Top 100 Quotes About Opposites
#1. Age and youth look upon life from the opposite ends of the telescope; it is exceedingly long,
it is exceedingly short.
Henry Ward Beecher
#2. Misbehavior and punishment are not opposites that cancel each other - on the contrary they breed and reinforce each other.
Haim G. Ginott
#3. A lot of people say I'm not very friendly, that I'm cold. But I'm just the opposite. I live a very simple life. I'm a normal person, very sensitive, very caring about those around me.
Justine Henin
#4. The way I go about choosing roles is basically by just trying to pick the complete opposite of the last thing I did, or if it has someone else who I really have wanted to work with.
Anne Hathaway
#5. Figure out what your opponent wants you to do and try to do the opposite.
Lou Krieger
#6. Often we tell ourselves, "Don't just sit there, do something!" But when we practice awareness, we discover that the opposite may be more helpful: "Don't just do something, sit there!"
Nhat Hanh
#7. Opposites though they are, both solitude and solidarity are essential if the artist is to produce works that are not only significant to his or her age, but that will also speak to future generations.
Rollo May
#8. Peterson thought it an unusual friendship, one only the Army could forge.
David Halberstam
#9. Whereas I want everything to be peaceful during a birth, I take the total opposite approach when I'm helping someone come to terms with leaving this place - I play Richard Pryor records.
Erykah Badu
#10. Our western mind lacking all culture in this respect, has never yet devised a concept, not even a name for "the union of opposites through the middle path", that most fundamental item of inward experience which could respectably be set against the Chinese concept of Tao.
Carl Jung
#11. Since I've grown up I really wanted to be able to create something different. In Persian music, opposite, again, to classical music, that the instrument developed and evolved over, like, hundreds of years, our instrument all remained the same.
Hafez Nazeri
#12. We often hear the terms 'positional' and 'tactical' used as opposites. But this is as wrong as to consider a painting's composition unrelated to its subject. Just as there is no such thing as 'artistic' art, so there is no such thing as 'positional' chess.
Samuel Reshevsky
#13. Enjoying praise is in some people merely a civility of the heart
and just the opposite of a vanity of the spirit.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#14. I have always done the opposite of what I was trained to do ... Having little technical background, I became a photographer. Adopting a machine, I do my utmost to make it malfunction. For me, to make a photograph is to make an anti-photograph.
William Klein
#15. Her feelings of fear and helplessness had reached such a pitch that they were suddenly transformed into their opposites. Having overcome them, she felt corageous and self-confident enough to tackle any power on earth; more precisely, she had ceased to worry about herself.
Michael Ende
#16. Writing should not be routine; writing should actually be the opposite of procedural because otherwise the written word would become a routine word.
Elie Wiesel
#17. Ginny who lived her life with hair in the breeze, Stillman who lived his with it under his hat. And he loved her so much the worse for it.
Josh Weil
#18. 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
#19. There are many ways of understanding simple things, but generally the opposite is true for difficult ideas
Miyamoto Musashi
#20. We shall not be properly educated ourselves, nor will the guardians whom we are training, until we can recognise the qualities of discipline, courage, generosity, greatness of mind, and others akin to them, as well as their opposites in all their manifestations.
Plato
#21. The world we live in is made up of polar opposites, black/white, male/female, night/day, and a human being who possesses both masculine and feminine - vulnerability and strength - is intriguing to us, whether they be a singer or actor or dancer, intrigues us, because THAT Is who we really are.
RuPaul
#22. Is man all man and is woman all woman? If so, they will never come together, since he lives for his own being and she lives for universal life, and these are opposites.
Pearl S. Buck
#23. The law of gratitude is the natural principle that action and reaction are always equal and in opposite directions.
Wallace D. Wattles
#24. If only a world-wide consciousness could arise that all division and fission are due to the splitting of opposites in the psyche, then we should know where to begin.
C. G. Jung
#25. Love and hate are not opposites; they are siblings birthed by obsession.
Steve Maraboli
#26. How can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?
Amy Tan
#27. Evil exists in this world because it has its place. For had you never sat blindly through the darkness of night, your eyes wouldn't turn toward the sunrise to appreciate its warmth and illumination.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#28. 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
#29. The opposite of success is not failure. Unsuccessful efforts are not failures unless they so discourage you that you abandon further efforts to achieve your goal. Even then, the venture or effort may be a failure but you are not. Failure is an event not a character trait.
Michael Josephson
#30. Divine Wisdom, intending to detain us some time on earth, has done well to cover with a veil the prospect of the life to come; for if our sight could clearly distinguish the opposite bank, who would remain on this tempestuous coast of time?
Madame De Stael
#31. 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
#32. 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.
Fran Lebowitz
#33. If two people are so unalike, as you and I, they are pleased when they discover points of agreement. But if they are as alike as Nietzsche and I, they suffer from their differences.
H.F. Peters
#35. Women have been taught that they are not powerful; they've been given an opposite description, that they are weak. The word "effeminate" implies weakness.
Frederick Lenz
#36. There can be no difference between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples anywhere in the USA.
Dahlia Lithwick
#37. Finally, I have someone that's like me. My other two pupils were the opposite sides of the moon. But this guy is on the same side of the moon, is on the same planet that I'm on.
Shaquille O'Neal
#38. Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.
Richard Dawkins
#39. Education is thus constantly remade in the praxis. In order to be it must become. Its "duration" (in the Bergsonian meaning of the word) is found in the interplay of opposites permanence and change.
Paulo Freire
#41. Accept ignorance; pay more attention to the question than the answer; never be afraid to go in the opposite direction.
Richard Saul Wurman
#42. Pugsley's First Law of Government: All government programs accomplish the opposite of what they are designed to achieve.
John Pugsley
#43. Are not all things which have opposites generated out of their opposites? I
Plato
#44. Love has no opposite.
Hate, fear, are not love's opposites;
they are its denial.
Ivan M. Granger
#45. We need dualities or opposites to appreciate, understand
and recognize value and distinction in our lives. If we did not have bitter, we could not appreciate sweet ...
I. Alan Appt
#46. I'll have a sentence in my head that's kind of beautiful and interesting, but I'm not sure why or where it's coming from. So it's kind of funny, because when people point out patterns or themes, it's the exact opposite of my film school experience.
Don Hertzfeldt
#47. When managers are afraid of redemptions, they get liquid. We all saw how many managers went from leveraged long in 2007 to huge net cash in 2008, when the right thing to do in terms of value would have been to do the opposite.
Seth Klarman
#48. [T]o be a castaway is to be caught up in grim and exhausting opposites.
Yann Martel
#49. I am against limitations like perspective. Perspective is illusion, it's the opposite of presence, and art is presence.
Pierre Soulages
#50. Humor is the opposite of all self-admiration and self-praise.
Karl Barth
#51. Some people think that because they do the opposite of what they are asked to do, they have initiative
Ovid
#52. With fear, possessiveness enters the picture, then jealousy rears its ugly head. Jealousy is the opposite of desiring life and freedom of choice for one's partner.
Peter Shepherd
#53. "We must learn that the electric Universe of motion is divided into wave cycles which are equally divided into opposite expressions"
Walter Russell
#54. The universe maintained a balance, moving first one way and then the other in a forever equalizing of opposites.
Diana Lanham
#55. When the opposite of your prayer occurs, your prayer hasn't been ignored; it's been considered & refused for your ultimate good.
C.S. Lewis
#56. Then Lady Chiltern argued the matter on views directly opposite to those which she had put forward when discussing the matter with her husband.
Anthony Trollope
#57. True love, unlike popular sentimental substitutes, is willing to suffer. Love is not "luv." Love is the cross. Our problem at first, the sheer problem of suffering, was a cross without Christ. We must never fall into the opposite and equal trap of a Christ without a cross.
Peter Kreeft
#58. This is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics.
Paul Krugman
#59. He believes in the unity of the opposites. And that is how life is.
Osho
#60. For love ... has two faces; one white, the other black; two bodies; one smooth, the other hairy. It has two hands, two feet, two tails, two, indeed, of every member and each one is the exact opposite of the other. Yet, so strictly are they joined together
Virginia Woolf
#61. As a child, I thought that war and peace were opposites. Yet I lived in peace when Vietnam was in flames and I didn't experience war until Vietnam had laid down its weapons. I believe that war and peace are actually friends, who mock us.
Kim Thuy
#62. Success and failure. We think of them as opposites, but they're really not. They're companions - the hero and the sidekick.
Laurence Shames
#63. There will always be new opposites, class struggles and uprisings. History has no ending.
Henning Mankell
#64. The more relaxed the muscles are, the more energy can flow through the body. Using muscular tensions to try to 'do' the punch or attempting to use brute force to knock someone over will only work to opposite effect.
Bruce Lee
#65. Doing your best is taking the action because you love it, not because you're expecting a reward. Most people do the exact opposite: They only take action when they expect a reward, and they don't enjoy the action. And that's the reason why they don't do their best.
Miguel Angel Ruiz
#68. In the old days rank was not important - The complete opposite of today. You just trained
Higa Yuchoku
#69. Life found itself alive and somehow knew its opposite was death. We are ever being born, or dying, and the thrill of choosing is ours. Only once, must we be born without our own consent. Only once, must we die without our own permission
Calvin Miller
#70. It is incorrect to assume that you cannot find any good in the point of view directly opposite yours.
Daniel Willey
#71. Remembering is the opposite of being here now; it's being there now.
Merrit Malloy
#72. I remember someone said to me, "Never stand up when you can sit down, never sit down when you can lie down, never lie down when you can be asleep." Those are bits of advice that I haven't taken, really. I've done the opposite of them, but they have stayed with me.
Michael Sheen
#73. I believe that bad taste is vulgar. It's like cursing. I think the world can be saved through design, because what is the most distasteful thing someone can do? Kill someone. So, good taste is the opposite of that.
Kanye West
#74. If you want to be creative, don't try to do something new. Doing something new means NOT doing what's been done before, and that's a negative impulse. Negative impulses are frustrating. They're the opposite of creativity, and they never yield good ideas ...
Eva Zeisel
#75. The keystone of the entire structure of the spiritual and physical universe is Rhythmic Balanced Interchange between all opposites.
Walter Russell
#76. I don't think I could walk down the street wearing bubbles or a dress made of ham. What Lady GaGa has done has been kind of amazing. I am the opposite. I wear clothes I would wear on the street. I'm all about a real look.
Rihanna
#77. You like lies?" Shallan asked. "Good lies," Pattern said. "That lie. Good lie." "What makes a lie good?" Shallan asked, taking careful notes, recording Pattern's exact words. "True lies." "Pattern, those two are opposites." "Hmmmm . . . Light makes shadow. Truth makes lies. Hmmmm.
Brandon Sanderson
#78. Because, my dear, in the spiritual life opposites meet. It's not the cold passionless ones who become great ascetics, but the most hot-blooded, people with something worth renouncing. That's why the church won't allow eunuchs to become priests.
Antal Szerb
#79. Whatever success I've achieved has come from pretty much doing the opposite of what I've been told or expected to do.
Hal Riney
#80. There are certain sacred things in my life that I would never talk about. Because they are clear in my head, I can walk freely around the opposite side. I keep them completely separate in my mind.
Heather Armstrong
#81. I will say that Bernie Sanders are the opposite end of the spectrum from Donald Trump. We see him leading right now in the Republican Party in an intractable way.
Rachel Maddow
#82. I have never acted he has never been cast in a romantic lead or has been cast opposite a female love interest in any movie he starred in.
Morgan Freeman
#83. Nothing shocks our moral feelings so deeply as cruelty does. We can forgive every other crime, but not cruelty. The reason for this is that it is the very opposite of compassion.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#84. It's way easier to stay in the comfort zone, especially when things are going good than to go out on a limb and take some risks. My philosophy is exactly the opposite: Sometimes it's risky not to take a risk.
Harvey MacKay
#85. The egg cream is psychologically the opposite of circumcision
it pleasurably reaffirms your Jewishness.
Mel Brooks
#86. We live in a polarized world of contrived dualisms, dichotomies and paradoxes: light vs. dark and good vs. evil. We as Mexic Amerindians/mestizas are the dark. We are the evilor at least, the questionable.
Ana Castillo
#87. If opposites attract why is the church trying so hard to mirror the world?
Lakesha Ruise
#88. What can be the dharma at one point in your life can totally reverse itself, and suddenly you might be doing something the opposite or something very new, something you never considered.
Frederick Lenz
#89. Indeed, nearly all attempts to exterminate a doctrine and its organizational expression, by force without spiritual foundation, are doomed to failure, and not seldom end with the exact opposite of the desired result ...
Adolf Hitler
#90. Marlon Brando was the absolute opposite of everything they told me he was going to be, which is that he was a testy guy who wants to know that he's in control of everything. But, that's not who Marlon was. No matter what he did, the most important thing on his mind was justice.
Johnny Depp
#91. (The Weakest Link) is fascinating program. They ask a bunch of people questions and they keep getting rid of the dumbest person, so just the smartest person is left. It is kind of the opposite way we elect a president.
Jay Leno
#92. You have to remember: the wife been home all day cleaning asses and feeding faces. Sometimes the opposite.
Ray Romano
#93. I find that so often this work can so easily overcome you and knock you out of balance and become all you think about and all you care about and all you feel is important in your life, and it's kind of the opposite. Relationships first and people first and then you can be a great performer.
Erin Davie
#94. All that we do is governed by the law of opposites in which every so-called positive act is exactly and equally balanced by its opposite.;
Tony Parsons
#95. God continually turns you from one state of feeling to another, revealing truth by means of opposites.... So that you may have the two wings of fear and hope; for the bird with one wing is unable to fly....
Jalaluddin Rumi
#96. Indiscriminate tolerance and indiscriminate condemnation are not two opposites: they are two variants of the same evasion.
Ayn Rand
#97. Though ugliness be the opposite of beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness; for it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a perfect fitness for any use.
Edmund Burke
#98. Digital also had this evolution that came out of post-production. And George Lucas did it because he wanted to make a big movie with special effects. Sort of the opposite of what you'd think is an indie film. So it's coming from both these angles.
Christopher Kenneally
#99. Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms. The one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it.
James Madison
#100. I don't buy into the word "failure." I used to but not anymore. Trying not to fail is the opposite of art.
Robert Piper
