Reversible Quotes & Sayings

In the old physics, three times two equals six and two times three equals 6 are reversible propositions. Not in quantum physics. Three times two and two times three are two different matters, distinct and separate propositions. — Paul Auster

The security fence is reversible. Human lives are irreversible. — Silvan Shalom

Still waiting for them to make reversible diapers, maybe with teflon coating ... — Neil Leckman

Life was not a reversible commodity. Things passed away, never to return: species, hopes, years. — Clive Barker

Men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat - seamy on both sides. — O. Henry

I believe that the problem of global climate change will ultimately spur our global society to respond and while the condition does not appear to be reversible, we will find ways to adapt to it. — Vinton Cerf

(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

Waves, once they land on the beach, are not reversible. — Grace Paley

One can never change the past, only the hold it has on you, and while nothing in your life is reversible, you can reverse it nevertheless. — Merle Shain

Our house is burning down and we are blind to it. The earth and humankind are in danger and we are all responsible. It is time to open our eyes. Alarms are sounding across all continents. We cannot say we did not know! Climate warming is still reversible. Heavy would be the responsibility of those who refuse to fight it. — Jacques Chirac

Global poverty is the product of reversible policy failures overseen by politicians, past and present. The poorest of the poor don't vote in American or European elections. They don't make donations to political parties or hire lobbyists in D.C., London or Canberra. — Hugh Evans

There was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible — Joan Didion

The most important thing a writer can do after completing a sentence is to stay in the room. The great temptation is to leave the room to celebrate the completion of the sentence or to go out in the den where the television lies like a dormant monster and rest up for a few days for the next sentence or to go wander the seductive possibilities of the kitchen. But. It's simple. The writer is the person who stays in the room. The writer wants to read what she is in the process of creating with such passion and devotion that she will not leave the room. The writer understand that to stand up from the desk is to fail, and to leave the room is so radical and thorough a failure as to not be reversible. Who is not in the room writing? Everybody. Is it difficult to stay in the room, especially when you are not sure of what you're doing, where you're going? Yes. It's impossible. Who can do it? The writer. — Ron Carlson

More relevantly, the revelation that Frank is Frances and that she became he because of a homegrown science experiment connects us to the practice, widespread in the Culture, of voluntary sex change. The difference in circumstances - in the Culture, the change is always completely successful, entirely reversible, and bioengineered inside the individual from birth - lies at the heart of Banks' conviction that the ability to switch between genders at will is essential to the creation of a more just society - once one has lived as both man and woman, misogyny becomes substantially more difficult to embrace. — Simone Caroti

If a person is capable of rectifying his erroneous judgments in the light of new evidence he is not prejudiced. Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are reversible when exposed to new knowledge. A prejudice, unlike a simple misconception, is actively resistant to all evidence that would unseat it. We tend to grow emotional when a prejudice is threatened with contradiction. Thus the difference between ordinary prejudgments and prejudice is that one can discuss and rectify a prejudgment without emotional resistance. — Gordon Allport

'Reversible Errors' is about the limits of the law to define who committed ultimate evil, to define what ultimate evil is, to allow the million arbitrary factors to make this a meaningful punishment, and finally to say, 'Are we really accomplishing what we wanted to accomplish? Are those anxieties relieved?' I don't think so. — Scott Turow

The solution to the novel's legal problem is a satisfyingly intricate one, and nobody will want his money back on the plot. But the echoes that will remain in your mind after you've finished Reversible Errors will mainly have to do with the novel's other elements. — Wendy Lesser

I'm the same kid who used to hop the trains with headphones and just go to downtown Manhattan, walk around and listen to music or walk through the city. The fame restricts that. It's a small complaint in comparison to the benefits I get from it, but the restrictive part is what I don't like - and the fact that it's not reversible. — J. Cole

The progress of women's rights in our culture, unlike other types of 'progress,' has always been strangely reversible. — Ann Douglas

Cultural evolution can proceed so quickly because it operates, as biological evolution does not, in the "Lamarckian" mode - by the inheritance of acquired characters. Whatever one generation learns, it can pass to the next by writing, instruction, inculcation, ritual, tradition, and a host of methods that humans have developed to assure continuity in culture. Darwinian evolution, on the other hand, is an indirect process: genetic variation must first be available to construct an advantageous feature, and natural selection must then preserve it. Since genetic variation arises at random, not preferentially directed toward advantageous features, the Darwinian process works slowly. Cultural evolution is not only rapid; it is also readily reversible because its products are not coded in our genes. — Stephan Jay Gould

The thermodynamic properties of electrolyte solutions can be determined from the measurements of the voltage between electrodes reversible to both ions. — Lars Onsager

women were beginning to see that custom, religious precept, and law were in fact man-made and therefore reversible. — Adam M. Grant

Yet I was myself in no way prepared to accept this news as final: there was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible. That was why I needed to be alone. After — Joan Didion

Enteric-coated peppermint-oil capsules: prevention and reduction of abdominal spasms Peony-licorice formula: prevention and reduction of abdominal spasms (For intermittent use only: can cause reversible low potassium and high blood pressure with daily use). Iberogast (nine-herb product): reduction of abdominal pain, control of gut hypersensitivity, normalized movement of the bowels Observing — Gregory Plotnikoff

By these last-minute improvisations, he had, without calling any undue attention to the fact, become the first president to play the race card both ways - once traditionally and once, so to speak, in reverse. His opportunist defenders, having helped him with a reversible chameleonlike change in the color of his skin, still found themselves stuck with the content of his character. — Christopher Hitchens

There are two kinds of jackets - reversible, and reversible but it's hard to zipper up and it looks really stupid. — Demetri Martin

Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning, - nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call 'logic.' The truest compass of life is spiritual instinct. — Marie Corelli

My advice was to start a policy of making reversible decisions before anyone left the meeting or the office. In a startup, it doesn't matter if you're 100 percent right 100 percent of the time. What matters is having forward momentum and a tight fact-based data/metrics feedback loop to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. That's why startups are agile. By the time a big company gets the committee to organize the subcommittee to pick a meeting date, your startup could have made 20 decisions, reversed five of them and implemented the fifteen that worked. — Steven Gary Blank

Defeat is curable;
failure is reversible. — Matshona Dhliwayo

By the mercy of God all the ideas of youth are reversible! — Katherine Cecil Thurston

The one on the left," Worthil said, "is a male, carrying the testes and penis. The middle one is equipped with a kind of reversible vagina, and ovaries. The vagina turns inside-out to implant the fertilised egg in the third sex, on the right, which has a womb. The one in the middle is the dominant sex."
Gurgeh had to think about this. "The what?" he said. — Iain M. Banks

So start saying F**k It to pain. When you respond to pain, you are only acting out a conditioned response. And all conditioned responses are reversible. When you encounter any pain, counter your immediate response by just saying F**k It. — John C. Parkin

The challenge is to explain, without resorting to the all-too-easy concept of evil, how people are capable of causing extreme hurt to one another. So let's substitute the term "evil" with the term "empathy erosion." Empathy erosion can arise because of corrosive emotions, such as bitter resentment, or desire for revenge, or blind hatred, or a desire to protect. In theory these are transient emotions, the empathy erosion reversible. But empathy erosion can be the result of more permanent psychological characteristics. — Simon Baron-Cohen

So far as we know, all the fundamental laws of physics, like Newton's equations, are reversible. — Richard P. Feynman

Here's how men think. Sex, work - and those are reversible, depending on age - sex, work, food, sports and lastly, begrudgingly, relationships. And here's how women think. Relationships, relationships, relationships, work, sex, shopping, weight, food. — Carrie Fisher

The first thing you must realise is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery." Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone - free - the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. — George Orwell

A portable friend to all readers-especia lly but not only women-who need to learn that the Golden Rule works only if it's reversible: We must learn to treat ourselves as well as we wish to treat others. — Gloria Steinem

A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism. — Aldous Huxley

Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge. — Gordon Allport