Quotes & Sayings About Gadfly

I'm a chameleon, so changeable. I see myself as a gadfly and a questioner. — Philip Johnson

Could mankind declare it was truly wise? Did man know everything on earth, or would he ever? Certainly not! — E.A. Bucchianeri

You ask why I love you. For this: You are a minute of quiet in a loud shouting world. — Gabriel Gadfly

A true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear. — E.A. Bucchianeri

A man doesn't like to have his ego popped, especially when he prides himself on his sagacity, and then to be proved wrong by a man who claims he doesn't know anything. — E.A. Bucchianeri

I don't think writers should be convenient examples. I don't think we should make people feel settled. I don't try to be a gadfly, but I do think that real ideas are troublesome. There should be something about my work that leaves the reader unsettled. I intend that. — Richard Rodriguez

I am an artist you know ... it is my right to be odd. — E.A. Bucchianeri

I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long ... arousing and persuading and reproaching ... You will not easily find another like me. — Plato

So Socrates was a kind of gadfly. He was a sort of philosophical urban gorilla hanging around in the middle of Athens, asking these peculiar questions of everybody - important people, young men, slaves - questions that had to do with ultimately what's the life that's worth living. And Plato was one of the young men who hung around him, a very aristocratic young man, came from a very old, important family. — Rebecca Goldstein

The reason people don't buy conspiracy theories is they think 'conspiracy' means everybody's on the same program. That's not how it works. Everybody's got a different program. They just all want the same guy dead. Socrates was a gadfly, but I bet he took time out to screw somebody's wife. — James Lee Burke

You may feel irritated at being suddenly awakened when you are caught napping; and you may think that if you were to strike me dead as you easily might, then you would sleep on for the remainder of your lives, unless God in his care of you gives you another gadfly. — Plato

Come on let's see the degree."
Katherine unrolled her scroll displaying a long declaration in Latin affixed with a red seal proclaiming her a Master of Art.
"Imagine working for years to obtain a piece of paper we can hardly read " Katherine joked.
"And to officially declare you have talent " Suzy returned. — E.A. Bucchianeri

I am a kamikaze gadfly. — Mo Rocca

Sometimes I grow
so tired of speaking
my emotions to you.

I open my mouth
and dust spills out
instead of feelings.

Dust, and the yellow
wings of moths,
and brittle paper,

scrawled over
with riddles that
lack solutions. — Gabriel Gadfly

If you are what you eat, you are what you see and hear. — E.A. Bucchianeri

They kill me because they are afraid of me; and what more can any man's heart desire? — Ethel Lilian Voynich

If that's the case, waiter, please bring me another piece of cake," Gramps said as lunch was brought to the table, "I'm all for fighting tyranny and oppression. — E.A. Bucchianeri

What you think is right isn't the same as knowing what is right. — E.A. Bucchianeri

You cannot hinder someone's free will, that's the first law of the Universe, no matter what the decision. — E.A. Bucchianeri

The Saylor Foundation is meant to be a gadfly to encourage Google, Apple, MIT, Harvard, the United States government, and the Chinese government to aggressively pursue digital education. — Michael J. Saylor

By now, with all our modern technology, there should be no poverty left on earth. — E.A. Bucchianeri

I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world? — E.A. Bucchianeri

[Editorial cartooning] is essentially a destructive art. We are not pontificators, or molders of thought - or at least we shouldn't try to be. Ours is more the role of the lowly gadfly: circle and stab, circle and stab. Roughly put, our credo should be, if it's big, hit it. — Bill Mauldin

The devil has not vanished simply because people refuse to believe he exists, no more than God has ... — E.A. Bucchianeri

I was attached to this city by the god - though it seems a ridiculous thing to say - as upon a great and noble horse which was somewhat sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. It is to fulfill some such function that I believe the god has placed me in the city. I never cease to rouse each and every one of you, to persuade and reproach you
all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company. — Socrates

Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving ... conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity. — John Dewey

I detect the activist returning with a vengence. — E.A. Bucchianeri

While you're singing something romantic, I can't get the lyrics to 'Love and Marriage' out of my head, and that tune always reminds me of the jingle from Jeopardy. — E.A. Bucchianeri

How terrible is the pain of the mind and heart when the freedom of mankind is suppressed! — E.A. Bucchianeri

Seeing clearly within himself and always able to dodge around the ends of any position, including his own, Shaw assumed from the start the dual role of prophet and gadfly. To his contemporaries it appeared frivolous and contradictory to perform as both superman and socialist, sceptic and believer, legalist and heretic, high-brow and mob-orator. But feeling the duty to teach as well as to mirror mankind, Shaw did not accept himself as a contradictory being. — Jacques Barzun

(The Mona Lisa), that really is the ugliest portrait I've seen, the only thing that supposedly makes it famous is the mystery behind it, Katherine admitted as she remembered her trips to the Louvre and how she shook her head at the poor tourists crowding around to see a jaundiced, eyebrow-less lady that reminded her of tight-lipped Washington on the dollar bill. Surely, they could have chosen a better portrait of the First President for their currency? — E.A. Bucchianeri

In Plato's republic, poets were considered subversive, a danger to the republic. I kind of relish that role. So I see my present role as a gadfly, to use my soapbox to promote my various ideas and obsesions. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense. — E.A. Bucchianeri

Poor God, how often He is blamed for all the suffering in the
world. It's like praising Satan for allowing all the good that happens. — E.A. Bucchianeri

Athens is like a sluggish horse, and I am the gadfly trying to sting it into life. — Jostein Gaarder

It's an artist's right to rebel against the world's stupidity. — E.A. Bucchianeri

You know something is wrong when the government declares opening someone else's mail is a felony but your internet activity is fair game for data collecting. — E.A. Bucchianeri