Opposites famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
-
When we asked Pooh what the opposite of an Introduction was, he said "The what of a what?" which didn't help us as much as we had hoped, but luckily Owl kept his head and told us that the Opposite of an Introduction, my dear Pooh, was a Contradiction; and, as he is very good at long words, I am sure that that's what it is.
-- A. A. Milne -
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.
-- A. J. Liebling -
It is hard to think of anything which more tragically and clearly exemplifies the phenomenon of good political intentions achieving the precise opposite of their aim.
-- A. N. Wilson -
To believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect,
-- A.C. Grayling -
Writers are opposite of athletes, they get better with age
-- Aaron Sorkin -
I do know that I've read somewhere that it's been statistically proven that in times of war, horror films are much more popular. I don't know why that is. You'd think it'd be the opposite. You'd think people would want to escape from it.
-- Aaron Stanford -
It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.
-- Abba Eban -
Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz said I have never known Allah May He be exalted except through the coincidence in Him of the opposites. 'He is the First and the Last, the Apparent and the Hidden.'
-- Abdelkader El Djezairi -
Persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should be adopted to influence the conduct of men. The opposite course would be a reversal of human nature, which is God's decree and can never be reversed.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
I tried to oppose the academic to the marketplace.
-- Ad Reinhardt -
The tenor of my life has been the opposite of everything that is vile, and no man can lay any such thing to my charge.
-- Adam Weishaupt -
Stadium rock and commercial rock are the opposite of what poetry needs. An audience of around 200 is ideal for poetry.
-- Adrian Mitchell -
Words are such uncertain things, they so often sound well but mean the opposite of what one thinks they do.
-- Agatha Christie -
Sometimes you can really serve well and win the match because of the serve. I have the opposite thing now, so it's kind of hard. I can just really play with my forehand and backhand.
-- Agnieszka Radwanska -
I enjoy the risk of bungee-jumping. I used to pay money to do it. Now, it's the opposite. I get paid to do action.
-- Akshay Kumar -
The ethic of truth is the complete opposite of an 'ethics of communication'. It is an ethic of the Real The ethic of truth is absolutely opposed to opinion, and to ethics in general.
-- Alain Badiou -
Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere-and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity, and weakness, and fear, and anxiety, because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.
-- Alain de Botton -
And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
-- Alan Watts -
A holy person is someone who is whole; who has, as it were, reconciled his opposites.
-- Alan Watts -
Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other. Forever.
-- Alan Watts -
But nirvana is a radical transformation of how it feels to be alive: it feels as if everything were myself, or as if everything---including "my" thoughts and actions---were happening of itself. There are still efforts, choices, and decisions, but not the sense that "I make them"; they arise of themselves in relation to circumstances. This is therefore to feel life, not as an encounter between subject and object, but as a polarized field where the contest of opposites has become the play of opposites.
-- Alan Watts -
The more vulnerable and the more confused the song is, the equal and opposite effect is how I feel after having written it.
-- Alanis Morissette -
The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.
-- Albert Camus -
It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of Courage-to move in the opposite direction.
-- Albert Einstein -
In horror movies today its lots of fast cut shot and lots of loud noises on the soundtrack. I tried to do the opposite. Playing with silence for instance.
-- Alejandro Amenabar -
I think if you live in London, it's such a cosmopolitan city; nobody even notices different-race relationships. I assumed it would be even more liberal in the States, and it's totally the opposite.
-- Alex Kingston -
If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite.
-- Alex Steffen -
There's no law of physics that says we have to be an unsustainable society - in fact, quite the opposite. The planet's ready to work with us if we're ready to think differently, but we do have to make that jump and start to do things in new ways.
-- Alex Steffen -
Anarchy: It is NOT bombs, disorder or chaos. It is NOT robbery and murder. It is NOT a war of each against all. It is NOT a return to barbarism or to the wild state of man. Anarchism is the very opposite of all that.
-- Alexander Berkman -
States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are respected and trusted: while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Anyone who wishes to learn how to play chess well must make himself or herself thoroughly conversant with the play in positions where the players have castled on opposite sides.
-- Alexander Kotov -
And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.
-- Alexander McCall Smith -
Love and hate are not opposites. The opposite of love is indifference.
-- Alexander Sutherland Neill -
Transformations don't scare me: it thrills me to become the polar opposite.
-- Alexandra Roach -
The very general occurrence of the homosexual in ancient Greece, and its wide occurrence today in some cultures in which such activity is not taboo suggests that the capacity of an individual to respond erotically to any sort of stimulus, whether it is provided by another person of the same or opposite sex, is basic in the species.
-- Alfred Kinsey -
Some have an idea that the reason we in this country discard things so readily is because we have so much. The facts are exactly opposite-the reason we have so much is simply because we discard things so readily. We replace the old in return for something that will serve us better.
-- Alfred P. Sloan -
The true opposite of depression is not gaiety or absence of pain, but vitality: the freedom to experience spontaneous feelings.
-- Alice Miller -
What acting does bring that music doesn't bring for me is the opportunity is the opportunity to be completely different in every way from whom you normally are, the person that you are when you wake up in the morning is who you are in your life. But to take that and have the opportunity to be the complete opposite of that, is the excitement of it.
-- Alicia Keys -
The self must be a tense bow. It must struggle with opposites rather than harmonize them, rather than turn the tension over to the great instruments of last manhood the skilled bow unbenders and Jesuits of our days, the psychiatrists, who, in the same spirit and as part of the same conspiracy of modernity as the peace virtuosos, reduce conflict.
-- Allan Bloom -
Southern women see no point in the hard way. Life is hard enough. So we add a little sugar to the sour. Which is not to suggest Southern women are disingenuous cream puffs. Quite the opposite. When you are born into a history as loaded as the South’s, when you carry in your bones the incontrovertible knowledge of man’s violence and limitations, daring to stay sweet is about the most radical thing you can do.
-- Allison Glock -
As soon as she was close, she whispered, "you've got to get out of here." "No, you've got to get out of here," he told her. "Go downstairs. Go now." "No," she countered. "You go." "Why?" he asked. "You tell me first." But before they could say another word, the last elevator slid slowly open and two men in masks rushed out. From the opposite side of the of the ballroom, shots rang out, rapid fire, piercing the ceiling, plaster falling onto the dance floor like snow. And then Hale and Macey whispered in unison, "Because of that.
-- Ally Carter -
The kids kept walking, moving through the Henley's halls like a tide, but when Kat turned to leave, she walked in the opposite directions. She wasn't an ordinary kid, after all. Katarina Bishop followed no one.
-- Ally Carter -
People sometimes imagine that just because they have access to so many newspapers, radio and TV channels, they will get an infinity of different opinions. Then they discover that things are just the opposite: the power of these loudspeakers only amplifies the opinion prevalent at a certain time, to the point where it covers any other opinion.
-- Amin Maalouf -
The opposite of love is not hate, its apathy, when u simply don't bother about that person!
-- Amish Tripathi -
There are many realities. There are many versions of what may appear obvious. Whatever appears as the unshakeable truth, its exact opposite may also be true in another context. After all, one's reality is but perception, viewed through various prisms of context.
-- Amish Tripathi -
[T]hat state, love, is so utterly alien to that other idea without which we cannot live as human beings --- the idea of justice. It is only because love is so profoundly the enemy of justice that our minds, shrinking in horor from its true nature, try to tame it by uniting it with its opposite [...] in the hope that if we apply all the metaphors of normality, that if we heap them high enough, we shall, in the end, be able to approximate that state metaphorically.
-- Amitav Ghosh -
Chance is commonly viewed as a self-correcting process in which a deviation in one direction induces a deviation in the opposite direction to restore the equilibrium. In fact, deviations are not "corrected" as a chance process unfolds, they are merely diluted.
-- Amos Tversky -
Well people love to go dirty and stuff like that. It's funny, because even really dirty things can kind of inspire, but all things inspire really dirty improv and monologues. So then really dirty things can inspire the exact opposite. It's kind of a crapshoot.
-- Amy Poehler -
Since desire always goes towards that which is our direct opposite, it forces us to love that which will make us suffer.
-- Anais Nin -
As we walked, I began to wonder what the opposite of molting was and why, unlike the body, which sheds everything, the soul cannot let go but compiles and accumulates, growing annual rings around the things it wants and dreams and remembers
-- André Aciman -
At the word witch, we imagine the horrible old crones from Macbeth. But the cruel trials witches suffered teach us the opposite. Many perished precisely because they were young and beautiful.
-- Andre Breton -
In Shakespearean tragedy the main source of the convulsion which produces suffering and death is never good: good contributes to this convulsion only from its tragic implication with its opposite in one and the same character.
-- Andrew Coyle Bradley -
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.
-- Andrew Greeley -
The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment.
-- Andrew Solomon -
I found myself losing interest in almost everything, I didn't want to do any of the things I had previously wanted to do and I didn't know why. Everything there was to do seemed like too much work. The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment.
-- Andrew Solomon -
Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.
-- Andy Warhol -
The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.
-- Andy Warhol -
Every action has equal and opposite reaction. This is law of the universe and spares none. Wrong done and injustice inflicted is paid back in the same coin. No one has escaped justice of the universe. It is only a matter of time.
-- Anil Sinha -
If we have to tell Hollywood good-by, it may be with one of those tender, old-fashioned, seven-second kisses exchanged between two people of the opposite sex, with all their clothes on.
-- Anita Loos -
The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.
-- Anne Lamott -
I don't think anything is the opposite of love.
-- Anne Lamott -
Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.
-- Anne Sexton -
If anything, I was the opposite of most college students who think they can do anything.
-- Annie Baker -
and they shook hands, hit each other on the shoulder, then there was forty feet of distance between them and nothing to do but drive away in opposite directions. Within a mile Ennis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirling new snow, tried to puke but nothing came up. He felt about as bad as he ever had and it took a long time for the feeling to wear off.
-- Annie Proulx -
Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
-- Anthony Burgess -
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.
-- Anthony Burgess -
I think people that have fear that, 'Oh if I have a kid I won't be able to do this and I won't be able to do that.' It's kind of the opposite. It really gives you energy. It makes people better.
-- Anthony Kiedis -
Thus, flexibility, as displayed by water, is a sign of life. Rigidity, its opposite, is an indicator of death.
-- Anthony Lawlor -
Suicide rates have not slumped under the onslaught of antidepressants, mood-stabilizers, anxiolytic and anti-psychotic drugs; the jump in suicide rates suggests that the opposite is true. In some cases, suicide risk skyrockets once treatment begins (the patient may feel not only penalized for a justifiable reaction, but permanently stigmatized as malfunctioning). Studies show that self-loathing sharply decreases only in the course of cognitive-behavioral treatment.
-- Antonella Gambotto-Burke -
Obviously, the intention was not to go back to images traditionally valued as worthy or holy images and shapes, but exactly the opposite; its main purpose had to be to realise as sacred art, anything which so far had been regarded as of little value and pitiful.
-- Antoni Tapies -
You see a woman, 22 years old, going out with a guy over 60 - and it's kind of natural. But if it happens in the opposite direction everyone says, 'What is going on there?
-- Antonio Banderas -
Why is an actor's unintentional giggling called a 'corpse'? It seems to me quite the opposite. It proves that he's very much alive, and can still tell how silly this all is: him dressed up as someone else speaking words written by a third party.
-- Antony Sher -
What you really have to know is one: yourself. And the only way you can know that one is in the mirror of the others. And the only way you can see into the mirror of the others is by love or its opposite—by profound emotion. Certainly not by curiosity—by dancing around asking, looking, making notes. You have to live relationships to know.
-- Archibald MacLeish -
To separate journalism and poetry, therefore-history and poetry-to set them up at opposite ends of the world of discourse, is to separate seeing from the feel of seeing, emotion from the acting of emotion, knowledge from the realization of knowledge.
-- Archibald MacLeish -
It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.
-- Archibald MacLeish -
Failure is not the opposite of success; it's part of success.
-- Arianna Huffington -
Creating the culture of burnout is opposite to creating a culture of sustainable creativity. This is something that needs to be taught in business schools. This mentality needs to be introduced as a leadership and performance-enhancing tool.
-- Arianna Huffington -
Failure is not the opposite to success, it's a stepping stone to success. If our primary goal is to be approved of, then we are not going to take risks, we are not going to speak out, we are going to try to blend in.
-- Arianna Huffington -
Rhetoric is useful because truth and justice are in their nature stronger than their opposites; so that if decisions be made, not in conformity to the rule of propriety, it must have been that they have been got the better of through fault of the advocates themselves: and this is deserving reprehension.
-- Aristotle -
We ought to be able to persuade on opposite sides of a question; as also we ought in the case of arguing by syllogism: not that we should practice both, for it is not right to persuade to what is bad; but in order that the bearing of the case may not escape us, and that when another makes an unfair use of these reasonings, we may be able to solve them.
-- Aristotle -
...in this way the structure of the universe- I mean, of the heavens and the earth and the whole world- was arranged by one harmony through the blending of the most opposite principles.
-- Aristotle -
We assume therefore that moral virtue is the quality of acting in the best way in relation to pleasures and pains, and that vice is the opposite.
-- Aristotle -
I do not know how it comes about, but if you sit opposite a man every day and you are engaged in fighting him, you cannot help getting a liking for him whether he deserves it or not.
-- Arthur Balfour -
Christianity has not conquered nationalism; the opposite has been the case nationalism has made Christianity its footstool.
-- Arthur Keith -
The integrative tendencies of the individual operate through the mechanisms of empathy, sympathy, projection, introjection, identification, worship- all of which make him feel that he is a part of some larger entity which transcends the boundaries of the individual self. This psychological urge to belong, to participate, to commune is as primary and real as its opposite. The all-important question is the nature of that higher entity of which the individual feels himself a part.
-- Arthur Koestler -
For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
The second I tell myself I have to do something, I'm sure to do the opposite.
-- Ashley Madekwe -
I don't think opposites attract. I think like attracts like. So I don't think that they do attract, opposites. Only when you're talking about magnetic poles.
-- Ashton Kutcher -
Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.
-- Assata Shakur -
Just, harmonious, temperate as is the spirit of liberty, there is in the name and mere notion of it a vagueness so opposite to the definite clearness of the moral law....
-- Augustus William Hare -
When I was 15, what I wanted in a boyfriend was just that confidence and swagger. I wanted someone who knew what he was doing, because I was just faking it. What I want for my daughter is the exact opposite.
-- Ayelet Waldman -
Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion.
-- Ayn Rand -
Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society.
-- Ayn Rand -
The severest trial of oppression is the constant outrage which one suffers at the thought of the oppressor. What Jesus discovered was how to avoid the inner devastations. His technique was to practice the opposite emotion... a man may not get his freedom or possessions back, but he's less miserable. It's a difficult lesson.
-- B. F. Skinner -
When you want to organize knowledge. you will be careful to base the classification upon essential qualities. You will thus derive classes in which the members have the greatest amount of resemblance to one another and the greatest amount of difference from the members of other classes. But suppose that, instead of organizing knowledge, you set out to organize ignorance and prejudice. You will then do precisely the opposite.You will keep the classification vague and flexible, so that it can be made to include just whatever individuals you choose.
-- Barrows Dunham -
What was the opposite of linkage blindness? What described being certain of something without any kind of evidence?...The term was faith.
-- Barry Lyga -
One time you told me that the opposite of love isn't hate. And I didn't understand that, but I think I do know. Because if you hate someone, you most still care, right? You have to care a little bit; otherwise you would just ignore them and forget they even live. Or lived.
-- Barry Lyga -
No one who is being himself is going to be approved of all the time. The whole world could love you, but if you do not love yourself, you would not even notice. The opposite is also true - the whole world could disapprove of you, but if you love yourself, you would not even notice. Accept yourself within you and the entire world becomes totally acceptable.
-- Bartholomaus
