Quotes about wrong
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“To sing a wrong note is insignificant, but to sing without passion is unforgivable.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

“When a small child, I thought that success spelled happiness. I was wrong, happiness is like a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment, but soon flits away.”

Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) Russian ballet dancer

Happiness, Appearance, Success

“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.

Love, Girl, Time, Waiting

“I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Learning

“We, all who live, have
A life that is lived
And another life that is thought,
And the only life we have
It's the one that is divided
In right or wrong.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Life

“Haven’t you ever noticed that people who win say it’s because the gods know they are in the right, but if they lose, it wasn’t the gods who declared them wrong? Their opponent cheated, or their equipment was bad.”

Tamora Pierce Squire

Source: Squire

God, People, Cheating

“When we keep choosing between right and wrong. We spend our energy sorting life rather than living it.”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

Life

“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

Life, Depressing, Good Morning

“But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“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

“[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

Life, Pain, World, Penalty

“I could not suffer them blowing me to pieces in my own native land and they knew Fitzpatrick wronged us and why not make it public and convict him but no they would rather riddle poor unfortunate creoles.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

Jerilderie Letter (1879)

Suffering

“Ibn 'Umar reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "A Muslim man must hear and obey both in respect of what he likes and dislikes, unless he is commanded to do a wrong action. If he is commanded to do a wrong action, he should not hear or obey."”

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

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 663
Sunni Hadith

Peace

“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

Personality

“Humans have a 3 percent human error, and a lot of companies can't afford to be wrong 3 percent of the time anymore, so we close that 3 percent gap with some of the technologies. The AI we've developed doesn't make mistakes.”

Walter O'Brien (1975) Irish businessman, founder of Scorpion Computer Services

Scorpion's Origin

Error, Time

“For the gospel proclaims that God is with us now, actively fighting the forces which would make man captive. And it is the task of theology and the Church to know where God is at work so that we can join him in this fight against evil. In America we know where the evil is. We know that men are shot and lynched. We know that men are crammed into ghettos…. There is a constant battle between Christ and Satan, and it is going on now. If we make this message contemporaneous with our own life situation, what does Christ's defeat of Satan mean for us?… The demonic forces of racism are real for the black man. Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man "the devil." The white structure of this American society, personified in every racist, must be at least part of what the New Testament meant by the demonic forces.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), pp. 39-41

Life, Men, God, Evil

“Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser today than he was yesterday — that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation?”

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

1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)

Change

“The truth is that Dickens's criticism of society is almost exclusively moral. Hence the utter lack of any constructive suggestion anywhere in his work. He attacks the law, parliamentary government, the educational system and so forth, without ever clearly suggesting what he would put in their places. Of course it is not necessarily the business of a novelist, or a satirist, to make constructive suggestions, but the point is that Dickens's attitude is at bottom not even destructive. There is no clear sign that he wants the existing order to be overthrown, or that he believes it would make very much difference if it were overthrown. For in reality his target is not so much society as ‘human nature’. It would be difficult to point anywhere in his books to a passage suggesting that the economic system is wrong as a system.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Charles Dickens" (1939)
Charles Dickens (1939)

Truth, Books, Education, Law

“"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

People

“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

“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

“When you examine your conscience (attention to what I am going to tell you) do not go too far; look at it as we look at the seashore from the top of the Alps or the Pyrenees, lightly, without going into details. If you do not see anything clearly and certainly wrong, go ahead and be at peace with your God. Mind this, I repeat, and do tell me how you are faring, because the devil could trick you and do you serious hard with his false doctrine and suggestions. This union produces peace of mind; then search for peace. Let nothing disturb you, be it good or bad.”

Francisco Palau (1811–1872) Beatified Spanish Discalced Carmelite friar and priest

Letter to Juana Gratia (1857)

God, Peace, Search, Falseness

“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

“If I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago and done no good to either you or to myself. …for the truth is that no man who goes to war with you or any other multitude, honestly struggling against the commission of unrighteouosness and wrong in the State, will save his life; he who will really fight for right, if he would live even for a little while, must have a private station and not a public one.”

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

31e
Plato, Apology

Life, War, Truth, Fight

“A civilization at war chooses only the most obvious enemy, and often also the one perceived, at first, to be the most easily defeatable. But that enemy is not the true enemy, nor is it the gravest threat to that civilisation. Thus a civilization at war often chooses the wrong enemy.”

Steven Erikson book The Bonehunters

The Bonehunters (2006)

War

“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

Love, Soul, Tree

“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

“It is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life.”

George Orwell book Burmese Days

Source: Burmese Days (1934), Ch. V

Life, Education, Way

“I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.”

John Diefenbaker (1895–1979) 13th Prime Minister of Canada

July 1, 1960. From the Canadian Bill of Rights.

God, Fear, Way, Thinking

“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

“Everything makes sense a bit at a time. But when you try to think of it all at once, it comes out wrong.”

Terry Pratchett book Only You Can Save Mankind

Only You Can Save Mankind (1992)

Thinking, Sense, Time

“[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

As I Please (1943–1947)

World

“My boys may charge me with all they want. The main thing is, it helps them. They are not evil and no criminals. They are the products of total war, grown up on the streets of scattered towns without any education! The only thing [they] knew was to handle weapons for the Dream of [the] Reich. They were young people with a hot heart and the desire to win or to die, according to the word: right or wrong—my country!”

Joachim Peiper (1915–1976) SS officer

Letter to Willis Everett, July 4, 1946. Parker, Hitler's Warrior, chapter 14, citing Everett Papers in note 5.

War, People, Education, Dreams

“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

Law, Universe

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

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)

Idea

“I am not part of the human race. Humanity has rejected me. The females of the human species have never wanted to mate with me, so how could I possibly consider myself part of humanity? Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all. I am Elliot Rodger… Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent… Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Final Days

God, World, Evil, Parting

“The thing that I think very striking is that no one, or no one I can remember, ever writes of an execution with approval. The dominant note is always horror. Society, apparently, cannot get along without capital punishment—for there are some people whom it is simply not safe to leave alive—and yet there is no one, when the pinch comes, who feels it right to kill another human being in cold blood. I watched a man hanged once. There was no question that everybody concerned knew this to be a dreadful, unnatural action. I believe it is always the same—the whole jail, warders and prisoners alike, is upset when there is an execution. It is probably the fact that capital punishment is accepted as necessary, and yet instinctively felt to be wrong, that gives so many descriptions of executions their tragic atmosphere. They are mostly written by people who have actually watched an execution and feel it to be a terrible and only partly comprehensible experience which they want to record; whereas battle literature is largely written by people who have never heard a gun go off and think of a battle as a sort of football match in which nobody gets hurt.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please" column in The Tribune (3 November 1944) http://alexpeak.com/twr/oocp/ "As I Please" (1943–1947)

People, Feeling, Literature, Question

“[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

“When the door closes you have two choices. Give up, or keep going. Let them shut you down or prove them wrong. We all start somewhere. It's where you end up that counts. Grammy 2013”

Rihanna (1988) Barbadian singer, songwriter, and actress

“I think Marilyn is bound to make an almost overwhelming impression on the people who meet her for the first time. It is not that she is pretty, although she is of course almost incredibly pretty, but she radiates, at the same time, unbounded vitality and a kind of unbelievable innocence. I have met the same in a lion-cub, which my native servants in Africa brought me. I would not keep her, since I felt that it would in some way be wrong…I shall never forget the almost overpowering feeling of unconquerable strength and sweetness which she conveyed. I had all the wild nature of Africa amicably gazing at me with mighty playfulness.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Written of her experience with actress Marilyn Monroe in a letter to the American author, Fleur Cowles Meyer, in 1961. As quoted in Fragments, by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment (2010)

People, Way, Feeling, Nature

“One of the fundamental points about religious humility is you say you don't know about the ultimate judgment. It's beyond your judgment. And if you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Source: The Mike Wallace Interview (1958)

God, Religion

“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

Love, Feeling

“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.

People, Lie, Way, Thinking

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

Edgar Allan Poe book A Dream Within 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.

Dreams

“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.

Life

“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.

Life, Lie

“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)

War, People, Secret, Fools

“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.

People, Understanding, Problem, Thinking

“Never think about something wrong you did in the past. Always look forward with your head up high. Have no regrets.”

Jared Leto (1971) American actor and musician

Thinking, Past

“Courage is hard. You have to be willing to take it on the chin if you get things wrong. Now I have clarity in my own life I’m able to focus…”

Billie Joe Armstrong (1972) American singer and guitarist

Life, Courage

“I’m an atheist in the sense that I do not believe in God, I do not believe in the afterlife. I believe that the soul is our brain. It’s impossible to scientifically prove either that God exists, or that God does not exist. The idea of God does not convince me. I prefer to believe that there is matter and that matter has the properties we observe. … When I pass away, if I meet God, I will tell him I was wrong.”

Margherita Hack (1922–2013) Italian astrophysicist and popular science writer

Quoted in " Goodbye Margherita Hack, “The Lady of the Stars.”", iitaly.org (1 July 2013) http://www.iitaly.org/magazine/focus/facts-stories/article/goodbye-margherita-hack-lady-stars?mode=colorbox.

God, Soul, Idea, Sense

“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.”

Gus Speth

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]

Problem, Thinking, Science, Change

“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

Women, Men, God, People

“In fact, the most difficult thing for a director like me is to find the right people; it is enough to put in a group a man or a woman or a wrong person that everything is compromised.”

Rocco Siffredi (1964) Italian pornographic actor, director, producer and entrepreneur

Interview by Andrea Di Marcantonio

People, Personality

“England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare’s much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control — that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.”

George Orwell book England Your England

Part I : England Your England, § III
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Family, Quotes, Silence, Memory

“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!”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

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)

Feeling, Thinking, Water

“Be willing to expose your unhappiness. Give a voice to the sorrow, the anger, the fear, the deep loneliness burning at your core. Break some taboos. Say the ‘wrong’ thing. Shatter the false image. You may lose followers. You may lose friends. You may lose your job. You will certainly lose your mask.

Change may scare the shit out of you. Good. It’s supposed to. You may lose everything and you may have to begin life again. But the soul will rejoice. It has been through myriad deaths and rebirths. It couldn’t give a fuck about protecting itself from change. It finds change thrilling, life-giving, erotic even.

Yes, there is a bigger Happiness that embraces and celebrates even our deepest unhappiness!”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/B5RcCpknF7y/

“And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working – bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming – all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less.”

George Orwell book A Hanging

Source: "A Hanging", in The Adelphi (August 1931)

Life, Men, World, Food

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

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Crime and Punishment

Source: Crime and Punishment (Zločin a trest)

“Maybe we've always asked the wrong question. We should ask ourselves about the meaning of death, rather than life. Are we not alive now?”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life, Death, Question

“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)

Help

“People love dogs. You can never go wrong adding a dog to the story.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: White Night

Love, People, Dogs

“If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else.” “I know. An overwhelming passion for it.” “No. An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Truth, Passion

“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

Suffering

“What's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Learning

“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.

Life, Fear, Motivational, Success

“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.

“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.

“But you ain't part of it, are you?" said Granny conversationally. "You try, but you always find yourself watchin' yourself watchin' people, eh? Never quite believin' anything? Thinkin' the wrong thoughts?”

Terry Pratchett book Maskerade

Source: Maskerade

People, Parting

“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

Death, Fools

“If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

“It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.”

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

Fear, Courage, Courageous

“… you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.”

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

Thinking

“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

Life, People, Problem, Thinking

“You're hurt because everything is changed. Jimmy is hurt because everything is the same. And neither of you can face it. Something's gone wrong somewhere, hasn't it?”

John Osborne Look Back in Anger

Source: Look Back in Anger

Change, Hurt

“Every book teaches a lesson, even if the lesson is only that one has chosen the wrong book.”

Mason Cooley (1927–2002) American academic

Books

“In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time.”

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

God, Time

“I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

“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

“But for this book we could not know right from wrong.”

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

Books

“You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was, ‘But we’ve always done it this way.’ A million dead people can’t have been wrong, can they?”

Terry Pratchett book The Fifth Elephant

Source: The Fifth Elephant

People, Way, Dead

“Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Life, Way

“I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong.”

Ovid Metamorphoses

Source: Metamorphoses

Way

“I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Thinking

“Don't you think baby corns are scary? There's just something wrong about their midget bodies.”

P. C. Cast book Marked

Source: Marked

Thinking, Baby

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

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

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

Question

“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

“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

Light, Parting

“Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

People, Way, Thinking

“It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

People, Idea