Quotes about wrong
page 25

Anthony Trollope photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Horace photo

“Then take, good sir, your pleasure while you may;
With life so short 'twere wrong to lose a day.”

Dum licet, in rebus jucundis vive beatus; Vive memor quam sis aevi brevis.

Book II, satire viii, line 96 (trans. Conington)
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo

“Men are so unwilling to displease a Prince, that it is as dangerous to inform him right, as to serve him wrong.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Princes (their Rewards of Servants).
Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Political Thoughts and Reflections

Joe Biden photo

“I wasn't built to look the other way because the law demanded it. The law might be wrong.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Source: 2000s, Promises to Keep (2008), Page 42

T. H. White photo

“The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch somebody else doing it wrong, without comment.”

T. H. White (1906–1964) author

The Godstone and the Blackymor (1959), p. 161.

James Martin (author) photo

“A horrifying amount of "business engineering" is done with the wrong strategic vision. A horrifying amount of IT development is done with the wrong business design.”

James Martin (author) (1933–2013) British information technology consultant and writer

As cited in: " The Great Transition http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/enterprise-design/the-great-transition-8696" Jurgens Pieterse April 7, 2006
The great transition (1995)

Stephen Fry photo

“I should say today that it's tragic that people lose faith in what was once an honourable profession but people will lose faith in journalists. There's nothing one can do about it. People no longer trust journalists - we'll have to turn to politics instead for our belief in people. I almost mean that. Although, of course, anybody can talk about snouts in troughs and go on about it, for journalists to do so is almost beyond belief. Beyond belief. I know lots of journalists - I know more journalists than I know politicians - and I've never met a more venal and disgusting crowd of people when it comes to expenses and allowances… Not all [of them] but then not all human beings are either. I've cheated expenses. I've fiddled things. You have, of course you have. Let's not confuse what politicians get really wrong - things like wars, things where people die - with the rather tedious bourgeois obsession with whether or not they've charged for their wisteria. It's not that important, it really isn't. It isn't what we're fighting for. It isn't what voting is for and the idea that 'Oh, we've all lost faith in politics' [is] nonsense. It's a journalistic made-up frenzy. I know you don't want me to say that. You want me to say "No, it matters, it's important." It isn't it. Believe me, it isn't. It's not the big deal; it's not what we should be worrying about. I know no one's going to pay any attention and newspapers will great joy over filling yards and yards of newsprint with tiny, pointless details of this politician's or that politician's squalid and sad little life as they see it. It's not the big picture, it really isn't. You know, we get the politicians we deserve, it's our fault as much as anybody else's. This has been going on for years and suddenly because a journalist discovers it it's the biggest story ever! It's absolute nonsense, it really is.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

On the expenses scandal in the UK.
On Newsnight on the BBC Website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8045869.stm
2000s

Philip K. Dick photo
Aron Ra photo
Mark Ames photo

“The whole country is infested with this meanness and coldness, and no one is allowed to admit it. Only the crazy ones sense that it is wrong- that what is "normal" is not at all normal- and some of them, adults and kids alike, fight back with everything they have.”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part VI: Welcome to the Dollhouse, page 239.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)

Shi Nai'an photo

“What excites pleasure in me is the meeting and conversing with old friends. But it is very galling when my friends do not visit me because there is a biting wind, or the roads are muddy through the rain, or perhaps because they are sick. Then I feel isolated. Although I myself do not drink, yet I provide spirits for my friends, […]. In front of my house runs a great river, and there I can sit with my friends in the shadow of the lovely trees. […] When they come they drink and chat, just as they please, but our pleasure is in the conversation and not in the liquor. We do not discuss politics because we are so isolated here that our news is simply composed of rumors, and it would only be a waste of time to talk with untrustworthy information. We also never talk about other people's faults, because in this world nobody is wrong, and we should beware of backbiting. We do not wish to injure anyone, and therefore our conversation is of no consequence to anyone. We discuss human nature about which people know so little because they are too busy to study it.”

Shi Nai'an (1296–1372) Chinese writer

Variant translation by Lin Yutang: "When all my friends come together to my house, there are sixteen persons in all, but it is seldom that they all come. But except for rainy or stormy days, it is also seldom that none of them comes. Most of the days, we have six or seven persons in the house, and when they come, they do not immediately begin to think; they would take a sip when they feel like it and stop when they feel like it, for they regard the pleasure as consisting in the conversation, and not in the wine. We do not talk about court politics, not only because it lies outside our proper occupation, but also because at such a distance most of the news is based upon hearsay; hearsay news is mere rumour, and to discuss rumours would be a waste of our saliva. We also do not talk about people's faults, for people have no faults, and we should not malign them. We do not say things to shock people and no one is shocked; on the other hand, we do wish people to understand what we say, but people still don't understand what we say. For such things as we talk about lie in the depths of the human heart, and the people of the world are too busy to hear them." (The Importance of Living, 1937; pp. 218–219)
Preface to Water Margin

Jack Layton photo
Mitt Romney photo

“He can't look like that. That's wrong. Just look at him!”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-05-10
Mitt Romney’s prep school classmates recall pranks, but also troubling incidents
Jason Horowitz
The Washington Post
0190-8286
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also-troubling-incidents/2012/05/10/gIQA3WOKFU_story.html
As recalled by friend Matthew Friedemann: remark about John Lauber, a fellow high school student with bleached hair over one eye, whose hair Romney forcibly cut while he was pinned to the ground.
Attributed

Murray N. Rothbard photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
G. E. M. Anscombe photo
Marek Sanak photo
Ani DiFranco photo
Leung Chun-ying photo
Sharron Angle photo

“My thoughts are these, first of all, Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don't know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

Wick
Allison
Sharron Angle Decries Muslim Law in Bent Tree
2010-10-08
Frontburner
D Magazine
http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2010/10/08/sharron-angle-decries-muslim-law-in-frankford-texas/
2010-10-20
Christina
Silva
Angle: Muslim Law Taking Hold in Parts of US
Associated Press
2010-10-07
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=11826443
The city of Frankford, Texas no longer exists. It was annexed by Dallas in 1975.

G. K. Chesterton photo

“One can sometimes do good by being the right person in the wrong place.”

The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) The Sins of Prince Saradine
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

Hans von Seeckt photo
J. Bradford DeLong photo

“The Good Economist Hayek is the thinker who has mind-blowing insights into just why the competitive market system is such a marvelous societal device for coordinating our by now 7.2 billion-wide global division of labor. Few other economists imagined that Lenin’s centrally-planned economy behind the Iron Curtain was doomed to settle at a level of productivity 1/5 that of the capitalist industrial market economies outside. Hayek did so imagine. And Hayek had dazzling insights as to why. Explaining the thought of this Hayek requires not sociology or history of thought but rather appreciation, admiration, and respect for pure genius.The Bad Economist Hayek is the thinker who was certain that Keynes had to be wrong, and that the mass unemployment of the Great Depression had to have in some mysterious way been the fault of some excessively-profligate government entity (or perhaps of those people excessively clever with money–fractional-reserve bankers, and those who claim not the natural increase of flocks but rather the interest on barren gold). Why Hayek could not see with everybody else–including Milton Friedman–that the Great Depression proved that Say’s Law was false in theory, and that aggregate demand needed to be properly and delicately managed in order to make Say’s Law true in practice is largely a mystery. Nearly everyone else did: the Lionel Robbinses and the Arthur Burnses quickly marked their beliefs to market after the Great Depression and figured out how to translate what they thought into acceptable post-World War II Keynesian language. Hayek never did.
My hypothesis is that the explanation is theology: For Hayek, the market could never fail. For Hayek, the market could only be failed. And the only way it could be failed was if its apostles were not pure enough.”

J. Bradford DeLong (1960) American economist

Making Sense of Friedrich A. von Hayek: Focus/The Honest Broker for the Week of August 9, 2014 http://equitablegrowth.org/making-sense-friedrich-von-hayek-focusthe-honest-broker-week-august-9-2014/ (2014)

Glen Cook photo
Paul Krugman photo
Shi Nai'an photo
Mary Wollstonecraft photo
Jack Vance photo
Muhammad photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo
James Thurber photo

“Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"The Duchess and the Bugs", 'Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances‎

Mark Steyn photo
David Graeber photo

“Honor is the same as credit; it's one's ability to keep ones promises, but also, in the case of a wrong, to "get even."”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Seven, "Honor and Degradation", p. 193

Donald J. Trump photo

“The word is, according to what I've have read, is that he was a terrible student when he went to Occidental. He then gets to Columbia and then gets to Harvard. I heard at Columbia he was not a very good student, and then he then he gets into Harvard. How do you get into Harvard if you are not a good student? Maybe that's right, maybe that's wrong, but I don't know why he doesn't he release his records. Why doesn't he release his Occidental records?”

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

press conference, New Hampshire, 2011-04-27
Schieffer: Racism underlying Trump's assertions
2011-04-27
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20058072-503544.html
2011-05-01
https://archive.is/ryIny
2013-06-28
About Barack Obama, who transferred to Columbia from Occidental College in 1981, graduated from Columbia in 1983, and graduated magna cum laude with a Juris doctorate from Harvard Law School in 1991
2010s, 2011

Lisa Randall photo
Anatoly Kudryavitsky photo

“Sorry, we gave you
a wrong life,' they said
not too apologetically.
'Will you begin anew?”

Anatoly Kudryavitsky (1954) a Russian/Irish novelist, poet, literary translator and magazine editor

Poems, Shadow of Time (2005)

Kris Kristofferson photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo
Robert Jordan photo

“I thought I could build, I was wrong. We are not builders, not you, or I, or the other one. We are destroyers. Destroyers.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lews Therin Telamon to Rand
(9 November 2000)

Margaret Cho photo
William Lane Craig photo
Timothy McVeigh photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“Those gathered at the Annual Correspondents' Dinner, or their Christmas party, are not the country's natural aristocracy, but its authentic Idiocracy. No matter how poor their predictive powers, no matter how many times they get it wrong—in war and in peace—the presstitutes always find time for this orgy of self-praise.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Thanks, POTUS, For Breaking-Up The Annual Correspondents’ Circle Jerk." http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/05/thanks_potus_for_breakingup_the_annual_correspondents_circle_jerk.html The American Thinker, May 8, 2017.
2010s, 2017

Alan Bean photo
Robert T. Bakker photo
Paula Lehtomäki photo

“But to my mind, it is not a politician's job to turn policeman. The most important thing about transparency of electoral financing is that one does not get the wrong sort of associations emerging. And they cannot emerge if one does not know the source of the money.”

Paula Lehtomäki (1972) Finnish politician

Election financiers Did the ministers and others know whose money they were getting? http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Election+financiers+/1135236506359 Helsingin Sanomat 20.5.2008

Madame Nhu photo

“If one has no courage to denounce, if one bows to madness and stupidity, how can one ever hope to cope with the other wrongs of humanity exploited in the same fashion by Communists?”

Madame Nhu (1924–2011) First lady of South Vietnam

"Letters to the Times: Mrs. Nhu Defends Stand", The New York Times, 14 August 1963. Referring to the self-immolation of Buddhist monks protesting government actions.

Henry Adams photo

“All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

<span title="New York Public Library card required, which can be requested online at http://nypl.org">"Postcard from L.A.,"</span> http://i.ezproxy.nypl.org/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/476511393/ The Observer, (10 June 1979) http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/guardian/doc/476511393.html
Essays and reviews

“How to handle enemies and those who wrong or offend me.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 7 (1919), A School for Living

Agatha Christie photo
Gregory Benford photo

“Just because something’s crazy, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

Part 5, Chapter 1 (p. 228)
Artifact (1985)

Calvin Coolidge photo
Haruki Murakami photo

“This film Phantom takes everything that's wrong with Broadway and puts it on the big screen in a gaudy splat.”

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Review http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2004/12/22/phantom/index.html of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Larry Wall photo

“It may be possible to get this condition from within Perl if a signal handler runs at just the wrong moment. Another point for Chip…”

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

[199710161546.IAA07885@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

“We cannot walk befor we toddle,
Though we may toddle far too long,
If we embrace a lovely Model
That is consistent, clear, and wrong.
- Experts from "Notes from Wooods Hole", unpublished, 1976.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1980s, Illustrating Economics: Beasts, Ballads and Aphorisms, 1980, p. 148

Lee Kuan Yew photo
Desmond Tutu photo

“What has happened to us? It seems as if we have perverted our freedom, our rights into license, into being irresponsible. Perhaps we did not realise just how apartheid has damaged us so that we seem to have lost our sense of right and wrong.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

As quoted in " Desmond Tutu turns 75 http://www.news24.com/World/News/Desmond-Tutu-turns-75-20061006" at News24 (6 October 2006)

Orson Scott Card photo
Glenn Beck photo
George E. P. Box photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Gerald Ford photo

“We now know what we should have known then -- not only was that evacuation wrong but Japanese-Americans were and are loyal Americans. On the battlefield and at home the names of Japanese-Americans have been and continue to be written in history for the sacrifices and the contributions they have made to the well-being and to the security of this, our common Nation.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, Proclamation 4417 (1976), Remarks
Variant: We now know what we should have known then--not only was that evacuation wrong, but Japanese-Americans were and are loyal Americans. On the battlefield and at home, Japanese-Americans -- names like Hamada, Mitsumori, Marimoto, Noguchi, Yamasaki, Kido, Munemori and Miyamura -- have been and continue to be written in our history for the sacrifices and the contributions they have made to the well-being and security of this, our common Nation.

Ingrid Newkirk photo
Bill Engvall photo
Ilana Mercer photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
Penn Jillette photo
Enoch Powell photo

“It is conventional to refer to the United Nations in hushed tones of respect and awe, as if it were the repository of justice and equity, speaking almost with the voice of God if not yet acting with the power of God. It is no such thing. Despite the fair-seeming terminology of its charter and its declarations, the reality both of the Assembly and of the Security Council is a concourse of self-seeking nations, obeying their own prejudices and pursuing their own interests. They have not changed their individual natures by being aggregated with others in a system of bogus democracy…Does anybody seriously suppose that the members of the United Nations, or of the Security Council, have been actuated in their decisions on the Argentine invasion of the Falklands by a pure desire to see right done and wrong reversed? That was the last thing on their minds. Everyone of them, from the United States to Peru, calculated its own interests and consulted its own ambitions. What moral authority can attach a summation of self-interest and prejudice? I am not saying that nations ought not to pursue their own interests; they ought and, in any case, they will. What I am saying is that those interests are not sanctified by being tumbled into a mixer and shaken up altogether. An assembly of national spokesmen is not magically transmuted into a glorious company of saints and martyrs. Its only redeeming feature is its impotence…The United Nations is a colossal coating of humbug poured, like icing over a birthday cake, over the naked ambitions and hostilities of the nations.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

'We have the will, we don't need the humbug', The Times (12 June 1982), p. 12
1980s

Tsunetomo Yamamoto photo
Jay Gould photo
Roberto Clemente photo

“Anytime I feel something is wrong I'm gonna say something. Baseball has changed in many ways since I first came to the big leagues. Ballplayers feel they can speak up much more now than they did then. I spoke up even then. […] I didn't like some of the things the white players said to Roberts so I said some things to them that they didn't like.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Sports Parade" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=OkAaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mSQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6377%2C3858585 by Milton Richman, in The Hendersonville Times-News (Wednesday, April 21, 1971), p. 9
Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Hunter S. Thompson photo
Ned Kelly photo

“There are many ways of being wrong, but only one way of being right.”

Susan Stebbing (1885–1943) British philosopher

As quoted in Thinking to Some Purpose (1939), p. 153

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“But I'm here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong. Eternally so, absolutely so. It's wrong to hate. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. It's wrong in America, it's wrong in Germany, it's wrong in Russia, it's wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 B.C., and it's wrong in 1954 A.D. It always has been wrong, and it always will be wrong. It's wrong to throw our lives away in riotous living. No matter if everybody in Detroit is doing it, it's wrong. It always will be wrong, and it always has been wrong. It's wrong in every age and it's wrong in every nation. Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute. The God of the universe has made it so. And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we're revolting against the very laws of God himself.”

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

Rediscovering Lost Values http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/rediscovering_lost_values/, Sermon delivered at Detroit's Second Baptist Church (28 February 1954)
1950s
Context: We have adopted in the modern world a sort of a relativistic ethic... Most people can't stand up for their convictions, because the majority of people might not be doing it. See, everybody's not doing it, so it must be wrong. And since everybody is doing it, it must be right. So a sort of numerical interpretation of what's right. But I'm here to say to you this morning that some things are right and some things are wrong. Eternally so, absolutely so. It's wrong to hate. It always has been wrong and it always will be wrong. It's wrong in America, it's wrong in Germany, it's wrong in Russia, it's wrong in China. It was wrong in 2000 B. C., and it's wrong in 1954 A. D. It always has been wrong, and it always will be wrong. It's wrong to throw our lives away in riotous living. No matter if everybody in Detroit is doing it, it's wrong. It always will be wrong, and it always has been wrong. It's wrong in every age and it's wrong in every nation. Some things are right and some things are wrong, no matter if everybody is doing the contrary. Some things in this universe are absolute. The God of the universe has made it so. And so long as we adopt this relative attitude toward right and wrong, we're revolting against the very laws of God himself. [... ] That attitude is destroying the soul of our culture! It's destroying our nation! The thing that we need in the world today is a group of men and women who will stand up for right and to be opposed to wrong, wherever it is. A group of people who have come to see that some things are wrong, whether they're never caught up with. And some things are right, whether nobody sees you doing them or not.

Hans Blix photo

“It's true the Iraqis misbehaved and had no credibility but that doesn't necessarily mean that they were in the wrong.”

Hans Blix (1928) Swedish politician

The Guardian, "One last warning from the man who made an enemy of Bush", June 11, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,974970,00.html

Ray Charles photo
Lester del Rey photo

“He was sure there must be some catch. Every principle here had an opposite, and both were wrong.”

Lester del Rey (1915–1993) Novelist, short story writer, editor

Source: The Eleventh Commandment (1962), Chapter 17 (p. 155)

Bret Easton Ellis photo
Dick Morris photo

“Where he's wrong is that we went into Iraq at the invitation of the government, not as an invasion.”

Dick Morris (1947) American political commentator and consultant

Hannity & Colmes
Television
2008-08-22
Fox News, quoted in * Dick Morris: ‘We Went Into Iraq At The Invitation Of The Government, Not As An Invasion’
2008-08-22
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/08/22/28028/dick-morris-iraq-stumped/

Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset photo

“Of justice yet must God in fine restore,
This noble crowne unto the lawful heire
For right will alwayes live, and rise at length,
But wrong can never take deepe roote to last.”

Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset (1536–1608) English politician and poet

Gorboduc (1561), Act 5, sc. 2, last lines; the play was written in collaboration with Thomas Norton, though Acts 4 and 5 were apparently Sackville's work alone.

Michel De Montaigne photo