Quotes about right
page 98

Calvin Coolidge photo
Ralph Waldo Trine photo
Charles Stross photo

““But then—you’re telling me they brought unrestricted communications with them?” he asked.
“Yup.” Rachel looked up from her console. “We’ve been trying for years to tell your leaders, in the nicest possible way: information wants to be free. But they wouldn’t listen. For forty years we tried. Then along comes the Festival, which treats censorship as a malfunction and routes communications around it. The Festival won’t take no for an answer because it doesn’t have an opinion on anything; it just is.”
“But information isn’t free. It can’t be. I mean, some things — if anyone could read anything they wanted, they might read things that would tend to deprave and corrupt them, wouldn’t they? People might give exactly the same consideration to blasphemous pornography that they pay to the Bible! They could plot against the state, or each other, without the police being able to listen in and stop them!”
Martin sighed. “You’re still hooked on the state thing, aren’t you?” he said. “Can you take it from me, there are other ways of organizing your civilization?”
“Well—” Vassily blinked at him in mild confusion. “Are you telling me you let information circulate freely where you come from?”
“It’s not a matter of permitting it,” Rachel pointed out. “We had to admit that we couldn’t prevent it. Trying to prevent it was worse than the disease itself.”
“But, but lunatics could brew up biological weapons in their kitchens, destroy cities! Anarchists would acquire the power to overthrow the state, and nobody would be able to tell who they were or where they belonged anymore. The most foul nonsense would be spread, and nobody could stop it—” Vassily paused. “You don’t believe me,” he said plaintively.
“Oh, we believe you alright,” Martin said grimly. “It’s just—look, change isn’t always bad. Sometimes freedom of speech provides a release valve for social tensions that would lead to revolution. And at other times, well—what you’re protesting about boils down to a dislike for anything that disturbs the status quo. You see your government as a security blanket, a warm fluffy cover that’ll protect everybody from anything bad all the time. There’s a lot of that kind of thinking in the New Republic; the idea that people who aren’t kept firmly in their place will automatically behave badly. But where I come from, most people have enough common sense to avoid things that’d harm them; and those that don’t, need to be taught. Censorship just drives problems underground.”
“But, terrorists!”
“Yes,” Rachel interrupted, “terrorists. There are always people who think they’re doing the right thing by inflicting misery on their enemies, kid. And you’re perfectly right about brewing up biological weapons and spreading rumors. But—” She shrugged. “We can live with a low background rate of that sort of thing more easily than we can live with total surveillance and total censorship of everyone, all the time.” She looked grim. “If you think a lunatic planting a nuclear weapon in a city is bad, you’ve never seen what happens when a planet pushed the idea of ubiquitous surveillance and censorship to the limit. There are places where—” She shuddered.”

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 14, “The Telephone Repairman” (pp. 296-297)

Clive Staples Lewis photo
Samuel Johnson photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Michelle Obama photo

“Every day, you have the power to choose our better history — by opening your hearts and minds, by speaking up for what you know is right, by sharing the lessons of Brown versus Board of Education, the lessons you learned right here in Topeka, wherever you go for the rest of your lives.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Quoted on Yahoo News!, "First lady tells Kansas students to fight bias" (16 May 2014) http://news.yahoo.com/first-lady-tells-kansas-students-fight-bias-021747701.html
2010s

Bernard Lewis photo

“Of all these offenses the one that is most widely, frequently, and vehemently denounced is undoubtedly imperialism—sometimes just Western, sometimes Eastern (that is, Soviet) and Western alike. But the way this term is used in the literature of Islamic fundamentalists often suggests that it may not carry quite the same meaning for them as for its Western critics. In many of these writings the term "imperialist" is given a distinctly religious significance, being used in association, and sometimes interchangeably, with "missionary," and denoting a form of attack that includes the Crusades as well as the modern colonial empires. One also sometimes gets the impression that the offense of imperialism is not—as for Western critics—the domination by one people over another but rather the allocation of roles in this relationship. What is truly evil and unacceptable is the domination of infidels over true believers. For true believers to rule misbelievers is proper and natural, since this provides for the maintenance of the holy law, and gives the misbelievers both the opportunity and the incentive to embrace the true faith. But for misbelievers to rule over true believers is blasphemous and unnatural, since it leads to the corruption of religion and morality in society, and to the flouting or even the abrogation of God's law. This may help us to understand the current troubles in such diverse places as Ethiopian Eritrea, Indian Kashmir, Chinese Sinkiang, and Yugoslav Kossovo, in all of which Muslim populations are ruled by non-Muslim governments. It may also explain why spokesmen for the new Muslim minorities in Western Europe demand for Islam a degree of legal protection which those countries no longer give to Christianity and have never given to Judaism. Nor, of course, did the governments of the countries of origin of these Muslim spokesmen ever accord such protection to religions other than their own. In their perception, there is no contradiction in these attitudes. The true faith, based on God's final revelation, must be protected from insult and abuse; other faiths, being either false or incomplete, have no right to any such protection.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990)

Roy Sesana photo
Jesse Helms photo

“Compromise, hell! That's what happened to us all down the line -- and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?”

Jesse Helms (1921–2008) American politician

(1959), as quoted in The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/26/weekinreview/ideas-trends-the-quotations-of-chairman-helms-race-god-aids-and-more.html.
1950s

Haruki Murakami photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Bill Hicks photo
Larry Wall photo

“Wow, I'm being shot at from both sides. That means I *must* be right.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199710211959.MAA18990@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

José Rizal photo

“No one has a monopoly of the true God, nor is there a nation or religion that can claim, or at any rate prove, that it has been given the exclusive right to the Creator or sole knowledge of His Being.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Annotations to Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas - translated by Austin Craig

George Harrison photo

“You can be standing right in front of the truth and not necessarily see it, and people only get it when they’re ready to get it.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 267

Will Cuppy photo

“I think you are absolutely right about everything, except I think humor springs from rage, hay fever, overdue rent and miscellaneous hell.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

From a letter to Max Eastman, 1936, about Eastman's book, The Enjoyment of Laughter ISBN 0-38413-740-7 (reprint). Eastman mss. http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/html/eastman.html, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Aron Ra photo
David Lloyd George photo
Joe Satriani photo

“When you hear an instrumental song someone is singing over, you know right away it's wrong.”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

As quoted in BAM Magazine (6 April 1990).

Henry Adams photo
Michael Ignatieff photo
Max Brooks photo

“People say, "get us out of the UN, we don't need the UN", we invented the UN. This is us, we are the ones who founded the idea of nations working together, and I think that's something we need to do. And it's, it's messy, and it's really complicated, and there's going to be a lot of countries out there that expect us to clean up there mess, or just want to see us fall on (our) face. And they love that, which is what I think president Obama said brilliantly at the UN, when he basically said, "that ok". If I'm paraphrasing, I don't think he's ever said "ok" in his life, he's probably said "well". But basically he said, "look, for the last eight years you've been on our case about going it alone, you know, we're imperialists, we're hegemonic, we're going it alone, we're going it alone… Ok, we're not going it alone anymore, we're going to listen to you, but you better ante up and kick in. Because, you don't have the right to have an opinion, if you can't back it up. It's put up or shut up time". And I was so happy when he said that, and the way he handled the Latin (American) countries, when he was dealing with the crisis in Central America, the coups in Honduras. And he said, "the very same countries who accuse us of doing nothing, are also the same ones who accuse us of being imperialistic. You can't have it both ways."”

Max Brooks (1972) American author

Lecture of Opportunity | Max Brooks: World War Z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nGG5E04cog

Archibald Hill photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Aaliyah photo

“I breathe to perform, to entertain, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. I’m just a really happy girl right now. I honestly love every aspect of this business. I really do. I feel very fulfilled and complete.”

Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model

In Vibe magazine cover story, "What Lies Beneath" (Published in 2001) http://www.vibe.com/article/aaliyahs-2001-vibe-cover-story-what-lies-beneath

Paulo Freire photo

“For them, having more is an inalienable right.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 1, on the oppressors

Mick Mulvaney photo

“With hindsight, one can perhaps see that unachievable projects were the right monuments to an ideal. Because they were not built, they could not be destroyed.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Source: The Shock of the New (1981), p. 92

Jimmy Wales photo
Nick Clegg photo
Emily Brontë photo

“Do what is right let the booty follow.”

Radio From Hell (April 21, 2006)

W. H. Auden photo
Bobby Seale photo

“I still want my right to defend myself. A railroad operation, and you know it, from Nixon on down. they got you running around violating my constitutional rights.”

Bobby Seale (1936) American activist

Transcript from Seale's conspiracy case as part of the Chicago 8 (October 1968)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton photo
Horace Greeley photo
Elbridge G. Spaulding photo
Fran Lebowitz photo
Mark Knopfler photo
James Jeans photo
Mickey Spillane photo
Sarah Dessen photo

“I dialed the number slowly, wanting to get it right. Two rings, and he picked up.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

What Happened To Goodbye (2011)

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo

“It is right to be forward in the defence of the poor; no system that is not just as between rich and poor can hope to survive.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech at Edinburgh (24 November 1882), from in G. Cecil, The Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury. Volume III, p. 65
1880s

Max Stirner photo
Francis Escudero photo

“We cannot just sit idly by and watch while our laws are being subverted. If we cannot defend, protect nor assist our fellow Filipino right here in our own soil, what chilling message do we get out there to our people and especially to those who are outside Philippine soils?”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

GMA News Online http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/384344/news/nation/demand-attendance-of-4-us-marines-in-laude-death-probe-dfa-doj-told
2014

George Carlin photo

“Nobody goes right to work. You might get there on time, but, screw the company, those first twenty minute belong to you, right? It's not an attitude in line with the American Spirit, but there it is: we all screw around first. "I just got here, man, you kiddin' me?"”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Really. You never see a memo that says 9:01.
Occupation: Foole (1973)
Source: Carlin, George, perf. Occupation: Foole. Rec. 02 Mar 1973. Monte Kay, Jack Lewis, 1973. Vinyl recording.

Al Sharpton photo

“I do believe the [Democratic] party has moved far to the right. I do believe that the party has a bunch of elephants running around in donkey clothes.”

Al Sharpton (1954) American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host

Interview with Robert Novak (January 2003)[citation needed]

Donald J. Trump photo
Donald J. Trump photo
"Weird Al" Yankovic photo

“Right now I'm listening to a lot of Top 40 music, because THAT'S MY JOB.”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

Weird Al Yankovic tackles Life's BIG Questions http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpZxwRzAD6c&list=PLBEFACC86EF5C5A1B.

Phil Brooks photo

“Isn't this the prettiest little thing you've ever seen? It was over a year ago I held this belt high in the air after I fought for it for the first time in Dayton, Ohio against Samoa Joe and I proclaimed this belt the most important thing to me. Right now, in my hands, as of this day 6/18/05, THIS becomes the most important belt in the world! This belt in the hands of any other man is just a belt, but in my hands it becomes power. Just like this microphone in the hands of any of the boys in the back is just a microphone, but in the hands of a dangerous man like myself it becomes a pipe-bomb. These words that I speak spoken by anybody else are just words strung loosely together to form sentences. What I say I mean, and what I mean I say, and they become anthems! You see, if I could be afforded the time here a little bit of a story. There was once an old man, walking home from work. He was walking in the snow, and he stumbled upon a snake frozen in the ice. He took that snake, and he brought it home, and he took care of it, and he thawed it out, and he nursed it back to health. And as soon as that snake was well enough, it bit the old man. And as the old man lay there dying he asked the snake, 'Why? I took care of you. I loved you. I saved your life.' And that snake looked that man right in the eye and said, 'You stupid old man. I'm a snake.' The greatest thing the devil ever did was make you people believe he didn't exist… and you're looking at him right now! I AM THE DEVIL HIMSELF! And all of you stupid, mindless people fell for it! You all believed in the same make-believe superhero that the legendary Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat saw some year ago today. No, you see, you don't know anything. You followed me hook-line and sinker, all of you did, and I'm not mad at you… I just feel sorry for you. This belongs to me! Everything you see here belongs to me, and I did what I had to do to get my hands on this. Now I am the GREATEST PRO WRESTLER walkin' the Earth today! This is my stage, this is my theater, you are my puppets! When I pulled those marionette strings, and I moved your emotions, and I played with them, and honestly it's 'cause I get off on it. I hate each and every single one of you with a thousand burns and I will not stop… I will not stop until I prove that I am better than you, that I am better than Low Ki, that I am better than AJ Styles! I'm better than Samoa Joe. Ladies and gentlemen, the champ is here! You don't have to love it, but you better learn to accept it. 'Cause I'm taking this with me, and there's not a single person in that locker room that can stop me!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Ring of Honor, Death Before Dishonor III. June 18th, 2005.
This promo took place directly after Punk defeated Austin Aries for the ROH World Championship proceeding to turn the, at the time face, Punk heel. Directly after this promo Christopher Daniels made his first appearance in ROH in over a year to challenge for the belt. This promo also made reference to an old parable http://www.snopes.com/critters/malice/scorpion.htm about an animal doing an act of kindness to another creature that is venomous and being surprised when the animal injects the venom to the creature after the act of kindness who then proceeds to explain it is their nature to perform the act.
Ring of Honor

Garrison Keillor photo

“None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Referring to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, in "Congress's Shameful Retreat From American Values" in The Chicago Tribune (4 October 2006) http://www.truthout.org/article/garrison-keillor-congresss-shameful-retreat-from-american-values

Ron Paul photo
Conor McGregor photo

“I just want to swing a few lefts and a few rights for a couple of hundred mill in peace.”

Conor McGregor (1988) Irish mixed martial artist and boxer

Twitter post https://twitter.com/TheNotoriousMMA/status/659853813403295746 (29 October 2015)
2010s, 2015

John Chivington photo

“Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! … I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians. … Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits [referring to infants] make lice!”

John Chivington (1821–1894) former Methodist pastor and colonel in the United States Volunteers

Brown, Dee (2001) [1970]. "War Comes to the Cheyenne". Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Macmillian. pp. 86–87.

Joseph Lowery photo
Lauren Duca photo
Steve Sailer photo
John Updike photo
James A. Garfield photo

“After nearly a quarter of a century of prosperity under the Constitution, the spirit of slavery so far triumphed over the early principles and practices of the government that, in 1812, South Carolina and her followers in Congress succeeded in inserting the word 'white' in the suffrage clause of the act establishing a territorial government for Missouri. One by one the Slave States, and many of the free States, gave way before the crusade of slavery against negro citizenship. In 1817, Connecticut caught the infection, and in her constitution she excluded the negro from the ballot-box. In every other New England State his ancient right of suffrage has remained and still remains undisturbed. Free negroes voted in Maryland till 1833; in North Carolina, till 1835; in ennsylvania, till 1838. It was the boast of Cave Johnson of Tennessee that he owed his election to Congress in 1828 to the free negroes who worked in his mills. They were denied the suffrage in 1834, under the new constitution of Tennessee, by a vote of thirty-three to twenty-three. As new States were formed, their constitutions for the most part excluded the negro from citizenship. Then followed the shameful catalogue of black laws; expatriation and ostracism in every form, which have so deeply disgraced the record of legislation in many of the States.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

William Morris photo
Ajahn Brahm photo
Jay Samit photo

“The customer is always right. Even when they're wrong.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p.177

Ani DiFranco photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Charles, Prince of Wales photo
Roger Ebert photo
Philip K. Dick photo

“What about [my] books? How do I feel about them?
I enjoyed writing all of them. But I think that if I could only choose a few, which, for example, might escape World War Three, I would choose, first, Eye in the Sky. Then The Man in the High Castle. Martian Time-Slip (published by Ballantine). Dr. Bloodmoney (a recent Ace novel). Then The Zap Gun and The Penultimate Truth, both of which I wrote at the same time. And finally another Ace book, The Simulacra.
But this list leaves out the most vital of them all: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. I am afraid of that book; it deals with absolute evil, and I wrote it during a great crisis in my religious beliefs. I decided to write a novel dealing with absolute evil as personified in the form of a "human." When the galleys came from Doubleday I couldn't correct them because I could not bear to read the text, and this is still true.
Two other books should perhaps be on this list, both very new Doubleday novels: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and another as yet untitled Ubik]. Do Androids has sold very well and has been eyed intently by a film company who has in fact purchased an option on it. My wife thinks it's a good book. I like it for one thing: It deals with a society in which animals are adored and rare, and a man who owns a real sheep is Somebody… and feels for that sheep a vast bond of love and empathy. Willis, my tomcat, strides silently over the pages of that book, being important as he is, with his long golden twitching tail. Make them understand, he says to me, that animals are really that important right now. He says this, and then eats up all the food we had been warming for our baby. Some cats are far too pushy. The next thing he'll want to do is write SF novels. I hope he does. None of them will sell.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

"Self Portrait" (1968), reprinted in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1995), ed. Lawrence Sutin

Rosa Luxemburg photo
Helen Reddy photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Roberto Clemente photo
David Cameron photo

“It’s wonderful news from St Mary’s Paddington, and I’m sure that right across the country, and indeed right across the Commonwealth, people will be celebrating and wishing the Royal couple well.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Remarks on the Royal birth http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/kate-middleton/10196324/David-Camerons-statement-on-the-royal-birth.html (22 July 2013)
2010s, 2013

Boris Johnson photo
Kevin Rudd photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
George William Curtis photo
David Brin photo

“One great mystery is why sexual reproduction became dominant for higher life-forms. Optimization theory says it should be otherwise.
Take a fish or lizard, ideally suited to her environment, with just the right internal chemistry, agility, camouflage—whatever it takes to be healthy, fecund, and successful in her world. Despite all this, she cannot pass on her perfect characteristics. After sex, her offspring will be jumbles, getting only half of their program from her and half their re-sorted genes somewhere else.
Sex inevitably ruins perfection. Parthenogenesis would seem to work better—at least theoretically. In simple, static environments, well-adapted lizards who produce duplicate daughters are known to have advantages over those using sex.
Yet, few complex animals are known to perform self-cloning. And those species exist in ancient, stable deserts, always in close company with a related sexual species.
Sex has flourished because environments are seldom static. Climate, competition, parasites—all make for shifting conditions. What was ideal in one generation may be fatal the next. With variability, your offspring get a fighting chance. Even in desperate times, one or more of them may have what it takes to meet new challenges and thrive.
Each style has its advantages, then. Cloning offers stability and preservation of excellence. Sex gives adaptability to changing times. In nature it is usually one or the other. Only lowly creatures such as aphids have the option of switching back and forth.”

Introduction to Chapter 8 (pp. 123-124)
Glory Season (1993)

Rab Butler photo
Michel Foucault photo
Herman Cain photo

“Lawrence O'Donnell: Mr. Cain, in fact, you were in college from 1963 to 1967, at the height of the civil rights movement, exactly when the most important demonstrations and protests were going on. You could easily, as a student at Morehouse, between 1963 and 1967, actively participated in the kinds of protests that got African Americans the rights they enjoy today. You watched from that perspective at Morehouse when you were not participating in those processes. You watch black college students from around the country and white college students from around the country come to the South and be murdered fighting for the right of African Americans. Do you regret sitting on those sidelines at that time?
Herman Cain: Lawrence, your attempt to say that I sat on the sidelines is an irrelevant comparison that you are trying to deduce from that—
Lawrence O'Donnell: It's in your book. It's in your book.
Herman Cain: Now, Lawrence, I know what's in my book. Now, let me ask you a question. Did you expect every black student and every black college in America to be out there, in the middle of every fight? The answer is no. So for you to say, why was I sitting on the sidelines, I think that that is an inaccurate deduction that you are trying to make. You didn't know, Lawrence, what I was doing with the rest of my life. You didn't know what my family situation may have been. Maybe, just maybe, I had a sick relative, which is why I might not have been sitting in, or doing the Freedom Rides. So what I'm saying, Lawrence, is, with all due respect my friend, your deduction is incorrect, and it's not logical, okay?”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

referring to "This is Herman Cain!" recounting that Herman read about sit-ins and Freedom Rides, and followed his father's advice to "stay out of trouble".

Alija Izetbegović photo
Benno Moiseiwitsch photo
Aron Ra photo
Allen C. Guelzo photo
Muhammad photo
Bill Whittle photo
Clarence Thomas photo
Kage Baker photo