Opposites Quotations | Page 7

Knowingness is sexy. The opposite of sexy is naivete.

I have the exact opposite problem of every writer I've ever met: Every writer I've ever met writes things that are too long, and they have to edit them down.

When I was young, I liked romance. But to me, romance is the opposite of domestic life. I just don't want anyone in the apartment, not for longer than a few hours.

The teens are emotionally unstable and pathic. It is a natural impulse to experience hot and perfervid psychic states, and it is characterized by emotionalism. We see here the instability and fluctuations now so characteristic. The emotions develop by contrast and reaction into the opposite.

Russians alone are able to combine so many opposites in themselves at one and the same time.

What can i tell you about the choices we make? Fate reads like the polar opposite of decision, and so much of life reads like fate.

Wrong way, Bones. The men's showers are in the opposite direction." I'll file that away with all the other information that doesn't pertain to me" was Bones' mocking reply.

...that left Francesca to slink into the chair opposite us. My feeling of superiority was short-lived, however, when she settled herself down and then crossed her legs. I didn't need a mirror to know my whole face had just turned red. With a hemline up to her thighs that gesture didn't leave anything to the imagination. Bones curled his fingers around mine and squeezed. His hand was still warmed from our contact moments ago. That's how fast he had to grab me again to keep me sitting where I was instead of yanking off my jacket to make her a pair of panties.

As if there could be true stories: things happen in one way, and we retell them in the opposite way.

I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It always made me want to do just the opposite.

I always cheerfully say, "Well, you know, the species is adapting, and whatever it needs to do, it'll do," but I do think it's maybe a little bit alarming. Everybody knows that one thing we really have to do is to be more wherever we are, more present, that's just kind of a commonplace. And the whole mobile phone thing is completely 100% the opposite - to never be where you are because you can always be somewhere else; and yet it's so fun and addictive.

One can't allow blind loyalty to a friendship to lead one away from acting in the public interest. If Martin [Schulz] were to propose something that was totally absurd, our friendship would not prevent me from doing the opposite.

Stories are invented: Juncker wants to introduce the euro everywhere or immediately deepen the EU - although I publicly stated the opposite that same day.

In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn't the opposite of day, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert.

Yeah, like Bizarro Superman, Superman's exact opposite, who lives in the backwards Bizarro world. Up is down, down is up, he says hello when he leaves, goodbye when he arrives.

If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.

Bacon is like the opposite of medicine. It's like, "Take that, Lipitor."

Peace is the alternative to war, and nonviolence should be seen as the antidote to violence, not simply as its opposite. Nonviolence is more concerned with saving life than with saving face.

Personal growth and professional development require mostly being treated like an adult, which is pretty much the opposite of what happens in most workplaces. People need to be able to make decisions. To do that effectively, they need information and training in how to use it.

I decided to write Leadership BS because I was irritated by the hypocrisy in the leadership literature and the fact that many of the people writing leadership books exhibited behavior that was precisely the opposite of what they advocated and also what they claimed they did. Stories did not seem to be a good foundation on which to build a science of leadership.

Observe the masses and do the opposite

So when one thought goes into your mind, it's not just one thought, it has to bounce off both hemispheres of the brain. When you're thinking about something happy, you're thinking about something sad. When you think about an apple, you also think about the opposite of an apple.

When you think about an apple, you also think about the opposite of an apple.

Freedom ultimately is dignity. And dignity, not income, is the opposite of poverty.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You receive from the world what you give to the world.

Pride is the king of vices...it is the first of the pallbearers of the soul...other vices destroy only their opposite virtues, as wantonness destroys chastity; greed destroys temperance; anger destroys gentleness; but pride destroys all virtues.

The Dark Knight series is all from Batman’s point of view. But if you look at Dark Knight 2, you’ll see a Superman who’s much calmer than the one in the first Dark Knight. Batman and Superman are dead opposites. I love Superman. Do I love Batman more? They’re not people. They’re only lines on paper.

Virtue and merit can become their opposites if they are exacted or compelled...

Psychics exploit the human beings' natural desire that longs for something higher. … The same way a pimp exploits the natural desire to be with the opposite sex … psychics put people in spiritual harm, the same way pimps put people in physical harm.

It's frustrating always being compared to Britney because we are two very different artists... We both dance and sing but people have not yet had enough time to realise that there is a huge difference between us. If she wants to go and do something, I'll want to do the opposite.

If you want to prevent abortions, you make sure everyone has health care, a high school education and birth control. Not the exact opposite.

I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining. We do not remember. We rewrite memory much as history is rewritten. How can one remember thirst?

Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it's productive.

As happy as I am off the floor, on the floor I am the opposite. I don't take any crap.

I do think that women could make politics irrelevant; by a kind of spontaneous cooperative action the like of which we have never seen; which is so far from people’s ideas of state structure or viable social structure that it seems to them like total anarchy — when what it really is, is very subtle forms of interrelation that do not follow some heirarchal pattern which is fundamentally patriarchal. The opposite to patriarchy is not matriarchy but fraternity, yet I think it’s women who are going to have to break this spiral of power and find the trick of cooperation.

Action and reaction are equal and opposite.

Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

There is a sad tendency in our world today for persons to cut one another down. Did you ever realize that it does not take very much in the way of brainpower to make remarks that may wound another? Try the opposite of that. Try handing out compliments.

As Aristotle wrote a long, long time ago, and I'm paraphrasing here, the goal is to avoid mediocrity by being prepared to try something and either failing miserably or triumphing grandly. Mediocrity is not about failing, and it's the opposite of doing. Mediocrity, in other words, is about not trying. The reason is achingly simple, and I know you've heard it a thousand times before: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

It occurred to me that nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting, so I devised a method of cleaning off the page opposite the editorial, which became the most important in America and thereon I decided to print opinions, ignoring facts.

When the judge calls the criminal's name out he stands up, and they are immediately linked by a strange biology that makes them both opposite and complementary. The one cannot exist without the other. Which is the sun and which is the shadow? It's well known some criminals have been great men.

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

When I write a song, I tap into the emotion and the feeling and then I use the emotion to write the words. It's the opposite when I act. I use the words and tap into the emotion.

Whatever anyone says, I think the opposite will happen.

That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.

Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy--in fact, the opposite.

Death never mattered at those times - in the early days I even used to pray for it: the shattering annihilation that would prevent for ever the getting up, the putting on of clothes, the wathchign her torch trail across to the opposite side of the common like the tail-light of a low car driving away.

People say that love is the best thing in the world not power. But they are wrong. Love is the opposite of power and that's why we fear it so much.

Love is the opposite of power. That's why we fear it so much.

Just my luck, if I believed in luck. I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is.

Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos.

Miami is nothing like me, and thats why I need to be here - its the opposite. Im practical, where this place is moody, Im stolid in my interior, where this place has a certain flair, and Im materialistic in a sense that this place is fundamentally spiritual - theres a quicksilver quality about this place.

Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.

When we try to avoid one fault, we are led to the opposite, unless we be very careful.

In avoiding one vice fools rush into the opposite extreme.

Virtue lies half way between two opposite vices.

Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.

There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible: truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary, reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths, until we come to those which are primary.

The skills of the modern artist are the opposite of those of the craftsman: instead of acquiring techniques for producing classes of objects, the artist today perfects the means suited to his particular work.

There are things that make us choose, on certain days, on certain nights, the opposite of love, in all its variations. But I want to acknowledge that with love and hate it's not simply one or the other. It's at least two, three, four, five different emotions existing at once, side by side, a broad spectrum of things alive.

Grab a pen and put down some words - your name even - and a title: something to see, to revise, to carve, to do over in the opposite way

Now I’m just standing here on the conveyor. Along for the ride. I reach the end, turn around, and go back the other way. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy. After a few hours of this, I notice a female on the opposite conveyor. She doesn’t lurch or groan like most of us. Her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her. That she doesn’t lurch or groan. I catch her eye and stare at her.

That's why we have memory. And the opposite of memory— hope. So things that are gone can still matter. So we can built off our pasts and make future.

I was brought up to believe that a person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality. The term ‘hero’ irritates me greatly – the opposite is true – I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little.

The temperament that produces a talent for little things is the opposite of that required for great ones.

The grace of novelty and the length of habit, though so very opposite to one another, yet agree in this, that they both alike keepus from discovering the faults of our friends.

Avarice is more opposite to economy than liberality.

In face of this modern nihilism, Christians are often lacking in courage. We tend to give the impression that we will hold on to the outward forms whatever happens, even if God really is not there. But the opposite ought to be true of us, so that people can see that we demand the truth of what is there and that we are not dealing merely with platitudes. In other words, it should be understood that we take this question of truth and personality so seriously that if God were not there we would be among the first of those who had the courage to step out of the queue.

Newton's Third Law of Conversation, if it existed, would hold that every statement implies an equal and opposite statement. To say that I'd turned the offer down raised the possibility that I might not have done.

Resistance to improvement contradicts the noblest instincts of the race. It begets its opposite. The fanaticism of reform is only the raging of the accumulated waters caused by the obstructions which an ultra conservatism has thrown across the stream of progress; and revolution itself is but the sudden overwhelming and sweeping away of impediments that should have been seasonably removed.

The French will always do exactly the opposite on what the United States wants regardless of what happens, so we're never going to have a consistent policy.

He and I were opposites on the screen and in real life in many ways, because I was an extension of Dobie and he was an extension of Maynard.

None of my patients are really troubled by the idea that some part of what they say might be in a book in the future. Some have expressed the very opposite feeling--the fear that they would not be interesting enough to write about.

As a concept [androgyny] raise[s] anxiety levels by conjuring up a conformist, unisex vision, the very opposite of the individuality and uniqueness that feminism actually has in mind.

Children who have been very sadistically abused over the long-term are able to dissociate, some of them are able to dissociate as a way of surviving and inventing someone to whom this doesn't happen. And so therefore, they invent within themselves different personalities who have life histories of their own. Many people invent an opposite gender personality as well.

The beginning, middle, and end of the birth, growth, and perfection of whatever we behold is from contraries, by contraries, and to contraries; and whatever contrariety is, there is action and reaction, there is motion, diversity, multitude, and order, there are degrees, succession and vicissitude.

Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.

A Horcrux is the complete opposite of a human being.

Bidding the wizard farewell, he turned to his daughter, who held up her finger and said, “Daddy, look — one of the gnomes actually bit me!” “How wonderful! Gnome saliva is enormously beneficial!” said Mr. Lovegood, seizing Luna’s outstretched finger and examining the bleeding puncture marks. “Luna, my love, if you should feel any burgeoning talent today — perhaps an unexpected urge to sing opera or to declaim in Mermish — do not repress it! You may have been gifted by the Gernumblies!” Ron, passing them in the opposite direction, let out a loud snort.

I've been accused of being cold, snobbish, distant. Those who know me well know that I’m nothing of the sort. If anything, the opposite is true. But is it too much to ask to want to protect your private life, your inner feelings? Lots of things touch me and I don’t want to be indiscreet.

There're lots of musicians in my family, too. My mother sings incredibly well. I've got to make a record with my mother's voice on it. She sings a lyric soprano. We do the opposite. I'm a baritone. She's a star singer in her church. She always does her solo.

I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A REBEL. I NEVER DO THINGS THE WAY THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DONE. EITHER I GO IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OR I CREATE A NEW DIRECTION FOR MYSELF, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE RULES ARE OR WHAT SOCIETY SAYS.

To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.

The opposite of retaliation is to entrust ourselves to God, who judges justly.

Cultivating whatever gave pleasure to my senses was always the chief business of my life; I have never found any occupation more important. Feeling that I was born for the sex opposite mine, I have always loved it and done all that I could to make myself loved by it. I have also been extravagantly fond of good food and irresistibly drawn by anything which could excite curiosity.

Separate two particles, place them at opposite ends of the universe, produce some effect in one, and the other will be identically affected.

The problem we've got now in Washington is that the goals are completely the opposite from each other.

Yet the reality is that I'm a stage actor from the Midwest - probably the opposite of a shark agent.

I know quite a few farmers all over the United States who have tried this and have said the opposite, that they have to use more herbicides, not less. The same holds true with BT.

Education is implication. It is not the things you say which children respect; when you say things, they very commonly laugh and do the opposite. It is the things you assume which really sink into them. It is the things you forget even to teach that they learn.

When "everyone knows" that something is so, it is always more interesting and often illuminating to assumeexactly the opposite, and to see where that leads.

Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of the opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge.

Peace means far more than the opposite of war.

It's really easy to fall into the trap of believing that what we do is more important than what we are. Of course, it's the opposite that's true: What we are ultimately determines what we do!

Paired opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you.

When a creature has developed into one thing, he will choose death rather than change into his opposite.

Decade after decade, the police culture has been just the very opposite. And that`s been to ignore or to rally around. And that`s something that systematically we are going to need to break this blue wall of silence if we`re ever going to dramatically change and end the culture of police violence.

Misbehavior and punishment are not opposites that cancel each other - on the contrary they breed and reinforce each other.

People judge too much by results. I'm just the opposite. I care about more than results. I'd rather make a good pitch and give up a bloop single than make a bad pitch and get an out.

It's been liberating to be able to play someone who's a bada– or promiscuous, because that's the opposite of who I am … It's like a drug.