Quotes about wrong
page 19

William Paley photo

“Wanton, and, what is worse, studied cruelty to brutes, is certainly wrong.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Vol. I, Book II, Ch. XI.
The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785)

Reggie Fils-Aimé photo
André Maurois photo
Muammar Gaddafi photo

“What's going on? … What you are doing is not allowed in Islamic law [halal]. What you are doing is forbidden in Islam [haraam]! … Do you know right from wrong?”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Remarks to captors minutes before death, quoted in msnbc.com (2011 October 21) "Even stashed in a meat locker, Gadhafi divides Libya" http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44986347/ns/today-today_news/t/battle-over-body-delays-gadhafis-burial/

Ken MacLeod photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Walter Savage Landor, from The Dial, XII

George Eliot photo
Mehdi Karroubi photo

“If Iran is exploiting the ‘Shia factor’ in its foreign policy then it is wrong. But I believe this to be untrue. I visited Lebanon five or six years ago when I was parliamentary speaker during Khatami’s era and we exerted all efforts in preserving the unity between the Sunnis and Shia.”

Mehdi Karroubi (1937) Iranian reformist politician, democracy activist, mojtahed, and chairman of the National Trust Party

Mehdi Karroubi: Iran’s Most Prominent Reformist Speaks http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=3&id=8613, Asharq Alawsat April 2007

Horatio Nelson photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
L. S. Lowry photo
Thomas Wolfe photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Segregation is wrong because it is a system of adultery perpetuated by an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Cobo Center speech (1963)

Roger Ebert photo
Pete Doherty photo
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux photo

“Now two punctilious envoys, Thine and Mine,
Embroil the earth about a fancied line;
And, dwelling much on right and much on wrong,
Prove how the right is chiefly with the strong.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

Et le Mien et le Tien, deux frères pointilleux,
Par son ordre amenant les procès et la guerre,
En tous lieux de ce pas vont partager la terre ;
En tous lieux, sous les noms de bon droit et de tort,
Vont chez elle établir le seul droit du plus fort.
Satire 11, l. 141
Satires (1716)

Grace Kelly photo

“(when children can watch without embarrassment their mothers breast feed brothers and sister) They realize the wholesomeness of sex and its naturalness. They don't put sex in the wrong proportion.”

Grace Kelly (1929–1982) American actress and Princess consort of Monaco

The Milwaukee Sentinel Princess Puts Motherhood First Jul 17, 1971

Nancy Grace photo
Glen Cook photo

“The best of the diviner breed are never wrong because they never set anything in stone.”

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 79 (p. 555)

“However a systems problem is solved—by a planner, scientist, politician, antiplanner, or whomever—the solution is wrong, even dangerously wrong. There is bound to be deception in any approach to the system.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. 229; cited in Charles Smith (2007, p. 43)

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston photo
Charles Evans Hughes photo

“In attempted justification of the statute, it is said that it deals not with publication per se, but with the "business" of publishing defamation. If, however, the publisher has a constitutional right to publish, without previous restraint, an edition of his newspaper charging official derelictions, it cannot be denied that he may publish subsequent editions for the same purpose. He does not lose his right by exercising it. If his right exists, it may be exercised in publishing nine editions, as in this case, as well as in one edition. If previous restraint is permissible, it may be imposed at once; indeed, the wrong may be as serious in one publication as in several. Characterizing the publication as a business, and the business as a nuisance, does not permit an invasion of the constitutional immunity against restraint. Similarly, it does not matter that the newspaper or periodical is found to be "largely" or "chiefly" devoted to the publication of such derelictions. If the publisher has a right, without previous restraint, to publish them, his right cannot be deemed to be dependent upon his publishing something else, more or less, with the matter to which objection is made. Nor can it be said that the constitutional freedom from previous restraint is lost because charges are made of derelictions which constitute crimes. With the multiplying provisions of penal codes, and of municipal charters and ordinances carrying penal sanctions, the conduct of public officers is very largely within the purview of criminal statutes. The freedom of the press from previous restraint has never been regarded as limited to such animadversions as lay outside the range of penal enactments. Historically, there is no such limitation; it is inconsistent with the reason which underlies the privilege, as the privilege so limited would be of slight value for the purposes for which it came to be established.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931).
Judicial opinions

Jonah Lehrer photo
John Wesley photo

“As to the word itself, it is generally allowed to be of Greek extraction. But whence the Greek word, enthousiasmos, is derived, none has yet been able to show. Some have endeavoured to derive it from en theoi, in God; because all enthusiasm has reference to him. … It is not improbable, that one reason why this uncouth word has been retained in so many languages was, because men were not better agreed concerning the meaning than concerning the derivation of it. They therefore adopted the Greek word, because they did not understand it: they did not translate it into their own tongues, because they knew not how to translate it; it having been always a word of a loose, uncertain sense, to which no determinate meaning was affixed.
It is not, therefore, at all surprising, that it is so variously taken at this day; different persons understanding it in different senses, quite inconsistent with each other. Some take it in a good sense, for a divine impulse or impression, superior to all the natural faculties, and suspending, for the time, either in whole or in part, both the reason and the outward senses. In this meaning of the word, both the Prophets of old, and the Apostles, were proper enthusiasts; being, at divers times, so filled with the Spirit, and so influenced by Him who dwelt in their hearts, that the exercise of their own reason, their senses, and all their natural faculties, being suspended, they were wholly actuated by the power of God, and “spake” only “as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”
Others take the word in an indifferent sense, such as is neither morally good nor evil: thus they speak of the enthusiasm of the poets; of Homer and Virgil in particular. And this a late eminent writer extends so far as to assert, there is no man excellent in his profession, whatsoever it be, who has not in his temper a strong tincture of enthusiasm. By enthusiasm these appear to understand, all uncommon vigour of thought, a peculiar fervour of spirit, a vivacity and strength not to be found in common men; elevating the soul to greater and higher things than cool reason could have attained.
But neither of these is the sense wherein the word “enthusiasm” is most usually understood. The generality of men, if no farther agreed, at least agree thus far concerning it, that it is something evil: and this is plainly the sentiment of all those who call the religion of the heart “enthusiasm.” Accordingly, I shall take it in the following pages, as an evil; a misfortune, if not a fault. As to the nature of enthusiasm, it is, undoubtedly a disorder of the mind; and such a disorder as greatly hinders the exercise of reason. Nay, sometimes it wholly sets it aside: it not only dims but shuts the eyes of the understanding. It may, therefore, well be accounted a species of madness; of madness rather than of folly: seeing a fool is properly one who draws wrong conclusions from right premisses; whereas a madman draws right conclusions, but from wrong premisses. And so does an enthusiast suppose his premisses true, and his conclusions would necessarily follow. But here lies his mistake: his premisses are false. He imagines himself to be what he is not: and therefore, setting out wrong, the farther he goes, the more he wanders out of the way.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Sermon 37 "The Nature of Enthusiasm"
Sermons on Several Occasions (1771)

Clive Staples Lewis photo
Richard Feynman photo
John Ralston Saul photo
Orson Scott Card photo
George Santayana photo

“All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: Dialogues in Limbo (1926), Ch. 3, P. 62

A. P. Herbert photo
Andrew Sullivan photo
Demi Lovato photo

“Somewhere we went wrong
We were once so strong
Our love is like a song
You can't forget it at all.”

Demi Lovato (1992) American singer, songwriter, actress, and author

Don't Forget
Lyrics, Don't Forget (2008)

Aneurin Bevan photo
Warren Farrell photo
George Soros photo
Federica Mogherini photo
Jeff Hawkins photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Anthony Kennedy photo

“One can conclude that certain essential, or fundamental, rights should exist in any just society. It does not follow that each of those essential rights is one that we as judges can enforce under the written Constitution. The Due Process Clause is not a guarantee of every right that should inhere in an ideal system. Many argue that a just society grants a right to engage in homosexual conduct. If that view is accepted, the Bowers decision in effect says the State of Georgia has the right to make a wrong decision — wrong in the sense that it violates some people's views of rights in a just society. We can extend that slightly to say that Georgia's right to be wrong in matters not specifically controlled by the Constitution is a necessary component of its own political processes. Its citizens have the political liberty to direct the governmental process to make decisions that might be wrong in the ideal sense, subject to correction in the ordinary political process.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

[Unenumerated Rights and the Dictates of Judicial Restraint, Address to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, Stanford University. Palo Alto, California., http://web.archive.org/web/20080627022153/http://www.andrewhyman.com/1986kennedyspeech.pdf, 24 July 1986 to 1 August 1986, 13] (Also quoted at p. 443 of Kennedy's 1987 confirmation transcript http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/senate/judiciary/sh100-1037/browse.html).

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Paul Cézanne photo

“But there are motifs that would need three or four months' work, which could be done, as the vegetation doesn't change here. There are the olive trees and the pines that always keep their leaves. The sun is so fierce that objects seem to be silhouetted, not only in black or white, but in blue, red, brown, violet. I may be wrong, but this seems to be the very opposite of 'modeling'. How happy the gentle landscapists of Auvers would be here, and that [con, or 'bastard'? ] Guillemet.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote from Cezanne's letter to Camille Pissarro, from L'Estaque 2 July 1876, taken from Alex Danchev, The Letters of Paul Cézanne, 2013; as quoted in the 'Daily Beast' online, 13 Oct. 2013 https://www.thedailybeast.com/cezannes-letter-to-pissarro-picture-business-isnt-going-well
'The very opposite of 'modeling' meant roughly that Cézanne and Pissarro in their common painting-years in open air would lay down one plane or patch of color next to another in the painting, without any 'modeling' or shading between them - so that it looked as if each component part of the painting could be picked up from the canvas a little like a 'playing card from the table', as Cezanne explains here.
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, 1860s - 1870s

Don Soderquist photo
Jesper Kyd photo
Robert M. Sapolsky photo

“Get it wrong, and we call it a cult. Get it right, in the right time and the right place, and maybe, for the next few millennia, people won't have to go to work on your birthday.”

Robert M. Sapolsky (1957) American endocrinologist

"Sapolsky on Religion", Human Behavioral Biology 150/250 (Spring 2002) http://blip.tv/file/2204956/

Reese Palley photo

“Always certain, often wrong.”

Reese Palley (1922–2015)

https://whyy.org/articles/always-certain-often-wrong-how-does-who-we-are-impact-how-we-age/ May 16, 2012

Emma Goldman photo
Richard Cobden photo
Merrick Garland photo

“The great joy of being a prosecutor is that you don’t take whatever case walks in the door. You evaluate the case, you make your best judgement, you only go forward if you believe that the defendant is guilty. You may well be wrong, but you have done your best to ensure that as far as the evidence that you are able to attain, the person is guilty. It is the kind of even-handed balancing that a judge should undertake although of course a judge has the advantage of having somebody speak for the other side.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Merrick Garland, Confirmation hearing on nomination of Merrick Garland to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, United States Senate, December 1, 1995]; quote excerpted in:
[March 18, 2016, http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2016/03/16/judge-merrick-garland-in-his-own-words/, Judge Merrick Garland, In His Own Words, Joe Palazzolo, March 16, 2016, The Wall Street Journal]
Confirmation hearing on nomination to United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1995)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Willard van Orman Quine photo

“Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.”

Willard van Orman Quine (1908–2000) American philosopher and logician

"Natural Kinds", in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (1969), p. 126; originally written for a festschrift for Carl Gustav Hempel, this appears in a context explaining why induction tends to work in practice, despite theoretical objections. The hyphen in "praise-worthy" is ambiguous, since it falls on a line break in the source.
1960s

Pat Condell photo
Nikolai Berdyaev photo
Andy Warhol photo
Lou Barletta photo
Ned Kelly photo
Stephen Miller photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Edmund Phelps photo
John Greenleaf Whittier photo

“Yet sometimes glimpses on my sight,
Through present wrong the eternal right;
And, step by step, since time began,
I see the steady gain of man;”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

The Chapel of the Hermits, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Robert Louis Stevenson photo
Bill O'Reilly photo
Steve Kilbey photo

“Everything is going wrong
All my songs are coming true ~ Mistress”

Steve Kilbey (1954) British artist

Lyrics

Saul D. Alinsky photo

“The three most important things to look for when searching for a church home are doctrine, doctrine, and doctrine. If your main criteria are 'programs' and 'outreach' to this or that niche group, then in my opinion you are starting your search the wrong way.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

The Memsahib’s Quote of the Day https://survivalblog.com/the_memsahibs_quote_of_the_day_1/, Survivalblog, 5 May 2006

Poul Anderson photo
George Lucas photo
Dave Eggers photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
Alexander McCall Smith photo
Sandra Fluke photo

“It's an attempt to silence women. That's really what it's about, if we're called these names, then we'll go away and we won't demand the health care we deserve and we need and I think women have proven those folks wrong.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

CBS News interview with Sandra Fluke. cited in — [March 2, 2012, March 8, 2012, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57389769-503544/sandra-fluke-rush-limbaugh-wants-to-silence-women/, CBS News, CBS, Sandra Fluke: Rush Limbaugh wants "to silence women", Brian, Montopoli]
Media interviews

Philipp Meyer photo
Zoey Deutch photo
Garry Kasparov photo

“So what’s happened since ’92, it’s where the administrations that changed quite dramatically, the foreign policy, and it was working more like pendulum, swinging from one side to the other. Clinton did very little, W did too much, Obama has been doing nothing. It sent a message – sent numerous messages across the world. While people knew in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s that America was there, America was consistent. Even if you have a change in the Oval Office, one party replaces another, you could rely on the United States. America was behind American allies. Today? It’s probably, it’s a springtime to be an American enemy because this administration gives up everything to the enemies and betrays allies. And going back to George W. administration, it’s very popular to criticize Bush today, Bush 43. Especially for the Iraq invasion, and I’ve heard many voices, even within the Republican Party, it’s just floating with the popular trend. First of all, I have to say as somebody who was born and raised in a Communist country, I cannot criticize any action that led to the destruction of dictatorship. I think his people had wrong expectations. When they saw the collapse of Saddam’s dictatorship after American invasion of Iraq and then the collapse of a few other dictatorships during the Arab Spring, they had expectations that next day, it would be a democracy. It’s wrong. It was very naive because dictators succeeds the staying in power for so many years, not because he’s a nice guy, just helps his people to get out of poverty, but because he’s brutal, he’s cruel. He succeeds in destroying opposition, first political opposition and then freedom of press and remaining horizontal ties in the society. All the NGOs, anything that could represent not just a threat to him, but it’s any sort of the slightest dissent. It’s kind of a political desert. What do you expect in a desert after 10, 20, 30 – in the case of Gaddafi, 42 years of dictatorship?”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

William T. Sherman photo
Robert Newman photo
Richard Stallman photo
Paul Carus photo

“No one saves us but ourselves,
No one can and no one may.
We ourselves must walk the path
Buddhas merely teach the way.
By ourselves is evil done,
By ourselves we pain endure,
By ourselves we cease from wrong,
By ourselves become we pure.”

Paul Carus (1852–1919) American philosopher

Translation from the Dhammapada of Gautama Buddha, as translated in The Dharma, or The Religion of Enlightenment; An Exposition of Buddhism (1896)

Sean Carroll photo
H. G. Wells photo
Rollo May photo

“Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 1 : The Courage to Create, p. 21

William Lane Craig photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Jimmy Wales photo
Diora Baird photo

“I can't imagine topping this. Really. I can't imagine doing like Little House on the Prairie gone wrong or something. I really think this will be it.”

Diora Baird (1983) American actress and model

On starring in a horror movie following The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. "["set visit: Q&A with Diora Baird", 2005-11-11, horror.com, http://www.horror.com/php/index.php?m=show&opt=printable&id=1035]

Elliott Smith photo

“They took your life apartAnd called your failures artThey were wrong, thoughThey won't know'Til tomorrow”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Tomorrow Tomorrow.
Lyrics, XO (1998)

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
André Maurois photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo

“Scientific "facts" are taught at a very early age and in the very same manner in which religious "facts" were taught only a century ago. There is no attempt to waken the critical abilities of the pupil so that he may be able to see things in perspective. At the universities the situation is even worse, for indoctrination is here carried out in a much more systematic manner. Criticism is not entirely absent. Society, for example, and its institutions, are criticised most severely and often most unfairly… But science is excepted from the criticism. In society at large the judgment of the scientist is received with the same reverence as the judgement of bishops and cardinals was accepted not too long ago. The move towards "demythologization," for example, is largely motivated by the wish to avoid any clash between Christianity and scientific ideas. If such a clash occurs, then science is certainly right and Christianity wrong. Pursue this investigation further and you will see that science has now become as oppressive as the ideologies it had once to fight. Do not be misled by the fact that today hardly anyone gets killed for joining a scientific heresy. This has nothing to do with science. It has something to do with the general quality of our civilization. Heretics in science are still made to suffer from the most severe sanctions this relatively tolerant civilization has to offer.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

How To Defend Society Against Science (1975)

Calvin Coolidge photo
Edgar Guest photo