home, you are driving somewhere and sometimes you get this impression that everything was put there the night before.

We moved leisurely towards Mount Foster, on the 22nd, and arrived opposite to it a little before sunset.

I'm a comedian, which is the opposite of a lifestyle that equips you to be a parent.

In athletics, older runners tend to go for longer races, but it's the opposite in swimming because your body can't handle the endurance.

I'm nothing more than what you actually see, but I am also the complete opposite.

The corporate woman has been defined as the 'liberated woman' and I see that as the exact opposite. I think she now is more enslaved, maybe even more than the housewife was; because she's so out of her power, and imitating male power is not female power.

Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

What I liked about doing a soundtrack is that it's almost the opposite of any kind of normal recording that a band does, because it's very much a restricted, narrow... And I kind of like that, I find it exciting to work within these things.

The adequate study of culture, our own and those on the opposite side of the globe, can press on to fulfillment only as we learn today from the humanities as well as from the scientists.

It is true that power corrupts. The hope at the polling stations and the actions of the elected representatives, unfortunately, often turn to be opposite. The power of ballot turns into the power of wallet. Some law-makers become law-breakers.

When I left drama school, my fear was that I'd get pigeon holed into comic acting and I did so much to counter it that I got stuck in the opposite.

The only thing of weight that can be said against modern honor is that it is directly opposite to religion. The one bids you bear injuries with patience, the other tells you if you don't resent them, you are not fit to live.

The older you get, the more you realize you're drifting toward a direction, and sometimes your significant other drifts into an opposite direction. You can't blame anybody for it.

If you use your mind to study reality, you won't understand either your mind or reality. If you study reality without using your mind, you'll understand both. . . . The mind and the world are opposites, and vision arises where they meet. When your mind doesn't stir inside, the world doesn't arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding.

The compulsion to do the opposite of what you are told does not lend itself to many occupations outside the entertainment industry. Within the industry, it is unlikely that you will be very successful without it.

When you're happy you don't always have to be laughing, and when you're sad you don't have to be crying; sometimes it's the opposite. You laugh when you're the most upset.

The world is not dialectical - it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.

The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite.

Mind training is based on the idea that two opposite mental factors cannot happen at the same time. You could go from love to hate. But you cannot, at the same time - toward the same object, the same person - want to harm and want to do good.

Pleasure and pain, though directly opposite are contrived to be constant companions.

Now equilibrium is the very opposite of disorder.

In the beginning, people think vulnerability will make you weak, but it does the opposite. It shows you're strong enough to care.

To succeed with the opposite sex, tell her you're impotent. She can't wait to disprove it.

A lot of people think Christianity is about always being perfect. It's actually the opposite of that. It's realizing that we're all humans, and that's why God sent his Son to this earth - to save people.

I think of masculine and feminine energy like two sides to a battery. There's a plus side and a minus side, and in order to make something turn on, you need to have opposites touching. It's the same in relationships.

Putin stands for the opposite of a universal ideology; he has become an arch-nationalist of a pre-Cold War type, making mystic appeals to motherland and religion.

Agitate! Agitate! Ought to be the motto of every reformer. Agitation is the opposite of stagnation - the one is life, the other death.

One of the things psychologists used to say was that if you are depressed, anxious or angry, you couldn't be happy. Those were at opposite ends of a continuum. I believe that you can be suffering or have a mental illness and be happy - just not in the same moment that you're sad.

I actually prefer getting into roles that are the polar opposite of me; that's why I've done so many dark and dreary things.

Music I can discover a part of myself that I haven't been able to for a long time, and acting is the opposite. I'm in love with both of them and I would never choose one over the other.

Never were two people more opposite in sentiment than my companions.

I think music is about our internal life. It’s part of the way people touch each other. That’s very precious to me. And astronomy is, in a sense, the very opposite thing. Instead of looking inwards, you are looking out, to things beyond our grasp.

Sympathy for victims is always counter-balanced by an equal and opposite feeling of resentment towards them.

It is impossible for me to estimate how many of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism were concepts that, left to my own devices, I would have encountered much later in life.

I tried to oppose the academic to the marketplace.

If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite.

As a child, the person I admired most in the world was Lana Turner! She seemed the epitome of glamour, and her glitzy surroundings so enviable, the opposite of my mother's extremely banal taste.

I try not to interpret things of the world into a single meaning. Rather, I try the opposite.

There's more to light than the opposite of dark.

Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy.

Opposites generally create intense chemistry. There are more chances of fireworks when different people are together than similar personalities.

Spirituality does two things for you. One, you are forced to become more selfless, two, you trust to providence. The opposite of a spiritual man is a materialist. If I was a materialist I would be making lots of money doing endorsements, doing cricket commentary. I have no interest in that.

To know one thing, you must know the opposite.

Whenever a situation develops to its extreme, it is bound to turn around and become its opposite.

I love playing characters who are opposite of who I am.

The national debate on health care once centered on improving access to quality care, yet the effect of Obamacare will be the exact opposite, resulting in the shameful degradation of care for the neediest individuals.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it is the exact opposite.

Everybody in politics claims to want to get everybody out of poverty. What's the opposite? Wealth. And what is often criticized by the left? Wealth.

I play opposite Beverly D'Angelo, and that was definitely a great time.

Christianity has not conquered nationalism; the opposite has been the case nationalism has made Christianity its footstool.

The real problem is deflation. That is the opposite of inflation but equally serious to the borrower.

I try to only eat animals that are vegan. I'm probably the opposite of a vegan.

Certain people are like 'Oh, here come the Feminazis!' You end up acting 10 times nicer than you even need to be, to be the opposite of the stereotype like 'You're the man haters!' We're always bending over backwards being extra nice. And I don't know if being nice is my legacy.

Darling: the popular form of address used in speaking to a member of the opposite sex whose name you cannot at the moment remember.

For a traveler going from any place toward the north, that pole of the daily rotation gradually climbs higher, while the opposite pole drops down an equal amount.

I have odd thumbs that are extremely flexible. I can bend them quite far down the back side of my hand, basically the opposite side you'd even try to attempt bending your thumb. Because of that, I'm a very good thumb wrestler.

Everything the Beats stood for was the opposite of the dominant culture today.

All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.

There's that stigma about New Yorkers, how they're so mean, but in my experience it was quite the opposite. People were very genuine and very nice, even on the subway.

Whatever the opposite of regret is best describes how I've always felt about that decision - it opened me up to a million creative opportunities I needed to experience away from the bull and distorting mirrors that fame engenders.

In God, the characteristics of men and women that we admire in men and women are combined. That's been a traditional Catholic teaching that God is the combination of opposites.

What's it like being opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger? For me? Are you kidding? Maybe if I'm lucky, come up to his navel!

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.

Politics follows the lines of physics: every action creates an equal and opposite reaction.

If anything, I was the opposite of most college students who think they can do anything.

Rapping and singing are not two polar opposites. There's so much middle ground. And I think there's a lot of people who find that middle ground.

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

We must have more union members in this country to fight the political and business forces that are undermining workers in this country. The AFL-CIO has chosen the opposite approach by planning to throw even more money at politicians.

The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity.

Most people think of success and failure as opposites, but they both are products of the same process.

We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite.

The world tells us in a thousand different ways that the bigger we become, the freer we will be. The richer, the more beautiful, and the more powerful we grow, the more security, liberty, and happiness we will experience. And yet, the gospel tells us just the opposite, that the smaller we become, the freer we will be.

I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them; most writers groups moonlight as support groups for the kind of people who think that writing is therapeutic. Writing is the exact opposite of therapy.

Certainly, I think being depressed is absolutely part of the human condition, it has to be, if there's joy there's its opposite, and it's something you ride if you possibly can.