This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"A driving ambition is of little use if you're on the wrong road" - Frank Tyger
"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them." - Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
"One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and petty ones to fear." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Right is right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong." - Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
"The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it's possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic." - George Soros, Hungarian as Soros György, born Schwartz György
"There is something terribly wrong with a culture inebriated by noise and gregariousness. " - George Steiner, fully Francis George Steiner
"Not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment." - George Augustus Sala, fully George Augustus Henry Sala
"Most of the dogmatic religions have exhibited a perverse talent for taking the wrong side on the most important concepts in the material universe, from the structure of the solar system to the origin of man." - George Gaylord Simpson
"The theory of dependence will take the wrong path and lead to deception if the analysis is not put within the framework of the worldwide class struggle" - Gustavo Gutiérrez
"When even one American - who has done nothing wrong - is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth - then all Americans are in peril. " - Harry S. Truman
"Many a man can save himself if he admits he's done wrong and takes his punishment." - Henrik Ibsen, aka Henrik Johan Ibsen
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers. (also cited as Grossman's Law)" - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"There is something fundamentally wrong in treating the Earth as if it were a business in liquidation." - Herman E. Daly
"To doubt one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. Don't defend past actions; what is right today may be wrong tomorrow. Don't be consistent; consistency is the refuge of fools." - Hyman George Rickover
"It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one's germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness!" - Irvin David Yalom
"Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your own profession. Do not indulge yourselves to judge of things by the first glimpse, or a short and superficial view of them; for this will fill the mind with errors and prejudices, and give it a wrong turn and ill habit of thinking, and make much work for retraction." - Isaac Watts
"The whole society depends on creating ambition in you. Ambition means a conflict, ambition means that whatsoever you are, you are wrong -- you have to be somewhere else. Wherever you are, you are wrong -- you have to be somewhere else. A constant madness to be somewhere else, to be somebody else, is what ambition is." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"What this country needs is more people to inspire others with confidence, and fewer people to discourage any initiative in the right direction more to get into the thick of things, fewer to sit on the sidelines, merely finding fault more to point out what's right with the world, and fewer to keep harping on what's wrong with it and more who are interested in lighting candles, and fewer who blow them out. " - James Keller
"A truth in ethics is a conclusion backed by reasons. The “correct” answer to a moral question is simply the answer that has the weight of reason on its side. Such truths are objective in the sense that they are true independently of what we might want or think. We cannot make something good or bad just by wishing it to be so because we cannot merely will that the weight of reason be on its side or against it. And this also explains our fallibility: We can be wrong about what is good or bad because we can be wrong about what reason commends." - James Rachels
"The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smiles; and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone. Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night's heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but angels of God." - Jerome K. Jerome, fully Jerome Klapka Jerome
"Some people believe the alternative to bad religion is secularism, but that's wrong . . . . The answer to bad religion is better religion--prophetic rather than partisan, broad and deep instead of narrow, and based on values as opposed to ideology." - Jim Wallis
"The wrong things are predominantly stressed in the schools - things remote from the student's experience and need." - Anne Sullivan, fully Johanna "Anne" Mansfield Macy
"When the soul, then, in any degree possesses the spirit of solitary love, we must not interfere with it. We should inflict a grievous wrong upon it, and upon the Church also, if we were to occupy it, were it only for a moment, in exterior or active duties, however important they might be. When God Himself adjures all not to waken it from its love, who shall venture to do so, and be blameless? In a word, it is for this love that we are all created. Let those men of zeal, who think by their preaching and exterior works to convert the world, consider that they would be much more edifying to the Church, and more pleasing unto God — setting aside the good example they would give if they would spend at least one half their time in prayer, even though they may have not attained to the state of unitive love." - John Yepes “Saint John of the Cross”
"The more seriously you take your growth, the more seriously your people will take you. Leaders never outgrow the need to change. My leadership began to take flight when I allowed myself to press people to change—whether they thanked me or cursed me. Eventually, you must disengage from the relationships you’ve outgrown, or they will limit your growth as a leader. Leadership involves the heavy burden of responsibility, and the fear of getting it wrong can paralyze a leader. Confront your inadequacies and push your personal boundaries: It’s the surest way to grow, improve and expand the scope of your influence." - John C. Maxwell
"If everything is coming your way, you are probably in the wrong lane. Adversity and defeat are more conducive to spiritual growth than prosperity and victory." - John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck
"We live in a country where we're supposed to have freedom of the press and religious freedom, but I think to some degree, there's a sense of fear in America today, that if you say the wrong thing, what some people will consider what is wrong, if you step out of line, if you dissent, whether you be an entertainer, that somehow and some way this government or the forces to be will come down on you." - John L. Lewis, fully John Llewellyn Lewis
"Reason alone will not serve. Intuition alone can be improved by reason, but reason alone without intuition can easily lead the wrong way. They both are necessary. " - Jonas Salk
"Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. " - Joseph Addison
"But if a person has had the sense of the Call — the feeling that there’s an adventure for him — and if he doesn’t follow that, but remains in the society because it’s safe and secure, then life dries up. And then he comes to that condition in late middle age: he’s gotten to the top of the ladder, and found that it’s against the wrong wall.If you have the guts to follow the risk, however, life opens, opens, opens up all along the line. I’m not superstitious, but I do believe in spiritual magic, you might say. I feel that if one follows what I call one’s bliss — the thing that really gets you deep in your gut and that you feel is your life — doors will open up. They do! " - Joseph Campbell
"Infidelity and faith look both through the perspective glass, but at contrary ends. Infidelity looks through the wrong end of the glass; and, therefore, sees those objects near which are afar off, and makes great things little,--diminishing the greatest spiritual blessings, and removing far from us threatened evils. Faith looks at the right end, and brings the blessings that are far off in time close to our eye, and multiplies God's mercies, which, in a distance, lost their greatness." - Joseph Hall
"When the truth is in your way, you are on the wrong road. " - Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek
"Metaphysical guilt is the lack of absolute solidarity with the human being as such--an indelible claim beyond morally meaningful duty. This solidarity is violated by my presence at a wrong or a crime. It is not enough that I cautiously risk my life to prevent it; if it happens, and I was there, and if I survive where the other is killed, I know from a voice within myself: I am guilty of being still alive." - Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers
"An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time." - Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II
"It is wrong to cling to what you should not believe in, or to fail to ask about a truth you should seek." - Dōgen, aka Dōgen Kigen, Eihei Dōgen, titled as Dōgen Zenji NULL
"Analysis, clarity and precision all are of great value, especially in philosophy. Just because a misapplied clarity is current or the wrong sort of precision is stressed, that is no reason to give up clarity of precision. Without precision, one cannot do anything in philosophy." - Kurt Gödel, also Goedel
"If it be the right way, advance; if it be the wrong way, retire." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Malaise is a consequence of the depersonalization and permanent insecurity of modern life. Yet it has never been felt among people so strongly as in the past few decades. The inchoate protest, the sense of disenchantment, and the vague complaints and forebodings that are already perceptible in late nineteenth century art and literature have been diffused into general consciousness. There they function as a kind of vulgarized romanticism, a Weltschmerz in perpetuum, a sickly sense of disturbance that is subterranean but explosive. The intermittent and unexpected acts of violence on the part of the individual and the similar acts of violence to which whole nations can be brought are indices of this underground torment. Vaguely sensing that something has gone astray in modern life but also strongly convinced that he lacks the power to right whatever is wrong (even if it were possible to discover what is wrong), the individual lives in a sort of eternal adolescent uneasiness." - Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman
"There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness." - Eldridge Cleaver, fully Leroy Eldridge Cleaver
"Then isn't this rather all a false funeral? Can't it help you to see that there is something wrong when all the dreams in this house-good or bad-had to depend on something that might never have happened if a man had not died? We always say at home: Accident was at the first and will be at the last a poor tree from which the fruits of life may bloom." - Lorraine Hansberry
"Life is complex. Each one of us must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another...The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
"We are wrong to fear superiority of mind and soul; this superiority is very moral, for understanding everything makes a person tolerant and the capacity to feel deeply inspires great goodness." - Madame de Staël, Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, born Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Madame Necker
"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
"You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says or does it. " - Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, Muslim name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
"What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"We can always choose to perceive things differently. We can focus on what's wrong in our life, or we can focus on what's right." - Marianne Williamson
"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together." - Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Baker
"There isn't anything either right or wrong when dealing with co-ordination. There are degrees of movement. Life is really moving from one position to another. We never stop and say, "This is right--this is my posture, this is the way I ought to be". If we do that, we're stiff trying to hold that posture. It isn't natural for our bodies to be held in positions." - Marjorie Barstow
"Better is the wrong with sincerity, than the right with falsehood." - Martin Tupper, fully Martin Farquhar Tupper