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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong... It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideals.

  Emma Watson

  Strong, Men, Sensitive Man

  "Emma Watson: Gender equality is your issue too". UN Speech on the HeForShe campaign, New York, www.unwomen.org. September 20, 2014.

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• if you pursue the truth far enough you always wind up in the land of paradox. You reach a point where the apparent truth divides into two opposing truths and then you have to try to reach beyond them to grasp the ultimate truth, their synthesis.

  Susan Howatch

  Wind, Land, Two

  Susan Howatch, Bruce Johnson, Charles Adolph Huttar (2005). “Scandalous Truths: Essays by and about Susan Howatch”, p.81, Susquehanna University Press

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• Take your well-disciplined strengths, stretch them between the two great opposing poles, because inside human beings is where God learns.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Two, Wells, Humans

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• While there is no one who hasn't an evil bone in their body, there is also no one who is totally evil to the core. the fact that someone harbors opposing emotions simply makes them human.

  Masaru Emoto

  Evil, Body, Facts

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• I give nightly praise to my Maker that I never cast a ballot to bring that lazy, disreputable, ill-tempered beast into what was once my home. I'm glad that I had the courage to go on record as opposing that illegitimate, shameless flea-bag that now shares my bed and board. You abstainer, you!

  Frank B. Gilbreth Jr.

  Home, Giving, Lazy

  FRANK B. GILBRETH JR. (1948). “CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN”

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• The only time I've been arrested was in opposing the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana. That was in 1979.

  Wendell Berry

  Nuclear, Indiana, Hills

  "'Everything Worthy is Under Fire'". Interview with Thomas P. Healy, www.counterpunch.org. November 8, 2010.

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• I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Money, Women, Order

  Statement to the Court, delivered 14 [or 18] September 1918, Federal Court of Cleveland, Ohio

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• It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case.

  George Orwell

  Attitude, Swimming, Nineteen

  George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.210, Arcturus Publishing

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• To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.

  Stephen Fry

  Mean, Opposites, Adults

  Stephen Fry's BAFTA annual television lecture, www.theguardian.com. June 16, 2010.

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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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• The question of the family now divides our society so deeply that the opposing sides cannot even agree on a definition of the institution they are arguing about.

  Christopher Lasch

  Definitions, Our Society, Sides

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• It now becomes clear why the Bush Administration has been vigorously opposing congressional hearings. The Bush Administration has been engaged in a conspiracy of silence.

  Cynthia McKinney

  Silence, Hearing, Administration

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• I don't personally believe that villains exist. Villains are just a way of saying that somebody has an opposing conviction.

  Ryan Reynolds

  Believe, Way, Villain

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• So the Midwest nourishes us [...] and presents us with the spectacle of a land and a people completed and certain. And so we run to our bedrooms and read in a fever, and love the big hardwood trees outside the windows, and the terrible Midwest summers, and the terrible Midwest winters [...]. And so we leave it sorrowfully, having grown strong and restless by opposing with all our will and mind and muscle its simple, loving, single will for us: that we stay, that we stay and find a place among its familiar possibilities. Mother knew we would go; she encouraged us.

  Annie Dillard

  Summer, Mother, Running

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• One must dig deeply into opposing points of view in order to know whether your own position remains defensible. Iron sharpens iron.

  Francis Collins

  Views, Order, Iron

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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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