I don't know if English is the only language where some expressions only and solely mean the opposite of what they say but we do have an awful lot of them.
A. A. Gill
It is impossible for me to estimate how many of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism were concepts that, left to my own devices, I would have encountered much later in life.
A. J. Liebling
I'm the complete opposite of every clean cut, decent-looking guy you could ever think of. Yet, I have the biggest heart in the world.
A. J. McLean
It was surreal to play opposite Angela Lansbury and Elaine Stritch, Bernadette Peters and Catherine Zeta-Jones. There was so much to learn just from watching them, and it was an honor to share the stage with women who have accomplished what they have.
Aaron Lazar
I'm typically a 'just drink water' kind of guy. I was a bodybuilder in high school, so I used to - food to me was, 'there are this many grams of carbohydrates and proteins, and I need these micronutrients in order to grow and be fit,' and I ate in order to live and not live in order to eat, and I think most people are the opposite.
Aaron Patzer
I always gravitate towards characters that are so opposite of me.
Aaron Paul
Being a midfielder, I need to get up and down, whether it's to get back and defend or get away from my opposite number. Extra effort in training makes all the difference.
Aaron Ramsey
The Internet, in general, I find troubling. The anonymity has made us all meaner and dumber. This thing that was supposed to bring us closer together, I see it doing the opposite.
Aaron Sorkin
I do know that I've read somewhere that it's been statistically proven that in times of war, horror films are much more popular. I don't know why that is. You'd think it'd be the opposite. You'd think people would want to escape from it.
Aaron Stanford
It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say.
Abba Eban
In our age of individualism, we see computers as ways through which we can express our individuality. But the truth is that the computers are really good at spotting the very opposite. The computers can see how similar we are, and they then have the ability to agglomerate us together into groups that have the same behaviours.
Adam Curtis
The opposite of an underminer is a supporter. When colleagues are supportive, they go out of their way to be givers rather than takers, working to enhance our productivity, make us look good, share ideas, and provide timely help.
Adam Grant
Our society is divided by the culture wars into the Left and Right, and the United Methodist Church has always stood historically in the center and has been willing to listen to and to bring together those things that often are found in opposite camps.
Adam Hamilton
But, in North Korea, it's just the opposite. There's one story. It's written by the Kim regime. And 23 million people are conscripted to be secondary characters. There, as a youth, your aptitude towards certain jobs is measured, and the rest of your life is dictated, whether you'll be a fisherman or a farmer or an opera singer.
Adam Johnson
Dynamic pricing - charging more when goods and services are in high demand and short supply and less when the opposite is true - isn't new. Gasoline retailers, hoteliers, and airlines have been deploying the technique for years.
Adam Lashinsky
A lot of my emotional issues come from dealing with the opposite sex. I've come to terms with the fact that I'll be retired before I can finally enter into a healthy relationship.
Adam Levine
Of course, the opposite of white privilege is not blackness, as many of us seemed to think then; the opposite of white privilege is working to dismantle that privilege. But my particular hip-hop generation proved to be very serious about figuring it all out and staying engaged.
Adam Mansbach
Pacifism as a mass movement aims to avoid suffering; pacifists often say that no cause is worth suffering or dying for. The ethos of Solidarity is based on an opposite premise - that there are causes worth suffering and dying for.
Adam Michnik
I used to play rugby, polo, tennis, and cricket in school. It was only in the 1990s, when I used to live just opposite Harrods in London, that I started putting on weight. I used to have my breakfast there every day.
Adnan Sami
Stadium rock and commercial rock are the opposite of what poetry needs. An audience of around 200 is ideal for poetry.
Adrian Mitchell
It feels good when guys reach out to be inspired - and you have shown people an example of how you can come back and be better than you were before when adversity strikes; and when the world predicts the opposite, you show them you not only can be successful but be great.
I went to a school where the girls that were found attractive were the complete opposite to me. I judged my worth on how many boyfriends everyone had, and I wanted to jump out of my skin every second of every day.
Sometimes you can really serve well and win the match because of the serve. I have the opposite thing now, so it's kind of hard. I can just really play with my forehand and backhand.
Some creative writing programs seem evil, but my experience at Irvine was totally the opposite, where I feel like they were really good at focusing in on each writers voice and setting. When I felt like I was obligated to write a story that was more typical, no one really liked it.
I'll be having lunch with my mum and she'll complain about the paparazzi outside. I tell her that she could have worn a beanie, but of course she never does. She loves it - it's how she chooses to connect with people. That's fine, I can respect that. But I'm the opposite. I always have been.
I joined Khalsa College just opposite Don Bosco in class XI, but soon I quit studies and was sent to Bangkok by my father to learn martial arts, as that is the only place we could afford given that I would also work there to support my training.
I enjoy the risk of bungee-jumping. I used to pay money to do it. Now, it's the opposite. I get paid to do action.
Sweetness is the opposite of machismo, which is everywhere - and I really don't get on with machismo. I'm interested in sensitivity and weakness and fear and anxiety because I think that, at the end of the day, behind our masks, that's what we are.
Art can do the opposite of glamourise the unattainable: it can show us anew the genuine merit of life as we're forced to lead it. It is advertising for the things we really need.
Noah's daughter is different from the girls of 'Suburgatory.' She goes to Brown, so she's in college, and she's very smart. And his wife is very much a very strong woman. She's certainly in charge at his house. She's Dallas's polar opposite.
And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
I think a common misperception about attuning and tending to a child's needs so constantly is that they don't grow in their independence, but I think that the opposite is true.
The more vulnerable and the more confused the song is, the equal and opposite effect is how I feel after having written it.
I thought the more famous I became, the more friendships I would have, but the opposite was true.
Even though I grew up in L.A., no one in my family was in the movie industry. I've always felt whatever the opposite of disillusioned is. I guess illusioned with movies and with people in movies and things like that. It's all exciting to me.
In horror movies today it's lots of fast cut shot and lots of loud noises on the soundtrack. I tried to do the opposite. Playing with silence for instance.
I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That's why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place, and they're absolutely contradictory.
I'm always looking for a chance to play somebody who's completely opposite of me, just because I find it more interesting.
Each of my books took roughly one and a half years to write. Some may have taken a shorter time to write the draft and a longer time to revise, while others were the opposite.
We passed a sign for Boring, Oregon. We never went there, but I was positively enchanted with the idea that there was a town called Boring. 'Gravity Falls' is partially from what I imagine Boring might be like. Or maybe the opposite of Boring, Oregon, would be 'Gravity Falls.'
I think if you live in London, it's such a cosmopolitan city; nobody even notices different-race relationships. I assumed it would be even more liberal in the States, and it's totally the opposite.
Hiding behind a tougher outer image as a teenager feels cooler and safer compared to admitting, perhaps, that you're the very opposite.
Most of the Amazon basin is as flat as a pancake and laced with extravagantly meandering waterways. One school of thought holds that more than 145 million years ago, when Africa and South America were joined, the Amazon's main stem was connected to the Niger River and actually flowed in the opposite direction, toward the Pacific Ocean.
If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite.
The Internet has made some phenomenal breakthroughs that are still only poorly understood in terms of changing people's ideas of us and them. If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite.
There's no law of physics that says we have to be an unsustainable society - in fact, quite the opposite. The planet's ready to work with us if we're ready to think differently, but we do have to make that jump and start to do things in new ways.
When it comes to the Alexa Bliss character, everyone says the character has to be an extension of yourself turned up. But I feel like I am the complete opposite of Alexa Bliss.
Transformations don't scare me: it thrills me to become the polar opposite.
People tend to see modernism as the opposite of a celebration. They see it as a fracturing and an art built round an absence, but it's really a celebration of our existence.
I actually completely suck at being a bioethicist. What I do is history of medicine and patient advocacy. Patient advocacy is actually the opposite of bioethics, because bioethicists are the people who increasingly set up and justify the systems we patient advocates have to fight.
