Chiasmus: a rhetorical trick where you say a thing and then say it in reverse.
"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." - JFK
"You stood up for America; now America must stand up for you" - Obama
"Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate" - JFK
When I learn a technique, I try to find applications.
In casual conversation, it comes across as fake-deep in an over-the-top way:
"Did you change jobs, or did the jobs change you?"
or
"You want to be the next Steve Jobs, but would Steve Jobs want to be the previous you?"
In fiction (my new hobby), I think it'd be fun to write a pretentious character whose "thing" is always dropping chiasmi.
I even slipped one into a story I'm writing:
"To Aster, Idris was only protecting the people of the island; to Edel, the people needed protection from him."
Don't try to change the government, or the government will change you.
I thought I was teaching my students. But in the end, it was my students who taught me.
"A wise man speaks because he has something to say, however, a fool speaks, because he has to say something."
Mark Twain
"Don't work for money; let the money work for you."
- Robert Kiyosaki
"Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live."
- Socrates (!!)
Or the more modern phrasing:
"I live to eat, and you eat to live."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
Champagne for real friends and real pain for sham friends.
Some more from Churchill:
"I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me."
"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
"We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us."
(The last one is from a speech to the UK Parliament, urging them to rebuild the House of Commons in its original rectangular shape after it was destroyed during the Blitz. He argued that the adversarial design, with parties facing each other, fostered the two-party system in British democracy.)
One from "the rings of power":
- Take off the ring!
- No! The ring belongs to me.
- No, you belong to the ring.
Oh, I got plenty o' nuttin'
And nuttin's plenty for me
Lyrics from "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin" (Porgy and Bess)
"we do not study ants to perfect industrial society; we perfect industrial society so that we may study ants"
x.com/eternalism_4eva/status/1991271398338093423?s=20
"We don’t make movies to make money. We make money to make more movies"
-Walt Disney
Friend: I hope you find answers to your questions.
Me: I hope I find questions for my answers.
I can't help it at this point
First line in the movie The Departed:
I don't want to be a product of my environment; I want my environment to be a product of me.
"We're no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength."
Mark Carney, WEF 2026
"Some people think in order to speak, some people speak in order to think."
Angela Antenore(?)
"It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice"