Controversy Quotes
More Controversy Quotes
If you do not specify and confront real issues, what you say will surely obscure them. If you do not embody controversy, what you say will be an acceptance of the drift to the coming human hell.
c. wright mills— Foreword, The Marxists (1962)
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
— Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (1963).
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King Jr.— American civil rights activist
The theory of politics that emerges from the political literature of the pre-Revolutionary years rests on the belief that what lay behind every political scene, the ultimate explanation of every political controversy, was the disposition of power.
bernard bailyn— Chapter III, POWER AND LIBERTY A THEORY OF POLITICS, p. 55
Avoid all controversy in preaching, talking, or writing; preach nothing down but the devil, and nothing up but Jesus Christ.
john berridge— Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 480.
It is past all controversy that what costs dearest is, and ought to be, most valued.
Miguel de Cervantes— Chap 11. (Part I)
Edward de Bono is the Cambridge academic who is making a lot of money out of peddling his ideas about "lateral thinking" to managers, bureaucrats and anyone else who will pay to listen. Whether the concept of lateral thinking is pure hokum or a precious revelation is a matter of some controversy. Either way, de Bono has won himself a small niche in communications history as the star of Britain's first complete, video- cassette-oriented film series, "Organised creativity and lateral thinking".
edward de bono— Timothy Johnson (1971) "Science and the paymasters: Videocasettes: What happened" In: New Scientist Vol. 52, nr. 774, 16 dec 1971. p. 177
"I find, Andrew Keen's, his whole pitch, I think he was just pure and simple looking for an angle, to create some controversy and sell a book, I don't think there's any substance whatever to his rants."
tim o'reilly— The Truth According to the Wikipedia- IJsbrand van Veelen
No sane person should believe that something is 'subjective' merely because it cannot be settled beyond controversy.
hilary putnam— Hilary Putnam (1987) The many faces of realism. p. 71
Doubtless there are times when controversy becomes a necessary evil. But let us remember that it is an evil.
arthur penrhyn stanley— P. 162. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of "crackpot" than the stigma of conformity.
thomas j. watson— Attributed to Watson in: Georg Blair, Sandy Meadows (1996) A Real-Life Guide to Organizational Change. p. 117
From the accession of Henry the Seventh to the breaking out of the civil wars, England enjoyed much greater exemption from war, foreign and domestic, than for a long period before, and during the controversy between the houses of York and Lancaster. These years of peace were favorable to commerce and the arts. Commerce and the arts augmented general and individual knowledge; and knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty.
Daniel Webster— Page 93. (On the Completion of the Bunker Hill Monument (1843))
Economy is the first and great article (economy such as I understand it) in my financial creed. The controversy between direct and indirect taxation holds a minor, though important place.
william ewart gladstone— Letter to his brother Robertson of the Financial Reform Association at Liverpool (1859), as quoted in Gladstone as Financier and Economist (1931) by F. W. Hirst, p. 241
Marx set out to resolve the contradictions and to correct the errors in classical political economy. In this he thought he had succeeded very well. Judging by the sound and the fury of the controversy surrounding his interpretations, he either succeeded too well or deluded himself to the success of his enterprise.
david harvey— Chapter 2, Production and Distribution, p. 39
The next stop on Reagan's European tour after Bitburg was Madrid, where he made a speech in which he said, "I know there's been a lot of controversy about the United States and Spain at that time, indeed some Americans once came here to fight in the civil war." He said, "But the thing is," said Reagan, "they were on the wrong side." In other words a conscious choice, a conscious and deliberate remark showing that the sympathy for fascism, not accidental, not anecdotal, not a slip of the tongue, but something bred-in-the-bone; and, I think, also worth recalling.
christopher hitchens— YouTube video, New York City: The Nation Institute, 1 May 1995
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
robert h. jackson— 319 U.S. at 638.
I got myself into a lovely little shall we say controversy with André Breton, by pointing out that the discipline of spontaneity, which he was asking his surrealist neophytes to adopt, was new for language but something that composers had been practicing for centuries.
virgil thomson— Virgil Thomson (1981). A Virgil Thomson Reader, p.548. New York: E.P. Dutton Inc.See: André Breton
One of the first major steps in the direction of modern skepticism came through the victory of Occam over Aquinas in a controversy about language. The statement that modi essendi were replaced by modi significandi et intelligendi, or that ontological referents were abandoned in favor of pragmatic significations, describes broadly the change in philosophy which continues to our time. From Occam to Bacon, from Bacon to Hobbes, and from Hobbes to contemporary semanticists, the progression is clear: ideas become psychological figments, words become useful signs.
richard weaver— “The Power of the Word,” p. 36
History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription moulders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?
— [[Washington Irving], The Sketch Book, Westminster Abbey.
I don't do things for the response or the controversy. I just live my life.
rihanna— Interview with "Access Hollywood" on March 15, 2016
Doubtless there are times when controversy becomes a necessary evil. But let us remember that it is an evil.
— Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, p. 162. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Avoid all controversy in preaching, talking, or writing; preach nothing down but the devil, and nothing up but Jesus Christ.
— John Berridge, p. 480. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
... had I taken the line, so often adopted by strong men in controversy, of justifying the means by the result.
— St. Jerome, Letter 48: "To Pammachius" (393 or 394 A.D.)
At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons -- convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of children, the embarrassment of illegitimacy, etc.
— Byron White, U.S. Supreme Court, one of two dissenters in Roe v. Wade, (January 22, 1973).
The line, often adopted by strong men in controversy, of justifying the means by the end.
— Letter 48
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. / One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
— Robert H. Jackson (1943). West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. Supreme Court of the United States. pp. 319 U.S. 624, 638.
At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons -- convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of children, the embarrassment of illegitimacy, etc.
— Byron White, U.S. Supreme Court, one of two dissenters in Roe v. Wade, (January 22, 1973).
It fell victim to what is often called the “Streisand effect,” in which an attempt to repress information attracts more attention to it. The controversy over the album cover sparked millions of downloads and distributions of the Virgin Killer image from other sources.
— Milton L. Mueller (2010). Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance. The MIT Press. pp. 28-29. ISBN 0262014599.
From this circumstance alone, that a controversy has been long kept on foot, and remains undecided, we may presume that there is some ambiguity in the expression, and that the disputants affix different ideas to the terms employed in the controversy.
— David Hume, in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), VIII: Of Liberty and Necessity, Part I
