Opposites Quotes - Page 36

• At root, vulgar just means popular on a mass scale. It is the semantic opposite of pretentious or snobby. It is humility with a comb-over. It is Nielsen ratings and Barnum's axiom and the real bottom line. It is big, big business.

  David Foster Wallace

  Real, Mean, Humility

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• The marriages come and go but your friendships stay, which is the opposite of what it used to be, so that there will be people in our lives for 30 years and often it is not your husband, it's your women friends, male friends with whom you come of age.

  Wendy Wasserstein

  Husband, Years, People

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• The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears.

  Erich Fromm

  Real, Love Is, Objectivity

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Art of Loving”, p.119, Open Road Media

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• Just honest. To me, being 'politically incorrect' means the opposite of being political -- which means to spin everything. That's all it's ever meant to me. It's never meant liberal or conservative. It means honest.

  Bill Maher

  Mean, Political, Conservative

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• Every so often my life will feel like a story. It doesn't have to be a big thing; in fact, most often, it's just the opposite.

  David Sedaris

  Stories, Facts, Bigs

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• 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

  Fighting, Men, Helping

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• How is it that in the so-called barbarian ages art was understood, whereas in our age of progress exactly the opposite is true?

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Art, Understanding, Progress

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• I always used to go for blondes and quiet girls, but Victoria is the total opposite - dark and loud.

  David Beckham

  Girl, Dark, Quiet

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• Who ever heard of Casablanca? I don't want to star opposite some unknown Swedish broad.

  George Raft

  Stars, Want, Broads

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• All things are in flux; the flux is subject to a unifying measure or rational principle. This principle (logos, the hidden harmony behind all change) bound opposites together in a unified tension, which is like that of a lyre, where a stable harmonious sound emerges from the tension of the opposing forces that arise from the bow bound together by the string.

  Heraclitus

  Together, Sound, Principles

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• I hate the idea that, when it comes to books and learning, hard is often seen as the opposite of fun. It's strange to me that we should be so quick to give up on a book or a math problem when we are so willing to grapple, for centuries if necessary, with a single level of Angry Birds.

  John Green

  Giving Up, Fun, Hate

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• And a face above mine, white and beautiful, eyes as large as the moon. You saved me. A hand on my cheek, cool and dry. Why did you save me? Words welling up on a tide: No, the opposite. Eyes the colour of a dawn sky, a crown of blond hair, so bright and white and blinding I could swear it was a halo.

  Lauren Oliver

  Beautiful, Eye, Moon

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• It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Book, Math, Thinking

  An Introduction to Mathematics ch. 5 (1911)

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• There are many people who have the gift, or failing, of never understanding themselves. I have been unlucky enough, or perhaps fortunate enough to have received the opposite gift.

  Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

  Failure, People, Understanding

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• That government is best which governs the least, so taught the courageous founders of this nation. This simple declaration is diametrically opposed to the all too common philosophy that the government should protect and support one from the cradle to the grave. The policy of the Founding Fathers has made our people and our nation strong. The opposite leads inevitably to moral decay.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Courage, Strong, Father

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• Are you letting culture, not scripture, determine your sexuality, how you date, how you present yourself, how you engage in certain relationships with members of the opposite sex? We need to be very clear that the way we do life is different than the rest of the world.

  Mark Driscoll

  Christian, Sex, Inspiration

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• Other people think exactly the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to all their problems. They make the other person responsible for their happiness and blame them for their possible unhappiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything.

  Paulo Coelho

  Love, Passion, Thinking

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• 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

  Freedom, Names, Law

  Augustus William Hare (1827). “Guesses at Truth”, p.38

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• One of the things that adds tension to our lives is small frustrations. Losing car keys can give you a panic attack. Not being able to find a comb when you get out of the shower, losing scissors and nail clippers, can make you fight with your roommate. The problem is that we think that these things are not supposed to happen to us. And that's what makes us tense. We think we can avoid these frustrations by making ourselves and others be more careful. I like to take the opposite tack-to assume that these things are a part of life and that they will happen no matter what.

  Jennifer James

  Fighting, Frustration, Thinking

  Jennifer James (1986). “Success Is the Quality of Your Journey”, William Morrow Paperbacks

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

  Jim DeMint

  Goal, Problem, Setting Goals

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• The opposite of creativity is cynicism

  Esa Saarinen

  Creativity, Cynical, Cynicism

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• As to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, that is on no ground credible. Even if some unknown landmass is there, and not just ocean, there was only one pair of original ancestors, and it is inconceivable that such distant regions should have been peopled by Adam's descendants.

  Saint Augustine

  Ocean, Men, Feet

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• The idea of being a feminist-so many women have come to this idea of it being anti-male and not able to connect with the opposite sex-but what feminism is about is equality and human rights. For me that is just an essential part of my identity. I hope [Girls] contributes to a continuance of feminist dialogue

  Lena Dunham

  Girl, Strong Women, Sex

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• 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

  Sex, Culture, Today

  Alfred C. Kinsey (1998). “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male”, p.660, Indiana University Press

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• Law practice is the exact opposite of sex:even when it's good, it's bad.

  Mortimer Zuckerman

  Sex, Law, Practice

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