Quotes about wrong
page 37

Hilaire Belloc photo

“Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

"The Pacifist"
Sonnets and Verse (1938)

Mao Zedong photo

“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land. Different forms and styles in art should develop freely and different schools in science should contend freely. We think that it is harmful to the growth of art and science if administrative measures are used to impose one particular style of art or school of thought and to ban another. Questions of right and wrong in the arts and sciences should be settled through free discussion in artistic and scientific circles and through practical work in these fields. They should not be settled in summary fashion.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Source: (zh-CN) 百花齐放、百家争鸣的方针,是促进艺术发展和科学进步的方针,是促进我国的社会主义文化繁荣的方针。艺术上不同的形式和风格可以自由发展,科学上不同的学派可以自由争论。利用行政力量,强制推行一种风格,一种学派,禁止另一种风格,另一种学派,我们认为会有害于艺术和科学的发展。艺术和科学中的是非问题,应当通过艺术界科学界的自由讨论去解决,通过艺术和科学的实践去解决,而不应当采取简单的方法去解决。

Rick Santorum photo
Harsha of Kashmir photo
Revilo P. Oliver photo
Lawrence H. Summers photo

“I deeply regret the impact of my comments and apologise for not having weighed them more carefully … I was wrong to have spoken in a way that has resulted in an unintended signal of discouragement to talented girls and women.”

Lawrence H. Summers (1954) Former US Secretary of the Treasury

Apology letter addressed to Harvard University community, posted on his website — reported in Reuters (January 26, 2005) "Summers Regrets", The Australian, p. 032.
2000s

David Mushet photo
Jacques Maritain photo

“A great philosopher in the wrong is like a beacon on the reefs which says to seamen: steer clear of me.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

On the Use of Philosophy (1961), p. 5.

Elon Musk photo

“When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

John Ogilby photo

“If Men, and Mortal Powers you not regard,
Yet know, the Gods both Right and Wrong record.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

George Soros photo
Billy Joel photo
Arthur Jones (inventor) photo

“If you like an exercise, chances are you’re doing it wrong.”

Arthur Jones (inventor) (1926–2007) American inventor

The New High Intensity Training (2004)

Richard Stallman photo

“There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to maximize one's income, as long as one does not use means that are destructive. But the means customary in the field of software today are based on destruction.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

Paul McCartney photo

“Why she had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

"Yesterday", from Help! (1965)
Lyrics, The Beatles

Rajiv Malhotra photo
John Maynard Keynes photo

“There is no harm in being sometimes wrong — especially if one is promptly found out.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Alfred Marshall, p. 175

Iain Banks photo
Indro Montanelli photo

“It is a common fallacy to believe that the law of large numbers acts as a force endowed with memory seeking to return to the original state, and many wrong conclusions have been drawn from this assumption.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter V, Conditional Probability, Stochastic Independence, p. 136.

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“There are then, at least two dialectical truths. The first is that you and I are reasonable creatures; the second that you and I ought to be reasonable. Because of the second, we can say not merely that we cannot reasonably deny the first, but also that we ought not to deny it. If these dialectical propositions are errors, they are irrefutable errors: there is no way for men qua rational creatures to find out what is wrong with them, just as there is no way for men qua rational creatures to cast doubt on their truth.”

Frank Van Dun (1947) Belgian law philosopher

"The Logic of Common Morality" http://web.archive.org/web/20060616233942/http://www.stephankinsella.com/texts/vandun_philosophy_argument.pdf, from E.M. Barth and J.L. Martens, eds., Argumentation Approaches to Theory Formation: Containing the contributions to the Groningen Conference on the Theory of Argumentation, October 1978 (Benjamins, 1982; original from the University of Michigan, digitized Mar 12, 2007. ISBN 9-027-23007-2, 333 pages).

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“5068. 'Tis better to suffer Wrong, than to do it.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Smokey Robinson photo

“Ooo la la la la
I did you wrong; my heart went out to play.
But in the game I lost you.
What a price to pay, hey I'm crying.

Ooo baby baby.
Ooo baby baby.”

Smokey Robinson (1940) American R&B singer-songwriter and record producer

Ooo Baby Baby, written by Smokey Robinson and Pete Moore (1965)
Song lyrics, With The Miracles

Zainab Salbi photo
Aron Ra photo

“It’s that feeling when you make it home Friday night and pour yourself a drink or a glass of wine and feel like the blood has drained out of you… I actually think burnout is the wrong description of it. I think it’s ‘burn up. Physiologically, that is what you are doing because of the chronic stress being placed on your body.”

Richard Boyatzis (1946) American business theorist

Richard Boyatzis (2006) cited in: "BURNOUT: Though no one is immune, middle managers are most at risk in a weak economy in which staff cuts add pressure on remaining workers" in: The Plain Dealer, February 13, 2006.

Noam Chomsky photo

“If I was in the mainstream, I'd began to ask myself what I'm doing wrong.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2010s, 2016

Anson Chan photo

“For the first ten years or so, you would always question whether the decisions were right or wrong, but you have to learn to put things behind you once a decision is made. You can't be wishy-washy about it.”

Anson Chan (1940) Hong Kong politician

Source: From Anson Chan's speech commenting on her handling the controversial 1986 child custody case on the eve of her retirement on April 27, 2001.

Morarji Desai photo
Charlie Brooker photo
Jonathan Franzen photo
Antonio Negri photo
John Stuart Mill photo

“It might be plausibly maintained, that in almost every one of the leading controversies, past or present, in social philosophy, both sides were in the right in what they affirmed, though wrong in what they denied.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

J. S. Mill, Dissertations and discussions: political, philosophical, and historical, Volume 2 http://books.google.gr/books?id=FyfPAAAAMAAJ&dq=, H. Holt, 1864, p. 11.

Winston S. Churchill photo
Gustav Stresemann photo

“The conquest of Riga is of the greatest importance not only from the military, but also form the political point of view… Our military situation was never more glorious than it is at present. Meanwhile, there is also the U-boat war, which is taking its course. The destruction of enemy tonnage that was expected of it on the basis of official predictions, has not only been achieved, but partly exceeded by more than half…Time is working for us. Britain to-day is fighting the war with a watch in her hand, and it is in this that I see the fundamentally decisive effect of the U-boat weapon for us and the approach of peace…If we are to achieve anything through compromise and understanding, then the Government must not be forced to make any statements renouncing something from the outset. For this reason the tactics by which it has been and is still being tried to make the Government declare its disinterestedness in Belgium, are wrong. Even those who share the attitude of Herr Scheidemann ought to fight for the last stone in Belgium, in order to exploit to the utmost that which possession has made into a dead pledge…However, the fact that we are going to have peace—and, we hope, soon—will in my conviction be due, apart from our military achievements, to the effects of unrestricted U-boat warfare, of which I have repeatedly said before the Main Committee that while I reject the formula that it will force Britain to her knees, I believe as firmly in the formula that it will force Britain to the conference table.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech in the Reichstag (October 1917), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 121
1910s

Ezra Pound photo

“But the one thing you shd. not do is suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

Guide to Kulchur (1938), p. 60

Thomas Eakins photo

“My figures at least are not a bunch of clothes with a head and hands sticking out but more nearly resemble the strong living bodies that most pictures show. And in the latter end of a life so spent in study, you at least can imagine that painting is with me a very serious study. That I have but little patience with the false modesty which is the greatest enemy to all figure painting. I see no impropriety in looking at the most beautiful of Nature's works, the naked figure. If there is impropriety, then just where does such impropriety begin? Is it wrong to look at a picture of a naked figure or at a statue? English ladies of the last generation thought so and avoided the statue galleries, but do so no longer. Or is it a question of sex? Should men make only the statues of men to be looked at by men, while the statues of women should be made by women to be looked at by women only? Should the he-painters draw the horses and bulls, and the she-painters like Rosa Bonheur the mares and cows? Must the poor old male body in the dissecting room be mutilated before Miss Prudery can dabble in his guts?Such indignities anger me. Can not anyone see into what contemptible inconsistencies such follies all lead? And how dangerous they are? My conscience is clear, and my suffering is past.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Letter of resignation to Edward Hornor Coates, Chairman of the Committee on Instruction, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1886-02-15).

Common (rapper) photo

“We write songs about wrong cause its hard to see right”

Common (rapper) (1972) American rapper, actor and author from Illinois

"The Corner" (Track 2)
Albums, Be (2005)

Robert P. George photo
Glenn Beck photo

“If you go to Cass Sunstein, what net neutrality means is now if you go to FoxNews. com, you will have Arianna Huffington, a little box pop up with her showing that "Bill O'Reilly is wrong on this" or "here's an opposing view of Bill O'Reilly."”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2010-12-2
The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Network
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/48783/
2010s, 2010

“Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing. Both roles are crucial, and they differ profoundly. I often observe people in top positions doing the wrong things well.”

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) American leadership expert

Bennis Warren and Burt Nanus (1985) Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge. Harper and Row. p. 21
1980s

Wilson Mizner photo

“Harry Thaw shot the wrong architect.”

Wilson Mizner (1876–1933) American writer

Disparaging the work of Joseph Urban, his brother Addison's architectural rival. Harry Thaw was a wealthy man of the times who had shot and killed architect Stanford White over his earlier involvement with Thaw's wife Evelyn Nesbit.
Quoted by Alva Johnston, The Legendary Mizners, 1953, Farrar Straus and Young, New York. Johnston allows that the quote has been attributed to many others, but makes a good case that Mizner said it first.
Wisecracks

Kent Hovind photo

“As long as we think we are worth something, we wrong ourselves.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Mientras creemos tener algún valor, nos hacemos daño.
Voces (1943)

Patricia de Leon (actress) photo
Laisenia Qarase photo

“Follow the teachings and you will not go wrong.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

Excerpts from a speech to the Christian Youth Conference in Suva, 15 May 2005

“I always disagree. I am always wrong.
I'm a perpetual dissident.
I like things I don’t understand.”

Riiko Sakkinen (1976) Finnish visual artist

"Riiko Sakkinen" at riikosakkinen.com http://www.riikosakkinen.com/info/quotes/

Marc Maron photo

“I don't want to offend people right out of the gate. I know that some of you believe and I certainly don’t want to mock the myths that define some of you, but um. I choose not to believe in god. That's ok still, i can do that, right? It's my choice to go through life filled with dread, panic and fear... because I think that's a more objective and real way to live. Just be like…"Aaaaahh' what's gonna happen?!" I think that's needed, honestly. And again I don't want to make fun of what you believe in. I think the reason Jesus is so popular, just on a celebrity level, is that he died at the peak of his career, ok. He was…hear me out…. he was young, he was hot. He was well spoken from all accounts. I really think it would have been different had he lived longer, alright. Say had he gotten old enough to get bitter. Alright, just hear me out. Picture there's a third testament to the bible' alright. This point Jesus is in his 50's. He's got one apostle left. And the book opens with him knee deep in water saying, "I used to be able to do this!" The apostle's saying, "Come on…don't yell at the water, Jesus. Come on in. It's not your day, buddy. Come on. People are gathering for the wrong reason. Can we just go, please. Let's go to the deli…we'll have a sandwich. We'll try again tomorrow. Come on, yes you are god, come on. And again, you know, if you're a religious person, I understand why you believe. It makes you feel better, you know. But a lot of us do not have the patience or disposition to have faith or belief. Thank god there's medication for those people because if you're properly medicated, it will provide roughly the same effect as religion, you know. If you're on the right combination of anti-depressants, it will alleviate your ability to see the truth clearly and provide a false sense of hope.”

Marc Maron (1963) Comedian

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/zt2b7c/comedy-central-presents-faith-medication
Comedy Central Presents (2007)

John Stuart Mill photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Taylor Swift photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Nigel Cumberland photo

“Once you stop learning, you start dying.’ I first heard this maxim by Albert Einstein in my twenties. At the time I thought it was nonsense. How wrong I was. Learning and success are totally interlinked. Do not make the mistake of thinking that learning ends when you complete your final exams.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Dinah Craik photo
Omar Bradley photo
Lawrence M. Krauss photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Sylvia Plath photo

“We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong”

Source: Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), p. 461

Orrin H. Pilkey photo
R. A. Lafferty photo

“If you have come with high expectations of anything, you have come to the wrong place.”

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

A lieutenant of Tiresias, Ch. 7
Space Chantey (1968)

Ernest Hemingway photo

“If you have a success, you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

As quoted in That Summer in Paris (1963) by Morley Callaghan

Susan Collins photo

“I think so much depends on what happens in the next six months. If the president is determined to go ahead with this plan, and he appears to be determined, I hope it works—for our country, for Iraq, for our soldiers. I hope that I prove to be as wrong as I’ve ever been in my life.”

Susan Collins (1952) United States Senator from Maine

Answering: "How will his [John McCain's] support for the war affect his presidential chances?" Feb. 5, 2007
‘I Hope I’m Wrong’, Newsweek, February 5, 2007 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16993944/site/newsweek/,

Paulo Coelho photo
Joseph E. Stiglitz photo
John Bright photo
Florence Nightingale photo
Hans Freudenthal photo
Colin Wilson photo
Alfred Austin photo

“Is life worth living? Yes, so long
As there is wrong to right,
Wail of the weak against the strong,
Or tyranny to fight;”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Is Life Worth Living? http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/9/3/1/19316/19316.htm (1896)

Boris Sidis photo
Wesley Clark photo
Kenneth Minogue photo
Muhammad photo
Chelsea Clinton photo

“Comparing Jews to termites is anti-Semitic, wrong and dangerous. The responsive laughter makes my skin crawl. For everyone who rightly condemned President Trump’s rhetoric when he spoke about immigrants “infesting our country,” this rhetoric should be equally unacceptable to you:”

Chelsea Clinton (1980) daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton

17 October 2018 https://twitter.com/ChelseaClinton/status/1052565799934849024 response to Louis Farrakhan highlighted by The Hill https://thehill.com/policy/technology/411950-twitter-says-it-wont-suspend-louis-farrakhan-over-tweet-comparing-jews-to

Jane Goodall photo
Golo Mann photo

“We cannot have another world war. War is the wrong word. We should ban the term ‘World War III’ and say instead apocalypse or holocaust.”

Golo Mann (1909–1994) German historian

Hamburg’s Die Zeit, August 30, 1985. cited in: The Watchtower, 2/15 1986.

Louis Kronenberger photo

“On a very rough-and-ready basis we might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. An eccentric puts ice cream on steak simply because he likes it; should a crank do so, he would endow the act with moral grandeur and straightaway denounce as sinners (or reactionaries) all who failed to follow suit […] Cranks, at their most familiar, are a sort of peevish prophets, and it's not enough that they should be in the right; others must also be in the wrong.”

Louis Kronenberger (1904–1980) American critic and writer

"The One and the Many", Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954). Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill. 229 pages
Essay also appeared in Perspectives USA, Spring 1954 http://books.google.com/books?id=2UMIAQAAMAAJ&q=%22We+might+define+an+eccentric+as+a+man+who+is+a+law+unto+himself+and+a+crank+as+one+who+having+determined+what+the+law+is+insists+on+laying+it+down+to+others%22&pg=PA30#v=onepage
Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954)

Al Sharpton photo

“What’s wrong with denouncing white interlopers?”

Al Sharpton (1954) American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host

As quoted in National Review (20 March 2000).

Thomas Gainsborough photo

“.. though I'm a rogue in talking upon Painting and love to seem to take things wrong I can be serious and honest upon any subject thoroughly pleasing to me.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote in Gainsborough's letter,from Bath 2 Sept. 1767, to his friend William Jackson of Exeter; as cited in The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. Mary Woodall, 1961
1755 - 1769

Jerry Brown photo

“There's nothing wrong with being an anarchist.”

Jerry Brown (1938) American politician/lawyer and current governor of California

Speaking to the International Transpersonal Association Conference in Santa Clara, California, 10 June 1995.
Political Consciousness and Transformative Action, LeapNonprofit.org, League for Earth & Animal Protection (LEAP), 2007-06-12 http://www.leapnonprofit.org/phil%20article4.htm,
1995

Fulton J. Sheen photo

“Right is right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong.”

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

Program 19
Life Is Worth Living (1951–1957)

Pope Benedict XVI photo
Thomas Hardy photo
Samuel Butler photo

“We play out our days as we play out cards, taking them as they come, not knowing what they will be, hoping for a lucky card and sometimes getting one, often getting just the wrong one.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

The World, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part I - Lord, What is Man?

Bowe Bergdahl photo
Neil Diamond photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Right or wrong, what I also saw was that you made an enemy, and left him alive behind you. Great charity. Bad tactics.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000), p. 60

Bernard Cornwell photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo