Inverse Quotes - Page 2

• There's a perceived inverse relation between looks and talent. Look at Charlize Theron - she made herself ugly for 'Monster' and suddenly everyone said 'she's a genius.' It shouldn't be like that.

  Lena Headey

  Monsters, Looks, Genius

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• I think I should not go far wrong if I asserted that the amount of genuine leisure available in a society is generally in inverse proportion to the amount of labor-saving machinery it employs.

  E. F. Schumacher

  Technology, Thinking, Saving

  "Good Work". Book by E.F. Schumacher, p. 25, 1985.

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• I am genuinely sorry for scientists of the younger generation who never knew Fisher personally. So long as you avoided a handful of subjects like inverse probability that would turn Fisher in the briefest possible moment from extreme urbanity into a boiling cauldron of wrath, you got by with little worse than a thick head from the port which he, like the Cambridge mathematician J. E. Littlewood, loved to drink in the evening. And on the credit side you gained a cherished memory of English spoken in a Shakespearean style and delivered in the manner of a Spanish grandee.

  Fred Hoyle

  Sorry, Memories, Wrath

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• The strength to kill is not essential for self-defense; one ought to have the strength to die. When a man is fully ready to die, he will not even desire to offer violence. Indeed, I may put it down as a self-evident proposition that the desire to kill is in inverse proportion to the desire to die. And history is replete with instances of men who by dying with courage and compassion on their lips converted the hearts of their violent opponents.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Heart, Men, Compassion

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• The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

  Alain de Botton

  Country, May, Developing Countries

  Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.40, Penguin UK

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• The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Country, Rights, Numbers

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• Free software is part of a broader phenomenon, which is a shift toward recognizing the value of shared work. Historically, shared stuff had a very bad name. The reputation was that people always abused shared things, and in the physical world, something that is shared and abused becomes worthless. In the digital world, I think we have the inverse effect, where something that is shared can become more valuable than something that is closely held, as long as it is both shared and contributed to by everybody who is sharing in it.

  Mark Shuttleworth

  Thinking, Names, Long

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• Are the atoms of the dextroacid (tartaric) grouped in the spirals of a right-hand helix or situated at the angles of an irregular tetrahedron, or arranged in such or such particular unsymmetrical fashion? We are unable to reply to these questions. But there can be no reason for doubting that the grouping of the atoms has an unsymmetrical arrangement with a non-superimposable image. It is not less certain that the atoms of the laevo-acid realize precisely an unsymmetrical arrangement of the inverse of the above.

  Louis Pasteur

  Fashion, Hands, Doubt

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• At American weddings, the quality of the food is in inverse proportion to the social position of the bride and groom.

  Calvin Trillin

  Quality, Social, Bride And Groom

  Calvin Trillin (1987). “Uncivil liberties”, Penguin Group USA

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• A promise is binding in the inverse ratio of the numbers to whom it is made.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Numbers, Promise, Ratios

  Thomas De Quincey (2015). “The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater”, p.81, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.

  Molly Ivins

  Rights, People, Doe

  Molly Ivins (2004). “Who Let the Dogs In?: Incredible Political Animals I Have Known”, p.246, Random House

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• Wise or unwise, who doubts for a moment that contentment is the cause of happiness? Yet the inverse is true: we are contented because we are happy, and not happy because we are contented. Well-regulated minds may be satisfied with a small portion of happiness; none can be happy with a small portion of content.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Wise, Doubt, Mind

  Walter Savage Landor (1853). “The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].”, p.6

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• Addictive behavior is kind of the inverse of procrastination: procrastination is about not being able to do what you want to do, addiction about not being able to not do what you don't want to do (drink, use drugs, etc.)

  James Surowiecki

  Procrastination, Addiction, Drug

  "Ask the Author Live: James Surowiecki on Procrastination". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. October 1, 2010.

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• I verily believe that a man's way with women is in inverse ratio to his prowess among men. The weakling and the saphead have often great ability to charm the fair sex, while the fighting man who can face a thousand real dangers unafraid, sits hiding in the shadows like some frightened child.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Sex, Children, Real

  Edgar Rice Burroughs (2014). “Under the Moons of Mars”, p.107, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Cancel me not - for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Humorous, Two, Roots

  Stanislaw Lem (2002). “The Cyberiad”, p.57, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Sometimes I think that the amount of time you live on earth is just an inverse reflection of how good you were in a previous existence. For example, infants who die from SIDs were actually great people when they were alive for real, so they get to go to heaven after a mere five weeks in purgatory. Meanwhile anyone Willard Scott ever congratulated for turning one hundred two was obviously a terrible individual who had many many previous sins to pay for and had to spend a century in his or her own unknown purgatory even though the person seemed perfectly wholesome in this particular world.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Real, Reflection, Thinking

  Chuck Klosterman (2006). “Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story”, p.24, Simon and Schuster

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• There thus appears to be an inverse correlation between recovery and psychotherapy; the more psychotherapy, the smaller the recovery rate.

  Hans Eysenck

  Recovery, Rate, Psychotherapy

  Hans J. Eysenck, Glenn D. Wilson (2013). “The Experimental Study of Freudian Theories (Psychology Revivals)”, p.370, Routledge

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• People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse "nobodies"-both of which are, of course, nonsensical descriptors, for we are all, by necessity, individuals with distinct identities and comparable claims on existence. Such words are nevertheless an apt vehicle for conveying the disparate treatment accorded to different groups. Those without status are all but invisible: they are treated brusquely by others, their complexities trampled upon and their singularities ignored.

  Alain de Botton

  People, Important, Identity

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• Now of the difficulties bound up with the public in which we doctors work, I hesitate to speak in a mixed audience. Common sense in matters medical is rare, and is usually in inverse ratio to the degree of education.

  William Osler

  Education, Hard Work, Science

  William Osler (1927). “Aequanimitas”, p.73, Ravenio Books

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• The necessity for external government to man is in an inverse ratio to the vigor of his self-government. Where the last is most complete, the first is least wanted. Hence, the more virtue the more liberty.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Men, Self, Liberty

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1854). “The complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: With an introductory essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions”, p.458

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• In any given society the authority of man over man runs in inverse proportion to the intellectual development of that society.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

  Running, Men, Intellectual

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• The ability to rebound is in inverse proportion to the distance your house is from the nearest railroad tracks.

  Don Meyer

  Basketball, Distance, Track

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• The influence of the senses have in men overpowered the thought to the degree that the walls of time and space have come to look solid, real and insurmountable. .. Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the power of the mind. Man is capable of abolishing them both.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wall, Real, Men

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• There is an inverse relationship between imagination and money.

  Alan Moore

  Imagination

  "Alan Moore: The Last Angry Man". Interview with Jennifer Vineyard, MTV, August 30, 2006.

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• Drag for me is costume, and what I'm trying to do is, sometimes I'll go around and wear makeup in the streets, turn up to the gig, take the makeup off, do the show, and then put the makeup back on. It's the inverse of drag. It's not about artifice. It's about me just expressing myself. So when I'm campaigning in London for politics, I campaign with makeup on and the nails. It's just what I have on, like any woman.

  Eddie Izzard

  Makeup, Trying, Nails

  "Eddie Izzard, Force of Nature". Interview with Gerry Visco, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 19, 2014.

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