Never from Obstinacy take the Wrong Side because your Opponent has anticipated you in taking the Right One.
[Nunca por tema seguir el peor partido, porque el contrario se adelantó y escogió el mejor.]Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish Jesuit priest, writer, philosopher
The Art of Worldly Wisdom [Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia], § 142 (1647) [tr. Jacobs (1892)]
(Source)
(Source (Spanish)). Alternate translations:
Never to espouse a bad party in spight to an Adversary, who hath taken the better.
[Flesher ed. (1685)]
Never out of stubbornness hold to the wrong side, just because your adversary anticipated you, and chose the right.
[tr. Fischer (1937)]
Don’t defend the wrong side out of stubbornness, just because your opponent happened to arrive first and choose the right side.
[tr. Maurer (1992)]
Quotations about:
sides
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There are two sides to every argument, unless a person is personally involved, in which case there is only one.
(Other Authors and Sources)
“Cutler Webster’s Law,” in P. Dickson (ed.), The Official Rules (1978)
Just because you’re on their side doesn’t mean they’re on your side.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden (b. 1956) American editor, writer, essayist
Making Light, “Commonplaces”
(Source)
You also ask, if I think the world tendency is towards Fascism, why do I support the war. It is a choice of evils — I fancy nearly every war is that. I know enough of British imperialism not to like it, but I would support it against Nazism or Japanese imperialism, as the lesser evil. Similarly I would support the USSR against Germany because I think the USSR cannot altogether escape its past and retains enough of the original ideas of the Revolution to make it a more hopeful phenomenon than Nazi Germany. I think, and have thought ever since the war began, in 1936 or thereabouts, that our cause is the better, but we have to keep on making it the better, which involves constant criticism.
George Orwell (1903-1950) English writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Letter to Noel Willmett (18 May 1944)
I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 2: The Two Towers, Book 3, ch. 4 “Treebeard” [Treebeard] (1954)
(Source)
