Quotes about wrong
page 42

“Abstract cleverness of the mind only separates the thinker from the world of reality, and that world, the Forest of Real Life, is in a desperate condition now because of too many who think too much and care too little. In spite of what many minds have thought themselves into believing, that mistake cannot continue for much longer if everything is going to survive. The one chance we have to avoid certain disaster is to change our approach, and learn to value wisdom and contentment. These are things that are being searched for anyway, through Knowledge and Cleverness, but they do not come from Knowledge and Cleverness. They never have, and they never will. We can no longer afford to look so desperately hard for something in the wrong way and in the wrong place. If Knowledge and Cleverness are allowed to go on wrecking things, they will before much longer destroy all life on this earth as we know it, and what little may temporarily survive will not be worth looking at, even if it were possible for us to do so.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

The Now of Pooh.
The Tao of Pooh (1982)

Life, Wisdom, World, Way

“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.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "The Land Ethic", p. 224-225.

Beauty, Communication, Question

“I can never join with my voice in the toast which I see in the papers attributed to one of our gallant naval heroes. I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. Fiat justitia, pereat coelum.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

My toast would be, may our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right.
Letter to his father, John Adams (1 August 1816), referring to the popular phrase "My Country, Right or Wrong!" based upon Stephen Decatur's famous statement "Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong." The Latin phrase is one that can be translated as : "Let justice be done though heaven should fall" or "though heaven perish".

Success, Country

“It’s a very vulgar, arithmetical, pragmatic way of arguing anyway. If you do that, then get the facts and figures wrong, well then you’re really fucked. You’re fucked twice.”

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

Christopher Hitchens, May 2002 http://archives.cjr.org/year/02/3/giuffo.asp: On Noam Chomsky 2000s, 2002

Way

“Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy…. I have not yet had enough experience with women. What we were taught about them in our youth is quite wrong, that is sure, it was quite contrary to nature, and one must try to learn from experience. It would be very pleasant if everybody were good, and the world were good, etc.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

yes - but it seems to me that we see more and more that we are not good, no more than the world in general, of which we are an atom - and the world no more good than we are. One may try one's best, or act carelessly, the result is always different from what one really wanted. But whether the result be better or worse, fortunate or unfortunate, it is better to do something than to do nothing. If only one is wary of becoming a prim, self-righteous prig - as Uncle Vincent calls it - one may be even as good as one likes. In his letter to Theo, from Nuenen, c. 9 March 1884, http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/14/359.htm 1880s, 1884

Love, Women, Youth, World

“If only we try to live sincerely, it will go well with us, even though we are certain to experience real sorrow, and great disappointments, and also will probably commit great faults and do wrong things, but it certainly is true, that it is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote of Vincent's letter to Theo, from Amsterdam, 3 April 1878; a cited in The Letters of Vincent van Gogh to his Brother, 1872-1886 (1927) Constable & Co
As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 483
1870s
Variant: Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

Love, Making love, Disappointment, Sincerity

“Whenever you hear the words chink, nigger, beaner, paki, sissy, bull dyke, faggot, cunt, bitch, ho, jap…because through no fault of your own, you happen to be you, and apparently to the person saying it something is wrong with that.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, RACISM AND CIVIL RIGHTS

Personality, Bitch

“All I ask for is a chance to have the same kind of forum, the right to speak, the same credibility as thee wrong-ass ignant fools. But the producers of these types of shows think tht I will only talk about tai chi, where to get the best sushi on the West Side, how to feng-shui your office…the fact that the media at large look at my race before they hear my voice = fucked up shit.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, INVISIBILITY

Fools, Thinking, Chance

“One Jewish quality these Arabs manifest; the outcome of many or of all high qualities: what we may call religiosity. From of old they had been zealous worshippers, according to their light. They worshipped the stars, as Sabeans; worshipped many natural objects,—recognized them as symbols, immediate manifestations, of the Maker of Nature. It was wrong; and yet not wholly wrong.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Star, Nature, Light

“All this is merely saying that he, in a degree once common, but now very unusual, threw his feelings into his opinions; which truly it is difficult to understand how any one who possesses much of both, can fail to do. None but those who do not care about opinions, will confound it with intolerance. Those, who having opinions which they hold to be immensely important, and their contraries to be prodigiously hurtful, have any deep regard for the general good, will necessarily dislike, as a class and in the abstract, those who think wrong what they think right, and right what they think wrong: though they need not therefore be, nor was my father, insensible to good qualities in an opponent, nor governed in their estimation of individuals by one general presumption, instead of by the whole of their character.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/50/mode/1up pp. 50-51

Feeling, Understanding, Thinking, Hurt

“No matter what you have been told by people who make your needs wrong because they don’t want to meet those needs, you cannot un-need what you need.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

People, Making love

“I look at those words—gang ties—and I think about all the players I’ve met in the NFL and all of us who come from inner-city neighborhoods like mine in Los Angeles, and I wonder how many of us could honestly say we’re not friends with guys doing the wrong things. I can’t.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

Stardom Doesn’t Change Where You’re From (April 02, 2014)

Angels, Guy, Thinking

“There is, of course, a tipping point. There have been times when I realized that someone can’t be helped, because they continue doing the wrong things. Typically, the only time I cut someone off is when they’re in jail, because I can’t help them there.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

Stardom Doesn’t Change Where You’re From (April 02, 2014)

Time, Help

“It seems to be a fact of life that human beings cannot continue to do wrong without eventually reaching out for some thin rationalization to clothe the obvious wrong in the beautiful garments of righteousness. The philosopher-psychologist William James used to talk a great deal about the stream of consciousness. He says that the very interesting and unique thing about human nature is that man had the capacity temporarily to block the stream of consciousness and place anything in it that he wants to, and so we often end up justifying the rightness of the wrong. This is exactly what happened during the days of slavery. Even the Bible and religion were misused to crystallize the patterns of the status quo. And so it was argued from pulpits across the nation that the Negro was inferior by nature, because of Noah’s curse upon the children of Ham. The apostle Paul’s dictum became a watchword: Servants, be obedient to your master. And then one brother had probably studied the logic of the great philosopher Aristotle. You know Aristotle did a great deal to bring into being what we know as formal logic, and he talked about the syllogism, which had a major premise and a minor premise and a conclusion. And so this brother could put his argument in the framework of an Aristotelian syllogism. He could say, All men are made in the image of God. This was the major premise; then came the minor premise: God, as everybody knows, is not a Negro. Therefore, the Negro is not a man. This was the type of reasoning that prevailed.”

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

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Life, Men, God, Children

“I wasn’t wrong. I am just far more correct now than I was then.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

Interview on Ac360, CNN (January 20, 2020) <nowiki>'</nowiki>I Have a More Sophisticated Basis for My Argument': Dershowitz, Backing Trump, Denies Flip-Flop on Impeachment https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2020/01/21/i-have-a-more-sophisticated-basis-for-my-argument-dershowitz-backing-trump-denies-flip-flop-on-impeachment/, law.com (January 21, 2020)

“Success is more about what you say NO to than what you say YES to. You can completely destroy your personal energy by saying yes to the wrong types of things.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Success, Personality

“Never be ashamed of how you feel. If you feel shame because of how you feel, it means you have been judged by others and told that your feelings were wrong or bad. But the reality is you wouldn't be feeling them if there wasn't a very valid reason to be feeling them. Your feelings are valid. If you feel an emotion, there is a good reason that you are feeling that emotion. Don't let anyone tell you how you should or shouldn't feel.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

book The Anatomy of Loneliness

Bad luck, Feeling, Reality

“Well, what if I'm wrong, I mean — anybody could be wrong. We could all be wrong about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the pink unicorn and the flying teapot. You happen to have been brought up, I would presume, in a Christian faith. You know what it's like to not believe in a particular faith because you're not a Muslim. You're not a Hindu. Why aren't you a Hindu? Because you happen to have been brought up in America, not in India. If you had been brought up in India, you'd be a Hindu. If you had been brought up in Denmark in the time of the Vikings, you'd be believing in Wotan and Thor. If you were brought up in classical Greece, you'd be believing in Zeus. If you were brought up in central Africa, you'd be believing in the great Juju up the mountain. There's no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian god, in which by the sheerest accident you happen to have been brought up and ask me the question, "What if I'm wrong?"”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

What if you're wrong about the great Juju at the bottom of the sea? Answering audience questions after a reading of The God Delusion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mmskXXetcg, Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Posed question: "This is probably going to be the most simplest one for you to answer, but: What if you're wrong?"

God, Faith, Mountain, Question

“Conformity to nature has no connection whatever with right and wrong. The idea can never be fitly introduced into ethical discussions at all, except, occasionally and partially, into the question of degrees of culpability. To illustrate this point, let us consider the phrase by which the greatest intensity of condemnatory feeling is conveyed in connection with the idea of nature - the word "unnatural."”

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

That a thing is unnatural, in any precise meaning which can be attached to the word, is no argument for its being blamable; since the most criminal actions are to a being like man not more unnatural than most of the virtues.
Source: On Nature (1874), p. 102

Feeling, Idea, Question, Nature

“The war on drugs has done considerable damage to the fourth amendment and that something is very wrong indeed when a person gets a longer sentence for marijuana than for espionage.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

Arnold S. Trebach, Fatal Distraction: The War on Drugs in the Age of Islamic Terrorism, Bloomington, Indiana, Unlimited Publishing LLC (2006) p. 74

War, Personality, Marijuana

“Lane was speaking now as someone does who has been monopolizing conversation for a good quarter of an hour or so and who believes he has just hit a stride where his voice can do absolutely no wrong.”

Jerome David Salinger book Franny and Zooey

Franny and Zooey (1961), Franny (1955)

“Chicano" was a bad word when I was coming up. At least that's what the elders said. The word referred to a Mexican born in the U.S., so by that definition, I'm not Chicano. I was born in Tijuana, but the Mexicans didn't see me as Mexican and the Americans didn't see me as American. I'm a man without a flag. When I started working among Chicanos as an adult, some accepted me, but some didn't. On either side [of the border] I was the "other"; I've always been the other. Later on when I had a bit of success, people on both sides were much more enthusiastic about embracing me. The word "Latino" seems meaningless to me, and "Hispanic" is just wrong. These days, I just tell people my nationality is "Writer.”

Luis Alberto Urrea (1955) Mexican-American poet

On finding his niche as a writer in “AN INTERVIEW WITH LUIS ALBERTO URREA” http://www.bookslut.com/features/2011_12_018440.php in Bookslut (December 2011)

Bad luck, People, Success

““Never fancied him anyway,” I’d write when a boy dumped me. I’d leave out things that had gone wrong, or been difficult. I think it was partly an exercise in defiance, a refusal to be defeated by life’s adversities. So in that sense, my diary was a bit of a self-help manual, written by me, for me.”

Tracey Thorn (1962) English singer and songwriter

On reading past diaries in “Tracey Thorn: ‘I went through a phase of carrying Camus under my arm’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/25/tracey-thorn-interview-another-planet-memoir in The Guardian (2020 Jan 25)

Life, Exercises, Boy, Thinking

“Our ignorance of brain function is currently so very nearly total that we could not even begin to frame appropriate research strategies. We would stand before the open brain, fancy instruments in hand, roughly as an unschooled labourer might stand before the exposed wiring of a computer: awed perhaps, but surely helpless. A microanalysis of brain functions is, moreover, no more useful for understanding anything about thinking than a corresponding analysis of the pulses flowing through a computer would be for understanding what program the computer is running. Such analyses would simply be at the wrong conceptual level. They might help to decide crucial experiments, but only after such experiments had been designed on the basis of much higher-level (for example, linguistic) theories.”

Joseph Weizenbaum (1923–2008) German-American computer scientist

Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation (1976)

Understanding, Thinking, Help

“The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great processes. But that's not what it's about. Process makes you more efficient.
But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.
And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

As quoted in "The Seed of Apple's Innovation" in BusinessWeek (12 October 2004)
2000s

People, Making love, Idea, Problem

“We've defeated the wrong enemy”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

It is unknown if Patton ever said these precise words. However, Anthony Cave Brown notes https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36062/did-gen-patton-say-we-defeated-the-wrong-enemy/36063#36063 in Bodyguard of Lies Volume II that "Patton was relieved of command of the 3rd Army by Eisenhower just after the end of the war for stating publicly that America had been fighting the wrong enemy— Germany instead of Russia", so it is at least an accurate paraphrase. For further discussion, see relevant threads on skeptics.stackexchange.com https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/36062/did-gen-patton-say-we-defeated-the-wrong-enemy and /r/AskHistorians https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/640pg5/what_did_general_george_s_patton_mean_when_he/. Disputed

“Philanthropy, emancipation, and pity for human calamity is very beautiful; but the deep oblivion of the Law of Right and Wrong; this "indiscriminate mashing up of Right and Wrong into a patent treacle" of the Philanthropic movement, is by no means beautiful; this, on the contrary, is altogether ugly and alarming.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Model Prisons (March 1, 1850)

Law, Beauty

“Inflicting pain as retribution for wrongs is a horrible mistake: The person wronged and the person punished are one and the same.”

Arnold Zuboff (1946) American philosopher

" My 8 Big Ideas https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286624424_My_8_Big_Ideas" (2011), p. 9

Pain, Personality

“Enjoin what is good and forbid what is evil. No believer should subject himself to humiliation, for I will be with the weak against the strong so long as he has been wronged, Insha'Allah”

Uthman (574–656) Companion of Muhammad and third Rashidun Caliph

History of the Prophets and Kings, vol. 4, p. 414

Strong, Evil

“Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived", but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious.
It is a difficult assignment. The conditions the teacher arranges must be powerful enough to compete with those under which the student tends to behave in distracting ways.”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

"Free and Happy Student" in The Phi Delta Kappan (September 1973); later published in Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978)

Way, Learning, Teachers, Future

“No, not necessarily. Not necessarily. I think there’s nothing wrong from saying that, actually, there are interventions that are required and that we should be making sure that we are focused on generating well-being for New Zealanders.”

Jacinda Ardern (1980) Prime Minister of New Zealand

On if she thinks that economic nationalism has negative connotations.
Interview with Lisa Owen at Newshub Nation, 21 October 2017

Making love, Thinking

“O custodians of civilization, may we ask how long
Will you perpetrate horror, commit wrong on wrong?
Conceded that you want to test the sharpness of your swords,
But how long will you try them on our pliant throats?
You want to see the assembly with rhetoric hot ablaze,
How long can our sighs and wails satisfy your craze?
True that the tales of woe titillate your heart,
But how long can we relate the tales of grief and loss?
We know that you grudge the drought caused by the heavens high,
How long can our tears of blood your withering crops revive>
You require glimmering stars to brighten up your fate,
How far can these grains of dust emblazon your face?
Knowing we are faded leaves of a fallen tree,
How long will you continue to crush us out complete?”

Shibli Nomani (1857–1914) Indian scholar

Masterpieces of Patriotic Urdu Poetry, p. 101
Poetry, custodians of civilization

Fate, Star, Tear, Tree

“Perfume is a good example of a product gone all wrong. When I was a child, it was a semi-exotic thing and it was called something stupid like "Fleur de Fleur" and you would give it to your mother or aunty at Christmas and it was advertised by some dopey looking woman in a field of sunflowers and she looked like she'd been hit by a tractor because she was going *flails with arms*. She couldn’t just get over how nice she smelled. Now, because we’re so jaded, we’ve consumed so much, our attention can only be grabbed in a violent way. So it’s always advertised by these constipated, exo-keletal bitches who are sneering at you and it’s called something horrible like "Homicide"! "Dysentery!"”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

"Urban Dysentery" for boys and girls!

On consumerism.
What It Is (2009)

Stupidity, Way, Christmas, Bitch

“You must not only discard the Shastras, you must deny their authority, as did Buddha and Nanak. You must have courage to tell the Hindus that what is wrong with them is their religion—the religion which has produced in them this notion of the sacredness of Caste. Will you show that courage?”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

quoted in Annihilation of Caste

Religion, Courage

“It is never challenging when you only do one thing in life. It is difficult to do everything, but if you specialise in one thing, you can focus with your head bent over one single thing the whole day and you have less likelihood of getting things wrong.”

Brunello Cucinelli (1953) Italian entrepreneur and philanthropist

Source: CEO Talk | Brunello Cucinelli, Founder and Chief Executive https://www.businessoffashion.com/amp/articles/ceo-talk/ceo-talk-brunello-cucinelli-founder-chief-executive-brunello-cucinelli Imran Amed, Business of Fashion, 1 July 2014

Life

“The average man is happier in the wrong with a crowd, than he is in the right with only one or two companions.”

Chapman Cohen (1868–1954) British atheist and secularist writer and lecturer

[God and the Universe: Eddington, Jeans, Huxley, & Einstein, 128, 1931, Pioneer Press, https://books.google.com/books?id=QmBHAAAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=happier]

“Do not hesistate to attack me, criticize me, if I do wrong in my job. It is your duty.”

Rodrigo Duterte (1945) Filipino politician and the 16th President of the Philippines

Philstar, Duterte to media: You can criticize me as long as it’s true https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2016/09/11/1622603/duterte-media-you-can-criticize-me-long-its-true (September 2016) On criticism

“Women are not exempt from patriarchy, they are also products of it. So, they also come in with that system of 'am I right' or 'am I wrong.'”

Zoya Akhtar (1974) Indian film director

Zoya Akhtar & Reema Kagti - FC Post Mortem 15 Jun 2015, at 10 Min 25 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4DGmAXNPt4 From interview with Film Companion

Women

“The real hero of Jaws is the mayor. A gigantic fish is eating all your constituents and he decides to keep the beaches open. OK, in that instance he was actually wrong. But in principle, we need more politicians like the mayor - we are often the only obstacle against all the nonsense which is really a massive conspiracy against the taxpayer.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Speech given by Johnson at Lloyd's of London in 2006, quoted in * 2007-07-18

Boris Johnson inspired by Jaws mayor

Graeme Wilson and George Jones

The Telegraph

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1557765/Boris-Johnson-inspired-by-Jaws-mayor.html
2000s, 2006

Fish

“Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, "My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way."”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

Interview with Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio (2 May 2002)
2000s

Age, Way, Future

“I think I was the best ballplayer I’ve ever seen. I feel nobody in the world could do what I could do on a baseball field. I hope I’m not saying anything wrong, but you have to think you’re the best. The next one would be Roberto Clemente.”

Willie Mays (1931) Baseball player

As quoted in "Sports of the Times: The Most Natural Ballplayer" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=UVUcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=p1EEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6465%2C2456085&dq=who%27s-best-ever-aside-yourself-next-roberto

World, Hope, Feeling, Thinking

“We can never know whether our analysis and our methods are wrong, except sometimes with hindsight. Our movements are stronger when they employ diverse methods and analyses and these different positions criticize one another.”

Peter Gelderloos (1982) American anarchist

Introduction: Nonviolence has lost the debate "The Failure of Nonviolence" (2013) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-the-failure-of-nonviolence

“Fourth is the argument from moral praise and blame:
# According to Dr. Rosenberg, if naturalism is true then I am not morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for any of my actions because, as I said, on his view objective moral values and duties do not exist.
# But, I am morally praiseworthy and blameworthy for at least some of my actions. If you think that you have ever done something truly wrong or truly good then you should conclude:
# Therefore, naturalism is not true.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

Nature, Thinking

“Something is wrong if workers do not look around each day, find things that are tedious or boring, and then rewrite the procedures. Even last month’s manual should be out of date.”

Taiichi Ohno (1912–1990) Japanese businessman and engineer

“If any one here can find a single wrong argument and can refute it, I will let him cut off my head.”

Xuanzang (602–664) Chinese Buddhists monk, scholar, traveler, and translator

Quoted in Durant, Will (1963). Our Oriental heritage. New York: Simon & Schuster.

“I need to say first of all that foreigners are wrong in regarding the DMZ as the "Last Frontier of the Cold War" which is sort of separating a failed and anachronistic communist state from a proud high-tech capitalist one.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with the Reuters War College (April 2017)

War

“As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" in Farming: A Hand Book (1970)
Poems

Making love, Way, Falseness

“It is wrong to condemn people for doing a thing and then offer no alternative but failure. A person could get mad about that.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"The Problem of Tobacco"
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)

People, Failure, Personality, Madness

“Pain, despair, misplaced bodily activity and wrong direction (or control) of the life currents are the results of the obstacles in the lower psychic nature.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect : a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

Life, Pain, Nature, Despair

“The obstacles to soul cognition are bodily disability, mental inertia, wrong questioning, carelessness, laziness, lack of dispassion, erroneous perception, inability to achieve concentration, failure to hold the meditative attitude when achieved.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect : a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

Soul, Failure, Question

“[G]overnments are not producers, they have no commodities on their road to the market, and can have no claim whatever to issue paper-money. Even exchequer bills are wrong,…”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Popular Political Economy: Four lectures delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (1827), p. 212

Money

“In corporation religions as in others, the heretic must be cast out not because of the probability that he is wrong but because of the possibility that he is right.”

Antony Jay (1930–2016) British screenwriter

Antony Jay, Management and Machiavelli (1967)

Religion

“No amount of happiness enjoyed by some organisms can notionally justify the indescribable horrors of Auschwitz. [...] Nor can the fun and games outweigh the sporadic frightfulness of pain and despair that occurs every second of every day. For there's nothing inherently wrong with non-sentience or [...] non-existence; whereas there is something frightfully and self-intimatingly wrong with suffering.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

2.7 Why Be Negative? https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon2.htm#negative*Negative-utilitarianism is only one particular denomination of a broad church to which the reader may well in any case not subscribe. Fortunately, the program can be defended on grounds that utilitarians of all stripes can agree on. So a defence will be mounted against critics of the theory and application of a utilitarian ethic in general. For in practice the most potent and effective means of curing unpleasantness is to ensure that a defining aspect of future states of mind is their permeation with the molecular chemistry of ecstasy: both genetically precoded and pharmacologically fine-tuned. Orthodox utilitarians will doubtless find the cornucopian abundance of bliss this strategy delivers is itself an extra source of moral value. Future generations of native ecstatics are unlikely to disagree. 2.7 Why Be Negative? https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon2.htm#negative The Hedonistic Imperative https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875 (1995)

Pain, Happiness, Game, Suffering

“Whether France or Italy or Germany or England has made the greatest contribution in the history of modern civilisation—however that speculative controversy may be settled, this at least is certain, that those are not wrong who hold that Germany's high and strict standard of competency, the purity and vigour of her administration of affairs, her splendid efforts and great success in all branches of science, her glories—for glories they are—in art and literature, and the fixed strength of character and duty in the German people entitle her national ideals to a supreme place among the greatest-ideals that now animate and guide the world. Do not let us forget all that. German ambition is a perfectly intelligible and even lofty ambition.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1911/nov/28/morocco#column_384 in the House of Lords during the Agadir Crisis (28 November 1911) 1910s

People, World, Art, History

“You seem to be angry with religion, angry with god. Am I wrong in my perception?”

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

Hitchens-"Not with god, obviously,that would be absurd."

Hannity's America, May 13, 2007, interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWoHh4_rVdg http://transcripts.wikia.com/wiki/Sean_Hannity_Christopher_Hitchens_Hannity%27s_America_May13%2C_2007?venotify=created
2000s, 2007

God, Religion

“Some European scholars who called Max Muller a racist are not far wrong.”

V. T. Rajshekar (1932) Indian conspiracy theorist

Brahminism. (2015) Gyan Publishing House

“If somebody else thinks something that you don't believe in, just think they're wrong and you're right and keep going. That's pretty much the way I always think.”

Donna Strickland (1959) Canadian physicist, 2018 Nobel prize winner

In [Casey, Liam, 'We are marching forward': Canadian scientist becomes third woman to win Nobel Prize in physics, https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/we-are-marching-forward-canadian-scientist-becomes-third-woman-to-win-nobel-prize-in-physics-1.4117566, 5 October 2018, CTV News Toronto, October 2, 2018]

Way, Thinking

“The crucial questions in politics are not questions of right and wrong, but of obedience and disobedience. If you do not submit to political authority, then "If I say you're wrong, you're wrong, even if you're right."”

Jiang Shigong (1967) Chinese legal and political theorist

《乌克兰转型中的宪政权威》 ["The authority of the constitution in a Ukraine in transition"] (2004), translated by David Ownby in Rethinking China's Rise https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=761eDwAAQBAJ, p. 27

Question

“I think if you put an infallible weapon into man's fallible hands there is always a threat that something's going to go wrong.”

Karen Meagher British actress

Auditioning for the Apocalypse (1984)

Thinking

“This sense of things...getting out of control very quickly is a lesson that we’ve forgotten. [...] I hope we don’t learn it in the wrong way. This is what you’re risking when you talk about fire and fury.”

Mick Jackson (director) (1943) film director

On Donald Trump's rhetoric to North Korea
The Director of the Scariest Movie We've Ever Seen Still Fears Nuclear War the Most

Hope, Way, Sense, Learning

“We speak of people "taking refuge" in vagueness — the more precise you are, in general the more likely you are to be wrong, whereas you stand a good chance of not being wrong if you make it vague enough.”

J. L. Austin (1911–1960) English philosopher

Sense and Sensibilia (1962), p. 125

People, Making love, Chance

“Pain, despair, misplaced bodily activity and wrong direction (or control) of the life currents are the results of the obstacles in the lower psychic nature.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary (1927)

Life, Pain, Nature, Despair

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary (1927)

Soul, Failure, Question

“History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time [1848] was not, by a long way, ripe for the removal of capitalist production.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Introduction (1895) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/intro.htm to Marx's The Class Struggles in France (1848-50)

Way, History, Time

“[I]t is better to be content with the fraction of a right solution than to beguile ourselves with the whole of a wrong solution.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“Keep your right and wrong
I don't need it
keep your black and white
I can't seeǃ”

Mara Balls (1983) Finnish musician

“I can't remember the last time I was wrong.”

Paavo Väyrynen (1946) Finnish politician

Time

“A major difference between politicians and the free press is that the press usually corrects itself when it gets something wrong. Politicians don't.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Farewell speech to the U.S. Senate (2018)

“I’m a magician who writes about ideas. I’m not a science-fiction writer. People who call me that are wrong. Most of what I write is fantasy or magic realism or plays about my Mexican-American background.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Bradbury Talk Likely to Feature the Unexpected (1994)

People, Idea, Science

“It's easy to hate and point out everything that is wrong with the world; it is the hardest and most important work in one's life to free oneself from the bonds of fear and attachment.”

Noah Levine (1971) American Buddhist teacher

Dharma Punx: A Memoir (2003)

Life, Hate, World, Fear

“Eventually I decided to give my thoughts a form, to put them into practice, and so to determine whether my understanding was right or wrong.”

Masanobu Fukuoka book The One-Straw Revolution

Source: The One-Straw Revolution (1975), Chapter 1, p. 5

Understanding

“I imagined in everybody I passed there was some story that they carried with them that would break your heart. So how could you have the temerity to approach that person and say, here's what's wrong with you?”

Barry Lopez (1945) American writer

On learning empathy after a cancer diagnosis in “Writer Barry Lopez Reflects On A Life Traveling Beyond The 'Horizon'” https://www.npr.org/2019/03/27/707358144/barry-lopez-shares-6-places-that-shaped-his-world-understanding-in-horizon in NPR (2019 Mar 27)

Imagination, Heart, Personality

“But we can do so much now, with so little, that we can take care of everybody. That’s why the idea of scarcity is all wrong.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

Source: From 1980s onwards, Buckminster Fuller Talks Politics (1982)

Idea

“The way a question is asked limits and disposes the ways in which any answer to it—right or wrong—may be given.”

Susanne K. Langer book Philosophy in a New Key

Source: Philosophy in a New Key (1942), Ch. 1, p. 1

Way, Question

“Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch. Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong...The constitution can no longer help you if you disrespect a person.”

Rodrigo Duterte (1945) Filipino politician and the 16th President of the Philippines

Duterte endorses killing corrupt journalists https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/788543/duterte-endorses-killing-corrupt-journalists(June 1, 2016) Duterte says killing of corrupt Philippines journalists justified https://edition.cnn.com/2016/05/31/asia/philippines-duterte-journalists/index.html(June 1, 2016)

Freedom, Help, Personality, Bitch

“Not that any simple principle exists, and not that I couldn’t be wrong. But it seems to me—well, that which we are, our society or culture or what you want to name it, has a life and a right of its own.”

Poul Anderson book The People of the Wind

He drew breath. “Best beloved,” he said, “if communities didn’t resist encroachments, they’d soon be swallowed by the biggest and greediest. Wouldn’t they? In the end, dead sameness. No challenges, no inspirations from somebody else’s way. What service is it to life if we let that happen?

Chapter 19 (p. 175)
The People of the Wind (1973)

Life

“Confusion has seized us, and all things go wrong: The women have leaped from "their spheres" And instead of fixed stars, shoot as comets along,And are setting the world by the ears!”

Maria Weston Chapman (1806–1885) American abolitionist

From "The Times That Try Men's Souls", as quoted in [Squire, Belle, The Woman Movement in America: A Short Account of the Struggle for Equal Rights, https://books.google.com/books?id=SnOIAAAAMAAJ, 1911, A. C. McClurg & Company, 71-2]

Women, World, Star

“I'd rather be optimistic and wrong; than pessimistic and right.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Source: Elon Musk Quotes https://quotepico.com/quotes?author=elon-musk

“Regardless of what you may think about yourself or what you have been told about yourself or what you may have been taught to believe about yourself… THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU. THERE NEVER WAS.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Thinking

“There are three great questions which in life we have over and over again to answer. Is it right or wrong? Is it true or false? Is it beautiful or ugly? Our education ought to help us to answer these questions.”

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury book The Use of Life

The Use of Life (1894), ch. VI: National Education Source: The Use of Life http://archive.org/details/uselife02lubbgoog/page/n114/mode/2up on Archive.Org, pages 102—103

Life, Education, Beauty, Question

“Ask questions stubbornly, very proud men who seeing themselves right without knowing anything about the matter. This shows lack of piety, a tendency to ranting, a weak mind, and excessive vanity. [...] If you hear, or read writing (you object to), do not react with violence until you have proof that what is expressed is wrong. Do not accept that with the enthusiasm of the credulous man either until being wholly convinced of that. In both situations you blind yourself and drift away from truth… Act like a person who has no preconceived views, one ready to know and accept what is right and reject what is wrong.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

ibid, 116

Men, Truth, Question, Reading

“The use of science in the practice of virtue, is considerable: the man who knows the beauty of virtue will follow it, however possible. Knowing the evil of wrong, he will avoid it, however possible. He listens to worthy praise, and keeps his distance from unworthy praise. From this is derived that science has a part in every virtue, and that ignorance has one in every vice. Man who is illiterate and who still practices virtue must be extremely pure, a virtuous being. This is the state of Prophets (PBUH) because God had conveyed goodness to them without they acquiring it from men.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

ibid

Men, God, Beauty, Science

“I don't know which way human psychology will go wrong. We have a world in which there is uncertainty. There are new technologies. And one of the problems is that we do things today with a thought to the future. Any purchase is one for the future. If you buy a refrigerator you are making a commitment to the future, so that you have food to eat for the next ten years. That's a simple theory, one of many simple theories -- theories that people agree on and that don't, in a fundamental way, change. But every once in a while there is unemployment, and wages will drop, and there will be several different interpretations.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

quoted in Conor Clarke, An Interview with Kenneth Arrow, Part One https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/07/an-interview-with-kenneth-arrow-part-one/22213/ (2009) New millennium

People, World, Making love, Food

“Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn’t have the courage to say “yes” to life?”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Life, World, Making love, Courage

“What the hell do you think spies are? Model philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They’re not. They’re just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me, little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants, playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong?”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

from a clip from the film adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, starring Richard Burton as Alec Leamas, an alcoholic cynical British spy The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1963) Source: Quoted in “The United States of America Has Gone Mad”: John le Carré on Iraq War, Israel & U.S. Militarism, Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/25/the_united_states_of_america_has (25 December 2020)

Men, God, Hell, Thinking

“Was it not better so to lie?
The fight was done. Even gods tire
Of fighting... My way was the wrong.
Now I should drift and drift along
To endless quiet, golden peace...
And let the tortured body cease.And then a light winked like an eye.
. . . And very many miles away
A girl stood at a warm, lit door,
Holding a lamp. Ray upon ray
It cloaked the snow with perfect light.
And where she was there was no night
Nor could be, ever. God is sure,
And in his hands are things secure.”

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

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage

God, Lie, Peace, Way

“The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Source: "Aubade", Times Literary Supplement, 23 December 1977

Love, Life, Making love, Travel

“I say that we put all our money upon the wrong horse. ... My own conviction is strong that, unless some very essential reforms in the conduct of the government are adopted, the doom of the Turkish Empire cannot be very long postponed.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1897/jan/19/address-in-answer-to-her-majestys-most#column_29 in the House of Lords (19 January 1897), expressing regret for Britain's support of the Ottoman Empire in the Crimean War

Money, Strong, Horse

“When was the last time anybody made a billion of anything safely and reliably? Never. Plants go offline, crap breaks, you can't find a part. There's a ton of things that can go wrong just on manufacturing”

Arthur Caplan (1950) American academic

a billion COVID-19 vaccines Source: Arthur Caplan (2020) cited in " This Is How We’ll Vaccinate the World Against COVID-19 https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/devices/this-is-how-well-vaccinate-the-world-against-covid19" on IEEE Spectrum, 15 December 2020.

Time, Parting

“Over the next 10 days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent. If we're wrong, we will be made fools of, but if we're right a lot of them will go to jail. Let's have trial by combat.”

Rudy Giuliani (1944–2001) American businessperson and politician, former mayor of New York City

Quoted by * 2021-01-06
Rudy Giuliani Loses Honorary Degree From Middlebury College in Capitol Riot's Aftermath
Alexandra Garrett
Newsweek
https://www.newsweek.com/rudy-giuliani-loses-honorary-degree-middlebury-college-capitol-riots-aftermath-1561331

Fools

“Allah, You created me when I was not worthy of mention; And You provided for me when I had nothing; And I wronged my soul and sinned, and I confess my guilt. If You forgive me, that will in no way reduce Your sovereignty; And if You punish me, that will in no way augment Your authority. You can find others to punish besides me, But I can find no one to forgive me but You. Truly, You are the most Merciful of those who show mercy. The Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) said 'Owais will come to Madinah to meet me, but he will not find me physically, for I shall then be united with my Lord.”

Uwais al-Qarani (594–657) Muslim saint

Quoted in Owais Qarni and his love for Prophet, https://www.arabnews.com/node/930256/islam-perspective by Abu Tariq Hijazi, Arab News, (28 May 2016)

Peace, Way, Soul, Forgiveness

“Syringes are probably less of a problem than vials and stoppers. If I was wanting to pay attention to what can go wrong (for COVID-19 vaccination), it'd be that.”

Georges C. Benjamin (1952) american public health official

Georges C. Benjamin (2020) cited in " This Is How We'll Vaccinate the World Against COVID-19 https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/devices/this-is-how-well-vaccinate-the-world-against-covid19" on IEEE Spectrum, 15 December 2020.

Problem

“As for 'story' I never yet did enjoy a novel or play in which someone didn't tell me afterward that there was something wrong with the story, so that's going to be no drawback as far as I'm concerned. "Good Lord, why am I so bored"—"I know; it must be the plot developing harmoniously."”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

So I often reply to myself, and there rises before me my special nightmare—that of the writer as craftsman, natty and deft.
Letter 104, to Forrest Reid, 19 June 1912
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask "Why are we here?"”

Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me. Source: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 239, from interview in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=48m10s

Thinking

“Slavery is disheartening; but Nature is not so helpless but it can rid itself of every last wrong. But the spasms of nature are centuries and ages and will tax the faith of short-lived men. Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely. The proverbs of the nations affirm these delays, but affirm the arrival. They say, "God may consent, but not forever."”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

The delay of the Divine Justice — this was the meaning and soul of the Greek Tragedy, — this was the soul of their religion.
"The Fugitive Slave Law", a lecture in New York City (7 March 1854), The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904), p. 238

Men, God, Age, Faith

“The Vegetarians may confidently reckon that the new perfect man will not kill and devour other animals, nay, will not kill and devour vegetables, if it is cruel and wrong to do so. Should he after serious moral reflection conclude that vegetable life is as sacred as animal, he will doubtless be clever enough to derive plenty of wholesome food from the mineral kingdom; and should he deem it wrong to ravage even this for so vulgar a purpose as filling his belly, he will doubtless be able to nourish himself without devouring anything at all.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part V, pp. 79–80
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Life, Food, Confidence, Animals

“Most people think us Haitian are mindless, we'll y'all wrong.”

Kadda Sheekoff (1993) Haitian rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, and entrepreneur

Source: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm11318964/quotes?ref_=m_nm_trv_trv

People, Thinking

“Rights come from human experience, particularly experiences with injustice… In a word, rights come from wrongs.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age, Little, Brown & Company, New York, NY, (2002) p. 4

“Pretending to be God and parroting his power of creation is an enormous risk that can plunge men into a barbarity. Never forget that there is only one creator: God. In the wrong hands, today's development can lead tomorrow to a devastating leap in the dark.”

Domenico Mogavero (1947) Catholic bishop

Catholic Church: synthetic cell potentially a good development but life originates from God https://www.foxnews.com/world/catholic-church-synthetic-cell-potentially-a-good-development-but-life-originates-from-god (May 21, 2010)

Men, God, Forgetting

“It's true, that's how your mind works. I can tell you that honestly, because I own an agency and I talk to girls all day and all night about what they want to do, and they are like, "I want to go into mainstream" and I tell them, "You are at the wrong agency; you are not going to get into mainstream through porn -- it's just not how it works." I think girls like Jenna Jameson and I have crossed over and made it, but mainstream is still kind of shaky once you've been in adult. After doing those magazines I started doing movies and it wasn't a big leap, like you said."”

Tera Patrick (1976) American pornographic actress

do not play a gain what I am doing. On her decision to move from Penthouse to film Interview with Roger T. Pipe, July 2000 http://www.rogreviews.com/interviews/tera_patrick.asp

Girl, Thinking, Night

Quotes about wrong page 42

Quotes about wrong
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