Quotes about wrong
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“Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Second Sin (1973), P. 49.

“There is nothing wrong with crying. Your feelings tell you who are. They tell what is important. Don't ever be ashamed of them.”

Terry Brooks book Armageddon's Children

Source: Armageddon's Children

Feeling, Cry

“There's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Understanding

“It is easy enough to be pleasant,
When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is one who will smile,
When everything goes dead wrong.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

Life, Smile, Dead, For Men

“I know. In fact, I am never wrong.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“Maybe the man had taken the wrong turning, but at least he'd travelled some extraordinary roads.”

Clive Barker book Weaveworld

Source: Weaveworld

Travel

“When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Call of Cthulhu

Source: The Call of Cthulhu

World, Star

“In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The Guardian [UK] (28 July 1989)

Life, Affliction

“Although the scythe isn't pre-eminent among the weapons of war, anyone who has been on the wrong end of, say, a peasants' revolt will know that in skilled hands it is fearsome.”

Terry Pratchett book Mort

Source: Mort

War

“Kennedy was not impressed by military objections. The Bay of Pigs had taught the President to distrust the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The first advice I’m going to give my successor,” he once said to his journalist friend Ben Bradlee, “is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that because they were military men their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.”4 During the missile crisis Kennedy courteously and consistently rejected the Joint Chiefs’ bellicose recommendations. “These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor,” he said. “If we…do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong.”5”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

Source: Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis

Men, Feeling

“It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free.”

Terry Pratchett book Pyramids

Source: Pyramids

Life, Death

“But I could be wrong.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

“Silence can ask all the questions, where the tongue is prone to ask only the wrong one.”

Robin Hobb book Fool's Errand

Source: Fool's Errand

Question, Silence

“You told me you had destroyed it."

"I was wrong. It has destroyed me.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?". - (Act III, scene I).”

William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice

Shylock, Act III, scene i.
Source: The Merchant of Venice (1596–7)
Context: I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

Revenge

“He'd been an angel once. He hadn't meant to Fall. He'd just hung around with the wrong people.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

People, Angels

“I feel shame, not for the wrong things I have done, but for the right things that I have failed to do.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Feeling

“Besides, I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. XVI.

Thinking

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "The Land Ethic", p. 224-225.
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
Context: Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

Beauty, Communication

“Inside of a ring or out, ain't nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

“Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.”

B.F. Skinner Walden Two

Source: Walden Two

Way, Failure, Understanding, Learning

“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

A Plea For Free Speech in Boston (10 December 1860), as contained in Words That Changed America https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1461748917, Alex Barnett, Rowman & Littlefield (reprint, 2006), p. 156 <br class="br">1860s

“It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling…”

V.S. Naipaul book Magic Seeds

Source: Magic Seeds

World

“Since a time has come, Mademoiselle, when the severe laws of men no longer prevent women from applying themselves to the sciences and other disciplines, it seems to me that those of us who can should use this long-craved freedom to study and to let men see how greatly they wronged us when depriving us of its honor and advantages. And if any woman becomes so proficient as to be able to write down her thoughts, let her do so and not despise the honor, but rather flaunt it instead of fine clothes, necklaces, and rings. For these may be considered ours only by use, whereas the honor of being educated is ours entirely.”

Louise Labé (1524–1566) female French poet of the Renaissance, born in Lyon

Women, Men, Education, Law

“The use of self control is like the use of brakes on train. It is useful when you find yourself in wrong direction but merely harmful when the direction is right”

Bertrand Russell book Marriage and Morals

Source: Marriage and Morals

Training

“Betrayed and wronged in everything,
I’ll flee this bitter world where vice is king,
And seek some spot unpeopled and apart
Where I’ll be free to have an honest heart.”

Molière The Misanthrope

Source: The Misanthrope

World, Heart

“Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Nature

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“They done
Wrong
Like ink from a busted pen
Thrown away 'cause of someone else
Used up
But he come back
Dressed in night
Fine as a king
With his queen
The wrong
Made right
So right.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Night

“You cannot have the right to do what is wrong!”

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

“And, as Stevie Rae would have said, Kalona was as wrong as manboobs.”

P. C. Cast book Burned

Source: Burned

“We thought the hard part was over—but we were wrong. Living is the hardest part. Figuring out how to live your life when you’re all busted up inside and out—there is nothing harder.”

Paullina Simons book The Summer Garden

Source: The Summer Garden

Life, Parting

“When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

Shoe

“Colon thought Carrot was simple. Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was.
Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.”

Terry Pratchett book Men at Arms

Source: Men at Arms

People, Stupidity, Thinking

“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

“I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: De Profundis and Other Writings

Law

“Somebody said once or wrote, once: 'We're all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God's name with the wrong alphabet blocks!”

Tennessee Williams Suddenly Last Summer

Source: Suddenly Last Summer

God, Children

“If you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.”

Terry Pratchett book I Shall Wear Midnight

Source: I Shall Wear Midnight

“I'VE NEVER BEEN VERY SURE ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT, said Bill Door. I AM NOT SURE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS RIGHT. OR WRONG. JUST PLACES TO STAND.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

“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?”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

War, Country

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Sense

“At your absolute best, you still won't be good enough for the wrong person. At your worst, you'll still be worth it to the right person.”

Karen Salmansohn American writer

Personality

“Nothing ever goes wrong.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

“If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“Something must be wrong with me to stop a good girl-on-girl fight”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Girl, Fight

“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”

Mo Willems (1968) American children's illustrator and writer

Source: Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

For women

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“If it's wrong when they do it, it's wrong when we do it.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

“The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“The Auditors fluttered anxiously. And, as always happens in their species when something goes radically wrong and needs fixing instantly, they settled down to try to work how who was to blame.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

“Oh, yesterdays are over my shoulder,
So I can't look back for too long.
There's just too much to see waiting in front of me,
and I know that I just can't go wrong.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Waiting

“And if a friend does you wrong, then say: "I forgive you what you have done to me; that you have done it to YOURSELF, however--how could I forgive that!”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Forgiveness

“The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Thinking, Effort

“It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Suffering, Cheating

“You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to makes such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person I thought it was your secret pride."

"I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor."

She didn't answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Love, Lie, Secret, Personality

“It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right --especially when one is right.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“The minute you become conscious that you are doing good, that's the minute you have to stop because from then on it's wrong.”

Paula Fox (1923–2017) Amercian book author

“Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.”

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

“Now, my mom always said two wrongs don't make a right. But she never said anything about four wrongs, and that always left me confused.”

Hugh Laurie (1959) British actor, comedian, writer, musician and director

Moms

“You know, you're rather amusingly wrong.”

Terry Pratchett book Maskerade

Source: Maskerade

“The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

World

“To say she was my girlfriend was absurd: no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriend… I suppose I ought to have realize it’s ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship.”

Robert Harris (1957) novelist

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities.”

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

Life, Way, Reality

“I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

People

“Welcome to fear, said Moist to himself. It's hope, turned inside out. You know it can't go wrong, you're sure it can't go wrong… But it might.”

Terry Pratchett book Going Postal

Source: Going Postal

Fear, Hope

“Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Leadership

“I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. Be honest, but hate no one; overturn a man's wrongdoing, but do not overturn him unless it must be done in overturning the wrong. Stand with a man while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”

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

The last sentence is from the 16 October 1854 Peoria speech, slightly paraphrased. No known contemporary source for the rest. It first appears, attributed to Lincoln, in US religious/inspirational journals in 1907-8, such as p123, Friends Intelligencer: a religious and family journal, Volume 65, Issue 8 (1908)
Misattributed

Hate, Parting

“When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

“I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were
selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

People, Feeling, Country

“This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That’s why everything is exactly the wrong way around.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

Life, Art, Way

“Last time I saw you, I said that it hurt too much to love you. But I was wrong about that. The truth is it hurts too much not to love you.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Love, Truth, Time, Hurt

“The secret to being wrong isn't to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn't fatal.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Source: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Secret

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Business

“Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

World

“Do you know the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

"Wrong. That's the definition of determination.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Through the Zombie Glass

“Never do anything wrong to make a friend or keep one”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

As quoted in Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography (1986) by Robert A. Caro and William Knowlton Zinsser. Also quoted in Truman by David McCullough (1992), p. 44, New York: Simon & Schuster.-
Context: You must be frank with the world; frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do on every occasion, and take it for granted you mean to do right … Never do anything wrong to make a friend or keep one; the man who requires you to do so, is dearly purchased at a sacrifice. Deal kindly, but firmly with all your classmates; you will find it the policy which wears best. Above all do not appear to others what you are not.

“One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation than its frank admission.”

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

World, Help

“There's a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork. And it's wrong. All roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork, but sometimes people just walk along them the wrong way.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People, Way

“The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.”

Barbara Hall (1946) Canadian politician

“The hardest thing in the world is believing someone can change. It's always easier to go along with the way things are than to admit that you might have been wrong in the first place.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

World, Way, Change

“The 50-50-90 rule: anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

Chance

“The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.”

Mark Twain book What Is Man?

Source: What Is Man? (1906), Ch. 6

“You cannot do wrong and feel right. It is impossible!”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Feeling

“Let me give you a piece of advice. The handsome young fellow who's trying to rescue you from a hideous fate is never wrong. Not even if he says the sky is purple and made of hedgehogs.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Fate

“People say that you're going the wrong way when it's simply a way of your own.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

People, Way

“In such doubtful matters, where you have to work as a pioneer, you must be able to put some trust in your intuition and follow your feeling even at the risk of going wrong.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Feeling

“You've no idea how long life goes on and how many, many changes it brings. Young people seem to imagine that it's over in a flash, that they do this thing, or that thing, and then die, but I can assure you they are quite wrong.”

Nancy Mitford (1904–1973) British writer

Source: Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels

Life, People, Imagination, Idea

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Variant: A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

Sense

“The highways are crowded with people who drive as if their sole purpose in getting behind the wheel is to avenge every wrong done them by man, beast or fate. The only thing that keeps them in line is their fear of death, jail and lawsuits.”

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

Source: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

Death, Fate, People, Fear

“Broadmindedness, when it means indifference to right and wrong, eventually ends in a hatred of what is right.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Life of Christ

Indifference

“A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong.”

Milton Berle (1908–2002) American comedian and actor

Forgiveness, For Wife

“Yes! I'm! I am careful and logical and I look up things I don't understand! When I hear people use the wrong words, I get edgy! I am good with cheese. I read books fast! I! And I always have a piece of string! That's the kind of person I am!”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

People, Books, Understanding, Reading

“If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”

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

1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)
Context: The foregoing history may not be precisely accurate in every particular; but I am sure it is sufficiently so, for all the uses I shall attempt to make of it, and in it, we have before us, the chief material enabling us to correctly judge whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong.
I think, and shall try to show, that it is wrong; wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska — and wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world, where men can be found inclined to take it.
This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world — enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites — causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty — criticising the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.

“I would rather be in minority and be right, than in the majority and wrong.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

“Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Exercises

“I knew that many things were wrong… I witnessed a great many injustices… But it was my revolutionary duty at the time not to criticize and not to help alien propaganda against [the Soviet Union], for at that time it was the only country where a revolution had been carried out and where Socialism had been built. I considered that propaganda should not be made against that country; that my duty was to make propaganda in my own country for Socialism.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Jasper Ridley, Tito: A Biography (Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 142.
Other

Time, Help, Country

“If […] the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant—in this respect almost alone among the philosophers—was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.”

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 13.

Stupidity, Exercises, Intelligence, Thinking

“If the assumptions are wrong, the conclusions aren't likely to be very good.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Cited in: Norman Pascoe (2011) Reliability Technology: Principles and Practice of Failure Prevention in Electronic Systems. Ch. 5
Principles of Operations Research (1975)

“The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man; that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the indefinite outspreading of his bondage "a sacred right of self-government."”

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

1850s, Speech on the Dred Scott Decision (1857)

“On the other hand, the free states carry on their government on the principle of the equality of men. We think slavery is morally wrong, and a direct violation of that principle. We all think it wrong. It is clearly proved, I think, by natural theology, apart from revelation. Every man, black, white or yellow, has a mouth to be fed and two hands with which to feed it, and that bread should be allowed to go to that mouth without controversy.”

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

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Men, Nature, Thinking

Quotes about wrong page 3

Quotes about wrong
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