Reversal Quotes - Page 3

• The so-called sexual revolution is not, as advertised, a liberation of sexual behavior but rather its reversal. In former days, even under Victoria, sexual intercourse was the natural end and culmination of heterosexual relations. Now one begins with genital overtures instead of a handshake, then waits to see what will turn up (e.g., might become friends later). Like dogs greeting each other nose to tail and tail to nose.

  Walker Percy

  Dog, Waiting, Tails

  Walker Percy (2013). “The Last Gentleman and The Second Coming: In One Volume”, p.356, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think the reason the stories are briskly paced, when they are, is that I like story. I like stories where things happen and there are surprises and reversals, in addition to vivid characters and a memorable voice. So those are the kinds of stories I try to write. And it turns out that's pretty much the only kind of writing that works for TV. It's a medium that just devours story, demands surprises and reversals. So my sensibility is suited to TV storytelling, at least as we think of it today.

  Nick Antosca

  Memorable, Writing, Character

  Interview with Shane Jones, logger.believermag.com. September 16, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• At that time [90th in Lagos], if you drove through the city, you drove through a foreground that always seemed to be incredibly dramatic and incredibly agonised - smoking, burning, incredible compression. In the first year we stayed on the ground and went everywhere. But then in order to discover whether this was the whole story, we rented a helicopter. And we began to understand that this is not chaos but a highly modern system that had been abandoned, then at some point went into reversal, then slowly came out of it.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Order, Years, Cities

  "'Lagos shows how a city can recover from a deep, deep pit': Rem Koolhaas talks to Kunlé Adeyemi". Interview with Chris Michael, www.theguardian.com. February 26, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• War ... a reversal of the rules where a man is permitted to kill all the humans he can.

  John Steinbeck

  War, Men, Humans

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.456, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A Russian Reversal quote on Uncyclopedia's Soviet Union article? How original.

  Yakov Smirnoff

  Unions, Articles, Soviet Union

  4 Copy quote

• [Ted] Cruz may have been hoping his reversal would fly under the radar.

  Chris Hayes

  May, Radar, Cruz

  Source: www.msnbc.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Men, Opposites, Would Be

  5 Copy quote

• If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.

  George C. Marshall

  Christmas, Peace, Men

  Biennial Report of the Chief of Staff, US Army, September 1, 1945.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• A miracle to confound natural law, a baffling reversal of the inevitable consequences . . . a miracle. . . . An act of high imagination -- daring and lurid and impossible. Yes, a cartoon of the mind.

  Tim O'Brien

  Law, Imagination, Miracle

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “Going After Cacciato”, p.242, Broadway Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To knot a sentence up properly, it has to be thought out carefully, and revised. New phrases have to be put in; sudden changes of subject must be introducted; verbs must be shifted to unsuspected localities; short words must be excised with ruthless hand; archaisms must be sprinkled like sugar-plums upon the concoction; the fatal human tendency to say things straightforwardly must be detected and defeated by adroit reversals; and, if a glimmer of meaning yet remain under close scrutiny, it must be removed by replacing all the principal verbs by paraphrases in some dead language.

  Aleister Crowley

  Hands, Plums, Verbs

  9 Copy quote

• In an initial period, Photography, in order to surprise, photographs the notable; but soon, by a familiar reversal, it decrees notable whatever it photographs. The 'anything whatever' then becomes the sophisticated acme of value.

  Roland Barthes

  Photography, Order, Notable

  9 Copy quote

• He gave her his phone number, in a peculiar reversal of dating procedure. She might have considered kissing him, even after the horrible first date, but he just didn’t seem to know what to do. However, Jeremy does have one outstanding quality. He likes her. And this quality in a person makes them infinitely interesting to the person who is being liked.

  Steve Martin

  Kissing, Phones, Numbers

  6 Copy quote

• If you want to heal Heal others And smile or weep At this very happy reversal of fate

  Muriel Barbery

  Fate, Want, Heal

  Muriel Barbery (2013). “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”, p.229, Gallic Books

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• History is full of delightful reversals, where the opposite of what one predicts comes true.

  Edmund Snow Carpenter

  Opposites, History, Delightful

  4 Copy quote

• Most people think that aging is irreversible and we know that there are mechanisms even in the human machinery that allow for the reversal of aging, through correction of diet, through anti-oxidants, through removal of toxins from the body, through exercise, through yoga and breathing techniques, and through meditation.

  Deepak Chopra

  Funny, Yoga, Exercise

  52 Copy quote

• Governments do not have the answers. Indeed quite the reversal. A lot of times they not only do not have the answers, they themselves are the problem. If we are committed to helping our world's children, then we must begin to create solutions from the bottom up.

  Betty Williams

  Children, Our World, Government

  11 Copy quote

• Turning something upside-down elicits a reversal of content and pointing a steeple into the ground directs it to hell as opposed to heaven.

  Dennis Oppenheim

  Heaven, Upside Down, Hell

  7 Copy quote

• 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. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next--and on and on.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Islands, People, Heaven

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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The reason sport is attractive to many of the general public is that it's filled with reversals. What you think may happen doesn't happen. A champion is beaten, an unknown becomes a champion.

  Roger Bannister

  Sports, Athlete, Thinking

  27 Copy quote

• We [at Soros Fund Management] use options and more exotic derivatives sparingly. We try to catch new trends early and in later stages we try to catch trend reversals. Therefore, we tend to stabilize rather than destabilize the market. We are not doing this as a public service. It is our style of making money.

  George Soros

  Style, Trying, Use

  George Soros (1995). “Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve”, Wiley

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• No, what I felt was the torment of waiting, stuck between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next which might or might not bring a hail storm, plane crash, poetic justice, or a miraculous reversal.

  Nicole Krauss

  Justice, Waiting, Storm

  6 Copy quote

• The investigation of making is illuminating towards that moment rather than the other way around, a reversal of the way that I would approach making a painting before. I think that it gets to a richer illumination of the moment, which is what I was trying to do at the beginning but going about it a little backwards.

  Julie Mehretu

  Thinking, Illumination, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• The resurrection is the revelation to chosen witnesses of the fact that Jesus who died on the cross is indeed king - conqueror of death and sin, Lord and Savior of all. The resurrection is not the reversal of a defeat but the proclamation of a victory. The King reigns from the tree. The reign of God has indeed come upon us, and its sign is not a golden throne but a wooden cross.

  Lesslie Newbigin

  Jesus, Kings, Tree

  31 Copy quote

• We have a reversal of a longstanding trend, from rising inequality across nations and constant or declining inequality within nations, to declining inequality across nations and rising inequality within them.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Rising, Trends, Inequality

  Source: www.theoryculturesociety.org

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was always fascinated with the idea that an imaginary friend was the perfect friend that a child created, and I wanted to play with the idea of a role reversal where the imaginary friend is waiting to find that perfect someone but has doubts about whether that day would ever come.

  Dan Santat

  Children, Play, Ideas

  "Helping Students Make Friends". Interview with Brian Smith, www.scholastic.com. August 25, 2014.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source