Opposing Quotes

• To take arms against a sea of troubles.

  William Shakespeare

  Death, Sea, Speech

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 1, l. 56

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• It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

  Albert Einstein

  Courage, Moving, Simple

  "Small is Beautiful". The Radical Humanist, Vol. 37, No. 5, (p. 22), August 1973.

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• It’s in our interest to take care of others. Self-centrednes s is opposed to basic human nature. In our own interest as human beings we need to pay attention to our inner values. Sometimes people think compassion is only of help to others, while we get no benefit. This is a mistake. When you concern yourself with others, you naturally develop a sense of self-confidence . To help others takes courage and inner strength.

  Dalai Lama

  Wise, Confidence, Spiritual

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• The man who fears war and squats opposing
  My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson
  But is fit only to rot in womanish peace

  Ezra Pound

  Fear, War, Men

  Ezra Pound, Richard Sieburth (2010). “New Selected Poems and Translations”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

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• The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

  Alex Kozinski

  Mistake, Gun, Rights

  "Ninth Circuit Confirms a 2nd Amendment Right to Carry" by Michael James Barton, www.nationalreview.com. February 14, 2014.

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• Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers.

  J. Sidlow Baxter

  Faith, Christian, Prayer

  "The Tremendous Power of Prayer". Book by Bob Kelly and Charlie Jones, p. 46, 2000.

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• China is not a superpower, nor will she ever seek to be one... If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialist, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it.

  Deng Xiaoping

  Change, Bullying, Power

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• I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.

  John Diefenbaker

  Country, Freedom, Believe

  John George Diefenbaker (1982). “The Wit & Wisdom of John Diefenbaker”, Hurtig Trade

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• The artist usually sets out -- or used to -- to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper functions of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Artist, Two, Way

  Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) ch. 1

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• There is an invisible strength within us; when it recognizes two opposing objects of desire, it grows stronger.

  Rumi

  Two, Desire, Stronger

  Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (Maulana), Jelaluddin Rumi, Kabir Helminski, Andrew Harvey (2005). “The Rumi Collection: An Anthology of Translations of Mevlâna Jalâluddin Rumi”, p.4, Shambhala Publications

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• What some men don't understand is that by opposing policies to reduce violence, promote equal pay and universal healthcare and voting to limit access to contraception and legal abortion, they are relegating women to another century, a time when men ruled exclusively and women were considered property and had to be guided by a firm masculine hand.

  Madeleine M. Kunin

  Men, Equal Pay, Hands

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• Sound is the vocabulary of nature... noises are as well articulated as the words in a dictionary... Opposing the world of sound is the world of music.

  Pierre Schaeffer

  Vocabulary, Sound, World

  Interview with the Pioneer of Musique Concrete, vol. 2, n° 1, 1987.

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• The last six years afforded me much time and food for thought. I came to the conclusion that the human race is not divided into two opposing camps of good and evil. It is made up of those who are capable of learning and those who are incapable of doing so.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Race, Years, Two

  Aung San Suu Kyi's Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women in Beijing, China, awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu. August 31, 1995.

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• Usually when the opposing team does well, the crowd quiets down. All I began to hear was a chant 'L-S-U, L-S-U.' It got louder and louder and louder. It was the loudest I've ever heard a stadium.

  Mark Richt

  Team, Lsu, Doe

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• If you go to Cass Sunstein, what net neutrality means is now if you go to FoxNews.com, you will have Arianna Huffington, a little box pop up with her showing that Bill O’Reilly is wrong on this or here’s an opposing view of Bill O’Reilly.

  Glenn Beck

  Mean, Views, Neutrality

  "The Glenn Beck Program", www.glennbeck.com. December 2, 2010.

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• Dogmas take endless forms, and when you can persuade different people to hold opposing dogmas, the manipulation of conflict and control through "divide and rule" becomes easy. It is happening today in the same way - more so, in fact - as it has throughout human history.

  David Icke

  People, Different, Today

  David Icke (1996). “--and the Truth Shall Set You Free”, Truth Seeker Company Incorporated

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• The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.

  John F. Kennedy

  Long Ago, People, Secret

  Address to the American Newspaper Publishers, delivered 27 April 1961, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York

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• What makes the Southern Poverty Law Center particularly odious is its habit of taking legitimate conservatives and jumbling them with genuine hate groups (the Klan, Aryan Nation, skinheads, etc.), to make it appear that there's a logical relationship between say opposing affirmative action and lynching, or demands for an end to government services for illegal aliens and attacks on dark-skinned immigrants. The late novelist/philosopher Ayn Rand called this 'the broad-brush smear.'

  Don Feder

  Hate, Dark, Government

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• It is not faith per se that creates the problem; it is conviction, the notion that one cannot be wrong, that opposing views are necessarily invalid and may even be intolerable.

  Jack McDevitt

  Views, May, Problem

  "Odyssey". Book by Jack McDevitt, 2006.

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• The bombs held in current nuclear arsenals are seventy times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. If we don't begin opposing the drift towards more and more of them, we will live in the shadow of the mushroom cloud for the rest of our lives - and millions may die there.

  Johann Hari

  Powerful, Mushrooms, Clouds

  "And the solution to the Iran crisis is". JohannHari.com, January 22, 2006.

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• The opposing tendencies of concentration and spread are of little consequence in the liberal model of political economy.

  Robert Gilpin

  Political, Littles, Economy

  Robert Gilpin (2016). “The Political Economy of International Relations”, p.94, Princeton University Press

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• Nonviolent action involves opposing the opponent's power, including his police and military capacity, not with the weapons chosen by him but by quite different means. Repression by the opponent is used against his own power position in a kind of political "ju-jitsu" and the very sources of his power thus reduced or removed, with the result that his political and military position is seriously weakened or destroyed.

  Gene Sharp

  Military, Mean, Power

  "The Politics of Nonviolent Action". Book by Gene Sharp, 1973.

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• The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Truth, War, Power

  B. H. Liddell Hart (2009). “Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American”, p.10, Da Capo Press

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• There are a lot of people who say we need to cut the amount of money that's spent in politics. I'm not sure that I agree. But I am sure that if you were talking about cutting the amount of money spent in politics, the media would have a strong interest in opposing you, because they make an enormous amount of money from political advertisements.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Strong, Cutting, Media

  "Lawrence Lessig Has a 'Moonshot' Plan to Halt Our Slide Toward Plutocracy". Interview with Joshua Holland, billmoyers.com. April 25, 2014.

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• The product of movement and counter-movement is tension. When tension working strength is expressed, it endows the work of art with the living effect of coordinated, though opposing, forces.

  Hans Hofmann

  Art, Movement, Force

  Hans Hofmann, Sara T. Weeks, Bartlett H. Hayes (1967). “Search for the Real: And Other Essays”, p.66, MIT Press

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