Retroactively Quotes & Sayings

I imagine the wedding guests at Cana were awed and pleased by Jesus turning the water to wine. I also suspect that many guests in detox centers around the world today would think it a much greater miracle if, at least for them, the good Lord would retroactively turn the wine back to water. — Joe Beaton

If tolerance poses as a middle road between rejection on the one side and assimilation on the other, this road, as already suggested, is paved by necessity rather than virtue; tolerance, as Nietzsche would say, becomes a virtue only retroactively and retrospectively. — Wendy Brown

I don't know about doing a sequel. I think you can retroactively damage a product by adding to it. — Simon Pegg

A more rational form of treatment," Pennington suggested, would be one that makes fat once again flow readily out of the fat cells, that directs "measures primarily toward an increased mobilization and utilization of fuel" by the muscles and organs. — Gary Taubes

Tax is not a four-letter word; rather, it's the price we pay for the country we want. — Alex Himelfarb

I've retroactively made all that wasted time rotting my brain into research. It makes me a hypocrite when I try to tell my own daughter, "I don't know, I think we've played a little too much Mario." — Ernest Cline

Not only was he sorrowful at the prospect of leaving home, he was convinced, he whispered, that he would never return alive. Herndon implored him to abandon such thoughts. — Harold Holzer

Hatred is hurt masquerading-it is an energy used to fool someone into thinking they are frightening when in truth they are frightened. — Jewel

Each time I think I've made a connection with someone ... once they find out what I can do, whether it's hours or days later, everything changes. Invariably they freak. They get retroactively paranoid, wondering what else Clark Kent is hiding from them. — Mark Waid

Whereas, it is hereby decreed to all felines of the Middle Kingdom: They are enjoined to observe every provision of the judicial codes unless such provisions aforesaid have been abrogated heretofore, though any abrogation is liable to reinstatement at any time whatever and shall be effective retroactively without recourse on behalf of said felines whether or not said felines are presently or will be engaged in litigation. This decree is not susceptible to appeal. — Lloyd Alexander

The Impersonal God seen through the mists of sense is personal. — Swami Vivekananda

Write it down. Written goals have a way of transforming wishes into wants; cant's into cans; dreams into plans; and plans into reality. Don't just think it - ink it! — Michael Korda

The Bill of Life The Second Civil War, also known as "The Heartland War," was a long and bloody conflict fought over a single issue. To end the war, a set of constitutional amendments known as "The Bill of Life" was passed. It satisfied both the Pro-life and the Pro-choice armies. The Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. However, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, a parent may choose to retroactively "abort" a child . . . . . on the condition that the child's life doesn't "technically" end. The process by which a child is both terminated and yet kept alive is called "unwinding." Unwinding is now a common, and accepted practice in society. — Neal Shusterman

Matthew hereby declares that Katherine Galloway is retroactively responsible for all embarrassing and painful incidents that have occurred in his life to date. Including, but not limited to, that time he broke his own nose with a tennis racket in eighth grade. KATHERINE'S FAULT. — Lauren James

The decisive moment, the popular Henri Cartier-Bresson approach to photography in which a scene is stopped and depicted at a certain point of high visual drama, is now possible to achieve at any time. One's photographs, years later, may be retroactively rephotographed by repositioning the photographer or the subject of the photograph, or by adding elements that were never there before but now are made to exist concurrently in a newly elastic sense of space and time. — Fred Ritchin

The 2014 election has given the GOP the rare opportunity to retroactively redeem its brand. The conventional perception, incessantly repeated by Democrats and the media, is that Washington dysfunction is the work of the Party of No. Expose the real agent of do-nothing. Show that, when Harry Reid can no longer consign House-passed legislation to oblivion, Congress can actually work. — Charles Krauthammer

He thought that he had believed it was a simple sequence, the past and the present, and if there was loss in the past one was compensated by pain in the present, and pain gave it a form of immortality - but he had not known that one could destroy like this, kill retroactively - so that to her it had never existed. — Ayn Rand

After four or five different wars, I grew weary of that work, partly because in an open war, open to coverage, as Vietnam was, it's not that difficult, really. — Morley Safer

Screw being a better person. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

My urge at Christmas time or Hanukkah-time or Kwanzaa-time is that people go to bookstores: that they walk around bookstores and look at the shelves. Go to look for authors that they've loved in the past and see what else those authors have written. — Michael Dirda

For the righteous, the revelation is a joyous event, the realization of a divine truth. But for the wicked, revelations can be far more terrifying, when dark secrets are exposed and sinners are punished for their trespasses. — Emily Thorne

With one hand she popped the button on my pants. She dropped to her knees. I got hard instantly, knowing what was coming next.
Me. — Karina Halle

For the special thrilling quality of their friendship was in their complete surrender. Like two open cities in the midst of some vast plain their two minds lay open to each other. And it wasn't as if he rode into hers like a conqueror, armed to the eyebrows and seeing nothing but a gay silken flutter
nor did she enter his like a queen walking on soft petals. No, they were eager, serious travellers, absorbed in understanding what was to be seen and discovering what was hidden
making the most of this extraordinary absolute chance which made it possible for him to be utterly truthful to her and for her to be utterly sincere with him. — Katherine Mansfield

Impeach President Reagan retroactively for agreeing with Obama on the assault weapons ban. — John Fugelsang

Memory - uncorrected, uncorroborated, and (by its very nature) unreliable - is what allows us to retroactively create the blueprints of our lives, because it is often impossible to make sense of our lives when we're inside them, when the narratives are still unfolding: This can't be happening. Why is this happening? Why is this happening now? Only by looking backward are we able answer those questions, only through the assist of memory. And who knows how memory will answer? Who will it blame? Who will it forgive? — Stephanie Kallos

The bad guys are the best parts. — Brion James

know the law of human nature: acts produce habits, habits breed dispositions, dispositions form the will, and the rightly-formed will is character. — Andrew Murray

I write under not only the presumption that everything I write is deeply conditioned by everything I've already written, but that everything I write changes, retroactively, all those things I've already written. — Nam Le

I'm not trying to be something that I'm not. I'm just trying to be myself and talk about what I know, and admit what I don't know. — Anderson Cooper