Quotes about wrong
page 27

“We must completely support the civil resistance throughout the Arab world. Corrupt secular nationalist rulers are as bad as corrupt undemocratic religious rulers. We must support the people all over the Muslim world with friendship and solidarity in support of democracy. We should be their partner in building mass popular trade unions to prevent them from exploitation in the market storm they are moving towards in their modernisation plans. Who on the left in Italy is working with the resistance to Gaddafi? I don’t know the answer to that but my suspicion is that there are not many. Again, you are on the wrong side of history on that. Support for democracy, for a democratic organised society, for resistance to capitalist domination and state despotism. That is the Blue Labour position. It goes without saying that China is the worst of all worlds, it combines market exploitation with state dictatorship. Blue Labour places unreserved solidity and support to the free democratic trade unions in China, and that is an important struggle for the Labour Movement all over the world.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

A Conversation with Maurice Glasman, Europa Quotidiano, 3 June 2011 http://europa.118.aws.dol.it/gw/producer/dettaglio.aspx?id_doc=127105

Friendship, People, World, Democracy

“We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth.
Our children know and suffer the armed men.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

Wisdom, Men, Children, Light

“Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong.”

Mark Knopfler (1949) English guitarist

Industrial Disease
Song lyrics, Love over Gold (1982)

Men

“I feel so bad. My band started playing the wrong song and I didn't know what to do so I thought I'd do a hoedown. I'm sorry.”

Ashlee Simpson (1984) American singer, actress, dancer

Quoted in: Newsweek. Vol. 145, Nr. 1-13, (2005), p. xxxv
Ashlee Simpson, on her "Saturday Night Live" performance in which a voice track was miscued, revealing that she was lip-syncing, due to what she alleged later was acid reflux.

Feeling

“Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.”

Ben Horowitz (1966) American businessman

Fortune: "Ben Horowitz: There's a fine line between fear and courage" http://fortune.com/2011/08/05/ben-horowitz-theres-a-fine-line-between-fear-and-courage/ (5 August 2011)

Courage, Decision, Time

“The use of "nurture" as a synonym for "environment" is based on the assumption that what influences children's development, apart from their genes, is the way their parents bring them up. I call this the nurture assumption. Only after rearing two children of my own and coauthoring three editions of a college textbook on child development did I begin to question this assumption. Only recently did I come to the conclusion that it is wrong.”

Judith Rich Harris book The Nurture Assumption

The Nurture Assumption, chapter 1, p. 2. http://books.google.com/books?id=-uKBJRMJBjcC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=%22nurture%22%20as%20a%20synonym%20for%20%22environment%22&f=false http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/harris-nurture.html

Children, Way, Question, Parent

“Saturday is a dismayingly bad book. The numerous set pieces—brain operations, squash game, the encounters with Baxter, etc. — are hinged together with the subtlety of a child's Erector Set. The characters too, for all the nuzzling and cuddling and punching and manhandling in which they are made to indulge, drift in their separate spheres, together but never touching, like the dim stars of a lost galaxy. The politics of the book is banal, of the sort that is to be heard at any middle-class Saturday-night dinner party, before the talk moves on to property prices and recipes for fish stew. There are good things here, for instance the scene when Perowne visits his senile mother in an old-folks' home, in which the writing is genuinely affecting in its simplicity and empathetic force. Overall, however, Saturday has the feel of a neoliberal polemic gone badly wrong; if Tony Blair — who makes a fleeting personal appearance in the book, oozing insincerity — were to appoint a committee to produce a "novel for our time," the result would surely be something like this.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

Banville on Saturday http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2005/05/banville_on_sat.html, from The New York Review of Books (source dated 10 May 2005). Original source http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/may/26/a-day-in-the-life/?pagination=false.

Books, Feeling, Home, Game

“I carried this rubber ball with me all the time. I squeezed it to strengthen my fingers and wrists and my friend and I would walk to and from school throwing the rubber ball back and forth. Many times at night, I laid in the bed and threw the ball against the ceiling and caught it. Baseball was my whole life. I would forget to eat because of baseball and one time my mother wanted to punish me. She started to burn my bat, but I got it out of the fire and saved it. Many times today she tells me how wrong she was and how right I was to want to play baseball. I bought my parents their home in Puerto Rico and gave them possessions they never thought they’d ever see. All from baseball.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in “Clouter Clemente: Popular Buc; Rifle-Armed Flyhawk Aims At Second Bat Crown”
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

Life, School, Home, Parent

“Of course I doubt [the existence of God], I would distrust anybody who didn't doubt. But I'm a believer. I have an understanding and belief in the divinity of things. It seems to me that people look at God in the wrong way. They think that God is there to serve them, but it's the other way around. God isn't some kind of cosmic bell-boy to be called upon to sort things out for us. It's important for us to realise that God has given us the potential to sort things out on our own.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Observer (May, 1998)
God and religion

God, People, Way, Boy

“Did you know that you could be wrong
And swear you’re right?
Some people been known to do it
All their lives.
But you find yourself alone
Just like you found yourself before.
Like I found myself in pieces
On the hotel floor.
Hard times help me see.I’m a good man with a good heart;
Had a tough time, got a rough start.
But I finally learned to let it go,
Now I’m right here, and I’m right now.
And I’m hoping, knowing somehow
That my shadow days are over.
My shadow days are over now.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Shadow Days
Song lyrics, Born and Raised (2012)

People, Hope, Learning, Time

“That the environment does wrongs to man’s mind today none will deny. These wrongs are not done because consciousness imprisons the instincts with the fetters of necessity; but because bourgeois man is unconscious of the determinism of his culture. Because of this the instincts are losing such freedom as they attained, are becoming crippled, and less free. Unconsciousness and inexperience, not consciousness and experience, are the gaolers of modern bourgeois man.”

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer

Further Studies in a Dying Culture (1949), Chapter IV: Consciousness: A Study in Bourgeois Psychology

Freedom

“Correct me if I'm wrong here, but truth is something that arises out of the relationship between language and the world. If I look at a picture alone, it tells me nothing. In the previous incarnation of this lecture, I was going to put a picture of the Titanic and the Lusitania up on the screen. They look very, very similar - four smokestacks. They look almost identical. You look at either picture, true or false? Neither. Put a caption at the bottom of one of them, that changes everything. If you put in the caption, "This is the Lusitania," and the picture is a picture of the Lusitania, then the caption is true. However, the picture itself is neither true nor false. It's just a picture.”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

Source: The Anti-Post-Modern Post-Modernist http://errolmorris.com/content/lecture/theantipost.html

Truth, World, Change, Falseness

“If now I…say "Stealing money is wrong," I produce a sentence which has no factual meaning — that is, expresses no proposition which can be either true or false. It is as if I had written "Stealing money!!" — where the shape and thickness of the exclamation marks show, by a suitable convention, that a special sort of moral disapproval is the feeling which is being expressed.”

Alfred Jules Ayer book Language, Truth, and Logic

Source: Language, Truth, and Logic (1936), p. 107.

Money, Feeling, Falseness

“In the name of God, I put my trust in God. O God, I seek refuge in Thee lest I stray or be led astray or cause injustice or suffer injustice or do wrong or have wrong done to me!”

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

Fiqh-us-Sunnah, Volume 2, Number 67b.
Sunni Hadith

God, Suffering

“Roger [Goodell] said he didn't want me in the scrip club. I was like, well, you know, I don't think there's nothing wrong with going to the scrip club. It ain't no sin to go to the scrip club, you know. I was just being rebellion.”

Adam Jones (American football)

Interview with Michael Irvin on The Michael Irvin Show on KESN radio, March 25, 2008 In this interview Jones pronounced "strip club" as "scrip club" and is often quoted as such. Pacman Jones on going to the "scrip" club http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HMA5YD0jsk, Youtube, Retrieved 2010-08-15.

Thinking

“What the feminists and their ventriloquist puppet husbands are talking about doing with Government-Funded Daycare is raising children as if they were a herd of interchangeable swine. No surprise coming from a gender which has no ethics, no scruples, no sense of right and wrong.”

Dave Sim (1956) Canadian cartoonist, creator of Cerebus

http://www.cerebusfangirl.com/artists/tangent1.php

Children, Sense, Swine

“It would, however, be wrong to think of an electron as a bullet-like structure with tentacles sticking out from its surface. We can calculate the mass of the bullet, and also the mass of the tentacles. The two masses are found to be identical, each agreeing with the known mass of the electron. Thus we cannot take the electron to be bullet plus tentacles… The two pictures do not depict two different parts of the electron, but two different aspects of the electron. They are not additive but alternative; as one comes into play, the other must disappear.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

Thinking, Parting

“I was happy, but I am now in possession of knowledge that this is wrong. Happiness isn't so bad for a woman. She gets fatter, she gets older, she could lie down, nuzzling a regiment of men and little kids, she could just die of the pleasure. But men are different, they have to own money, or they have to be famous, or everybody on the block has too look up to them from the cellar stairs.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"An Interest in Life" (1959)

Men, Money, Happiness, Pleasure

“Do you think it inconsistent for someone who lacks belief in the stork to object when public schools teach middle schoolers that that’s where babies come from? Likewise no history class should ever confuse students by playing any movie with Mel Gibson’s name in the credits, because they’re wrong, and it’s wrong to mislead students. It would be inconsistent for one who loves and seeks knowledge of truth not to object to lies or challenge liars. Everything religion teaches is wrong. Although public schools are not teaching about the stork, some of them are teaching creationism, which is just as demonstrably absurdly wrong; In either case, it’s a criminal immoral disservice, and should be corrected.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Anti-theist Answers to Christian Questions http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/22/anti-theist-answers-to-christian-questions/ (November 22, 2015)

Love, Truth, School, Religion

“After the Sixties there was a collapse in almost everything we believed in. It culminated in the biological disaster of AIDS — an answer to every one of us who preached free love. … AIDS is a price paid for sins committed in the Sixties, and by gay men who took free love to extremes throughout the Seventies and had unrestrained, decadent, pagan sex. I support paganism in all its forms, but a price must be paid. I believed in free love, too, but we were wrong. It wasn't the Pope who was the problem. It wasn't the struggle with old-fashioned moral codes that was the problem. It was nature. Nature said, "Guess what? If you're going to be that promiscuous, I will off you."”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

… I believe that nature rewards things that are in its best interest and punishes things that are not.
Playboy interview (May 1995)

Love, Men, Sex, Fashion

“If you look at the world with parted lips and a pure heart, and will the good, won't that make a true and beautiful poem? One's heart tells one that it will; and one's heart is wrong. There is no direct road to Parnassus.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"Recent Poetry," The Yale Review (Autumn 1955) [p. 237]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

World, Beauty, Heart, Parting

“Deception, in turn, suggests morality: the morality of deceiving people into thinking something is so when it is not. […] The moral principle is this: whoever attempts to tame a part of a wicked problem, but not the whole, is morally wrong.”

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

Source: 1960s - 1970s, Guest editorial: Wicked problems (1967), p. 142 cited in: Rob Hundman (2010) Weerbarstig veranderen. p. 38

People, Problem, Thinking, Parting

“It's wrong, my friend, to send any stranger packing—
even one who arrives in worse shape than you.
Every stranger and beggar comes from Zeus
and whatever scrap they get from the likes of us,
they'll find it welcome.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XIV. 56–59 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

“You're not supposed to say the word "cancer" in a song.
And tellin' folks Jesus is the answer can rub 'em wrong.
It ain't hip to sing about tractors, trucks, little towns, and mama, yeah that might be true.
But this is country music and we do.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

This Is Country Music, written by Brad Paisley and Chris DuBois.
Song lyrics, This Is Country Music (2011)

Music, Singing, Country

“God knows I can think of enough things that I did wrong both personally and as part of my cohort. But I never abandoned what I thought of as the benefits of the postwar consensus in favour of sectional advantage. Actually, I was always a bit awkward in this as other respects. As you know, I was against root-and-branch school comprehensivization on the grounds that the postwar arrangements combining meritocracy with opportunity, while imperfect and logically indefensible, were better than the radical schemes on offer – which have trashed much of the pedagogical gains of the early postwar decades.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

in Tony Judt: the last interview http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/tony-judt-interview by Peter Jukes (2010)

God, School, Thinking, Parting

“Aye, nay, we won't argue: you're wrong.”

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925) English industrialist, philanthropist, and politician

William Lever, quoted in: Adam Macqueen (2011) The King Of Sunlight: How William Lever Cleaned Up The World. Phrase he often used with employees — and he never changed his mind.

“It must be fundamentally wrong to reduce production of food and fiber while one-third of our population is still ill fed and ill clothed.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Part IV, Chapter XVI, Reservoir Plan Versus Crop Control, p. 195
Storage and Stability (1937)

Food, Clothes

“Do not let us imagine that discoveries in the world of the higher mathematics, of physics or biology are going to remove or even reduce our difficulties on the moral plane…The realm of morals is a world neither of quantity nor of chemical action. It is a world of values. It is precisely these values of right and wrong, of good and evil, of honesty and courage, which matter supremely for religion and national life…I am not despising science. I am only suggesting that moral values, eternal in their quality, transient in their form and application, are the foundation of a country's greatness. If moral values flourish in our common life all will be well with the nation.”

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

Speech to the annual assembly of the Congregational Union, London (12 May 1931), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 86-87.
1931

Life, World, Religion, Imagination

“I handed in their game, without thinking about anything it was late when I realized my wrong attitude.. Sad when you love who else wants to deceive you.”

MC Daleste (1992–2013) Brazilian funk and rap musician

In the song Lagrimas de Sofrimento http://www.vagalume.com.br/mc-daleste/lagrima-de-sofrimento.html

Love, Sadness, Game, Thinking

“Ignorance immediately knows things in an ordinary, conceptual way. Because ignorance and its accompanying mental states arise first, wrong beliefs ensue. Therefore the texts say, "Ignorance conceals the true nature of obejcts."”

Mahasi Sayadaw (1904–1982) Burmese Buddhist philosopher

Source: Manual of Insight (1945), p. 67

Way, Nature

“Lesson #7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
Lesson #8: Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
Lesson #9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
Lesson #10: Never say never.
Lesson #11: You can't change human nature…”

Robert S. McNamara (1916–2009) American businessman and Secretary of Defense

Robert S. McNamara (2004), Official Teacher's Guide for The Fog of War, p. 5

Nature, Evil, Change

“The third aspect of my subject is that of science as a method of finding things out. This method is based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not. All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea. But "prove" used in this way really means "test," in the same way that a hundred-proof alcohol is a test of the alcohol, and for people today the idea really should be translated as, "The exception tests the rule." Or, put another way, "The exception proves that the rule is wrong."”

Richard Feynman book The Meaning of It All

That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong.
lecture I: "The Uncertainty of Science"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

People, Alcohol, Truth, Way

“We must be something in order to do something, but we must also do something in order to be something. The best rule, I think, is this: If we find it hard to do good, then let us try to be good. If, on the other hand, we find it hard to be good, then let us try to do good. Being leads to doing, doing leads to being. Yet below both as their common root is faith, — faith in God, in man, in ourselves, in the eternal superiority of right over wrong, truth over error, good over evil, love over all selfishness and all sin.”

James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888) American theologian and writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 121.

Love, God, Truth, Faith

“If, therefore, our personal religious life is likely to be sapped by our devotion to social work, it would be a calamity second to none. But is it really likely that this will happen? The great aim underlying to whole social movement is the creation of a free, just, and brotherly social order. This is the greatest moral task conceivable. Its accomplishment is the manifest will of God for this generation. Every Christian motive is calling us to do it. If it is left undone, millions of lives will be condemned to a deepening moral degradation and to spiritual starvation. Does it look probable that we will lose our contact with God if we plunge too deeply into this work? Does it stand to reason that we shall go astray from Jesus Christ if we engage in the unequal conflict with organized wrong? What kind of ‘spirituality’ is it which is likely to get hurt by being put to work for justice and our fellow-men?”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianizing the Social Order (1912), p. 104

Life, Men, God, Justice

“It is important, of course, that controversies be settled right, but there are many civil questions which arise between individuals in which it is not so important the controversy be settled one way or another as that it be settled. Of course a settlement of a controversy on a fundamentally wrong principle of law is greatly to be deplored, but there must of necessity be many rules governing the relations between members of the same society that are more important in that their establishment creates a known rule of action than that they proceed on one principle or another. Delay works always for the man with the longest purse.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

"Adequate Machinery for Judicial Business," Journal of the American Bar Association, vol. 7, p. 454 (September 1921).

Law, Way, Question

“... the principle that where there is fear, there will be wrong figures....”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

Fear

“When things go wrong, the standard management strategy is to decide who takes the blame. This should be an underling, as far down the chain as possible, but preferably with some visibility so people know management means business.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 9 (p. 78)

People, Business

“The studios have their list of five actresses and whether they’re right or wrong for a role doesn’t matter. It’s how much money their last movie made.”

Sherilyn Fenn (1965) American actress

Sherilyn Fenn, quoted in "Crate Expectations", by Jim McClellan. The Face (UK). Issue 57. June 1993. p. 40-47.

Money

“You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism”. Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father—who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third—”Oh you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment”, E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.””

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
"Bulverism" (1941)

Truth, Age, World, Parting

“There is nothing wrong with us sitting down and arguing that issue that we are a European country.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

Source: Newsday (11 November 1992). <ref> https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/12/09/buchanan-wont-dodge-issues-used-by-duke/b453450b-4ed9-445d-b862-a2bc4dc08993/?utm_term=.5e83276abd1b

Country

“Some sensual unthinking persons affirm, that a long life is no great blessing, and that the state of a man, who has passed his seventy-fifth year, cannot really be called life; but this is wrong, as I shall fully prove; and it is my sincere wish, that all men would endeavour to attain my age [of eighty-three], that they might enjoy that period of life, which, of all others is most desirable.”

Luigi Cornaro (1484–1566) Italian philosopher

Discourses on the Sober Life

Life, Men, Age, Personality

“One day you think you never even made a choice and then you have to make one, even a wrong one, just so you're sure you're still able. And once that's over, you can go back and be happy again with what you were before you started worrying.”

Richard Ford (1944) American novelist and short story writer

Source: A Piece of My Heart (1976), p. 276

Happiness, Thinking

“I can't say that I'm crazy, you know, about watching this. I don't like the person who I was back at this time, and-and, uh… I think I had all my priorities in the wrong places and I think if I were to spend to much time playin guitar as I did picking out stupid shorts and stupid hats and stupid, you know, overcoats, I would've… I would've been able to write some good songs, you know? I can't watch this version of myself and be at all happy about it. I want to… I want to strangle myself when I see this video. I was 18 years old. 18-year-old that deserved to be slapped upside his head.”

John Frusciante (1970) American guitarist, singer, songwriter and record producer

On "Higher Ground" video audio commentary - Red Hot Chili Peppers Greatest Videos

Happiness, Stupidity, Thinking, Time

“But somewhere [during the 1950's, in East-Germany at the Art Academy] along the way we all began to notice that there was something wrong. We saw a few art magazines from the West and got a sense of another world. We began to talk about a third way between capitalism and Communism in art. I saw the work of graphic designers from Poland, the only ones [in communist area] I came across who seemed to be doing something for society but in a style that was more modern.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

World, Art, Way, Communication

“The Bell curve is a fact of life. The blacks on average score 85 per cent on IQ and it is accurate, nothing to do with culture. The whites score on average 100. Asians score more … the Bell curve authors put it at least 10 points higher. These are realities that, if you do not accept, will lead to frustration because you will be spending money on wrong assumptions and the results cannot follow.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew, The Man & His Ideas, 1997
1990s

Life, Money, Reality

“Attack of the Clones displays some similarities to The Empire Strikes Back, but, overall, it is not as effective a piece of cinema (although the 2002 era special effects make it far more pleasing to the eye). Both films contain romantic subplots and are darker in tone than their predecessors. Both develop a number of unresolved plot elements. And both end on a note that incorporates hope with ambiguity. There is, however, one major difference. The Empire Strikes Back includes a shocking revelation. Nothing of that sort is present in Attack of the Clones. In terms of its plotting, this film is relatively straightforward. There's nothing wrong with that — in fact, it works. In a time when, more often than not, sequels disappoint, it's refreshing to uncover something this high-profile that fulfills the promise of its name and adds another title to a storied legacy.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/s/sw2002.html of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002). Three-and-a-half star reviews

Hope, Disappointment, Time

“I mean by pacifism, not the love of peace as a good to be secured by a definite form of action, but the belief that any form of social constraint of others or any violent action is in itself wrong, and that violence such as war must be passively resisted because to use violence to end violence would be logically self-contradictory. I oppose pacifism in this sense to the Communist belief that the only way to secure peace is by a revolutionary change in the social system, and that ruling classes resist revolution violently and must therefore be overthrown by force.”

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer

Studies in a Dying Culture (1938), Pacifism and Violence: A Study in Bourgeois Ethics

Love, War, Peace, Way

“The ones [compliments] I value most came from Edgar Degas who said he was happy to see my work becoming more and more pure. The etcher Bracquemond, a pupil of Ingres, said - possibly he meant what he said - that my work shows increasing strength. I will calmly tread the path I have taken, and try to do my best. At bottom, I have only a vague sense of its rightness or wrongness. I am much disturbed by my unpolished and rough execution. I should like to develop a smoother technique which, while retaining the old fierceness, would be rid of those jarring notes which make it difficult to see my canvases clearly except when the light falls in front. There lies the difficulty - not to speak of drawing.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, Paris, 4 May 1883, in a letter to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, pp. 29-30
his comment after having seen his own painting-show at Durand-Ruel 's gallery in Paris, May 1883
1880's

Happiness, Sense, Light, Drawing

“When code and comments disagree, both are probably wrong.”

Norm Schryer

More Programming Pearls: Confessions of a Coder, Column 6: Bumper-Sticker Computer Science. http://www.softwarequotes.com/ShowQuotes.asp?ID=660&Name=Schryer%20,_Norm&Type=Q

“Q: What's wrong with the world? A: I am.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Purportedly a response by Chesterton to the question posed around 1910 by the Times of London (along with other luminaries), but biographer Kevin Belmonte, in 'Defiant Joy: the Remarkable Life & Impact of G.K. Chesterton', was unable to verify. Belmonte surmises its origin in an anecdote that while writing What's Wrong with the World (told in the book's preface), he would delight in telling society ladies that "I have been doing 'What is Wrong' all this morning." http://books.google.com/books?id=1rsXvfW2aiEC Misattributed

World

“I think it's already apparent that a good part of this Nation understands — if only instinctively — that anything which seems to suggest that God favors a political party or the establishment of a state church, is wrong and dangerous.
Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions — or whole bodies of religious belief — and government. Apart from constitutional law and religious doctrine, there is a sense that tells us it's wrong to presume to speak for God or to claim God's sanction of our particular legislation and His rejection of all other positions. Most of us are offended when we see religion being trivialized by its appearance in political throw-away pamphlets.
The American people need no course in philosophy or political science or church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Religious Belief and Public Morality (1984)

God, People, Religion, Law

“They’ll say you’re walking down the wrong path, if you’re walking down your path.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Dirán que andas por un camino equivocado, si andas por tu camino.
Voces (1943)

“Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good. Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn - by practice and careful contemplations - the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God-carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. How do you know you have graduated? You don't. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share the interest. Couples that enter the sacrament of marriage and are not prepared to go the distance or are not willing to get right with the real love of God cannot thrive. They may cleave together like robins or gulls or anything else that mates for life. But if they eschew this mighty course, at the moment when all are judged for the disposition of their eternal lives, their cleaving won't mean a thing. God bless the pure and holy. Amen.”

Toni Morrison book Paradise

Paradise (1997)

Love, Life, God, Marriage

“I view the work I've done related to statistics and economics as roughly speaking, how to do something without having to do everything. So economic models -- how any model by definition isn't right. When someone just says, 'Oh, your model is wrong.' That's not much of an insight. What you want to know is, is wrong in important ways or wrong in ways that are less relevant? And you want to know what does the data really say about the model?”

Lars Peter Hansen (1952) American economist

Source: David Brancaccio (2013) " Nobel Prize in Economics winner Lars Peter Hansen on imperfect models http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/nobel-prize-economics-winner-lars-peter-hansen-imperfect-models" at marketplace.org.

Way

“In almost every edition (and consequently most performances) of Chopin's Sonata in B flat Minor, Op. 35, there is a serious error that makes awkward nonsense of an important moment in the first movement. The repeat of the exposition begins in the wrong place.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 5 : Chopin: Counterpoint and the Narrative Forms

Error

“I think some of these schemes - and I think particularly of the Jimmy Carr scheme - I have had time to read about and I just think this is completely wrong.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

About comedian Jimmy Carr's tax arrangements, speaking to ITV News during a round of TV interviews during his trip to Mexico - " David Cameron Brands Jimmy Carr's Tax Arrangements 'Morally Wrong' http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/20/david-cameron-jimmy-carr-tax_n_1612757.html", The Huffington Post UK, 20 June 2012 2010s, 2012

Thinking, Time, Reading

“I think people have common sense and can tell what's real, what's right or what's wrong and work it out.”

Billie Piper (1982) English singer, dancer and actress

Responding to notions that her role in Call Girl might inspire women to become prostitutes.
Guardian interview (2008)

People, Thinking, Sense

“What upsets me the most is that I was an accountable representative of a system under which people suffered, also under which repression was aimed at individuals, who were persecuted because of their oppositional stance. Their position was the right one. My position was the wrong one. We were not capable of democracy, but rather tried in the absence of better arguments to get rid of the other opinion with direct violence.”

Günter Schabowski (1929–2015) German politician

Am meisten bedrückt mich, dass ich ein verantwortlicher Vertreter eines Systems war, unter dem Menschen gelitten haben, dass Repressionen gegen einzelne Menschen gerichtet waren, die wegen ihrer oppositionellen Haltung verfolgt wurden. Ihre Einstellung war die richtige. Meine Einstellung war die falsche. Wir waren nicht demokratiefähig, sondern haben versucht, mangels besserer Argumente uns der anderen Meinung mittels direkter Gewalt zu entledigen.
[citation needed]

People, Democracy, Suffering

“I like my parrot, Figaro. Not in a wrong way – I mean, yes, he’ll do anything for a mouth full of seed but nothing tacky.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Mind Control (1999–2000) or Inside Your Mind on DVD

Way

“This idea of working just to make money or setting up in business just as a means to a livelihood is all wrong…It seems to me absolutely necessary, and in reality a joy, that a young man starting out in the world should be imbued with a desire to benefit mankind and society by his work and service - whether that be in the field of business, law, or something else.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to his parents (January 13, 1939)

Money, World, Law, Idea

“That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

1770, p. 181
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol II

Idea

“Oh! My dear! My tis of thee! What a tangled web we weave!

Everyone is the one until the one falls down

Then we're all just "please please please"

The painted rust will only fool the fools for just so long

Eventually, that's when they'll see everything was wrong

Oh! The shame! Humility! What a wicked gang are we!

Like a liar looking down on a thief looking down on a killer looking down on a creep

Oh! This sinking ship will only hold its course for just so long

Eventually, that's when they'll see everything is wrong”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"What A Wicked Gang Are We" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/10/

Fools, Painting

“The beautiful seems right
By force of Beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Book II. Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

Beauty

“When you take up lab-to-land transfer, you should know the socio-economic circumstances of the farmer. You should not do experiments with the farmer, because he is already poor. You must be very sure that whatever you are recommending is both economically and ecologically sound. If farm economics and farm ecology go wrong, nothing else can go right in agriculture.”

M. S. Swaminathan (1925) Indian scientist

Quoted from Challenges in lab-to-land transfer in agriculture pdf, In Conversation: M. S. Swaminathan, 25 October 2011, Current Science http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/101/08/0996.pdf,

“I don't get
Many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns
And stumbles and falls
Brought me here.”

Ben Folds (1966) American musician

"The Luckiest", Rockin' the Suburbs (2001).
Song lyrics, Solo

Time

“The preamble to the Regulation says that women were employed wholesale to entice and take away the wives or female children for purposes of prostitution, and it was common practice among husbands and fathers to desert their families and children. Public conscience there was none, and in the absence of conscience it was futile to expect moral indignation against the social wrongs. Indeed the Brahmins were engaged in defending every wrong for the simple reason that they lived on them. They defended Untouchability which condemned millions to the lot of the helot. They defended caste, they defended female child marriage and they defended enforced widowhood—the two great props of the Caste system. They defended the burning of widows, and they defended the social system of graded inequality with its rule of hypergamy which led the Rajputs to kill in their thousands the daughters that were born to them. What shames! What wrongs! Can such a Society show its face before civilized nations? Can such a society hope to survive?”

Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901) Indian scholar, social reformer and author

In support of the Regulation (VII of 1819) to put a stop to this moral degeneracy such were the questions which Ranade asked. He concluded that on only one condition it could be saved—namely, rigorous social reform. Quoted in Ranade Gandhi & Jinnah
At his 100th Anniversary lecture delivered in 1943 on Ranade, Gandhi & Jinnah by Dr. Ambedkar

Women, Marriage, Children, Family

“Simply because I liked it so much I saw it in Venice and thought: I'd like to have that for myself. To start with I only meant to make a copy, so that I could have a beautiful painting at home and with it a piece of that period, all that potential beauty and sublimity... Then my copy went wrong, and the pictures that finally emerged went to show that it just can't be done any more, not even by way of a copy. All I could do was to break the whole thing down and show that it's no longer possible”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Richter's quote refers to his 'Annunciation after Titian', he made in 1973
Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 104, note 52

Beauty, Way, Quotes, Home

“I believe the essence of the Independence Day is missing. We celebrate it like any other holiday, which is wrong. We must celebrate our independence everyday, not just on one day of the year.”

Arin Paul (1980) Indian film director

On Indian Independence Day Celebrations http://www.ilovekolkata.in/index.php/My-City/Independence-means.html (2010)

Holiday

“We used to think of cow's milk as a nearly perfect food. However, over the past several years, researchers have found new information that has caused many of us to change our opinion. This has provoked a lot of understandable controversy, but I have come to believe that cow's milk is not necessary for children. First, it turns out that the fat in cow's milk is not the kind of fat ("essential fatty acids") needed for brain development. Instead, milk fat is too rich in the saturated fats that promote artery blockages. Also, cow's milk can make it harder for a child to stay in iron balance. Milk is extremely low in iron and slows down iron absorption. It can also cause subtle blood loss in the digestive tract that causes the child to lose iron. … Some children have sensitivities to milk proteins, which show up as ear problems, respiratory problems, or skin conditions. Milk also has traces of antibiotics, estrogens, and other things a child does not need. There is, of course, nothing wrong with human breast milk — it is perfect for infants. For older children, there are many good soy and rice milk products and even nondairy "ice creams" that are well worth trying. If you are using cow's milk in your family, I would encourage you to give these alternatives a try.”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care

Source: Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (1945), Seventh edition (1998), p. 346

Children, Family, Food, Understanding

“Adolf Hitler may have been wrong all down the line, but one thing is beyond dispute: the man was able to work his way up from lance corporal in the German Army to Führer of a people of almost 80 million. … His success alone proved that I should subordinate myself to this man.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

As quoted in "The Eichmann Memoir" in The Personalist Volume XLII (1962).

People, Way, Success

“… the Linux philosophy is "laugh in the face of danger". Oops. Wrong one. "Do it yourself."”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

That's it. Post, linux.dev.kernel newsgroup, Google Groups, 1996-10-16, Torvalds, Linus, 2006-08-28 http://groups.google.com/groups?&selm=Pine.LNX.3.91.961016155929.27735D-100000%40linux.cs.Helsinki.FI, 1990s, 1995-99

“Thus we must carefully distinguish between two kinds of reality, one which has an individual character, and one which has a universal appearance... It is, however, wrong to think that the non-figurative artist finds impressions and emotions received from the outside useless, and regards it even as necessary to fight against them... It is equally wrong to think that the non-figurative artist creates through 'the pure intention of his mechanical process', that he makes 'calculated abstractions' and that he wish to 'suppress sentiment not only in himself but in the spectator'... It is thus clear that he has not become a mechanic, but that the progress of science, of technique, of machinery, of life as a whole, has only made him into a living machine, capable of realizing in a pure manner the essence of art.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in: 'Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art', Piet Mondrian (1937); in 'Documents of modern Art' ed. Robert Motherwell for Wittenborn, Schulz, New York 1945
1930's

Life, Art, Thinking, Reality

“Even measured by Wiener's standards Cybernetics is a badly organised work — a collection of misprints, wrong mathematical statements, mistaken formulas, splendid but unrelated ideas, and logical absurdities. It is sad that this work earned Wiener the greater part of his public renown, but this is an afterthought. At that time mathematical readers were more fascinated by the richness of its ideas than by its shortcomings.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Norbert Wiener (2008)

Sadness, Mathematics, Idea, Time

“And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
Which could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient search and vigil long
Of him who treasures up a wrong.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Mazeppa (1819), stanza 10.

“The women's movement is rooted in the belief that we don't even need men. All it will take is one natural disaster to prove how wrong that is. Then, the only thing holding this culture together will be masculine men of the working class. The cultural elite — women and men — will be pleading for the plumbers and the construction workers. We are such a parasitic class.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Women, Men, Nature

“It is first of all factually correct that Muslims of India have DNA wise the same DNA as us. And therefore there is nothing wrong with them acknowledging that their ancestors are Hindus. If they say Hindus are not their ancestors, then who could be their ancestors? Now after all we created Pakistan for those Muslims who didn't consider themselves as ready to live with their Hindu brothers.”

Subramanian Swamy (1939) Indian politician

As quoted in "Indian Muslims have Hindu ancestry: Subramanian Swamy" http://ibnlive.in.com/news/indian-muslims-have-hindu-ancestry-subramanian-swamy/175660-3.html, IBNLive (14 April 2011) 2011-2014

“Philosophy rests on a proposition that whatever is is right. Preaching begins by assuming that whatever is is wrong.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

The Philistine http://books.google.com/books?id=AoxHAAAAYAAJ&q=&quot;Philosophy+rests+on+a+proposition+that+whatever+is+is+right+preaching+begins+by+assuming+that+whatever+is+is+wrong&quot;&pg=PA130#v=onepage (October 1897).

“When the root of your wrong is not from the heart, your wrong will make you to run to God the more.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On the root of sin - "TB Joshua Defends Oyakhilome" http://www.herald.ng/tb-joshua-defends-oyakhilome-dont-disagree-peoples-understanding-differs/#rGUiGU1sJDEPXQC4.99 The Herald, Nigeria (March 23 2014)

God, Heart

“If you're going to do something wrong, do it big, because the punishment is the same either way.”

Jayne Mansfield (1933–1967) American actress, singer, model

Source: On Being Blonde (2004), p. 79

Way

“Yet there is no gainsaying but that it must have been somewhat sweeter in that dewy morning of creation, when it was young and fresh, when the feet of the tramping millions had not trodden its grass to dust, nor the din of the myriad cities chased the silence forever away. Life must have been noble and solemn to those free-footed, loose-robed fathers of the human race, walking hand in hand with God under the great sky. They lived in sunkissed tents amid the lowing herds. They took their simple wants from the loving hand of Nature. They toiled and talked and thought; and the great earth rolled around in stillness, not yet laden with trouble and wrong. Those days are past now. The quiet childhood of Humanity, spent in the far-off forest glades and by the murmuring rivers, is gone forever; and human life is deepening down to manhood amid tumult, doubt, and hope. Its age of restful peace is past. It has its work to finish and must hasten on. What that work may be—what this world's share is in the great design—we know not, though our unconscious hands are helping to accomplish it. Like the tiny coral insect working deep under the dark waters, we strive and struggle each for our own little ends, nor dream of the vast fabric we are building up for God.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love, Life, God, Age

“It would be foolish and wrong to ignore the fact that all our universities today tread a very dangerous path. Increasingly, they are accepting government money because they are doing things that government wants done. How great a peril is this in a democracy?”

Vincent Massey (1887–1967) Governor General of Canada

Address at the Congress of the Association of the Universities of the British Commonwealth, Montreal, September 1, 1958
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Money, Democracy, Universe

“Is A-bian wrong? (Chen is colloquially referred to as A-Bian)”

Chen Shui-bian (1950) Taiwanese politician

http://www.kmdn.gov.tw/shownews.asp?newsid=26668 http://www7.www.gov.tw/todaytw/2007/relations/ch01/4-1-02-0.html Pet Phrases

“My visceral perception of brotherhood harmonizes with our best modern biological knowledge. […] Many people think (or fear) that equality of human races represents a hope of liberal sentimentality probably squashed by the hard realities of history. They are wrong. This essay can be summarized in a single phrase, a motto if you will: Human equality is a contingent fact of history. Equality is not true by definition; it is neither an ethical principle (though equal treatment may be) nor a statement about norms of social action. It just worked out that way. A hundred different and plausible scenarios for human history would have yielded other results (and moral dilemmas of enormous magnitude). They didn't happen.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Flamingo's Smile

"Human Equality Is a Contingent Fact of History", p. 186
The Flamingo's Smile (1985)

People, Fear, Hope, Way

“The stand of the "realist" school, and its objections to further or faster involvement in the Libya crisis, can be fairly summarized…The actual evidence, however, is that Qaddafi senior has reached his Ceausescu moment: a full-dress (in the literal sense) meltdown into paranoia, megalomania, and delusion. His recent speeches and appearances have shown him stinking with madness and hysteria. His age and condition, at any rate, set a very sharp limit to the duration of his regime. If that regime implodes while he is still "in place," then all the grim consequences foreseen by the realists will be incurred in any case. Weapons will get into the wrong hands; divide-and-rule tactics (already a stock in trade) will intensify; religious and tribal passions will be deliberately inflamed. The main difference will be that we merely watched this happen.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2010s, 2011

Age, School, Sense, Appearance

“The rational scrutiny of religious faith involves asking believers only two questions:

How do you know that?

What makes you so sure that the claims of your faith are right and the claims of other faiths are wrong?”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 25

Faith, Question

“It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It's wrong.”

Saul Kripke book Naming and Necessity

Naming and Necessity (1980, p. 64)

Thinking

“For more than twenty-five years we have monitored beach nourishment projects around the United States. In order to secure federal funding and justify the enormous costs of these projects, anyone undertaking one must make a prediction of how long the sand will last on the replenished beach. The predictions are based on mathematical models that are said to be sophisticated and state of the art, and yet are consistently, dramatically wrong—always in an optimistic direction. In the rare instances when communities questioned the models after the predictions of a long healthy replenished beach clearly failed, the answer typically was that an unusual and unexpected storm caused the error. Well, the occurrence of storms at any beach is neither unusual nor unexpected. Eventually we became interested in how models were used in other fields. When you start looking into it, you find that a lot of global and local decisions are made based on modeling the environment. There are some fascinating (and discouraging) stories of model misuse and misplaced trust in models in the book.”

Orrin H. Pilkey (1934) American ecologist

Interview with Orrin Pilkey & Linda Jarvis-Pilkey https://web.archive.org/web/20080105132439/http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/publicity/pilkeyinterview.html. Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future (2007)

Books, Art, Error, Communication

“In 1934 I warned Mr. Baldwin that the Germans had a secret Air Force and were rapidly overhauling ours. I gave definite figures and forecasts. Of course, it was all denied with all the weight of official authority. I was depicted a scaremonger. Less than six months after Mr. Baldwin had to come down to the House and admit he was wrong. … He got more applause for making this mistake, which may prove fatal to the British Empire and to British freedom, than ordinary people would do after they rendered some great service which added to its security and power. Well, Mr. Chamberlain was, next to Mr. Baldwin, the most powerful Member of that Government. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He knew all the facts. His judgment failed just like that of Mr. Baldwin and we are are suffering from the consequences today.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Chingford (9 December 1938), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 1026
The 1930s

People, Secret, Freedom, Suffering

“The connection between facts and values is straightforward and philosophically uninteresting… values reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures; the well-being of conscious creatures is what can be valued in this universe… Now, here’s the one bit of philosophy I’m going to anchor this to: imagine a universe in which every conscious creature suffers as much as it can for as long as it can – I call this the worst possible misery for everyone. The worst possible misery for everyone is bad. If the word bad is to mean anything, surely it applies to the worst possible misery for everyone… the moment you grant me that the worst possible misery for everyone is bad and therefore worth avoiding… well then you have every other possible constellation of conscious experience which, by definition, is better. So you have this continuum here of states of consciousness and given that consciousness is related to the way the universe is, it’s constrained by the laws of nature in some way, there are going to be right and wrong ways to move along this continuum… now this is, in philosophy, a somewhat controversial statement. I do not see how.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, Sam Harris: Can Science Determine Human Values? http://fora.tv/2010/11/10/Sam_Harris_Can_Science_Determine_Human_Values (2010/11/10) 2010s

Law, Way, Imagination, Nature

“And now I know it's hard when you don't know what to think

And every single smile is a foil and you're waking up

You might try but you won't get by until you're crucified for all the things you try to do

Well I don't care if you sink or swim

And I don't care how you hold it in

As long as you don't bother me with all the things I don't bother you with

And 9 times out of 10 you might be right

But what about that time you know you're wrong?

You sing that same song

And everybody smiles but they'll never get along”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"We Are The Few" from "Everything Goes Numb" (2003) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/egn/06/

Smile, Thinking, Singing, Time

“I don't believe you're an ape: You're made in the image of God, with the knowledge of right and wrong.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

AronRa vs Ray Comfort (September 17th, 2012), Radio Paul's Radio Rants

God, Knowledge

“I find OOP methodologically wrong. It starts with classes. It is as if mathematicians would start with axioms. You do not start with axioms - you start with proofs. Only when you have found a bunch of related proofs, can you come up with axioms. You end with axioms. The same thing is true in programming: you have to start with interesting algorithms. Only when you understand them well, can you come up with an interface that will let them work.”

Alexander Stepanov (1950) Russian programmer

An Interview with A. Stepanov by Graziano Lo Russo, 2008-04-25 http://www.stlport.org/resources/StepanovUSA.html,

Understanding

“But the honest truth is that what drives me as an economist is that economics is fun. I think I understand why so many people think that economics is a boring subject, but they are wrong. On the contrary, there is hardly anything I know that is as exciting as finding that the great events that move history, the forces that determine the destiny of empires and the fate of kings, can sometimes be explained, predicted, or even controlled by a few symbols on a printed page. We all want power, we all want success, but the ultimate reward is the simple joy of understanding.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Incidents from my career http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/incidents.html (1995)

Fate, People, Truth, History

“Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.”

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

Hansard http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo051109/debtext/51109-03.htm#51109-03_spmin10, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 439, col. 302. 9 November 2005, responding to Charles Kennedy in the House of Commons during Prime Minister's Questions. Blair was referring to the likely defeat in Parliament of additional powers to detain terror suspects without charge, which happened later that day. 2000s

“The zealots imposing their religion in public schools never understand that they’re even doing anything wrong. They think they’re being oppressed or attacked if they’re disallowed from indoctrinating everyone else’s kids. And it doesn’t help that all the kids in town have already been indoctrinated. Because they don’t understand what the problem is either, and and secular government requirement will invariably be seen as some sort of victimization, which feeds right into the typical Christian persecution complex. People like this never seem to understand the necessity of secular government until or unless they have to give fair consideration to Muslims. Then suddenly the Christians leap over to my side of the political spectrum, demanding separation of church and state just as I do. Hypocrites.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"Religious indoctrination rampant in rural Texas schools" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/10/28/religious-indoctrination-rampant-in-rural-texas-schools/, Patheos (October 28, 2015) Patheos

People, School, Religion, Understanding

“We hold that the greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong, that in the exercise thereof people have an inviolable right to express their unbridled thoughts on all topics and personalities, being liable only for the abuse of that right.”

William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) American newspaper publisher

Platform, Independent League; N.Y. Journal (February 1, 1924)your mom stinks

People, World, Exercises, Personality

“Media pundit John Gibson's controversial statements brought criticism when he referred to religions, other than his own, as "wrong". Christians tolerate those who are "following the wrong religion… as long as they're civil and behave"”

John Gibson (media host) (1946) American radio talk show host

http://mediamatters.org/items/200512010018

Religion

“The Dong button was just that, a big green button with the word Dong engraved on it. You pushed it, and it went dong. Well, that was almost too simple. Should there not be a deeper reason for it? And the small instruction plate over it didn’t add much. It read: “Wrong prong, bong gong.””

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Description of a Dong button, which is later revealed to reverse the flow of time for the wielder, if there has been a dire error made which needs correcting, Ch. 3
Ch. 3 -->
Space Chantey (1968)

Reading

“To state the obvious, I thought it was wrong at the time… those statements and comments did not comport with the facts on the ground. … But do I blame [the President] for that specific banner? I can't blame him for that.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

1 May 2008; Fox News http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/05/01/candidates-weigh-in-on-5th-anniversary-of-mission-accomplished-banner/ 2000s, 2008

Time

“Herr Reich Chancellor, present-day science is following a wrong and dangerous path. First and foremost it concerns the treatment of water - the principal agent of life. The existing methods of water control, power stations and forestry are ruining water - the earth's blood. It becomes diseased, and so affects all its surroundings. Instead of progress, the future promises catastrophe. With your four-year plan, and the technological methods employed, you are demolishing Germany, instead of building her up. In this way, Germany will sink within ten years..”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Living Water

Life, Disease, Way, Water

Quotes about wrong page 27

Quotes about wrong
page 27