Quotes about wrong
page 15

“I wouldn't do anything mean spirited. If it's in the wrong spirit, or if its not honest, then I wouldn't do it. It's got to honest. Otherwise, what's the point?”

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

The Des Moines Register https://www.newspapers.com/image/296428181 (11 May 1990)

“Concepts such as legal subject and legal object, legal relation and legal wrong, and indeed the very concept of law itself, are not accidental possessions of several or all legal orders but are necessary prerequisites if any legal order is to be understood as legal.”

Gustav Radbruch (1878–1949) German politician

Rechtsphilosophie (1932)

Law

“Unable to grasp the importance of Black women’s intersectional experiences, not only courts, but feminist and civil rights thinkers as well have treated Black women in ways that deny both the unique compoundedness of their situation and the centrality of their experiences to the larger classes of women and Blacks. Black women are regarded either as too much like women or Blacks and the compounded nature of their experience is absorbed into the collective experiences of either group or as too different, in which case Black women’s Blackness or femaleness sometimes has placed their needs and perspectives at the margin of the feminist and Black liberationist agendas. While it could be argued that this failure represents an absence of political will to include Black women, I believe that it reflects an uncritical and disturbing acceptance of dominant ways of thinking about discrimination. Consider first the definition of discrimination that seems to be operative in antidiscrimination law: Discrimination which is wrongful proceeds from the identification of a specific class or category; either a discriminator intentionally identifies this category, or a process is adopted which somehow disadvantages all members of this category.”

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw book Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex

Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex (1989)

Women, Law, Way, Failure

“True Christian love cherished in the heart and exemplified in the life, would teach us to put the best possible construction upon the course of our brethren. We should be as jealous of their reputation as of our own. If we are forever suspecting evil, this very fact will so shape their course of action as to produce the very evil which we have allowed ourselves to suspect. In this way, a great many difficulties are manufactured that otherwise would never have had birth, and brethren are often wronged by our being suspicious, free to judge their motives, and express our opinion to others in regard to their actions. That which one may be ready to construe into grave wrongs, may be no more than we ourselves are chargeable with every day.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

The Review and Herald (15 April 1880); also in Mind, Character, and Personality (1977), Vol. 2, p. 789

Love, Life, Way, Motivation

“Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead.
He was not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to the greatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring.
He was an Indian with a white man's spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies.”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Saturday Pioneer (20 December 1890)
The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer (1890 and 1891)

People, History, Revenge, Nature

“I could scarcely keep from laughing at this scrupulous manner of waging war. I cited the European example as a much more forceful policy. A monarch is careful not to overlook any advantage for victory. She had some questions about that: "Tell me," she said, "do your princes have no other pretext for war than might makes right?"
"Yes," I answered, "the justice of their cause."
"Why, then," she continued, "do they not choose to be reconciled by impartial judges? And if it is determined that both sides are in the right, then why not maintain the status quo? Or why not play a game of gin rummy for the town or province they're arguing over? But no, while they cause the death of four million men who are better than they, they stay in their strategy rooms making light of the way the poor fellows are being massacred. But I'm wrong to criticize the valour of your brave men. It's important to die for one's country when it means being the subject of a king who wears a ruffled collar or a pleated one."”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

Death, Men, War, Justice

“The Germans had thought they could replace light artillery with mortars, believing it unnecessary to furnish their troops with light guns and howitzers. The theory was wrong as they found out during the invasion.”

Leonid Govorov (1897–1955) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "The Russian Army: Its Men, Its Leaders and Its Battles" - Page 82 - by Walter Kerr - History - 2005

Light

“"Then he was wrong to have been born at all. Cheek- eek-eek-eek, oo, hoo!" chuckled Rinkitink, his fat body shaking with merriment. "But it's hard to prevent oneself from being born; there's no chance for protest, eh, Bilbil?"”

L. Frank Baum (1856–1919) Children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter

Rinkitink of Oz (1916), Ch. 5 : The Three Pearls
Later Oz novels

Chance

“The sin is yours, but the shame and sorrow are mine, the past I cannot retrieve, the future is still unspoiled and I will not embitter it by any willful sin. Before I was innocently guilty, now I should be doubly guilty if I went back to the 'gay free life I love.' Atone for the wrong you have done me by ceasing to tempt and trouble me. I will not yield, though you hunt me to death.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

Love, Life, Death, Past

“Show me your little poem
and I'll tell you why it wasn't written
any earlier or later than it was.Oh no, you've got me wrong.
Keep your funny piece of paper
with its scribbles.
All I need for my ends
is your layer of dirt
and the long gone
smell of burning.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"Archeology"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)

“I'm a hothead, what's wrong with that?”

Pim Fortuyn (1948–2002) Dutch politician

Gay Krant, issue 458 (April 2002)

“The semanticists are exactly wrong in regarding language as an obstruction or series of pitfalls. Language, on the contrary, appears as a great storehouse of universal memory, or it may be said to serve as a net, not imprisoning us but supporting us and aiding us to get at a meaning beyond present meaning through the very fact that it embodies others’ experiences.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 158.

Support, Universe, Appearance, Memory

“Dershowitz: The Israeli military then did an analysis, and they discovered, of course, that when they dropped that bomb and killed those people, they had no idea that those people were in the building, and the people who made the decision to drop the bomb were criticized and disciplined for it. The point I make is, when they knew, for sure, that family members were there, they withheld doing it. That doesn't deny the fact that on occasion they will accidentally make a decision that's wrong. The difference is deliberateness, willfulness…
Norman Finkelstein: …That was a nice fairy tale, dropping a 1 ton bomb on a densely populated civilian neighborhood in Gaza, and they had no idea that civilians would be there. And then he goes on to fantasy #2, that those who did it were disciplined. Really, Mr. Dershowitz? I'd love the evidence for that. I mean, if I could get $10,000 for every one of your fraudulent statements…”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

Never Before Aired: Watch PART II of the debate between Finkelstein and Dershowitz http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=109 (archive located here http://web.archive.org/web/20120814094352/http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/never-before-aired-watch-part-ii-of-the-debate-between-finkelstein-and-dershowitz/ is a continuation of part 1 http://web.archive.org/web/20120910213955/http://www.democracynow.org/2003/9/24/scholar_norman_finkelstein_calls_professor_alan) published 2003-9-24

Love, People, Family, Idea

“How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Letters and papers from Prison (1997), p. 311. May 25, 1944 letter to Eberhard Bethge,

God, Knowledge

“Don’t pay any attention to what she says. Half of it’s always wrong and she doesn’t mean the rest.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

The Menace from Earth (p. 351)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)

“It seemed as if she had given these treasures and left him alone — to use them or lose them, apply them or misapply them, according to his own choice. That is all we can do with children, when they grow into big children, old enough to distinguish between right and wrong, and too old to be forced to do either.”

Dinah Craik book The Little Lame Prince and his Travelling Cloak

Ch 7
The Little Lame Prince and his Travelling Cloak (1875)

Children

“Why do I always bang my head against the wall
So sick and tired of doing, doing everything wrong”

Beef Bonanza punk rock musician in The Bones

Flatline Fever
Lyrics

“You served here how long, Cornelius?’
‘Long enough to learn about what they believe. Not long enough to learn to speak their language well enough to get their confidence. Not long enough to learn how to read their books. Now I’ve three years before retirement and a measure of spare time for getting down to it.’
‘This, you know,’ Marcellus said, ‘is all wrong. You’re not here to get their confidence or read their books. They’re a colonized people. We’re here to give orders.
‘They’d rather die than obey some of the Roman orders. Besides, it’s laid down that their religion is inviolate…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985)

People, Books, Religion, Confidence

“Q: But if you stand out strongly trying to let the Arab world know that this is wrong and then you have the proverbial spokesperson for the conservative party saying this, doesn't that send a mixed message?
Scott McClellan: The President's views have been very -- have been made very clear. Go ahead.”

Scott McClellan (1968) Former White House press secretary

Source: Press briefing http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/05/20040506-8.html, May 6, 2004

World

“I believe we made the most beautiful thing in the world. Nobody would criticize a renowned architect's blueprint that the position of a gate is wrong. It's the same as that.”

Ken Kutaragi (1950) Japanese businessman

In response to the original PSP units' square button problems https://www.gamespot.com/articles/gamers-report-psp-malfunction/1100-6116985/

World, Beauty

“Anyone can look at our books and what we've done over 12 years, we have absolutely nothing to hide. We are under attack despite doing nothing wrong, I along with the board and all our ambassadors devote our time for free to raise funds. I've put over USD 150,000 of my own money into the foundation and never received a cent. I'm spending four to five hours a day on the foundation … and getting grief for it”

Shane Warne (1969–2022) Australian former international cricketer

Talking about his foundation, TSWF, being closed down due to allegations about its financial and reporting practices, Z News (January 24, 2016), h"Shane Warne: Nothing to hide, says Aussie legend after foundation comes under scanner" http://zeenews.india.com/sports/cricket/shane-warne-nothing-to-hide-says-aussie-legend-after-foundation-comes-under-scanner_1848626.html

Money, Books, Time

“There is no doubt that Jacomoni and Visconti Prasca have a large share of the responsibility in the Albanian affair, but the real blame must be sought elsewhere. It lies entirely with the Duce's command. This is a command that he, the Duce, cannot hold. Let him leave everything to us, and when things go wrong let him punish those responsible.”

Pietro Badoglio (1871–1956) Italian general during both World Wars and a Prime Minister of Italy

To Pavolini. Quoted in " Albania in the Twentieth Century: A History" - Page 68 - by Owen Pearson - 2006

“The last book, the one on the bottom, was a copy of the 1,500-page Gray’s Anatomy. The weight was all wrong in her hands. She opened the cover, revealing a space hollowed out with surgical precision.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 130

Books

“If you're going to be a good and faithful judge, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're not always going to like the conclusions you reach. If you like them all the time, you're probably doing something wrong.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Speech at Chapman Law School http://lawandordnance.com/oldbrass/2005/08/the_quotable_sc.php (August 2005). 2000s

Faith, Time

“Normal is the wrong name often used for average.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p.135

“Which is the greater wrong? To hurt the unforgiving one, or hurt the one who has forgiven all?”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Hurt

“Now I gazed upon him, no longer in a passionate frenzy, but in a cold contempt. I visualized long days and nights of vengeance, of fiendish ingenuity and complete consumation. My enemy was at my mercy; he lived; all the plans of hate and torture I had concieved through the long years of wrong and insult I would wreak upon him. My plans were carefully laid; I knew exactly what tortures I would use, how long I could inflict them without causing death, until my enemy at last went forth, a man ruined of soul and body. I was at peace, and content.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From “Revenge” in a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (c. late Aug/early September 1927)
Letters

Death, Hate, Peace, Soul

“I never thought I would see the day when America (which is based on the idea of liberty, from which the world Liberal comes) would become so self-centered and hypocritical. I mean if democracy considers liberal to be a term of abuse, then we should be terrified. A liberal is someone who belives in liberty. And if it is wrong to be liberal, then the other side has to be facist.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

Conversations with Derek Walcott (University Press Mississippi, 1996, page.165)

World, Democracy, Idea

“Let's face it, minorities are people who probably look and act and think differently from us and have faults we don't have. We may dislike the way they look and act, and we may hate their faults. And it’s better if we admit to disliking and hating them, than if we try to smear over our feelings with pseudo-liberal sentimentality. If we’re frank about our feelings, we have a safety valve; and if we have a safety-valve, we’re actually less likely to start persecuting.... I know that theory is unfashionable nowadays. We all keep trying to believe that, if we ignore something long enough, it’ll just vanish––
‘Where was I? Oh yes... Well, now, suppose this minority does get persecuted – never mind why – political, economic, psychological reasons – there always is a reason, no matter how wrong it is – that’s my point. And, of course, persecution itself is always wrong; I’m sure we all agree there. But, the worst of it is, we now run into another liberal heresy. Because the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, therefore the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure. Can’t you see what nonsense that is? What’s to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse? Did all the Christian victims in the arena have to be saints?’
‘And I’ll tell you something else. A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority — not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities – because all minorities are in competition: each one proclaims that its sufferings are the worst and its wrongs are the blackest. And the more they all hate, and the more they're all persecuted, the nastier they become! Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed?”

Christopher Isherwood book A Single Man

pps. 53-54
A Single Man (1964)

Love, Hate, People, Way

“Character does count. For too long we have gotten by in a society that says the only thing right is to get by and the only thing wrong is to get caught. Character is doing what's right when nobody is looking…”

J. C. Watts (1957) American politician

Speech at the Republican National Convention (1996-08-13)

“It can never be wrong to give pleasure.”

Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) British politician

"Gossip in a Library"
In the Name of the Bodleian, and Other Essays

Pleasure

“I was mad last year. I played as well as anyone else on our team and I didn't receive one vote for MVP. Don't get me wrong; I didn't say I was the best last year or that I should have won the MVP award. But nobody seemed to care about me. But you win the batting title yourself. They can't take that away from you.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente Will Seek Raise in Pay Next Year" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=eHQlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zfIFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1095%2C1859848 by Lou Prato, in The Gettysburg Times (Tuesday, October 3, 1961), p. 5 Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1961</big>

Madness

“I believe my subject is bewilderment. But I could be wrong.”

Donald E. Westlake (1933–2008) American novelist

Statement at his official website http://www.donaldwestlake.com/autobiography/, also quoted in his obituary in The Washington Post (3 January 2009) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/02/AR2009010202282_pf.html

“Our country – In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong.”

Stephen Decatur (1779–1820) United States Navy officer

Toast at a dinner in Norfolk, Virginia (April 1816) reported in Niles' Weekly Register (Baltimore, Maryland) 20 April 1816; as cited in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (2010), Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, p. 70
Variant: Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.
[emphasis added] This widely quoted version is attributed in Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, Life of Stephen Decatur: A Commodore in the Navy of the United States (1846), C. C. Little and J. Brown, p. 443.
This statement produced the famous slogan "My country, right or wrong!" which itself produced famous responses by:
Carl Schurz "...if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."
Schurz, Carl, remarks in the Senate, February 29, 1872, The Congressional Globe, vol. 45, p. 1287. See Wikisource for the complete speech.
G. K. Chesterton "'My country, right or wrong' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober'." -- A Defence of Patriotism
Variant: Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!

Success, Country

“I update negatively on people who mislead (including expressing great confidence while being wrong, and especially including avoidable mischaracterizations of others' views); people who do tangible damage (usually by misleading); and people who create little of value despite large amounts of opportunity and time investment.”

Holden Karnofsky (1981) American nonprofit executive

In "Some Thoughts on Public Discourse" http://effective-altruism.com/ea/17o/some_thoughts_on_public_discourse/, February 2017

People, Confidence, Time

“(Voice on television) Midol relives the special pain that women get (Sylvia) when they realize they picked the wrong man, again.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 48

Women, Pain

“I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

Campaign advertisement, December 2011
2011

School, Christmas, Country

“Everything in this book may be wrong.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

Books

“Thus Kantian autonomy, once it is understood, will (and ought to) disappoint those shallow minds and immature souls who are attracted to the doctrine of autonomy for the wrong reasons. They were hoping for some radical individualist revolution in morality, in which paroxysms of human self-will overthrow the divine will’s numinous majesty (thereby replacing, as many such revolutions sadly do, one arbitrary and unjust tyranny with another and bringing to power merely a different mob of unprincipled scoundrels). The sober rationalism of Kantian ethics is equally incompatible with voluntarism in its theological and its Promethean forms.”

Allen W. Wood (1942) academic

Kantian Ethics (2008)

Hope, Disappointment, Soul

“In the largest sense, every work of art is protest. … A lullaby is a propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it. … A hymn is a controversial song — sing one in the wrong church: you'll find out. …”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

Pop Chronicles, Show 33 - Revolt of the Fat Angel: American musicians respond to the British invaders. Part 1 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19792/m1/, interview recorded 2.14.1968 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

Art, Sense, Singing

“The crowd of ragged Confederates on the White House lawn had doubled and more since he went in to confer with Lincoln. The trees were full of men who had climbed up so they could see over their comrades. Off in the distance, cannon occasionally still thundered; rifles popped like firecrackers. Lee quietly said to Lincoln, "Will you send out your sentries under flag of truce to bring word of the armistice to those Federal positions still firing upon my men?" "I'll see to it," Lincoln promised. He pointed to the soldiers in gray, who had quieted expectantly when Lee came out. "Looks like you've given me sentries enough, even if their coats are the wrong color." Few men could have joked so with their cause in ruins around them. Respecting the Federal President for his composure, Lee raised his voice: "Soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, after three years of arduous service, we have achieved that for which we took up arms-" He got no further. With one voice, the men before him screamed out their joy and relief. The unending waves of noise beat at him like a surf from a stormy sea. Battered forage caps and slouch hats flew through the air. Soldiers jumped up and down, pounded on one another's shoulders, danced in clumsy rings, kissed each other's bearded, filthy faces. Lee felt his own eyes grow moist. At last the magnitude of what he had won began to sink in.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 180

Men, Color, Kiss, Tree

“The truth is nobody finances tiny movies anymore. I mean there are so many movies I like that I hope will get their money together. It's a different world than it was when I first started making independent movies. Something is really wrong right now. I was a part of it and things are so different now. You can't make a movie for three million dollars with a kind of known actor. It's impossible. I think in general it has to do with the financial state of the country. It's tough for everybody in every business, but the independent movies have really suffered I think…they would never have made Secretary. They never would have financed Secretary with an unknown actress and James Spader. There's just no way.”

Maggie Gyllenhaal (1977) American actress

2008-07-11, Comics2Film

Money, Truth, World, Hope

“To me, capital punishment is a form of societal self-defense. It should not be employed indiscriminately, but in cases of the most heinous crimes, the death penalty may be the only appropriate punishment. Some people believe it is right to take a life to save the life of someone else, but they would not vote to take the life of a convicted criminal, no matter how horrible the crime. Others believe that killing another person for any reason is simply wrong. I respect those opinions, but I disagree with them. I'm convinced that government has a duty to promote community defense. The death penalty, when applied in appropriate cases, can be a strong deterrent to crime. It is certainly a deterrent to the convicted criminal sentenced to death, and it is also a deterrent to other potential capital offenders.”

John Ashcroft (1942) American politician

Source: Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice (2006), p. 112

Life, Death, People, Penalty

“In the first inning, there is always something wrong. I hit somebody, I walk somebody, there's a blooper. But that's part of the game. You have to be able to control yourself and make good pitches to get yourself out of trouble.”

Carlos Zambrano (1981) Venezuelan baseball pitcher

Author Unknown, Pittsburgh 6, Chi Cubs 4 http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/recap?gid=270510116, Yahoo! Sports, Retrieved on June 16, 2007 2007

Game, Parting

“The police aren't hired to protect you. They're hired to keep an eye on you to see what you did that was wrong so that they can book you. That's their function. They are not protectors. They are not hired to be protectors. They are hired to keep an eye on all of us as potential criminals. Now, do you think they're going to make you safe? They weren't hired to make you safe.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Rampart Institute (Society for Libertarian Life edition), speech from 1978, p. 16.
Does Government Protection Protect (1979)

Books, Thinking

“Women have, commonly, a very positive moral sense; that which they will, is right; that which they reject, is wrong; and their will, in most cases, ends by settling the moral.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Women, Sense

“It is the considered opinion of most members of our rational élites that, in any given difference of opinion with reality, reality is wrong.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Reality"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

Reality

“We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.”

Jordan Anderson (1825–1907) Freed slave

"Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master"

Horse, Drawing, Night

“I saw what made the Japanese tick. I admired their discipline. That's what made Japan what it is today: discipline - not brilliance, but discipline. You obeyed orders, even if the orders were wrong.”

Robert Kuok (1923) Malaysian businessman

Cap 3 "Under the Japanese Heel"

“If you can't get rich dealing with politicians, there's something wrong with you.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Campaign Rally in South Carolina http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/07/donald-trump-campaign-speech-lindsey-graham YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImhJ2sFBJmA 2010s, 2015

“Many thanks for your kind care for my health; I certainly have not been well for many weeks, and about a week ago I was very poorly. I have had a good deal of fever at times, and indifferent nights; but I am considerably better now and am recovering my looks a little, which have been bad enough — black and white, and every wrong colour. I must not depend upon being ever very blooming again. Sickness is a dangerous indulgence at my time of life.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Fanny Knight (1817-03-23) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Life, Health, Time, Dependency

“If we don’t view our fellow activists as human beings rather than symbols of what’s right or wrong with the movement, then whom are we fighting for?”

Sarah Seltzer

Remembering Pioneering Feminist Shulamith Firestone http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/174721/jewish-feminist-shulamith-firestones-lessons/?utm_source=t.co&utm_campaign=&utm_content=general-general&utm_medium=jd.fo-other#ixzz2QH2HKUQg "Jewish Daily Forward," April 11, 2013

Fight

“With all the effort in the world, the results of cramming kids are likely to be more ambiguous than we can predict, not because the child rearing was done wrong but because all such results tend to be ambiguous.”

Adam Gopnik (1956) American journalist

How to Raise a Prodigy, The New Yorker (2018)

World, Effort

“[another part / version of Whistler's lecture:]
Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful—as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he bring forth from chaos glorious harmony. To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player, that he may sit on the piano. That Nature is always right, is an assertion, artistically, as untrue, as it is one whose truth is universally taken for granted. Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that Nature is usually wrong: that is to say, the condition of things that shall bring about the perfection of harmony worthy a picture is rare, and not common at all.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

1870 - 1903, his lecture 'Ten O'Clock' (1885)
Source: James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), Weinberg, H. Barbara, 'Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History'. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/whis/hd_whis.htm (April 2010)

Truth, Beauty, Music, Nature

“Productivity, however, is exactly the wrong thing to care about in the new economy.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

“Lavoisier was right in the deepest, almost holy, way. His passion harnessed feeling to the service of reason; another kind of passion was the price. Reason cannot save us and can even persecute us in the wrong hands; but we have no hope of salvation without reason. The world is too complex, too intransigent; we cannot bend it to our simple will.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"The Passion of Antoine Lavoisier", p. 366
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

World, Hope, Way, Feeling

“I don't think it is wrong, racist, immoral or anything, for a country to say 'we will decide what the cultural identity and the cultural destiny of this country will be and nobody else.”

John Howard (1939) 25th Prime Minister of Australia

Quoted in "Howard reasserts right to decide cultural identity," The Age, 20 September 1988.

Thinking, Country

“No reputable theologian, or rational believer for that matter, adheres strictly to Biblical morality. As everyone knows, believers pick and choose their morality from a smorgasbord of divine commands, both good and bad, in scripture. And doing that shows that you have a sense of right and wrong that doesn’t come from the Bible or God. Ergo, it comes from evolution and culture.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Where does morality come from? A demonstration with monkeys http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/where-does-morality-come-from-a-demonstration-with-monkeys/" August 7, 2012

God, Sense

“Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong.”

David Fasold (1939–1998) American sailor

Source: [Pickover, Clifford, The Mathematics of Oz, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 47, 2002, 0521016789] From [Fasold, David, The Ark of Noah, Wynwood, 1988, New York, 0922066108]

Dead

“Father, father, everybody thinks we're wrong
Oh, but who are they to judge us
Simply because our hair is long
Oh, you know we've got to find a way
To bring some understanding here today.”

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) American singer-songwriter and musician

What's Going On.
Song lyrics, What's Going On (1971)

Way, Understanding, Thinking

“It saddens me a great deal that, you know, so many kids turn around and say, 'My dad doesn't want me doing this.' It's this terrible image that some people have got of 'My son's going to dance' and 'Oh, my God, is he gay?' No. 1, if he is gay, then still be proud of him. What's wrong with being gay in this day and age? But No. 2, don't just associate dance with being gay. It's just so wrong, you know?”

Nigel Lythgoe (1949) Executive producer and television director

God, People, Age, Dance

“I feel a great deal of sympathy for the families of the four brave Americans that we lost at Benghazi. And I certainly can’t even imagine the grief that she has for losing her son, but she’s wrong. She’s absolutely wrong. I and everybody in the administration, all the people she named, the president, the vice president, Susan Rice, we were scrambling to get information that was changing, literally by the hour. And when we had information, we made it public. But then sometimes we had to go back and say we have new information that contradicts it. So I testified for 11 hours. … We have captured one of the lead terrorists and he admits it was both a terrorist attack and it was influenced by the video. This was fog of war. This was complicated. The most effective, comprehensive reports and studies demonstrate that. … I deeply regret that we lost four Americans. And I of course sympathize with members of the families who are still, you know, very much grieving. And I wish that there could be an easy answer at the time, but we learned a lot, and the intelligence kept improving, and we learned enough to say what we think happened at Benghazi.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

War, People, Family, Feeling

“He's (Michael Moore) going to wake up every day for the rest of his life, and he's going to tell us how he hates everything about this country except his right to hate it. And then we say that we love it and he's going to tell us what naive sheep we are and that he's the true patriot because he hates it and he sees all the problems in it. Yeah, right, Mike. You know something, if my yawn got any bigger they'd have to assign it a hurricane name, okay? Michael Moore simultaneously represents everything I detest in a human being and everything I feel obligated to defend in an American. Quite simply, it is that stupid moron's right to be that utterly, completely wrong.”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (3 April 2003)

Love, Life, Hate, Stupidity

“You cannot give an official power to do right without at the same time giving him power to do wrong.”

Leonard D. White (1891–1958) American historian

Source: Introduction to the Study of Public Administration, 1926, p. 144

Time

“We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for thirty or forty or fifty years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”

Rudy Giuliani (1944–2001) American businessperson and politician, former mayor of New York City

Speech at a forum on crime in the cities, as quoted in The New York Times (March 20, 1994) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E2D9173CF933A15750C0A962958260

People, Law, History, Freedom

“The question is not whether something is wrong with subjectivity. We are embedded in it, so we can only deal with it, or be blind and attempt to ignore it.”

Carlos Gershenson (1978) Mexican researcher

Source: Design and Control of Self-organizing Systems (2007), p. 29

Question

“"If it works, he'll take the credit," Bokov warned once they were safely outside NKVD headquarters. "Oh, sure," Shteinberg agreed. "But he'd do that anyway." Bokov laughed, not that his superior was joking- or wrong.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 413

“The laurel-tree grew large and strong,
Its roots went searching deeply down;
It split the marble walls of Wrong,
And blossomed o'er the Despot's crown.”

Richard Henry Horne (1802–1884) English poet and critic

The Laurel Seed; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 439.

Search, Tree, Strong

“For Greek democracy failed, and the reasons for its failure are full of instruction. The great ruling ideas which the Greeks gave to the world, ideas which England later was to absorb and spread over a quarter of the globe, freedom and self-government, social equality and civic patriotism, these were corrupted by demagogues and flatterers of the people. It was so fatally easy to think that freedom meant doing what you like, that one man was not only as good as another but equally able to fill any office whatsoever, that majorities could do no wrong, that you could make Utopian laws for your own country without regard to what other nations or other empires were doing…Freedom of speech was stifled and public men who refused to advocate pleasures for the public multitude were banished. Politicians rivalled one another in bribing the electorate.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 35-36.
1930

Men, People, Pleasure, World

“Laura and I have come to Blacksburg today with hearts full of sorrow. This is a day of mourning for the Virginia Tech community -- and it is a day of sadness for our entire nation. We've come to express our sympathy. In this time of anguish, I hope you know that people all over this country are thinking about you, and asking God to provide comfort for all who have been affected.Yesterday began like any other day. Students woke up, and they grabbed their backpacks and they headed for class. And soon the day took a dark turn, with students and faculty barricading themselves in classrooms and dormitories -- confused, terrified, and deeply worried. By the end of the morning, it was the worst day of violence on a college campus in American history -- and for many of you here today, it was the worst day of your lives.It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they're gone -- and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Remarks by the President at Virginia Tech Memorial Convocation http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/04/20070417-1.html (April 17, 2007) 2000s, 2007

God, Fate, People, Sadness

“One’s ears are weary of the voice of the art teacher who sits like the parrot on his perch, learning the jargon of the studios, making but poor copy and calling it criticism. We have had enough of their omniscience, their parade of technical knowledge, and their predilection for the wrong end of the stick.”

Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) English illustrator and author

The Art of the Hoarding (1894)

Art, Knowledge, Learning, Teachers

“Did you really just ask me if I want it to be bad? I have kids! What do you think? "Yeah, I don't want them to have any kind of a -- I want things to corrode to the point where we're all living in huts." […] [I] "like things to go a little wrong" like birdshot to the face of a guy that would survive, not "like things to go wrong" till it's like Mad Max, every-man-for-himself-let's-all-ride-around-and-machine-guns, which seems to be the way that it's”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

going
Responding to King's suggestion that as a political comedian Stewart would "want things to be bad" because that would provide him with the most fodder for jokes

Way, Guy, Thinking, Madness

“Well let them take you for a clown
And they're bound to bring you down.
You got to make it through the world if you can.
Think they're doing you wrong
But you got here on your own.
You got to make it through the world if you can.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

You Gotta Make It Through the World
Song lyrics, A Period of Transition (1977)

World, Thinking

“I was convinced before the war started that it was a great disaster, a great wrong. Even after the campaign in Poland my conviction didn't change because on 3rd September, the third day of our going to war, the Western Powers had declared war on Germany. After the campaign in France in 1940 my conviction became uncertain, but when I heard one or two months after the armistice with France that now Hitler was to go with Russia, the old conviction came up again and it was at this moment that I changed the place of living for my family, moved them from Berlin to the place where they are today.”

Walter Warlimont (1894–1976) German general

Quoted in "The World at War: the Landmark Oral History from the Classic TV Series" - Page 181 - by Richard Holmes - 2007

War, Family, Change

“You say you are fighting for liberty. Yes you are fighting for liberty: liberty to keep four millions of your fellow-beings in ignorance and degradation;– liberty to separate parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister;– liberty to steal the products of their labor, exacted with many a cruel lash and bitter tear;– liberty to seduce their wives and daughters, and to sell your own children into bondage;– liberty to kill these children with impunity, when the murder cannot be proven by one of pure white blood. This is the kind of liberty– the liberty to do wrong– which Satan, Chief of the fallen Angels, was contending for when he was cast into Hell.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

David Hunter, letter to Jefferson Davis https://books.google.com/books?id=Jc8VCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA59 (1863)

Children, Angels, Hell, Parent

“One needs a medium. The best is, one is his own medium. But don't be serious because seriousness belongs to a passed time. This medium, called you yourself will tell you to take absolutely the wrong material. That is very good, because only the wrong material used in the wrong way, will give the right picture, when you look at it from the right angle. Or the wrong angle. That leads us to the new ism: Anglism. The first art starting from England [the country of Schwitters' forced stay, when he wrote this quote], except the former shapes of art.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

Source: 1940s, I is Style (2000), pp. 100-101 : in: 'That is my confession I have to make MERZ' (1940 – 1946), Kurt Schwitters.

Art, Way, Quotes, Time

““You know, my dear, you’re wrong that suffering ennobles people.” She’d stopped to massage her hip, wincing. “It simply makes one cross.””

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Nooncoming, p. 100 (Originally published in Universe 8, edited by Terry Carr), 1978
In Alien Flesh (1986)

People, Suffering

“As soon as we started looking at them, we saw the most remarkable situation. My first thought was, "Great guns! Something's gone wrong with the apparatus!" But then we got later North American tapes and everything seemed normal again.”

James Van Allen (1914–2006) American nuclear physicist

On the first results from Explorer I, Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

“Known for centuries, a tenet of classical liberalism, the pacific nature of democracy has become largely forgotten or ignored in the last half-century. That democracy is inherently peaceful is now probably believed by no more than a few prominent peace researchers. In part this has been due to the intellectual defection of Western intellectuals from classical liberalism to some variant of socialism, with its emphasis on the competitive violence and bellicosity of capitalist freedoms. Many intellectuals, and in particularly European and Third World peace researchers, have come to believe that socialist equalitarianism is the answer to violence; others, particularly American liberals, believe that if the socialist are wrong, then at least democracies are no better than other political systems in promoting peace.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

“Political Systems, Violence, and War,” chap. 14 in "Approaches to Peace: An Intellectual Map", edit, W. Scott Thompson and Kenneth M. Jensen, Washington, D.C., United States Institute of Peace, 1991, pp. 347-370; and “The Politics of Cold Blood,” Society, Vol. 27 (November/December, 1989) pp. 32-40

World, Peace, Democracy, Nature

“The vision we have of conversational programming takes in much more than rapid turn around time and convenient debugging aids: our most interesting programs are never wrong and never final. […] What is new is the requirement to make variable in our languages what we had previously taken as fixed. I do not refer to new data classes now, but to variables whose values are programs or parts of programs, syntax or parts of syntax, and regimes of control.”

Alan Perlis (1922–1990) American computer scientist

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

Time, Parting

“It's never the wrong time to call on Toad. Early or late he's always the same fellow. Always good-tempered, always glad to see you, always sorry when you go!”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 2

Time

“Some teachers of mankind — as Plato… the first Christians, the orthodox Muslims, and the Buddhists — have gone so far as to repudiate art. …[They consider it] so highly dangerous in its power to infect people against their wills, that mankind will lose far less by banishing all art than by tolerating each and every art. …such people were wrong in repudiating all art, for they denied that which cannot be denied — one of the indispensable means of communication, without which mankind could not exist. …Now there is only fear, lest we should be deprived of any pleasures art can afford, so any type of art is patronized. And I think the last error is much grosser than the first and that its consequences are far more harmful.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

People, Pleasure, Fear, Art

“And I wanted to say something before I go — I told you guys it's been a bad year — when you have these kind of moments when you are in despair, I just want to remind you that God does not take a break — he does not clock out, he doesn't get caught off-guard — there is nothing that goes on that he is not allowing. So everything is as it should be, no matter how wrong, or scary, or sad, or angry, or afraid, or any of it — everything is as it should be. And we need to remember that, and that we love Him and He loves us. Whatever we're feeling, we need to remember the truth.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

Quote from video posted a day after both her YouTube channels were suspended (have been reinstated), two days after being laid off, and about a month after the cause of her worsening chronic pain was diagnosed as fibromyalgia (no cure or effective treatment). "Update 12/12/08" (12 December 2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHYdRwaLQN0&feature=related

Love, God, Truth, Sadness

“GG Allin: If you think I'm into this for the money you're dead wrong because I'm not doing this for the money. I'm doing it because it lives inside of me.”

GG Allin (1956–1993) American singer-songwriter

GG Allin on The Jerry Springer Show, May 5. 1993.
On The Jerry Springer Show

Money, Thinking, Dead

“Don't get me wrong, I like to cuddle. But there is such a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so that they can't get away.”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

"Skanks for the Memories"

“I was wrong. Those days are over, and they ought to be over.”

George Wallace (1919–1998) 45th Governor of Alabama

Speech (1979), as quoted in Government in America: people, politics, and policy (2009), by George C. Edwards, Pearson Education, p. 80.
1970s

“I am just as white myself as I am black; and I am not afraid of the negro getting the upper hand in me… If you build the negro a church on every hill, and a schoolhouse in every valley, and endow them all for a hundred years, you will not make up for the wrongs you have done him. Who is it that asks for protection at the polls and for equal education? The men who came forth to clutch with iron fingers your faltering flag, and shed their blood for you, who protected the women and children of the South during the war, who have tilled your soil with their horny hands, and watered it with their tears!”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1890s, Speech at Tremont Temple (1890)

Women, Men, War, Children

“if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
Instead of me.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

"It's Raining In Love"
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mining Disaster

God, Sadness, Girl, Question

“They say the rebels in Iraq still fight for Saddam but that's bullshit. I'll tell you why it's totally wrong. Because if another country invaded the hood tonight it would be warfare through Harlem and Washington Heights. I wouldn't be fighting for Bush or white America's dream. I'd be fighting for my people's survival and self esteem.”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

Bin Laden (2005)
The Martyr, 2011, Singles

People, Dreams, Fight, Country

“It was not the "God-intoxicated" philosopher but the hard-headed, not to say hard-hearted, pupil of Machiavelli and philologic-historical critic of the Bible. Orthodoxy could be returned to only if Spinoza was wrong in every respect.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Preface
Spinoza's Critique of Religion (1965)

God, Heart

“I'm surprised she's friends with the Tories, Helen Bonham-Carter, because she's an artist and I'm not saying it's right or wrong, artists do tend, historically, to be on the left. People on the right tend to be practical, level-headed, capable, unsentimental realists; people on the left tend to be people with dreams, hope, vision, imagination. You have to have imagination on the left, don't you? You have to be able to look at Ed Miliband and imagine that he represents anything other than the death of the post-war socialist dream. Ed Miliband, how did he manage that; how did he make the Labour party less popular than under Blair? That's like catching a baby that's been thrown out of an aeroplane and then tripping up and dropping it in a gutter.”

Stewart Lee (1968) English stand-up comedian, writer, director and musician

Series 3 Episode 3: "Satire"

Death, War, People, Dreams

“What's so wrong with feeling sorry for myself? Better that than trying to get other people to feel sorry for me.”

Orson Scott Card Treasure Box

Treasure Box (1996)

People, Feeling

“Being impotent because they have never dared to assert themselves, they continually play the blame game. They are innocent and powerless and, therefore, others are always to blame when things go wrong. … They have yet to bite the apple of consciousness.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 83

Game

“The trouble with you,” the Ugly Girl said, “is that you think you know just what everyone should do, don’t you?”
The Mad Duke smiled at her. His face was bright and sharp, smooth and glittering. “Yes,” he said, “I do.”
“And what,” she said, “if you’re wrong?”

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

“And what,” he said, “if I’m not?”
Part I, Chapter VIII (p. 82)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

Smile, Girl, Thinking, Madness

“The reason we are finding it hard to win this battle is that we're not actually fighting it properly. We're not actually standing up to these people and saying, "It's not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn't justified."”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

" Blair launches stinging attack on 'absurd' British Islamists http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2115929,00.html", 1 July 2007. Remarks made on the eve of his departure from Downing Street, 26 June 2007. 2000s

People, Idea, Sense, Fight