Flipping the Script

I’m not sure exactly why this reversal technique works. The repetition? Because they’re easy to remember? Because of the rythme? (Songs often have AB-BA form.) Anyone else know? Sometimes it really works, though. (The technical name for them is antimetabole.)

1. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country //Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate —JFK

2. Eat to live, not live to eat—Socrates

3. We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us—Malcolm X

4. In America, you can always find a party. In the Soviet Russia, the Party always finds you—Yakov Smirnoff

5. It’s not the men in your life, it’s the life in your men—Mae West

6. Sometimes the words aren’t exactly the same

“Adam, first of men, To first of women, Eve”--John Milton

It still works.