Controversy Quotes - Page 8

• The enemy of a writer is not controversy but obscurity.

  William P. Young

  Enemy, Obscurity

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• I'm never surprised by controversies that are whipped up in Washington.

  Barack Obama

  Barack Obama's Remarks in Joint Press Conference with Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom in Brussels, Belgium, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. June 5, 2014.

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• I don't want to create controversy; I just have an opinion on things, and there is nothing wrong with stating your opinion if you are asked. Everyone wants that right, and because you are famous doesn't mean you have less of a right.

  John Travolta

  Mean, Want, Opinion

  "John Travolta Defends Tom Cruise on Psychiatry". www.foxnews.com. June 20, 2007.

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• It becomes easier to handle controversies when you are a part of the film industry. I just take them with
  a smile.

  Katrina Kaif

  Film, Easier, Handle

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• Speaking of the motto of the New York Times, "All the news that's fit to print:" It is hard to think of any group of seven words that have aroused more newspaper controversy.

  Gerald W. Johnson

  New York, Thinking, Groups

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• For what I wrote that started this whole controversy, I deserved to be criticized, and I felt bad about writing it. I felt bad mainly as a writer and a thinker.

  Gregg Easterbrook

  Writing, Ukulele, Thinker

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• I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry's program planners believe.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Believe, America, Mature

  "In Search of Light: The Broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, 1938-1961".

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• History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders 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

  Fall, Character, Dust

  Washington Irving (2006). “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories From the Sketch Book”, p.144, Penguin

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• Controversy is what mediocre people start because they can't communicate anything meaningful.

  G. Willow Wilson

  Meaningful, People, Mediocre

  G. Willow Wilson (2010). “The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman's Journey to Love and Islam”, p.261, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• A fiction which is designed to inculcate an object wholly alien to the imagination sins against the first law of art; and if a writer of fiction narrow his scope to particulars so positive as polemical controversy in matters ecclesiastical, political or moral, his work may or may not be an able treatise, but it must be a very poor novel.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Art, Law, Imagination

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• I wrote a story for my kids. It's fiction. It's not systematic theology. It's not a new book of the Bible. It's flawed, I wrote it. All of that goes into the mix, but I love the controversy. It elevates the conversation.

  William P. Young

  Book, Kids, Fiction

  Interview with C.J. Darlington, Miriam Parker, Deena Peterson, Melissa J. Carswell, www.titletrakk.com.

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• It is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obsesses the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into innumerable and inane controversies and fancies.

  Francis Bacon

  Learning, Mean, Men

  "New Method, Book I (Aphorism 43)". Book by Francis Bacon, 1620.

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• The line, often adopted by strong men in controversy, of justifying the means by the end.

  St. Jerome

  Cute, Strong, Mean

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• In the networks' endless pursuit of controversy, we should ask what is the end value ... to enlighten or to profit? What is the end result ... to inform or to confuse? How does the ongoing exploration for more action, more excitements, more drama, serve our national search for internal peace and stability.

  Spiro T. Agnew

  Drama, Doe, Ongoing

  John R. Coyne, Spiro T. Agnew (1972). “The Impudent Snobs: Agnew Vs. the Intellectual Establishment”, New Rochelle, N.Y. : Arlington House

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• It is past all controversy that what costs dearest is, and ought to be, most valued.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Past, History, Cost

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1993). “Don Quixote”, p.270, Wordsworth Editions

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• I feel like great TED Talks are ones that are a little bit subject to interpretation, that do provoke further conversation - and potentially controversy.

  Damon Lindelof

  Littles, Ted Talks, Conversation

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• This notion that's peddled by the religious right - that they are oppressed is not true. Sometimes it's a cynical ploy to move their agenda ahead. The classic example being that somehow secularists are trying to eliminate Christmas, which strikes me as some kind of manufactured controversy.

  Barack Obama

  Religious, Moving, Cynical

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• Controversy, though always an evil in itself, is sometimes a necessary evil.

  Richard Whately

  Evil, Necessary Evil, Sometimes

  Richard Whately (1856). “Thoughts and Apophthegms: From the Writings of Archbishop Whateley”, p.92

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• Political success is often dependent on the ability to be heard above the din of controversy and debate and to set a course with one's own compass.

  Madeleine M. Kunin

  Political, Politics, Debate

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• The controversy between rule of law and rule of men was never relevant to women because, along with juveniles, imbeciles, and other classes of legal nonpersons, they had no access to law except through men.

  Freda Adler

  Men, Law, Class

  "Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal". Book by Freda Adler and Herbert M. Adler, 1975.

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• The political controversy surrounding this Boston's Big Dig could have the effect of throwing cold water on any plans for farsighted infrastructure development around the country.

  Andrew Natsios

  Country, Boston, Water

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• I did not know there was any controversy. I don't get a lot of time to read the fan forums, etc. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to have more storylines. I was just so happy to step in and pick up some of the slack for Emily while she was pregnant. It was so important for Emily to concentrate on her health and the well-being of her baby. In the end ... she is a great mother and her baby is adorable. I did not realize there was any controversy. LOL!

  Eva LaRue

  Mother, Baby, Opportunity

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• Avoid all controversy in preaching, talking, or writing; preach nothing down but the devil, and nothing up but Jesus Christ.

  John Berridge

  Jesus, Writing, Talking

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• 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

  Years, Political, Literature

  Bernard Bailyn (2012). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, p.55, Harvard University Press

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• The once rather old-fashioned science of paleontology finds itself in a maelstrom of excitement and controversy. Astrophysicists, atmospheric scientists, geochemists, geophysicists, and statisticians are all contributing to the extinction problem. And the general public is taking part through television talk shows, magazine cover stories, newspaper editorials, and even the occasional mention in gossip columns.

  David M. Raup

  Gossip, Television, Maelstrom

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