Controversial Quotes & Sayings

I have never written out of a desire to be controversial. — Meg Rosoff

Please, what are public relations?" said Khashdrahr. "That profession," said Halyard, quoting by memory from the Manual, "that profession specializing in the cultivation, by applied psychology in mass communication media, of favorable public opinion with regard to controversial issues and institutions, without being offensive to anyone of importance, and with the continued stability of the economy and society its primary goal. — Kurt Vonnegut

There was a survey done a few years ago that affected me greatly. it was discovered that intelligent people either estimate their intelligence accurately or slightly underestimate themselves, but stupid people overestimate their intelligence and by huge margins. (And these were things like straight up math tests, not controversial IQ tests.) — Harvey Pekar

I think the reason that drones have become so controversial is because they're used in Pakistan; they're used in Yemen; they've been used in all kinds of places. — Tim Kaine

Answer Professor Mandell's letter when you get a chance and the patience. Ask him not to send me any more poetry books. I already have enough for 1 year anyway. I am quite sick of it anyway. A man walks along the beach and unfortunately gets hit in the head by a cocoanut. His head unfortunately cracks open in two halves. Then his wife comes along the beach singing a song and sees the 2 halves and recognizes them and cries heart breakingly. That is exactly where I am tired of poetry. Supposing the lady just picks up the 2 halves and shouts into them very angrily "Stop that!" Do not mention this when you answer his letter, however. It is quite controversial and Mrs. Mandell is a poet besides. — J.D. Salinger

To the citizens of Israel, I say: we have passed difficult years, faced the most painful experiences and overcame them. The future lies before us. We are required to take difficult and controversial steps, but we must not miss the opportunity to try to achieve what we have wished for, for so many years: security, tranquillity and peace. — Ariel Sharon

'Girls' feels very active and stirring a conversation and controversial, and you can't really ask for more as an actor. — Adam Driver

To the union of all honest men. — Aaron Burr Jr.

The thing that has always baffled me about people's perception of my writing is the sense that I'm a very controversial, opinionated, polarizing person. I feel like I write about things that I'm interested in, and I describe why they're interesting to me. I could be negative, I guess. It's far easier to write why something is terrible than why it's good. — Chuck Klosterman

The principals are quite simple. We can love people who treat us well. We cannot love people who treat us badly because, treating someone badly is not a virtue and we can only love virtue. I don't think that's controversial. I mean, there is no marriage therapist that I can imagine in the world who would say to a woman being beaten, humiliated, verbally abused, or completely ignored by her husband, "You just need to love him more. You need to work at making him happier." That would be sadistic in the extreme to say to someone.
So, in the same way I say, if anyone, I don't care if they are your priest, god, father, mother, or your Siamese twin cousin coming out of your elbow or ass. I don't care. If someone is treating you badly, that is not good for you. The solution is not you being so great that you both become better. That's not a realistic solution. — Stefan Molyneux

The difference between a debater and a polemicist is that unlike debaters, who try to seek a common ground, a polemicist intends to establish the truth of a controversial point of view while refuting the opposing point of view - there is no room for compromise. — Henrik O. Lunde

Flirting is a "controversial art form" that leaves the intended either flattered, infatuated, creeped out or getting a restraining order. — Shannon L. Alder

If art is singular expression, then by nature, the best art is controversial. But when art stirs debate for reasons besides its artistic integrity, that's when things get bent. — John Ridley

As you know, the fossil record includes not only the ancestors of crocodiles and whales, but also the ancestors of human beings. And this, of course, is why evolution remains controversial. — Kenneth R. Miller

If men were equally at risk from this condition - if they knew their bellies might swell as if they were suffering from end-stage cirrhosis, that they would have to go nearly a year without a stiff drink, a cigarette, or even an aspirin, that they would be subject to fainting spells and unable to fight their way onto commuter trains - then I am sure that pregnancy would be classified as a sexually transmitted disease and abortions would be no more controversial than emergency appendectomies. — Barbara Ehrenreich

I'd like to think I'm going upriver in talking about world-view topics rather than particular political or controversial topics. — Max Lucado

The subject of British abolitionism has long been controversial, complex, and even baffling. It also raises the issue of moral progress in history - whether groups of reformers and even nations can succeed in eliminating deeply entrenched forms of human oppression, and if so, by what methods, misconceptions, and under what conditions? — David Brion Davis

Sense data are much more controversial than qualia, because they are associated with a controversial theory of perception - that one perceives the world by perceiving one's sense-data, or something like that. — David Chalmers

I didn't say what I said to be controversial just because most people are picking the Patriots to win. I consider myself a pretty good judge of talent when it comes to defensive linemen and the Panthers' biggest strength is their defensive line. You win the battle of the trenches and that goes a long way to winning the game. — Warren Sapp

This puzzling discrepancy prompted the development of the controversial cosmological theory known as the Strong Misanthropic Principle, which asserts that the universe exists in order to screw with us. — Robert Kroese

I follow the teachings of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps. He won two Congressional Medals of Honor, and he wrote the highly controversial antiwar book 'War is a Racket.' — Jesse Ventura

There are opportunities that I have because I'm a white dude, and it's controversial because that's just the way that the world we live in kind of is. — Diplo

How controversial is for one to deny that men aren't from space while the Earth itself is in space? — Marcus L. Lukusa

The Armenian Genocide is such a controversial and very sensitive issue because the Turkish and Armenian people disagree about the facts of what actually happened. I know how strongly Armenians feel about the Genocide, and how it's never been recognised. At the same time, I do not hold today's generation of people accountable. — Khloe Kardashian

Any actor is happy to be involved with something that's challenging, controversial, and not easily palatable. Things that are too dumbed down or easy to swallow are uninteresting ... It's good when people have such a polarizing response. — Adam Driver

Dollywood is a family park, and all families are welcome. We do have a policy about profanity or controversial messages on clothing or signs. It is to protect the individual wearing or carrying them, as well as to keep down fights or problems by those opposed to it at the park. — Dolly Parton

Ben Skinner's brains and courage take us into the belly of the beast and expose the ugly truth of modern slavery. Instead of sensation, A Crime So Monstrous gives us desperately needed insight and analysis. This is an important book, the first deep look into America's confused relationship with human trafficking and slavery today. Skinner's balanced dissection of our government's haphazard policies will be controversial, but it can also be the foundation for a new anti-slavery agenda, one that ends the political games being played with the lives of slaves. — Kevin Bales

Following a private conversation with Harry, Minerva McGonagall later took the controversial decision to add a portrait of Severus Snape to the gallery of old headmasters and headmistresses in her tower office. — J.K. Rowling

They argue that, if the governments of developed countries want a fifty-fifty chance of hitting the agreed-upon international target of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and if reductions are to respect any kind of equity principle between rich and poor nations, then wealthy countries need to start cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by something like 8 to 10 percent a year - and they need to start right now. The idea that such deep cuts are required used to be controversial in the mainstream climate community, where the deadlines for steep reductions always seemed to be far off in the future (an 80 percent cut by 2050, for instance). But as emissions have soared and as tipping points loom, that is changing rapidly. Even Yvo de Boer, who held the U.N.'s top climate position until 2009, remarked recently that "the only way" negotiators "can achieve a 2-degree goal is to shut down the whole global economy."48 — Naomi Klein

You can't have a university without having free speech, even though at times it makes us terribly uncomfortable. If students are not going to hear controversial ideas on college campuses, they're not going to hear them in America. I believe it's part of their education. — Donna Shalala

What makes me vulnerable is speaking up about topics that may be controversial to others. — Gabrielle Bernstein

Innovators are inevitably controversial. — Eva Le Gallienne

I know Reverend Jesse Jackson is controversial, and not a popular figure with many, but he hired me in 1984. He gave me my first job in politics. — Donna Brazile

I think art should be controversial. I think it should make people think. — Madonna Ciccone

I'm not always happy when Hollywood does remakes of films, but that's usually, when they have a very, very, very good film and they take away anything controversial from it and make flatter. — Stellan Skarsgard

All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance - unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion, have the full protection of the guarantees [of the First Amendment]. — William J. Brennan

Now that I exist in the mainstream majority, I'm not really so controversial any more, am I? Not really news. — Michael Moore

There are people who can talk sensibly about a controversial issue; they're called humorists. — Cullen Hightower

That such a perspective of the Declaration's 'Creator God' should sound so foreign and controversial to people today is a tragic and striking sign of how far we are removed from the thinking of our colonial fathers. — Pat Swindall

If you're not controversial you don't have anything to say. If you're not controversial you're boring. If you're bored you're boring to be with so don't ever tell anyone you re bored. — Sol Gordon

The modern emphasis on what is called 'clean fun' is really the symptom of a general unwillingness to touch upon any serious or controversial subject. — George Orwell

Books whose topics I thoroughy depsise are accapteble because they often force the reader to think and to examine his own beliefs. In an age where most people are either blindly obedient or radical, exposing oneself to the ideas contained in even the most controversial of books is a good thing. — Tiffini Johnson

I am conscious of the fact that the subject of hell is not a very pleasant one. It is very unpopular, controversial, and misunderstood ... As a minister I must deal with it. I cannot ignore it. — Billy Graham

I'm bi everything; sexual, coastal, political, controversial. I think if you find your comfortable sexual preference then that's excellent. Everybody knows that I'm a huge fan of gay men and drag queens and would not be who I am today without their help, support and make-up tips. — Jessicka

Abortion is a hard thing for Hollywood to deal with because it is so controversial and you don't want to alienate half your audience by sending one message or the other. — Cynthia Nixon

Despite my involvement in difficult and sometimes controversial questions I have received consistent support from the people of Ashfield. They have recognised that it is necessary to take difficult decisions, that newspapers do not always report fairly or accurately. — Geoff Hoon

It's not controversial to say that human activity is contributing in some way. The question is how serious that is. — Bobby Jindal

Children did this. They sensed when there was something controversial or sensitive and they pushed and pushed like tiny prosecutors. — Liane Moriarty

I've been a very effective leader in the gay rights movement, though at times I've been controversial. — Jean O'Leary

If everyone thinks you're doing the right thing, then everyone would be doing it. Have a controversial strategy. — Scott McNealy

Show Republicans a shiny pro-life or pro-marriage issue and they'd much rather address that controversial topic than keep pressing on the tyranny that Obamacare represents. — Ben Shapiro

Thinking of the universe as a computer is controversial. — Seth Lloyd

The market-based legal order of the Brussels bureaucracy helped to fill the legal vacuum created by communism, and was warmly received on that account. But, because of the unwise provisions of the Treaty of Rome regarding freedom of movement, it has led to the mass emigration of the professional classes, and to the loss of the educated young from countries that stand desperately in need of them. The 'enlargement' agenda has therefore become controversial all across Europe, and I return to the controversy in what follows. — Roger Scruton

A propaganda model has a certain initial plausibility on guided free-market assumptions that are not particularly controversial. In essence, the private media are major corporations selling a product (readers and audiences) to other businesses (advertisers). The national media typically target and serve elite opinion, groups that, on the one hand, provide an optimal "profile" for advertising purposes, and, on the other, play a role in decision-making in the private and public spheres. The national media would be failing to meet their elite audience's needs if they did not present a tolerably realistic portrayal of the world. But their "societal purpose" also requires that the media's interpretation of the world reflect the interests and concerns of the sellers, the buyers, and the governmental and private institutions dominated by these groups. — Noam Chomsky

I am really the most controversial artist in the world. — Thomas Kinkade

I think if I'm controversial it's not because I set out to be. It's because I've never felt comfortable being part of someone else's mainstream community. — Tony Judt

Public health regulations are often controversial at the time but who would want to go back to the days of sitting in smoke-filled restaurants or cars without seatbelts? — Sarah Wollaston

First, this law - the National Defense Education Act - ended years and years of debate about one controversial question: 'Shall the Federal Government, with all its massive resources, get directly involved in aiding American education?' The answer this law gave was a loud 'Yes!' - and thus we paved the way for a new era of support for education in America. This law, in fact, helped make possible more than 50 new education laws passed in my administration. — Lyndon B. Johnson

I like to take chances. The actors I admire are the ones who aren't afraid to make themselves nasty, bad or even goofy. I've never shied away from controversial characters. — Matt Dillon

They said it was against the rules to take sides on a controversial issue. I said, 'I wish you had told me that during World War II, when I took sides against Hitler.' — Howard K. Smith

There are usually half a dozen right answers to what needs to be
done. Yet, unless a person makes the risky and controversial choice of only one, he will achieve nothing. — Peter Drucker

My work has always been controversial within certain segments of the Asian-American community. This is a community that is generally not represented well at all on the stage, in the media, etc. So on those few occasions when something comes along, everybody feels obligated to make sure that it represents his own point of view. — David Henry Hwang

I'm not sure anyone's ever experienced enlightenment, been born again, been called to repentance or decided to sell their belongings on account of a system. The voice, the tale, the image, the parable that gets through to you
that wins your heart
religiously is the one that makes it past your defenses. You've been won over, and you probably didn't see it coming. You've been enlisted into a drama, whether positively or negatively, and it shouldn't be controversial to note that it happens all the time. When you really think about it, there's one waiting around every corner. It's as near as the story, song or image you can't get out of your head. Religion happens when we get pulled in, moved, called out or compelled by something outside ourselves. It could be a car commercial, a lyric, a painting, a theatrical performance or the magnetic pull of an Apple store. The calls to worship are everywhere. — David Dark

Everything about The Bradshaws is controversial, fluid, uncertain: their age - perhaps 30,000 years old, perhaps older, perhaps more recent - who painted them, what they mean. — Richard Flanagan

When controversial speech can be taken offline through pressures on private intermediaries without any kind of due process, that is something we need to be concerned about. — Rebecca MacKinnon

To be truly positive in the eyes of some, you have to risk appearing negative in the eyes of others. — Criss Jami

Whether advanced driver training helps drivers in the long term is one of those controversial and unresolved mysteries of the road, but my eye-opening experience at Bondurant raises the curious idea that we buy cars - for most people one of the most costly things they will ever own - with an underdeveloped sense of how to use them. This is true for many things, arguably, but not knowing what the F9 key does in Microsoft Word is less life-threatening than not knowing how to properly operate antilock brakes. — Tom Vanderbilt

he has served for three of his four short years at Payne in administration, directing the undergraduate writing center and the much contested/maligned composition program. (No reasonable person outside a university would believe the teaching of composition to be controversial, but of course it is.) Professor West has an open-door policy — Julie Schumacher

The question of "canon and creed," which underlies quite a bit of this book, has become quite urgent and controversial and needs to be addressed from the point of view of those of us who are actually working with the biblical canon itself rather than using the word "canon" as shorthand for the systematic theology they already possess. — N. T. Wright

My most famous drama in England is quite controversial. It's something called Men Only, and it's rather a shocking exploration of male sexuality. — Peter Webber

We're always on a tightrope. We're trying to put together people who don't make sense to be together, talking about issues that are sensitive and controversial. We're mixing dangerous chemicals on a nightly basis. — Bill Maher

A lot of my books deal with very controversial issues that most people often don't want to talk about, issues that, in my country, are more likely to get put under the carpet than get discussed. And when you talk about moral conundrums, about shades of gray, what you're doing is asking the people who want the world to be black and white to realize instead that maybe it's all right if it isn't. I know you'll learn something picking up my books, but my goal as a writer is not to teach you but to make you ask more questions. — Steven Tyler

I am really interested in who owns ideas of religion. What if I say I'm a libertarian, socialist, Occupy-supporting, anti-war, Christian? Is that a controversial idea? I don't see anything really in the original semiotics of Christianity, in the specific parable of the radical socialist Jew from Galilee who becomes the hero figure in the Homeric-word-of-mouth-gossip-novel that becomes the Bible that should make that a paradox. — Robert Montgomery

The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you. — Donald Trump

An interesting life," Yingling told me, "is one filled with controversial successes punctuated by occasional and spectacular failures. — Craig M. Mullaney

I may be controversial, but my allegiance is to people outside the Beltway. — Howard Dean

There are some issues where ministers should come and talk to the prime minister, if the prime minister hasn't already talked to them. Any issue which a minister thinks is going to be profoundly controversial, where we do not have a clear existing position, it is important that there be a conversation between the minister and the prime minister. I think they all understand that and I think it is working very well. — Tony Abbott

If I tax them, in fact, I'm not taxing the capitalists, I am taxing the people who have saved, trusted. It was very controversial, those sorts of things. But finally, it worked out. — Shimon Peres

Vice President Biden's surprising declaration of unqualified support for gay marriage seems to have forced President Obama into a public endorsement of a controversial social issue. It is difficult not to suspect that Biden's pronouncement aimed to give the president some political cover. — Robert Dallek

People say I'm controversial. But I think I lead a very balanced and normal life. — Ricardo Salinas Pliego

I think the point of art is to be controversial in a lot of ways. It's to cause conversations, and it's to get people excited about and talking about the things that the films are about. — Eloise Mumford

I think that as I continue to write, my writing I hope will become more controversial and more provocative. — Christopher Darden

For all its shortcomings, Wikipedia does have strong governance and deliberative mechanisms; anyone who has ever followed discussions on Wikipedia's mailing lists will confirm that its moderators and administrators openly discuss controversial issues on a regular basis. — Evgeny Morozov

Only when we start with the gospel - the most controversial point of Christian faith - are we ready to talk about who God is and how we know him. — Michael S. Horton

In the old days, 'controversial' in a relationship meant same-sex or mixed races. — Sam Taylor-Johnson

As an artist, I try and be controversial, and I have been a bit offensive at times. I have a view on the burka, and I'm sure a few of the Muslim girls and their families would have a view of me on stage in next to nothing! — Jessie J.

People often ask me why I persisted in doing research on a subject that was so controversial. I frequently respond by telling them that only a few scientists are granted the great fortune to pursue topics that are so new and different that only a small number of people can grasp the meaning of such discoveries initially. — Stanley B. Prusiner

I'm really happy I was kicked out of CalArts (for a controversial art piece I made). — Yony Leyser

There are some current 'theories' that, when divested of begged questions, reduce to the non-controversial statement, 'Here are some facts and there may be some relation between them.' — Harold Jeffreys

My "home" is a controversial topic. I don't exactly have one. I live all over the world. — Lady Gaga

What, then, can we conclude about the moral value of Metallica's music? In light of our discussion, it is decidedly mixed. Insofar as it has the potential to arouse negative emotions that lead to destructive behavior, it is morally damaging. Insofar as it helps purge us of destructive emotions, it is morally beneficial. And, insofar as it engages our imaginative empathy and gets us to think more clearly and deeply about controversial issues, it is morally edifying. So, while Metallica is unquestionably a monster of a rock band, it is far from obvious that they are some kind of monster. — Robert Fudge

Most people seem to resent the controversial in music; they don't want their listening habits disturbed. They use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be used as a soporific. Contemporary music, especially, is created to wake you up, not put you to sleep. It is meant to stir and excite you, to move you
it may even exhaust you. But isn't that the kind of stimulation you go to the theater for or read a book for? Why make an exception for music? — Aaron Copland

It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer. — Barbara Kingsolver

Many times I heard Imam Ahmad saying (when asked to give his opinion) on controversial scholarly issues 'I do not know.' — Abu Dawood

Before science, before the eighteenth century, religion answered the questions, and so in the nineteenth century for instance there was a real jostling between science and religion over the truth and this is why Darwin was so controversial. — Nell Irvin Painter

Climate change is a controversial subject, right? People will debate whether there is climate change ... that's a whole political debate that I don't want to get into. I want to talk about the frequency of extreme weather situations, which is not political. — Andrew Cuomo

problem peaked in 1952 with an outbreak that killed more than three thousand victims, many of them children, and left twenty-one thousand at least partially paralyzed. Soon afterward, vaccines developed by Jonas Salk, Albert Sabin, and a virologist named Hilary Koprowski (about whose controversial career, more later) came into wide use, eventually eliminating poliomyelitis throughout most of the world. In 1988, WHO and several partner institutions — David Quammen

Susan Boyle having a meltdown is not controversial. It's human for a 48-year-old recluse to get a little wigged out when she finds herself on the world stage overnight. — Shawn Amos

Just because you say something doesn't make it controversial, and it doesn't make you a bad person. — Charles Barkley

The problem with deterrence - apparently sometimes forgotten by our former presidents - is that it is not static, but a creature of the moment, captive to impression, and nursed on action, not talk. It must be maintained hourly and can erode or be lost with a single act of failed nerve, despite all the braggadocio of threatened measures. And, once gone, the remedies needed for its restoration are always more expensive, deadly - and controversial - than would have been its simple maintenance. — Victor Davis Hanson