Incorrigible Quotes

• It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.33, Broadway Books

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• Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

  John Updike

  Success, Writing, Decay

  John Updike's acceptance speech for Edward MacDowell Medal, as quoted in New York Times, August 26, 1981.

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• The idealist is incorrigible: if he is thrown out of his heaven he makes an ideal of his hell.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Heaven, Hell, Idealist

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• I pride myself on being incorrigible. I have a very hard time being told what to do.

  Joe Satriani

  Pride, Hard Times, Hard

  Guitar World, May 2000.

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• There may be some incorrigible human beings who cannot be changed except by God's own mercy to that one person.

  Warren E. Burger

  That One Person, May, Mercy

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• In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.

  A. E. Housman

  Funny, Sarcastic, Air

  "Voices: A Memoir". Book by Frederic Prokosch, 1983.

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• Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.

  William Hazlitt

  Race, Idols, Evil

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.553

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• Do not be inaccessible. None is so perfect that he does not need at times the advice of others. He is an incorrigible ass who will never listen to any one. Even the most surpassing intellect should find a place for friendly counsel. Sovereignty itself must learn to lean. There are some that are incorrigible simply because they are inaccessible: They fall to ruin because none dares to extricate them. The highest should have the door open for friendship; it may prove the gate of help. A friend must be free to advise, and even to upbraid, without feeling embarrassed.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Fall, Should Have, Doors

  Baltasar Gracian (2006). “The Art of Worldly Wisdom”, p.59, Shambhala Publications

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• If you have never been called a defiant, incorrigible, impossible woman… have faith. There is yet time.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Have Faith, Impossible, Ifs

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• If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible, forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly, rebellious, you're on the right track.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Track, Rebellious, Unruly

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• Weakness is the only fault that is incorrigible.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Weakness, Faults

  Francois duc de La-Rochefoucauld (1828). “Maximes Et Reflexions Morales Traduites en Grec Moderne Par Wladimir Brunet; Avec Une Traduction Anglaise en Regard”, p.73

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• Early in my school career, I turned out to be an incorrigible disciplinary problem. I could understand what the teacher was saying as fast as she could say it, I found time hanging heavy, so I would occasionally talk to my neighbor. That was my great crime, I talked in school.

  Isaac Asimov

  Teacher, School, Science

  Isaac Asimov (2002). “It's Been a Good Life”, Pyr Books

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• The greatest obstacle to progress is not man's inherited pugnacity, but his incorrigible tendency to parasitism.

  William Ralph Inge

  Men, Progress, Obstacles

  William Ralph Inge (1920). “Outspoken Essays”

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• A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Knaves, Fool, Dangerous

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.188

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• I am not merely a habitual quoter but an incorrigible one. I am, I may as well face it, more quotatious than an old stock-market ticker-tape machine, except that you can't unplug me.

  Joseph Epstein

  Tape, Machines, May

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• The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Educational

  Joseph Eger, Albert Einstein (2005). “Einstein's Violin: A Conductor's Notes on Music, Physics, and Social Change”, Tarcher

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• Children who have proven themselves to be incorrigible by the age of twelve should be quickly and quietly beheaded, lest they grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate the likeness of their being.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Children, Maturity, Age

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• Since the early days, [the church] has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was an apologist for the divine right of kings.

  H. L. Mencken

  Kings, Men, Law

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• Even the most incorrigible maverick has to be born somewhere. He may leave the group that produced him-he may be forced to-but nothing will efface his origins, the marks of which he carries with him everywhere. I think it is important to know this and even find it a matter for rejoicing, as the strongest people do, regardless of their station. On this acceptance, literally, the life of a writer depends.

  James A. Baldwin

  Acceptance, Thinking, Origin Of Life

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• As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible.

  Susan Sontag

  Weakness, Different, Needs

  Susan Sontag (2013). “Regarding the Pain of Others”, p.98, Macmillan

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• Remember, Monsieur, that the downfall of most Communities comes from the cowardice of Superiors in not holding firm and in not purging them of the troublesome and incorrigible.

  Vincent de Paul

  Leadership, Community, Remember

  Saint Vincent de Paul, Pierre Coste (1990). “Correspondence, Conferences, Documents: Correspondence; January 1640-July 1646)”

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• On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.

  Albert Camus

  Real, Ignorance, Men

  Albert Camus (1948). “The Plague”, Vintage

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• Neither an enlightened philosophy, nor all the political wisdom of Rome, nor even the faith and virtue of the Christians availed against the incorrigible tradition of antiquity. Something was wanted, beyond all the gifts of reflection and experience - a faculty of self government and self control, developed like its language in the fibre of a nation, and growing with its growth.

  Lord Acton

  Christian, Philosophy, Reflection

  "The History of Freedom in Christianity". Lord Acton's Address Delivered to the Members of the Bridgnorth Institute, acton.org. May 28, 1877.

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• I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

  William James

  Men, Intellectual, Doubt

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature”, p.116, Xist Publishing

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• Some persons hold that, while it is proper for the lawgiver to encourage and exhort men to virtue on moral grounds, in the expectation that those who have had a virtuous moral upbringing will respond, yet he is bound to impose chastisement and penalties on the disobedient and ill-conditioned, and to banish the incorrigible out of the state altogether. For (they argue) although the virtuous man, who guides his life by moral ideals, will be obedient to reason, the base, whose desires are fixed on pleasure, must be chastised by pain, like a beast of burden.

  Aristotle

  Pain, Men, Law

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