Quotes about wrong
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Ludwig Van Beethoven photo
Anna Pavlova photo
Cher photo

“I love having boyfriends. A girl can wait for the right man to come along – but in the meantime that doesn’t mean she can’t have a wonderful time with all the wrong ones.”

Cher (1946) American singer and actress

"Cher Genius", an interview in You magazine, the Mail on Sunday (UK) newspaper (28 November 2010), interviewed by Elaine Lipworth in Las Vegas.

Oscar Wilde photo
Fernando Pessoa photo
Tamora Pierce photo
Theodor W. Adorno photo

“There is no right life in the wrong one.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life

George Orwell photo
Muhammad photo

“The Messenger of Allah said, "Verily, Allah has revealed to me that you should adopt humility. So that no one may wrong another and no one may be disdainful and haughty towards another."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, Compiled By Al-Imam Abu Zakariya Yahya bin Sharaf An-Nawawi Ad-Dimashqi, Chapter 279, Hadith 1589 http://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/hadeeth/riyad/17/chap279.htm
Sunni Hadith

Socrates photo

“[In the world below…] those who appear to have lived neither well not ill, go to the river Acheron, and mount such conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes—who have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like—such are hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and they never come out. Those again who have committed crimes, which, although great, are not unpardonable—who in moment of anger, for example, have done violence to a father or a mother, and have repented for the remainder of their lives, or who have taken the life of another under like extenuating circumstances—these are plunged into Tartarus, the pains of which they are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of the year the wave casts them forth—mere homicides by way of Cocytus, patricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon—and they are borne to the Acherusian Lake, and here they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they have slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to receive them, and to let them come out of the river into the lake. And if they prevail, then they come forth and cease from their troubles; but if not, they are carried back again into Tartarus and from thence into the rivers unceasingly, until they obtain mercy from those whom they have wronged: for this is the sentence inflicted upon them by their judges.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Ned Kelly photo
Muhammad photo
George Ohsawa photo

“Sickness is the first warning that we have made a wrong judgement. A healthy person is never unhappy.”

George Ohsawa (1893–1966) twentieth century Japanese philosopher

Source: Essential Ohsawa - From Food to Health, Happiness to Freedom - Understanding the Basics of Macrobiotics (1994), p. 77

Walter O'Brien photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
George Orwell photo
Cao Cao photo

“"I will rather I wronged all the people under the heavens than for all the people under the heavens to wrong me."”

Cao Cao (155–220) Chinese warlord during the Eastern Han Dynasty

Statement to Chen Gong after falsely killing Lü Boshe and his household. Source: Romance of the Three Kingdoms. An adaptation of the Sanguo Zhi new 2010.
likely intentional misquote by the novel of the quote「宁我负人,毋人负我」above to add character to the story.
Attributed

Marvin Minsky photo

“An ethicist is someone who sees something wrong with whatever you have in mind.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

TED talk (February 2003) http://blog.ted.com/2008/09/health_populati.php

Murray Walker photo

“I don't make mistakes. I make prophecies that immediately turn out to be wrong.”

Murray Walker (1923) Motorsport commentator and journalist

The Gold Coast Bulletin staff (October 26, 2002) "Muddly Talker", The Gold Coast Bulletin, p. W09.
Interviews

Francisco Palau photo
Mark Twain photo

“The minority is always in the right. The majority is always in the wrong.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Attributed to Twain, but never sourced. Suspiciously close to "A minority may be right, and the majority is always in the wrong." — Henrik Ibsen "Enemy of the People," as well as a famous quote from Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard
Misattributed

Socrates photo
Steven Erikson photo
Elvis Presley photo

“A well I bless my soul
What's wrong with me?
I'm itching like a man on a fuzzy tree.
My friends say I'm actin' wild as a bug.
I'm in love,
I'm all shook up.
Mm mm oh, oh, yeah, yeah!”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

All Shook Up, written by Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley (1957)
Song lyrics

Antisthenes photo

“Once, when he was applauded by rascals, he remarked, "I am horribly afraid I have done something wrong."”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 5
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

George Orwell photo
John Diefenbaker photo
P. W. Botha photo

“I never have the nagging doubt of wondering whether perhaps I am wrong.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As quoted in Dictionary of South African Quotations, Jennifer Crwys-Williams, Penguin Books 1994, p. 285

Terry Pratchett photo
George Orwell photo
Joachim Peiper photo
Marcus Annaeus Seneca photo

“It is wrong not to give a hand to the fallen; this law is universal to the whole human race.”
Iniquum est conlapsis manum non porrigere; commune hoc ius generis humani est.

Marcus Annaeus Seneca (-54–39 BC) Roman scholar

Book I, Chapter I; slightly modified translation from Norman T. Pratt Seneca's Drama (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983) p. 140
Controversiae

Marvin Minsky photo

“When no idea seems right, the right one must seem wrong.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)

George Orwell photo
George Orwell photo

“[T]here is something wrong with a regime that requires a pyramid of corpses every few years.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Letter to Humphry House, (11 April 1940). p. 532 http://books.google.com/books?id=0j2qODEJkdoC&pg=PA532#v=onepage&q&f=false, The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters, George Orwell: An age like this, 1920–1940, Editors: Sonia Orwell, Ian Angus

Rihanna photo
Karen Blixen photo
Reinhold Niebuhr photo
Josh Homme photo

“I survived
I speak, I breathe
I'm incomplete
I'm alive, hooray!
You're wrong again, 'cause I feel no love.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

"The Vampyre of Time and Memory", ...Like Clockwork (2013)
Lyrics, Queens of the Stone Age

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“I tell you, if one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm - but that's a lie, and you yourself used to call it that. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

1880s, 1884, Letter to Theo (Nuenen, Oct. 1884)
Context: I tell you, if one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm - but that's a lie, and you yourself used to call it that. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.
Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, You can't do a thing. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerises some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of 'you can't' once and for all.
Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily. He wades in and does something and stays with it, in short, he violates, "defiles" - they say. Let them talk, those cold theologians.

Edgar Allan Poe photo

“You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;”

"A Dream Within a Dream" (1849).
Context: You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

Stendhal photo

“Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us.”

Stendhal (1783–1842) French writer

Journal entry (10 December 1801)
Context: Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely, is, therefore, a great step towards happiness.

Hunter S. Thompson photo

“For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Letter to Larry Callen (14 July 1958), p. 133
1990s, The Proud Highway : The Fear and Loathing Letters Volume I (1997)
Context: I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively. … For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words.

George Orwell photo

“If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:
: BRITISH TORY. Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.
: COMMUNIST. If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.
: IRISH NATIONALIST. Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.
: TROTSKYIST. The Stalin regime is accepted by the Russian masses.
: PACIFIST. Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

Terence McKenna photo

“I think that people don't understand. As the Firesign Theater used to say, 'Everything you know is wrong.' But that is a very liberating understanding, because if everything you know is wrong, then all the problems you thought were insoluble can be framed differently.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Spacetime Tsunami http://www.deoxy.org/t_sunami.htm, Interview with Carla Sinclair, bOING bOING #10.
Context: I think that people don't understand. As the Firesign Theater used to say, 'Everything you know is wrong.' But that is a very liberating understanding, because if everything you know is wrong, then all the problems you thought were insoluble can be framed differently. And there's a way to take the world apart and put it back unrecognizably. We don't really understand what consciousness is at the really deep levels. With some of the tryptamine hallucinogens, you see into possibilities where questions like, 'are you alive?' 'are you dead?' 'are you you?' seem to have been transcended. I think people have a very narrow conception of what is possible with reality, that we're surrounded by the howling abyss of the unknowable and nobody knows what's out there.

Jared Leto photo
Billie Joe Armstrong photo
Margherita Hack photo

“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation.”

Quoted by Daniel crockett
Source: [Crockett, Daniel, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/daniel-crockett/nature-connection-will-be-the-next-big-human-trend_b_5698267.html/Nature, Connection Will Be the Next Big Human Trend, Huffington Post, Aug 22, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20160105052014/http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/daniel-crockett/nature-connection-will-be-the-next-big-human-trend_b_5698267.html, January 5, 2016, yes]

“I concluded that women are flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their brains are wired, as if they haven’t evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of reason or thinking rationally. They are like animals, completely controlled by their primal, depraved emotions and impulses. That is why they are attracted to barbaric, wild, beast-like men. They are beasts themselves. Beasts should not be able to have any rights in a civilized society. If their wickedness is not contained, the whole of humanity will be held back from advancement to a more civilized state. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate with. That choice should be made for them by civilized men of intelligence. If women had the freedom to choose which men to mate with, like they do today, they would breed with stupid, degenerate men, which would only produce stupid, degenerate offspring. This in turn would hinder the advancement of humanity. Not only hinder it, but devolve humanity completely. Women are like a plague that must be quarantined. When I came to this brilliant, pefect revelation, I felt like everything was now clear to me, in a bitter, twisted way. I am one of the few people on this world who has the intelligence to see this. I am like a god, and my purpose is to exact ultimate Retribution on all of the impurities I see in the world.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Building to Violence

Rocco Siffredi photo
George Orwell photo
Charlotte Brontë photo

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!”

I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!
Jane to Mr. Rochester (Ch. 23)
Jane Eyre (1847)

George Orwell photo
Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”

Source: Crime and Punishment (Zločin a trest)

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Kanye West photo

“I'm tryin' to right my wrongs
But it's funny, them same wrongs helped me write this song.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Touch the Sky
Lyrics, Late Registration (2005)

Anthony de Mello photo
Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Mark Twain photo

“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”

Joseph Chilton Pearce (1926–2016) American writer

Variant: To live a creative life we must first lose the fear of being wrong.

Mark Twain photo

“The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Part VI: "Two Fragments from a Suppressed Book Called 'Glances at History' or 'Outlines of History' ".
Papers of the Adams Family (1939)
Context: Against our traditions we are now entering upon an unjust and trivial war, a war against a helpless people, and for a base object — robbery. At first our citizens spoke out against this thing, by an impulse natural to their training. Today they have turned, and their voice is the other way. What caused the change? Merely a politician's trick — a high-sounding phrase, a blood-stirring phrase which turned their uncritical heads: Our Country, right or wrong! An empty phrase, a silly phrase. It was shouted by every newspaper, it was thundered from the pulpit, the Superintendent of Public Instruction placarded it in every schoolhouse in the land, the War Department inscribed it upon the flag. And every man who failed to shout it or who was silent, was proclaimed a traitor — none but those others were patriots. To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?
For in a republic, who is "the Country"? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant — merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. Who, then, is "the country?" Is it the newspaper? Is it the pulpit? Is it the school-superintendent? Why, these are mere parts of the country, not the whole of it; they have not command, they have only their little share in the command. They are but one in the thousand; it is in the thousand that command is lodged; they must determine what is right and what is wrong; they must decide who is a patriot and who isn’t.

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Kansas City Star (7 May 1918)
1910s
Context: The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

Terry Pratchett photo
Emile Zola photo

“Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

Source: The Masterpiece

Groucho Marx photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Terry Pratchett photo
John Osborne photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Bruce Lee photo

“Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
Abraham Lincoln photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Dr. Seuss photo
Ovid photo
Oscar Wilde photo

“Once they have you asking the wrong questions. They don't have to worry about the answers.”

Variant: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
Source: Gravity's Rainbow

Wolfgang Pauli photo

“This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

Response after reading a colleague's paper, quoted in The Successful Toastmaster: A Treasure Chest of Introductions, Epigrams, Humor, and Quotations (1966) by Herbert Victor Prochnow, p. 350, and in Mathematical Apocrypha Redux : More Stories and Anecdotes of Mathematicians and the Mathematical (2005) by Steven George Krantz, p. 194
This paper is so bad it is not even wrong.
As quoted in Comic Sections : The Book of Mathematical Jokes, Humour, Wit, and Wisdom (1993) by Des MacHale
Das is nicht einmal falsch.
It is not even wrong.
As quoted in Not Even Wrong : The Failure Of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law (2006) by Peter Woit (2006), Preface, p. xii

Abraham Lincoln photo

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right — stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Reported as an inscription quoting Lincoln in an English college in The Baptist Teacher for Sunday-school Workers : Vol. 36 (August 1905), p. 483. The portion beginning with "stand with anybody..." is from the 16 October 1854 Peoria speech..
Posthumous attributions

Terry Pratchett photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Alain de Botton photo
Abraham Lincoln photo

“Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)

Michael Crichton photo
Terry Pratchett photo

“Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Usenet

Gail Carson Levine photo

“Who judges the judge who judges wrong?”

Source: Fairest

Lee Child photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo

“He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister