Quotes about controversy
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Francis Drake photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Michael Foot photo

“Some famous people owe their fame to controversy.”

Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810) Ukrainian rabbi

יש מפורסמים שעיקר הפרסום שלהם נעשה על ידי מחלוקת
Yesh mefursamim sh'ikar hapirsum shelahem n'ase al yedey mahloket.
Attributed

Jair Bolsonaro photo

“It was in many ways a political marriage between the most radical evangelical and the most controversial militarist, who together hope to conceive a new generation of ultra-right governments. Bolsonaro brings backing from a wealthy Catholic elite to Feliciano’s grassroots campaign network of evangelical churches.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

The Guardians editor Jonathan Watts. With Rousseff on the ropes, Brazil's far right sees an opening https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/05/brazil-far-right-dilma-rousseff-impeachment. The Guardian (5 May 2016).

John Conyers photo
Tulsi Gabbard photo

“The majority of US agrees on need to address healthcare, climate change, corruption, etc. Divisions that lead to civil war are the fault of partisan pols seeking votes and a corporate-owned media establishment that pushes a war agenda and profits off controversy & divisiveness.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

Twitter, https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1103277298562842625 (6 March 2019)
Twitter account, March 2019

David Ben-Gurion photo

“In Jerusalem, the United Nations (a truly United Nations) will build a Shrine of the Prophets to serve the federated union of all continents; this will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

As quoted on Look magazine, and reproduced by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency http://www.jta.org/1962/01/04/archive/ben-gurion-foresees-gradual-democratization-of-the-soviet-union, 4 January 1962.

“Rather painfully, we managed to digest Darwinian evolution so far as physical attributes were concerned within half a century of the initial controversy.”

I say “we,” but if you’re a Bible-thumping fundamentalist I expect you at this point to take the book by one corner at arm’s length and ceremonially consign it to the place where you put most sensible ideas, along with everything else you decline to acknowledge the existence of, such as mainly shit.
context (5) “The Grand Manor”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Yeh Jiunn-rong photo

“If my colleagues and I could confront such a difficult issue (controversies surrounding the appointment of National Taiwan University president), can our society please let things go too?”

Yeh Jiunn-rong (1958) Taiwanese politician

Yeh Jiunn-rong (2018) cited in " Yeh defends his decision on Kuan’s appointment http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2018/12/26/2003706796" on Taipei Times, 26 December 2018.

Jerzy Vetulani photo

“He was a man of contradictions: genius, loyal, virtuous. But also uncompromising and even brazen. Beloved and unbearable at the same time. A controversial scientist, and just a good man.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

Maria Mazurek, journalist and co-author of several popular science books with Vetulani. Odszedł profesor Jerzy Vetulani, wybitny naukowiec z Krakowa http://www.gazetakrakowska.pl/wiadomosci/krakow/a/odszedl-profesor-jerzy-vetulani-wybitny-naukowiec-z-krakowa,11966432/ (in Polish), Gazeta Krakowska, 8th April 2017.

Sania Mirza photo
Mohammad Hidayatullah photo
Shankar Dayal Sharma photo
V. P. Singh photo
M. Balamuralikrishna photo
Edward Coke photo

“That great lawyer was much heated in the controversy between the Courts at Westminster and the Ecclesiastical Courts. In every part of his conduct his passions influenced his judgment. Vir acer et vehemens.”

Edward Coke (1552–1634) English lawyer and judge

His law was continually warped by the different situations in which he found himself.
Heath, J., Jefferson v. Bishop of Durham (1797), 2 Bos. & Pull. 131.
About, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904)

David Pearce (philosopher) photo

“More controversially, technology can accelerate the transition from harming to helping free-living sentient beings: mankind's fitfully expanding "circle of compassion."”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

The civilising process needn't be species-specific but instead extend to free-living dwellers in tomorrow's wildlife parks. Every cubic metre of the biosphere will soon be computationally accessible to surveillance, micro-management and control. Fertility regulation via immunocontraception can replace Darwinian ecosystems governed by starvation and predation. Any species of obligate carnivore we choose to preserve can be genetically and behaviourally tweaked into harmlessness. Asphyxiation, disembowelling, and agonies of being eaten alive can pass into the dustbin of history.

" High-tech Jainism https://www.hedweb.com/transhumanism/neojainism.html", The World Transformed, Jul. 2014

Shaun Chamberlin photo

“It is hopefully not too controversial to note that unsustainable things end. There are two possibilities from here – we dramatically change direction or we end up where we are headed. Either way, we are on the cusp of radical change.”

"Humanity – not just a virus with shoes", Dark Optimism (2019) http://www.darkoptimism.org/2019/08/06/humanity-not-just-a-virus-with-shoes/#post-6037

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo
Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr. photo

“Thimerosal is a controversial mercury based (sic) vaccine preservative that research scientists and vaccine safety advocates have connected to the epidemic of brain disorders in children.”

Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr. (1954) American activist

Source: " Why Does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Get Brain Science So Wrong? https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2015/07/21/why-does-robert-f-kennedy-jr-get-brain-science-so-wrong/#451fa6e83a13" by Emily Willingham, forbes.com (July 21, 2015).

Trevor Noah photo

“At this point, it's not even a high-level controversy. This isn't House of Cards. Like, this isn't even Veep. It wouldn't even qualify for Blue's Clues.”

Trevor Noah (1984) South African comedian

Source: The Daily Show July 11th, 2017'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwr7pEgPqk4
A Russian, an Email and an Idiot: Did Donald Trump Jr. Incriminate Himself?: The Daily Show

Enoch Powell photo

“Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race.'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are 'prejudiced', 'racialist'... A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as 'spouting the fantasies of racial purity' to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong. The process has already gone perilously far, when political parties at a general election dare not discuss a subject which results from and depends on political action and which for millions of electors transcends all others in importance; or when party leaders can be mesmerised into accepting from the enemy the slogans of 'racialist' and 'unChristian' and applying them to lifelong political colleagues...</p><p>In the universities, we are told that education and the discipline ought to be determined by the students, and that the representatives of the students ought effectively to manage the institutions. This is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians and parties, to accept and mouth upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress.</p><p>We are told that the economic achievement of the Western countries has been at the expense of the rest of the world and has impoverished them, so that what are called the 'developed' countries owe a duty to hand over tax-produced 'aid' to the governments of the undeveloped countries. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense with which the people of the Western countries, clergy and laity, but clergy especially—have been so deluged and saturated that in the end they feel ashamed of what the brains and energy of Western mankind have done, and sink on their knees to apologise for being civilised and ask to be insulted and humiliated.</p><p>Then there is the 'civil rights' nonsense. In Ulster we are told that the deliberate destruction by fire and riot of areas of ordinary property is due to the dissatisfaction over allocation of council houses and opportunities for employment. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that has not prevented the Parliament and government of the United Kingdom from undermining the morale of civil government in Northern Ireland by imputing to it the blame for anarchy and violence.</p><p>Most cynically of all, we are told, and told by bishops forsooth, that communist countries are the upholders of human rights and guardians of individual liberty, but that large numbers of people in this country would be outraged by the spectacle of cricket matches being played here against South Africans. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that did not prevent a British Prime Minister and a British Home Secretary from adopting it as acknowledged fact.</p>
Source: The "enemy within" speech during the 1970 general election campaign; speech to the Turves Green Girls School, Northfield, Birmingham (13 June 1970), from Still to Decide (1972), pp. 36-37

Massad Ayoob photo
Yasmin Ahmad photo

“It's rare to find a woman filmmaker in Muslim society, and even rarer when she is an outspoken talent unafraid of controversy.”

Yasmin Ahmad (1958–2009) Malaysian film director

By Roger Garcia (former director of the Hong Kong International Film Festival)
Reuters Article by Jalil Hamid - Malaysian filmmaker struggles with hardline Islam https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-filmmaker-idUSKLR21119520070629 - 29 June 2007 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210821072553/https://www.reuters.com/article/us-malaysia-filmmaker-idUSKLR21119520070629
Yasmin Ahmad retrospective at the Honolulu Academy of Arts hosted by CSEAS (Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawai`i) - Interview with Malyasian Filmmaker Yasmin Ahmad (with Wimal Dissanayake) in Section: Description http://hdl.handle.net/10125/7235 - 2007 Spring - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210821074323/https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/7235
About Yasmin Ahmad

James D. Watson photo

“The tendency is to focus on the worst-case scenario and to shy away from potentially controversial science; it is time, I think, we looked instead at the benefits.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

Source: DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution (2003/2017), Chapter 13, “Who We Are: Nature vs. Nurture” (p. 372)

Murphy Pakiam photo

“We want to be a community that lives in dialogue and spreads peace throughout the nation. Certainly these episodes and the controversy surrounding the term 'Allah' can have a negative impact on Christian-Muslim dialogue. It will take time and patience to overcome this impasse.”

Murphy Pakiam (1938) Catholic archbishop

Source: “Christians are praying and not responding to the provocations,” Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur tells Fides, following attacks on churches http://www.fides.org/en/news/25759-ASIA_MALAYSIA_Christians_are_praying_and_not_responding_to_the_provocations_Archbishop_of_Kuala_Lumpur_tells_Fides_following_attacks_on_churches (9 January 2010)

Isaac Herzog photo

“The historic connection of Jews to Hebron, to the tomb of the patriarch, to the heritage of the patriarchs and matriarchs is unquestionable. Recognition of this connection must be beyond all controversy.”

Isaac Herzog (1960) Israeli politician

Source: Isaac Herzog (2021) cited in " Lighting candle at Hebron shrine, Herzog says Jewish connection is 'unquestionable' https://www.timesofisrael.com/lighting-candle-at-hebron-shrine-herzog-says-jewish-connection-is-unquestionable/" on The Times of Israel, 28 November 2021.

Laurence Tribe photo

“[W]e should beware of "hearing" silences where nearly all readers, setting aside how they would like a particular controversy to end, identify determinative text... "The heart has its reasons," as Pascal famously said, "that reason does not know."”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Good enough. And those heartfelt reasons deserve a hearing. But when they defy reason, the meaning of living by the rule of law is that reason should prevail.
Soundings and Silences (2016)

Eminem photo
Frank Lloyd Wright photo
Jonas Salk photo