Reversal Quotes

• A reversal is just anything that's a surprise. It's a way of keeping the audience interested.

  Tony Gilroy

  Way, Surprise, Audience

  "Twister" by D. T. Max, www.newyorker.com. March 16, 2009.

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• Excessive optimism sows the seeds of its own reversal.

  Alan Greenspan

  Optimism, Seeds

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• Those who have been indulged by fortune and have always thought of calamity as what happens to others, feel a blind incredulous rage at the reversal of their lot, and half believe that their wild cries will alter the course of the storm.

  George Eliot

  Believe, Storm, Half

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.3429, Delphi Classics

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• This is a catastrophic universe, always; and subject to hidden reversals, upheavals, changes, cataclysms, with joy never anything but the song of substance under pressure forced into new forms and shapes.

  Doris Lessing

  Song, Joy, Shapes

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• To recommend that women become identical to men, would be simple reversal, and would defeat the whole point of androgyny, and for that matter, feminism: in both, the whole point is choice.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Simple, Men, Choices

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• To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it - who are you?

  Eckhart Tolle

  Past, Ego, Mind

  Eckhart Tolle (2010). “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, p.22, New World Library

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• The search for God is a reversal of the normal, mundane worldly order. In search for God, you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult. You abandon your comforting and familiar habits with the hope (the mere hope!) that something greater will be offered you in return for what you have given up.. if we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be.. a prudent insurance policy.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Destiny, Order, Swim

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• Jesus announced a great reversal of values in His Sermon on the Mount, elevating not the rich or attractive, but rather the poor, the persecuted, and those who mourn.

  Philip Yancey

  Jesus, Rich, Poor

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• Getting ahead in a difficult profession - singing, acting, writing, whatever requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows and unfair reversals. When I think back to those first couple of years in Rome, those endless rejections, without a glimmer of encouragement from anyone, all those failed screen tests, and yet I never let my desire slide away from me, my belief in myself and what I felt I could achieve.

  Sophia Loren

  Encouragement, Couple, Writing

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• A curious reversal in the locus of moral concern has taken place: people feel responsible for everything except for what they do.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  Taken, People, Moral

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• What happens behind your eyes is more important than what happens in front of them. This is a reversal from the way that we have been taught and the way that we had experienced the world as five sensory humans.

  Gary Zukav

  Eye, Important, World

  Source: www.douglasgillies.com

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• Those in the community who defy authority and 'break the law' seem to enjoy the good life and have everything in the way of material possessions. On the other hand, people who work hard and struggle and suffer much are the victims of greed and indifference, losers. This insane reversal of values presses heavily on the Black community. The causes originate from outside and are imposed by a system that ruthlessly seeks its own rewards, no matter what the cost in wrecked human lives.

  Huey Newton

  Good Life, Struggle, Hard Work

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• A market does not culminate in one grand blaze of glory. Neither does it end with a sudden reversal of form. A market can and does often cease to be a bull market long before prices generally begin to break.

  Jesse Lauriston Livermore

  Long, Doe, Bulls

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• I'm not a big crime reader, but I'm reading Michael Connelly's 'The Reversal.' I'm going back to his novels. I'm also reading Keith Richards' 'Life.' I'm always fascinated by the transition from the innocent late '60s and early '70s and the youth culture becoming an industry.

  Jo Nesbo

  Reading, Culture, Keith

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• Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  People, Facts, Action

  Kurt Vonnegut (1999). “Galapagos: A Novel”, Dial Press

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• History demonstrates that participants in financial markets are susceptible to waves of optimism. Excessive optimism shows the seeds of its own reversal in the form of imbalances that tend to grow over time.

  Alan Greenspan

  Optimism, Imbalance, Financial

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• I was blessed with a sense of my own destiny. I have never sold myself short. I have never judged myself by other people's standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself. So failure or reversal does not bring out resentment in me because I cannot blame others for any misfortune that befalls me.

  Sophia Loren

  Life, Blessed, Destiny

  "Sophia, Living and Loving: Her Own Story". Book by A. E. Hotchner, 1979.

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• Slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or the taste of the superhuman, cripple judgment. On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself. The purpose of this essay is to accept and study that strange challenge.

  Albert Camus

  Challenges, Age, Peculiar

  Albert Camus (1965). “Caligula and Cross purpose”

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• Modern art did not just happen. It came as a result of a deep reversal of spiritual values in the Age of Reason, a movement that in the course of a little more than two centuries changed the world.

  Hans Rookmaaker

  Spiritual, Art, Two

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• Once I witnessed a windstorm so severe two 100-year-old trees were uprooted on the spot. The next day, walking among the wreckage, I found the friable nests of birds, completely intact and unharmed on the ground. That the featherweight survive the massive, that this reversal of fortune takes place among us — that is what haunts me. I don’t know what it means.

  Mary Ruefle

  Mean, Years, Two

  Mary Ruefle (2012). “Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures”, p.206, Wave Books

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• Good technique includes quick changes, great variety and speed. It may be a system of reversals much like a concept of God and the Devil. In the speed of events, which one is really in charge? Do they change places with lightning speed? The Chinese believe so. To put the heart of the martial arts in your own heart and have it be a part of you means total comprehension.

  Bruce Lee

  Art, Mean, Warrior

  "Tao of Jeet Kune Do".

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• It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite… The reversal of fear of being touched belongs to the nature of crowds. The feeling of relief is most striking where the density of the crowd is greatest

  Elias Canetti

  Men, Opposites, Feelings

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• Islam was something like a Christian heresy. The early heresies had been full of mad reversals and evasions of the Incarnation, rescuing their Jesus from the reality of his body even at the expense of the sincerity of his soul.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christian, Jesus, Reality

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• I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history... The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me.

  Jimmy Carter

  Thinking, Impact, America

  "Carter blasts Bush, Blair on Iraq". www.reuters.com. May 20, 2007.

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• Almost every sin is committed for the sake of sensual pleasure; and sensual pleasure is overcome by hardship and distress arising either voluntarily from repentance, or else involuntarily as a result of some salutary and providential reversal. 'For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged; but when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, so that we should not be condemned with the world.' (1 Cor. 11:31-32).

  Gregory of Nazianzus

  Judging, Sensual, Hardship

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