- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.Please feel free to browse and borrow.
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
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Quotations about opposition
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
If you attack Stupidity, you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life, and you will make small progress against it.
Robertson Davies (1913-1995) Canadian author, editor, publisher
The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)
(Source)
He who is mistaken in an action which he sincerely believes to be right may be an enemy, but retains our esteem.
[Celui qui se trompe dans une intention qu’il croit bonne, on peut le combattre, on ne cesse pas de l’estimer.]
Jules Verne (1828-1905) French novelist, poet, playwright
The Mysterious Island, Part 3, ch. 16 (1874)
(Source)
Everybody favors free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground.
Heywood Broun (1888-1939) American journalist, author
New York World (23 Oct 1926)
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) US President (1913-20), educator, political scientist
Speech, Detroit (10 Jul 1916)
For man’s only weapon is courage that flinches not from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not even the legions of Hell can stand.
Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
Charles Caleb "C. C." Colton (1780-1832) English cleric, writer
Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words, # 28 (1821 ed.)
A President is best judged by the enemies he makes when he has really hit his stride.
Maxwell "Max" Lerner (1902-1992) American journalist, columnist, educator
Column, New York Star (9 Jan 1949)
Reprinted in "The Education of Harry Truman," pt. 4, The Unfinished Country (1959).
About one-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.
Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968) American politician
Speech, University of Pennsylvania (6 May 1964)
The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.
Alexander Jablokov (b. 1956) American writer
“The Place of No Shadows” (1990)
Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.
Jimmy Carter (b. 1924) American politician, US President (1977-1981), Nobel laureate [James Earl Carter, Jr.]
Address to the Nation (4 Jan 1980)
On Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
Americans have a lazy habit of defining themselves in terms of what they are against rather than what they believe in.
A. Whitney Brown (b. 1952) American comic actor, writer
(Attributed)
