Irreversibility Quotes & Sayings

Something escapes us, and we are escaping from ourselves, or losing ourselves, as part of an irreversible process; we have now passed some point of no return, the point where the contradictoriness of things ended, and we find ourselves, still alive, in a universe of non-contradiction, of enthusiasm, of ecstasy - of stupor in the face of a process which, for all its irreversibility, is bereft of meaning. — Jean Baudrillard

For every failure, there's an alternative
course of action. You just have to find it.
When you come to a roadblock,
take a detour. — Mary Kay Ash

The irreversibility of time is the mechanism that brings order out of chaos. — Ilya Prigogine

Given the irreversibility of the death penalty, the possibility of a wrongful conviction can never be overstated — George Gascon

People who fight fire with fire end up with only the ashes of their own integrity. — Michael Josephson

(1) irreversible processes are as real as reversible ones. (2) irreversible processes play a fundamental constructive role in the physical world. (3) irreversibility is deeply rooted in dynamics. — Ilya Prigogine

The irreversibility of time. That's the hardest thing to accept at our age, that's the most violent aspect of death. — Francine Du Plessix Gray

The only antidote to the irreversibility of history is the faculty of forgiveness. — Hannah Arendt

Exasperation with the threefold frustration of action
the unpredictability of its outcome, the irreversibility of the process, and the anonymity of its authors
is almost as old as recorded history. It has always been a great temptation, for men of action no less than for men of thought, to find a substitute for action in the hope that the realm of human affairs may escape the haphazardness and moral irresponsibility inherent in a plurality of agents. — Hannah Arendt

...nostalgia goes beyond individual psychology. At first glance, nostalgia is a longing for a place, but actually it is a yearning for a different time - the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams. In a broader sense, nostalgia is a rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress. The nostalgic desires to obliterate history and turn it into a private or collective mythology, to revisit time like space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition. — Svetlana Boym

You can call it institutionalized racism or institutionalized inequality, but what I say is that any system that operates to maintain inequality is a corrupt system and must be addressed. — Robert D Bullard

Evolution in the biosphere is therefore a necessarily irreversible process defining a direction in time; a direction which is the same as that enjoined by the law of increasing entropy, that is to say, the second law of thermodynamics. This is far more than a mere comparison: the second law is founded upon considerations identical to those which establish the irreversibility of evolution. Indeed, it is legitimate to view the irreversibility of evolution as an expression of the second law in the biosphere. — Jacques Monod

I still think that luck is what a lot of the good things come from. It's simply the luck of where you are, when. — Mike Nichols

The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility--of being unable to undo what one has done--is the faculty of forgiving. The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises. Both faculties depend upon plurality, on the presence and acting of others, for no man can forgive himself and no one can be bound by a promise made only to himself. — Hannah Arendt

..the irreversibility of things is a kind of death at the heart of life and threatens constantly to steer us into time past- the home of
nostalgia, guilt, regret and remorse, the great spoilers of happiness. — Luc Ferry

No man is the wiser for his learning; it may administer matter to work in, or objects to work upon; but wit and wisdom are born with a man. — John Selden

America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat. — James Madison

In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action. — Hannah Arendt

You can't drown yourself that simply. All good suicides involve speed and irreversibility, because the body will always move to protect itself against the sicko mind trying to do it in. — Josephine Humphreys

Life is a rainbow which also includes black. — Yevgeny Yevtushenko

I'm a label that wants to sell. I believe in clothes. — Giambattista Valli

She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep. — Gustave Flaubert

In the use of force, one simplifies the situation by assuming that the evil to be overcome is clear-cut, definite, and irreversible. Hence there remains but one thing: to eliminate it. Any dialogue with the sinner, any question of the irreversibility of his act, only means faltering and failure. Failure to eliminate evil is itself a defeat. Anything that even remotely risks such defeat is in itself capitulation to evil. The irreversibility of evil then reaches out to contaminate even the tolerant thought of the hesitant crusader who, momentarily, doubts the total evil of the enemy he is about to eliminate. p. 21 — Thomas Merton

An English teacher at school once said to her, 'Alice, one thing I hope you never find out is that a broken heart hurts physically.' Nothing she has ever experienced has prepared her for the pain of this. Most of the time her heart feels as though it's waterlogged and her ribcage, her arms, her back, her temples, her legs all ache in a dull, persistent way: but at times like this the incredulity and the appalling irreversibility of what has happened cripple her with a pain so bad she often doesn't speak for days. — Maggie O'Farrell

Most people do surprisingly poorly when dealing with a relative who is hurting, depressed, or anxious - we get defensive and try to solve the problem rather than finding the truth in what the person is saying. — David D. Burns

If by 'foe' you mean a brutal killer, then I suppose I'd fall into the 'friend' category," I replied cynically. "Although in your case, we may have to find a secret option number three. — M.A. George

Pulled pork jokes never get old. — Joel Edgerton