Quotes about right
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Source: Blue-Eyed Devil
Source: The Last Song
Source: Keeping the Moon
Source: If You Could See Me Now
Source: The Ghost's Child
Source: The Other Boleyn Girl
Source: Message in a Bottle
The Man Upstairs (1914)
Source: The Man Upstairs and Other Stories
Source: The Devil's Web
Source: Starship Troopers
“I can’t exactly describe how I feel but it’s not quite right. And it leaves me cold.”
Variant: When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
Context: There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.... When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.
Source: Clockwork Angel
Source: Baby Proof
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Variant: She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.
Source: Beloved
Source: Black Blood
Virginia Resolution of 1798 (24 December 1798) http://www.constitution.org/cons/virg1798.htm
Federalist No. 46 (29 January 1788) Full text at Wikisource
1790s
Variant: [The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
Context: That the General Assembly doth particularly protest against the palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution, in the two late cases of the "Alien and Sedition Acts" passed at the last session of Congress; the first of which exercises a power no where delegated to the federal government, and which by uniting legislative and judicial powers to those of executive, subverts the general principles of free government; as well as the particular organization, and positive provisions of the federal constitution; and the other of which acts, exercises in like manner, a power not delegated by the constitution, but on the contrary, expressly and positively forbidden by one of the amendments thereto; a power, which more than any other, ought to produce universal alarm, because it is levelled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of every other right.
Context: Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
Source: The Mark of Athena
Colonel John Boyle and David in Ch. 7
Source: The Garden of Eden (1986)
Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth
Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 68
Source: All Wound Up: The Yarn Harlot Writes for a Spin
“Nothing wrong with shooting… as long as the right people get shot.”
“Rosie: Marrying someone you don't love is not right.”
Source: Where Rainbows End
“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.”
1960s, Address on Courage (1965)
Context: Deep down in our nonviolent creed is the conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true that they’re worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36 years old, as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life, some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right, he’s afraid his home will get burned, or he’s afraid that he will lose his job, or he’s afraid that he will get shot or beat down by state troopers. He may go on and live until he’s 80, but he’s just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80. And the cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. He died...
A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.
So we're going to stand up right here amid horses. We're going to stand up right here, in Alabama, amid the billy-clubs. We're going to stand up right here in Alabama amid police dogs, if they have them. We're going to stand up amid tear gas! We're going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!
“Librarians save lives: by handing the right book, at the right time, to a kid in need”
Source: Spirit Bound
“Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.”
“The time is always right to do what’s right.”
Speech delivered in Finney Chapel at Oberlin College (22 October 1964), as reported in "When MLK came to Oberlin" by Cindy Leise, The Chronicle-Telegram (21 January 2008) http://chronicle.northcoastnow.com/2008/01/21/when-mlk-came-to-oberlin/
1960s
Variant: The time is always right to do what’s right.
“I was made at right angles to the world
and I see it so. I can only see it so.”
Source: Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters
“To see what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.”
The Analects, Chapter I, Chapter II
Variant: To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle.
Context: To worship to other than one's own ancestral spirits is brown-nosing. If you see what is right and fail to act on it, you lack courage.
Variant To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle.
Source: Magic Breaks
“But just suddenly I really, really needed to see you again right that minute, that night.”
Source: Why We Broke Up
Source: Sorceress of Darshiva
“In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.”
Vol. 2, Ch. 27, § 370
Variant translation: To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims