“What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
A collection of quotes on the topic of popularity, people, doing, likeness.
“What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Meryl Streep (1949) American actress
Misattributed to Meryl Streep (and widely disseminated on the Internet as of August/September 2014), this quote is allegedly a translation of a text by the author José Micard Teixeira, the original of which begins (in Portuguese): "Já não tenho paciência para algumas coisas, não porque me tenha tornado arrogante..."
Misattributed
“What's right isn't always popular, and whats popular isn't always right.”
Sharon M. Draper (1948) American children's writer
Michael Parenti (1933) American academic
1 POLITICS AND ISSUES, Making The World Safe For Hypocrisy, p. 64
Dirty truths (1996), first edition
Michael Parenti book The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome
Introduction
The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (2003)
“But it takes a war to make map-reading popular.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
Source: "As I Please," Tribune (11 February 1944)
Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality
From interview with Komal Nahta
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor
Eric Blom (ed.) Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th edn. (London: Macmillan, 1954) vol. 7, p. 27.
Criticism
Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer
November 2005 reported by report by NY Post https://nypost.com/2005/11/23/jerko-jackos-ugly-jabs-at-jews-calls-them-leeches-on-tape/
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1860s, First State of the Union address (1861)
Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality
From interview with Komal Nahta
Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Comment to Cheondoist independence activist Kim In Jin (1936), described in autobiography With the Century (1993)
“We're more popular than Jesus now”
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
One of the most controversial statements Lennon ever made, this was published in England's Evening Standard newspaper (4 March 1966) as part of an interview with writer Maureen Cleave.
Context: Christianity will go.. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first — rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
"The Freedom of the Press", unused preface to Animal Farm (1945), published in Times Literary Supplement (15 September 1972)
Context: At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
"Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution" (31 March 1968)
1960s
Variant: There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.
Source: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Context: On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
Context: On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "We ain't goin' study war no more." This is the challenge facing modern man.
“The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.”
Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism
The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: Art is this intense form of individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it an authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as it is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public have always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.
“Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”
Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer
This is not a quote by Kerouac. It's a quote by CBS broadcaster Charles Kuralt who used to present a TV news segment called 'On the Road' (which is probably how the confusion arose). This particular statement by Kuralt was made in May 1996 to students of Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19960527&id=yf8yAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yQcGAAAAIBAJ&pg=3106,5606314
Misattributed
“Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
p. 114 http://books.google.com/books?id=qCDpAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Fame+is+a+vapor+popularity+an+accident+the+only+earthly+certainty+is+oblivion%22&pg=PA114#v=onepage <br class="br">Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)
Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) Venezuelan military and political leader, South American libertador
Letter from Jamaica (Summer 1815)
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1910s, California's Policies Proclaimed (Feb. 21, 1911)
Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist
"Clive Barker: Love, Death, & the Whole Damned Thing", Locus (1995)
Aleksandr Pushkin book Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin (1823)
Original: (ru) Но так и быть — рукой пристрастной Прими собранье пестрых глав, Полусмешных, полупечальных, Простонародных, идеальных, Небрежный плод моих забав, Бессониц, легких вдохновений, Незрелых и увядших лет, Ума холодных наблюдений И сердца горестных замет.
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1860s, Cooper Union speech (1860)
Context: Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave another, no third man should object," fantastically called "Popular Sovereignty"; but never a man among you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live." Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1862/aug/01/the-administration-of-viscount in the House of Commons (1 August 1862).
Ronald Fisher book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection
On the objection (still often made by creationists) that the theory of evolution predicts evolution occurs "only by chance", Ch. 2, p. 37.
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930)
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
Letter to Oral Roberts in 1972, as quoted in Oral Roberts : An American Life (1985) by David Edwin Harrell, p. 310; later published in How to be a Successful Teenager (1994) by Rick Jones, Ch. 5 : The Secret About Material Things, p. 54; the accuracy of this is disputed in "The Gospel of John Lennon" in This Land Press (7 March 2011) http://thislandpress.com/03/07/2011/the-gospel-of-john-lennon/ <br class="br">Disputed
Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author
Prologue: Grove summarized his first twenty years of life in Hungary in his memoirs.
New millennium, Swimming Across: a Memoir, 2001
Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States
On his role in The Beguiled
Source: Clint: The Life and Legend (1999), p. 189.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Lillian Gilbreth (1878–1972) American psychologist and industrial engineer
Source: Psychology of management, 1914, p. 1-2
James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader
Songs of Freedom by Irish Authors (1907) Introduction. Revolutionary Song https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1907/xx/revsong.htm
Samir Amin (1931–2018) Egyptian economist
The Election of Donald Trump https://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/amin301116.html (30 November 2016), Monthly Review Magazine (MRzine)
James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist
James Tobin, "Keynes' Policies in Theory and Practice", Challenge (1983).
1970s and later
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Statements (c. December 1907), in Mark Twain In Eruption : Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men And Events (1940) edited by Bernard Augustine De Voto
George Lucas (1944) American film producer
The George Lucas Interviews at SuperShadow.com (27 June 2005) http://web.archive.org/web/20050630002609/http://www.supershadow.com:80/starwars/lucas/
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1910s, California's Policies Proclaimed (Feb. 21, 1911)
Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society
Perennial fashion — Jazz, as quoted in The Sociology of Rock (1978) by Simon Frith,
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/may/15/corn-importation-bill-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (15 May 1846). <br class="br">1840s
Merlin Mann (1966) American blogger
Twitter http://favstar.fm/users/hotdogsladies/status/890278849 <br class="br">Tweeting as @hotdogsladies
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Fragment, Notes for a Law Lecture (1 July 1850), cited in Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works, Comprising his Speeches, Letters, State Papers, and Miscellaneous Writings, Vol. 2 (1894)
1850s
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
Remarks by the President at the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Symposium hold at The National War College in Washington, D.C. on December 03, 2012. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/12/03/remarks-president-nunn-lugar-cooperative-threat-reduction-symposium <br class="br">2012
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
"Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction", Californian 3, No. 3 (Winter 1935): 39-42. Published in Collected Essays, Volume 2: Literary Criticism edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 178
Non-Fiction
Charles Barkley (1963) American basketball player
Asked to comment on the 20th anniversary of the cocaine-overdose death of Len Bias,
Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician
Lufkin, Texas http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/lufkin-texas-jul1997-full.html (July 19, 1997) <br class="br">In Concert
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Proclamation Calling Militia and Convening Congress on (15 April 1861) http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/proc-1.htm <br class="br">1860s
Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents
Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 21 (p. 430)
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Speech to a Conservative dinner (26 June 1863), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 114
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Letter to Lucy Martin Donnelly, February 10, 1916
1910s
Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944) Italian neo-Hegelian Idealist philosopher and politician
Orgini e dottrina del fascismo, Rome: Libreria del Littorio, (1929). Origins and Doctrine of Fascism, A. James Gregor, translator and editor, Transaction Publishers (2003) p. 28
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
"License of the Press", an address before the Monday Evening Club, Hartford (1873)
André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836) French physicist and mathematician
André-Marie Ampè, in André-Marie Ampère: Enlightenment and Electrodynamics http://books.google.co.in/books?id=QWZKQWB-sbQC&pg=PA159, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 159
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Oliver Herford (1863–1935) American writer
Speaker's Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955), p. 69.
Attributed
Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles
Magnus Bane and Ragnor Fell in 1791, p. 6-7.
The Bane Chronicles, What Really Happened in Peru (2013)
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Address to the electors of Buckinghamshire (25 May 1847), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 837.
1840s
Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model
Beals and Obama article (3 March 2009) http://www.douban.com/note/29958902/.
“Science is too important not to be a part of a popular culture.”
Brian Cox (physicist) (1968) English physicist and former musician
in The Large Hadron Collider will revolutionise how we understand the universe, Telegraph.co.uk Comment (2008-09-06) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3561949/The-Large-Hadron-Collider-will-revolutionise-how-we-understand-the-universe.html
“The best of us would rather be popular than right.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger (unpublished manuscript written 1902–1908)
Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam
March 23, 1998, Janeane Garofalo interviewing Eddie Vedder for CMJ New Music Report at Brendan's, on the Lower East Side.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Letter to a working men's club (1867), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 297.
Ben Horowitz (1966) American businessman
Ben Horowitz, " The Fine Line Between Fear and Courage http://www.bhorowitz.com/the_fine_line_between_fear_and_courage," at bhorowitz.com, August 07, 2011.
Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician
As quoted in Conversations With Allende (1970) by Regis Debray
Bertil Ohlin (1899–1979) Swedish economist and politician
Ohlin in his memoirs, as cited in: Flam, Harry, and M. June. " The Young Ohlin on the Theory of Interregional and International Trade http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:328550/FULLTEXT01.pdf." Bertil Ohlin: A Centennial Celebration, 1899-1999 10 (2002): p. 175. <br class="br">1970s
Mark Twain book The Mysterious Stranger
originally in The Chronicle of Satan (1905).
The Mysterious Stranger (1916)
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1860s, "If Slavery Is Not Wrong, Nothing Is Wrong" (1864)
My Day (1935–1962)
Context: The film industry is a great industry with infinite possibilities for good and bad. Its primary purpose is to entertain people. On the side, it can do many other things. It can popularize certain ideals, it can make education palatable. But in the long run, the judge who decides whether what it does is good or bad is the man or woman who attends the movies. In a democratic country I do not think the public will tolerate a removal of its right to decide what it thinks of the ideas and performances of those who make the movie industry work. (29 October 1947)
Errico Malatesta (1853–1932) Italian anarchist
Neither Democrats, Nor Dictators: Anarchists (1926)
Context: Theoretically "democracy" means popular government; government by all for everybody by the efforts of all. In a democracy the people must be able to say what they want, to nominate the executors of their wishes, to monitor their performance and remove them when they see fit.
Naturally this presumes that all the individuals that make up a people are able to form an opinion and express it on all the subjects that interest them. It implies that everyone is politically and economically independent and therefore no-one, to live, would be obliged to submit to the will of others. <!--
If classes and individuals exist that are deprived of the means of production and therefore dependent on others with a monopoly over those means, the so-called democratic system can only be a lie, and one which serves to deceive the mass of the people and keep them docile with an outward show of sovereignty, while the rule of the privileged and dominant class is in fact salvaged and consolidated. Such is democracy and such it always has been in a capitalist structure, whatever form it takes, from constitutional monarchy to so-called direct rule.
Elagabalus (203–222) Roman Emperor
Michael L. Meckler, in "Elagabalus (218-222 A.D.)" in De Imperatoribus Romanis : An Online Encyclopedia of Roman Emperors (1997) http://www.roman-emperors.org/elagabal.htm <br class="br">Context: Scholars have often viewed the failure of Elagabalus' reign as a clash of cultures between "Eastern" (Syrian) and "Western" (Roman), but this dichotomy is not very useful. The criticisms of the emperor's effeminacy and sexual behavior mirror those made of earlier emperors (such as Nero) and do not need to be explained through ethnic stereotypes. With regard to religion, the emperor's promotion of the cult of the Emesene sun-god was certainly ridiculed by contemporary observers, but this cult was popular among soldiers and would remain so. Moreover, the cult continued to be promoted by later emperors of non-Syrian ethnicity, calling the god The Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus).<br>Elagabalus is best understood as a teenager who was raised near the luxury of the imperial court and who then suffered a drastic change of fortune brought about by the sudden deaths — probably within one year — of his father, his grandfather and his cousin, the emperor Caracalla. Thrust upon the throne, Elagabalus lacked the required discipline. For a while, Romans may well have been amused by his "Merrie Monarch" behavior, but he ended up offending those he needed to inspire. His reign tragically demonstrated the difficulties of having a teenage emperor.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/apr/11/maynooth-college in the House of Commons (11 April 1845). <br class="br">1840s <br class="br">Context: Sir, it is very easy to complain of party Government, and there may be persons capable of forming an opinion on this subject who may entertain a deep objection to that Government, and know to what that objection leads. But there are others who shrug their shoulders, and talk in a slipshod style on this head, who, perhaps, are not exactly aware of what the objections lead to. These persons should understand, that if they object to party Government, they do, in fact, object to nothing more nor less than Parliamentary Government. A popular assembly without parties&mdash;500 isolated individuals&mdash; cannot stand five years against a Minister with an organized Government without becoming a servile Senate.
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1860s, First Inaugural Address (1861)
Context: Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.
Muhammad Asadullah Al-Ghalib (1948) Bangladeshi academic
Speech in a workshop, Rajshahi, 2013, (English Translation).[citation needed]
From Speeches