Quotessence
Home / Topics / Inverse Quotes

Inverse Quotes

Browse 80 quotes about Inverse.

Related topics

ProportionRatiosNumbersIfsMenPeople

Inverse Quotes

“I verily believe that a man's way with women is in inverse ratio to his prowess among men. The weakling and the saphead have often great ability to charm the fair sex, while the fighting man who can face a thousand real dangers unafraid, sits hiding in the shadows like some frightened child.”

MenWayBelieveChildrenRealFacesFightingSexAbilityDangerThousandShadowFairsCharmFrightenedHidingRatiosUnafraidInverseProwessHiding In The Shadows
Book:Under the Moons of Mars
Create image

“Wise or unwise, who doubts for a moment that contentment is the cause of happiness? Yet the inverse is true: we are contented because we are happy, and not happy because we are contented. Well-regulated minds may be satisfied with a small portion of happiness; none can be happy with a small portion of content.”

MindWellsMayMomentsCausesDoubtWiseSatisfiedContentmentPortionsNot HappyUnwiseInverse
Book:The works of Walter Savage Landor [ed. by J. Forster].
Create image

“It is so hard for an evolutionary biologist to write about extinction caused by human stupidity. Let me then float an unconventional plea, the inverse of the usual argument. The extinction of Partula is unfair to Partula. That is the conventional argument, and I do not challenge its primacy. But we need a humanistic ecology as well, both for the practical reason that people will always touch people more than snails do or can, and for the moral reason that humans are legitimately the measure of all ethical questions for these are our issues, not nature's.”

PeopleNeedsWritingHumansWellsHardReasonChallengesMoralIssuesArgumentLet MeStupidityPracticalsEthicalUsualConventionalUnfairEcologyExtinctionFloatsBiologistUnconventionalSnailHumanisticInversePrimacyHuman StupidityEthical Questions
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
Create image

“That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If, for example, +1, -1, and the square root of -1 had been called direct, inverse and lateral units, instead of positive, negative and imaginary (or even impossible), such an obscurity would have been out of the question.”

IfsHas BeensViewsImpossibleSubjectsExampleNegativeDirectRootsIllPoint Of ViewMysteriousSquaresImaginaryUnitsObscurityMagnitudeAdaptedInverseSquare Roots
Author:Carl Friedrich Gauss
Create image

“This solidarity can grow only in inverse ratio to personality... Solidarity which comes from likenesses is at its maximum when the collective conscience completely envelops our whole conscience and coincides in all points with it... when this solidarity exercises its force, our personality vanishes, as our definition permits us to say, for we are no longer ourselves, but the collective life.”

WholeForceGrowsPersonalityExerciseConscienceDefinitionsCollectivesPermitSolidarityMaximumRatiosInverse
Author:Emile Durkheim
Create image

“Drag for me is costume, and what I'm trying to do is, sometimes I'll go around and wear makeup in the streets, turn up to the gig, take the makeup off, do the show, and then put the makeup back on. It's the inverse of drag. It's not about artifice. It's about me just expressing myself. So when I'm campaigning in London for politics, I campaign with makeup on and the nails. It's just what I have on, like any woman.”

TryingSometimesShowsTurnsStreetsLondonCampaignsMakeupDragNailsCostumesGigsArtificeCampaigningInverse
Author:Eddie Izzard
Create image

“I am genuinely sorry for scientists of the younger generation who never knew Fisher personally. So long as you avoided a handful of subjects like inverse probability that would turn Fisher in the briefest possible moment from extreme urbanity into a boiling cauldron of wrath, you got by with little worse than a thick head from the port which he, like the Cambridge mathematician J. E. Littlewood, loved to drink in the evening. And on the credit side you gained a cherished memory of English spoken in a Shakespearean style and delivered in the manner of a Spanish grandee.”

LittlesLongMomentsTurnsSidesMemoriesGenerationsSubjectsStyleDrinkScientistSorryExtremesCreditEveningThickMathematicianProbabilityWrathHandfulAvoidedPortYounger GenerationBoilingCambridgeInverseCauldronsCherished Memories
Author:Fred Hoyle
Create image

“Sometimes I think that the amount of time you live on earth is just an inverse reflection of how good you were in a previous existence. For example, infants who die from SIDs were actually great people when they were alive for real, so they get to go to heaven after a mere five weeks in purgatory. Meanwhile anyone Willard Scott ever congratulated for turning one hundred two was obviously a terrible individual who had many many previous sins to pay for and had to spend a century in his or her own unknown purgatory even though the person seemed perfectly wholesome in this particular world.”

PeopleThinkingWorldPersonsTwoRealSometimesEarthDiesIndividualHeavenSinPayExistenceFiveAliveWeekCenturyExampleParticularAmountTerribleReflectionHundredMereInfantGreat PeoplePurgatoryInverseSids
Book:Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
Create image

“We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts.”

IfsKnowsGivingLittlesProblemMightTogetherSocialBabyBirthMembersDirectSuicideSticksBlowStoresCommitInstanceMealsCracksChestsFrequencyLiquorLabsDonkeySocial ProblemsCubsInverseKitchen ConfidentialFreezerLiquor StoresMeatloafCub Scout
Book:Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
Create image

“The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.”

MayMadeStillsCountryObviousProductivityDevelopingManifestDesksDocumentsStrictBureaucracyObserversFilesCabinetsTrue NatureComplementDeveloping CountriesPaperworkInverse
Book:The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Create image

“People who hold important positions in society are commonly labelled "somebodies," and their inverse "nobodies"-both of which are, of course, nonsensical descriptors, for we are all, by necessity, individuals with distinct identities and comparable claims on existence. Such words are nevertheless an apt vehicle for conveying the disparate treatment accorded to different groups. Those without status are all but invisible: they are treated brusquely by others, their complexities trampled upon and their singularities ignored.”

PeopleImportantDifferentCoursesIndividualExistenceGroupsIdentityPositionClaimsInvisibleTreatedComplexityTreatmentVehicleNeverthelessIgnoredSingularityNonsensicalInverseConveying
Author:Alain de Botton
Create image