Facing Controversy Quotes & Sayings

There's this tendency to think of the individual and the collective are somehow at odds or separate. But I think that's really false. We're all both. And when the individual suffers, the collective suffers, and vice versa. — Eula Biss

It is the desire for irreverence as much as anything else that brought me first to poetry. The need to make fun of authority, break taboos, celebrate the body and its functions, claim that one has seen angels in the same breath as one says that there is no god. — Charles Simic

Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil. — Gore Vidal

Do get over the idea that size has any value or merit. It is the enemy of most of the best things in the world - it is the enemy of the good life. — Ann Bridge

Rudeness is not cool. Defeating tiny guys is not cool. Close-following is not cool. Young is cool. Risk taking is cool. Winning is cool. Polite is cool. Defeating bigger, unsympathetic guys is cool. Inventing is cool. Explorers are cool. Conquerors are not cool. Obsessing over competitors is not cool. Empowering others is cool. Capturing all the value only for the company is not cool. Leadership is cool. Conviction is cool. Straightforwardness is cool. Pandering to the crowd is not cool. Hypocrisy is not cool. Authenticity is cool. Thinking big is cool. The unexpected is cool. Missionaries are cool. Mercenaries are not cool. — Brad Stone

A clean break, like an amputation. Eventually, you realized you could survive without all your limbs, that you could function and even thrive, because human beings were designed to take a battering. And though you weren't whole, you at least had a son. And though it sometimes seemed as if your heart had stopped beating, you at least knew that somewhere in the world, another heart was beating for you. — Beatriz Williams

But as love turns to grief, and grief becomes anger, so must anger yield to thought, in order to know itself. — Justin Cronin

Silence and indifference would not take you anywhere at the end of the day. — Sunday Adelaja

Miss Gates is a nice lady, ain't she?"
Why sure," said Jem. "I liked her when I was in her room."
She hates Hitler a lot ... "
What's wrong with that?"
Well, she went on today about how bad it was him treating the Jews like that. Jem, it's not right to persecute anybody, is it? I mean have mean thoughts about anybody, even, is it?"
Gracious no, Scout. What's eatin' you?"
Well, coming out of the courthouse that night Miss Gates was
she was going' down the steps in front of us, you musta not seen her
she was talking with Miss Stephanie Crawford. I heard her say it's time somebody time somebody taught 'em a lesson, they were gettin' way above themelves, an' the next thing they think they can do is marry us. Jem, how can you hate Hitler so bad an' then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home
— Harper Lee

Present wars impoverish the lords that win as much as those that lose. — Niccolo Machiavelli

We are carrying contraband words with us, memorized, tucked away in tattered journals and stored magically on disks in Anna's left pocket. Canadian words, queer words that we spoke on-stage for money in the land of the brave. With no valid permit, license, visa or contract to do so. Felons, really, all of us, and now we intended to flee the scene without paying income tax on the twelve dollars and fifty American cents we each made. It's just this kind of shameless law-breaking that gives all poets a bad name. — Ivan E. Coyote

They are filled with earnest nonsense, the sort of things that a boy writes to his sweetheart, but which somehow, when they are meant for you, never feel tired or cliched or anything other than absolutely tender and true. — Natasha Solomons

I guess there's a Use By date when it comes to blaming your parents for how messed up you are. — Nathan Filer

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it. — Jonathan Swift