Show Them Wrong Quotes & Sayings

It was apparent...that, all over America, thousands of people threw down a book or got up from a television show and said, 'I can write better than that!' It was amazing how many of them were wrong. — Donald E. Westlake

I open my eyes. No, I was wrong; I didn't jump off the roof because I wanted to be like the Dauntless. I jumped off because I already was like them, and I wanted to show myself to them. I wanted to acknowledge a part of myself that Abnegation demanded that I hide. — Veronica Roth

You don't inspire people by telling them they're wrong. You need to show them something extraordinary so they long to be part of it. — Jeffrey Overstreet

Bingo pup. It's a lesson best learned early. They're all afraid of us." He strolled over to Derek. "You're trying to be a good kid, aren't you? You think that'll show them they're wrong. So how'd that working out for you? Guess what? They don't care. To them, you're a monster, and nothing you do
or don't do
will change their minds. My advice? Give 'em what they want. It's a short, brutal life." He smiled. "Live it up."
Derek stared straight ahead, patiently waiting.
"He can't hear a word I'm saying, can he?" Liam said.
"Nope. — Kelley Armstrong

But once, in his anger, Aidan had asked me whether I thought I had wasted my life, and I had told him no. No, I had not. But I had been wrong. And Tom Cardle has been right. For I had known everything, right from the start, and never acted on any of it. I had blocked it from my mind time and again, refused to recognize what was staring me in the face. I had said nothing when I should have spoken out, convincing myself that I was a man of higher character. I had been complicit in all their crimes, and people had suffered because of me. I had wasted my life. I had wasted every moment of my life. And the final irony was that it had taken a convicted pedophile to show me that in my silence, I was just as guilty as the rest of them. — John Boyne

I felt there needed to be a show for teenagers that didn't make them feel judged. 'Skins' never tried to preach. It allowed young people to make their own decisions about what to do and whether it was right or wrong. Young people really respond to that, and that's what sets 'Skins' apart. — Kaya Scodelario

Abruptly, she yanked the covers over her crippled one, hiding it from him.
Tohr marched right back over to her, and resolutely pulled the duvet back where it had been. Tracing the badly healed wounds with his fingertips, he met her squarely in the eye.
"You're beautiful. Every inch of you. Don't think for a moment there's anything wrong with you. We clear?"
"But-"
"Nope. I'm not hearing that." Bending down he pressed his lips to her shin, her calf, her ankle, tracing the scars, caressing them. "Beautiful. All of you."
"How can you say that," she whispered blinking back tears.
"Because it's the truth."Straightening, he gave her a final squeeze. "No hiding from me, okay. And after I feed you, I think I'm going to have to show you just how serious I am."
That made her smile ... then laugh a little.
"That's my girl." he murmured. — J.R. Ward

Helping to match people to the book that would change their life, or make them fall in love, or get over a love affair gone wrong. And for the children, she could show them where to dive into a crocodile-infested river, or fly through the stars, or open the door of a wardrobe... — Jenny Colgan

If the infidels live among the Muslims, in accordance with the conditions set out by the Prophet - there is nothing wrong with it provided they pay Jizya to the Islamic treasury. Other conditions are . . . that they do not renovate a church or a monastery, do not rebuild ones that were destroyed, that they feed for three days any Muslim who passes by their homes . . . that they rise when a Muslim wishes to sit, that they do not imitate Muslims in dress and speech, nor ride horses, nor own swords, nor arm themselves with any kind of weapon; that they do not sell wine, do not show the cross, do not ring church bells, do not raise their voices during prayer, that they shave their hair in front so as to make them easily identifiable, do not incite anyone against the Muslims, and do not strike a Muslim. . . . If they violate these conditions, they have no protection .40 — Raymond Ibrahim

She talked like that. But I understood what she meant. About having another you inside that isn't anything like you. Dorcas and I used to make up love scenes and describe them to each other. It was fun and a little smutty. Something about it bothered me, though. Not the loving stuff, but the picture I had of myself when I did it. Nothing like me. I say myself as somebody I'd seen in a picture show or a magazine. Then it would work. If I pictured myself the way I am it seemed wrong. — Toni Morrison

Wrong again. I'll tell you, shall I?" The djinni fixed him with its black-eyed stare. "You knocked yourself out, like the idiot you are. The golem was approaching, doubtless planning to take the Staff and crush your head like a melon. It was foiled - "
"By your prompt action?" Nathaniel said. "If so, I'm grateful, Bartimaeus."
"Me? Save you? Please - someone I know might be listening. No. My magic is canceled out by the golem's, remember? I sat back to watch the show. In fact ... it was the girl and her friend. They saved you. Wait - don't mock! I do not lie. The boy distracted it while the girl climbed on the golem's back, tore the manuscript from its mouth, and threw it to the ground. Even as she did so, the golem seized her and the boy - incinerated them in seconds. Then its life force ebbed and it finally froze, inches from your sorry neck. — Jonathan Stroud

Sometimes, I have to retract what I say.. Sometimes, I have to apologize for being absolutely right, but totally wrong on my delivery, sometimes I have to apologize when I know I'm not wrong.... And ALL THE time, I have to forgive and show love...
It gets exhausting and you won't win them all, but the peace you have, knowing you did the right thing, is priceless. — Jennifer M. Malone

There have always been people who have written me off. They're not going away. I use that to motivate me. I'm driven to show them just how wrong they are. — Ronda Rousey

Men of superior vivacity and wit, when they take a wrong turn, are generally worse than other men: because wit, consisting in a lively representation of ideas assembled together, gives every sensible object those heightening touches, and that striking imagery, which is unknown to men of slower apprehensions: wit being to sensible objects, what light is to bodies; it does not merely show them as they are in themselves: it gives an adventitious colour, which is not a property inherent in them: it lends them beauties which are not their own. — Jeremiah Seed

For throughout history, you can read the stories of women who - against all the odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed. — Caitlin Moran

In a way I'm lucky because when people suggest I won't be able to do something I have no choice but to show them they are wrong. If I say I'm doing it, I'm doing it. No matter how hard it is. — Zoe Cassavetes

Now I realize, of course, that many readers will acknowledge that we do in fact have these reactions, but would nevertheless write them off as mere reactions. "Our tendency to find something personally disgusting," they will sniff, "doesn't show that there is anything objectively wrong with it." This is the sort of stupidity-masquerading-as-insight that absolutely pervades modern intellectual life, and it has the same source as so many other contemporary intellectual pathologies: the abandonment of the classical realism of the great Greek and Scholastic philosophers, and especially of Aristotle's doctrine of the four causes. — Edward Feser

You know ... a lot of kids at school hate their parents. Some of them got hit. And some of them got caught in the middle of wrong lives. Some of them were trophies for their parents to show the neighbors like ribbons or gold stars. And some of them just wanted to drink in peace. — Stephen Chbosky

The people who did you wrong or who didn't quite know how to show up, you forgive them. And forgiving them allows you to forgive yourself too. — Jane Fonda

They don't know who we are. Not really. They don't know what we've done, what we've managed together. So let's go show them they picked the wrong damn fight. — Leigh Bardugo

The problem was, I was labeled as trouble - so I was like, 'Trouble? I'll show you trouble. You want trouble, well here it is!' No matter what label they give you, the best thing you can do is prove them wrong. — Pink

Teach a child arithmetic," he said at last, "and he can use it to
cheat with, can't he? Teach a man the laws and forces of the
universe, and he can turn them against his teacher, can't he?
Give a child a box of matches, and there will always be some one
to show him how to set fire to a house. Teach me spiritual knowledge,
and for every one desire to use it rightly I shall have a thousand
impulses to do the wrong thing. Persistence in thinking the wrong
thing makes a man a fool if he is untaught and a dugpa if he knows
too much. Do you think you know enough to be a dugpa? — Talbot Mundy

I mean a global warming advocate is as wrong as anybody could be about anything, folks. It's a hoax. There is no man-made global warming. It has been thoroughly debunked. The fact that it's a hoax has been proven, by them. E-mails that were uncovered at East Anglia University in Great Britain show that they worked together to perpetuate the hoax, that they lied about data, that they eliminate data that contradicted their political belief. So you'd have to assume from that that they are political advocates disguised as scientists who are purposely engaging in misinformation. — Rush Limbaugh

Straight guys only feel three ways about girls ... First, either they love you, and they show it by writing a song about you, like Gabriel, and asking you out, and everything is nice and fun like it should be. Second, they love you, but they're scared of their passion for you because it's so strong, like your boy Christopher, so they stuff it way, way down and ignore you, or do stupid things like make fun of you because they don't know how to express it any other way, because they're immature little babies and are too shy to, say, write a song about you. Or third, there's something wrong with them, and they start out nice and loving and then turn around and do stupid things like sleep with other girls behind your back, like Justin Bay. But we'll never figure out what went wrong with them, and neither will they, so it's not worth thinking about. Okay? That's it. The end.
Lulu Collins — Meg Cabot

Lift up your eyes, discouraged one. When you feel like giving up, when they say it can't be done, it's up to you to show them why they're wrong. — Matty Mullins

I've been fighting my whole career to show a different side and prove naysayers - not prove them wrong, because I don't think you should get your energy from negative people. — Ice Cube

Horses have taught us about the transfiguring effect of reducing anger. We have repeatedly observed that they rarely show offense at a handler who reprimands them legitimately for something they have done wrong, if the handler is devoid of rage or vengeance. Howeve, if reprimanded in a fury, horses will counterattack because they feel challenged. Many power struggles can be avoided by learning not to meet anger with anger. This is an invaluable lesson in life. Developing patience and being unemotional is the key. — Adele Von Rust McCormick

It is quite wrong to assume that poor people are generally unwilling to change; but the proposed change must stand in some organic relationship to what they are doing already, and they are rightly suspicious of, and resistant to, radical changes proposed by town-based and office-bound innovators who approach them in the spirit of: "You just get out of my way and I shall show you how useless you are and how splendidly the job can be done with a lot of foreign money and outlandish equipment. — Ernst F. Schumacher

Open up. Ask for help. Accept help. Accept yourself. Be completely honest. Take a daily inventory. Whenever you are in the wrong, make amends. Face reality. Reach out. Communicate. Show kindness. Share your concerns and your worries with another human being. Help another human being, on a daily basis. Count your blessings, not your failures. Don't live in regret or in yesterday. Don't project your fears into tomorrow. Take action, when action is needed. Deal with your feelings if and when they arise. Don't sit on them. — Sally Brampton

If they tell me one more time that I'm using the wrong fork for a part of a meal, I swear I'll show them exactly how multifunctional the utensil can be. — Jennifer Ellision

Common sense says that the amazing complexity of life cannot arise out of a random process. The neo-Darwinians use clever arguments to show why evolution should work and why common sense is wrong. One after the other of them has explained that although the variability occurs randomly, the selection process gives it direction and makes it nonrandom ... if the arguments were solid and correct they should have put the theory on a stable and reliable foundation. The neo-Darwinians would like everyone to believe they have done that. — Lee Spetner

When teachers doubt your potential, show them how wrong they truly are. — Ace Antonio Hall

Apparently people don't like the truth, but I do like it; I like it because it upsets a lot of people. If you show them enough times that their arguments are bullshit, then maybe just once, one of them will say, 'Oh! Wait a minute - I was wrong.' I live for that happening. Rare, I assure you — Lemmy Kilmister

It could be a thousand things, distractions, worries;
but very often I think what keeps a writer from finding the words is that she grasps at them too soon, hurries, grabs. She doesn't wait for the wave to come in and break. She wants to write because she's a writer; she wants to say this, and tell people that, and show people something else - things she knows, her ideas, her opinions, her beliefs, important things - but she doesn't wait for the wave to come and carry her beyond all the ideas and opinions, to where you cannot use the wrong word. — Ursula K. Le Guin

What I mean," Sofia said, "is that when people say right person, wrong time, or wrong person, right time, it's usually a cop-out. They think that fate is playing with them. That we're all just participants in this romantic reality show that God gets a kick out of watching. But the universe doesn't decide what's right or not right. You do. Yes, you can theorize until you're blue in the face whether something might have worked at another time, or with someone else. But you know what that leaves you? — Rachel Cohn

You know why my show is good? Because the network officials say you're not smart enough to get what I'm doing, and every day I fight for you. I tell them how smart you are. Turns out, I was wrong. You people are stupid.
-responding to an idiot in the audience during a stand-up performance who would not stop yelling "I'm Rick James B***h". — Dave Chapelle

How can you go wrong with playing around on a superhero show? Just the way that they do things and watching them do their thing was amazing to me. Also, superheroes are awesome! — Bex Taylor-Klaus

Outstanding American men seem to see power as something you use in order to correct someone who's wrong, to change them, to show them you see more in this situation than the boss does. Outstanding American women, on the other hand, see power as a resource, something you can use to get people together, to gain commitment. — David McClelland

Och, Christ, woman," he hissed. Devouring the space between them in two strides, he cupped her jaw with one big hand, tipped her face up, and claimed her mouth in a kiss. Once, twice, three times. Then he drew back and glared down at her. "I thought you were dead. I couldn't fucking get out of there and I thought of a thousand things I'd done wrong and imagined a million deaths for you. Kiss me, Jessica. Show me you're alive. — Karen Marie Moning

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward - reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. — Michael Crichton

We will have to remember where our cranks belong in our national life, so that they can resume their proper roles as lonely guardians of the frontiers of the national imagination, prodding and pushing, getting us to think about things in new ways, but also knowing that their place is of necessity a lonely and humble one. There is nothing wrong with a country that has people who put saddles on their dinosaurs. It's a wonderful show and we should watch them and applaud. We have no obligation to climb aboard and ride. — Charles P. Pierce

I set out to show that there exists single creative activity,which is displayed alike in the arts and in the sciences.It is wrong to think of science as a mechanical record of facts, and it is wrong to think of the arts as remote and private fancies. What makes each human, what makes them universal, is the stamp of the creative mind. — Jacob Bronowski

Part of the art of creating is in discovering your own kind. They are everywhere. But don't look for them in the wrong places
Henry Miller
As you put yourself and your work out there, you will run into your fellow knuckleballers. These are your real peers-the people who share your obsessions, the people who share a similar mission to your own, the people with whom you share a mutual respect. There will only be a handful or so of them, but they're so, so important. Do what you can to nurture your relationships with these people. Show them work before you show anybody else. Keep them as close as you can. — Austin Kleon

Look at the evils of the world around you and protect yourself from them. Our teachers give all the wrong messages to our youth, since they take away the natural flare from the soul. Take it from me that all knowledge is useless until it is connected with your life, because the purpose of knowledge is nothing but to show you the splendors of yourself! — Muhammad Iqbal

It's instinct," he said then. "For centuries, it's been our job to protect our home, our women, and our children. We're emotional cowards. We don't talk about our feelings, we're not comfortable putting our soul into words. So we give of ourselves the only way we know how. We protect. We smother those we love in protection, fight for ways to keep them always safe, even from what we deem as a threat from themselves. It's in our genes, Kira. Right or wrong. Emotions are harder for a man to voice, strength is much easier for us to show. It's not an insult, it's the way men show their emotions for those they love. You can't change it."
"I can protect myself. — Lora Leigh

Things and persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds. How unconsciously we judge others by the light that is within ourselves, condemning or approving them by our own conception of right and wrong, honor and dishonor! We show by our judgment just what the light within us is. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

Politics is a lot like sex - if you want something, you have to ask for it, if they're not doing it right you've got to speak up and show them and if you still don't get what you want, then there is nothing wrong with doing it yourself. — Jennifer Beals

The only thing I can do now," he said to himself, and his thought was confirmed by the equal length of his own steps with the steps of the two others, "the only thing I can
do now is keep my common sense and do what's needed right till the end. I always wanted to go at the world and try and do too much, and even to do it for something that was not too cheap. That was wrong of me. Should I now show them I learned nothing from facing trial for a year? Should
I go out like someone stupid? Should I let anyone say, after I'm gone, that at the start of the proceedings I wanted to end them, and that now that they've ended I want to start them again? I don't want anyone to say that. I'm grateful they sent these unspeaking, uncomprehending men to go with me on this journey, and that it's been left up to me to say what's necessary — Franz Kafka

Not everything is supposed to become something beautiful and long-lasting. Sometimes people come into your life to show you what is right and what is wrong, to show you who you can be, to teach you to love yourself, to make you feel better for a little while, or to just be someone to walk with at night and spill your life to. Not everyone is going to stay forever, and we still have to keep on going and thank them for what they've given us. — Emery Allen

I didn't want her turned, against both her will and nature, into those diligent, sad women who are bent on a lifelong course of quiet servitude, forever in fear of showing, saying, or doing the wrong thing. Women who are admired by some in the West- here in France, for instance- turned into heroines for their hard lives, admired from a distance by those who couldn't bear even one day of walking in their shoes. Women who see their desires doused and their dreams renounced, and yet- and this is the worst of it- if you meet them, they smile and pretend they have no misgivings at all. As though they lead enviable lives. But you look closely and you see the helpless looks, the desperation, and how it belies all their show of good humor. I did not want this for my daughter. — Khaled Hosseini

Never let us do wrong, because our opponents did so. Let us, rather, by doing right, show them what they ought to have done, and establish a rule the dictates of reason and conscience, rather than of the angry passions. — James Joyce

None of us want to make God look bad. But in the end, being fake makes God look worse. It makes people think he tastes like Crisco.
Not only that, but when we meet people who have been fed the fake stuff about who God is and what He's about, it's not surprising that they have a little indigestion. So we can either spend our time talking about wrappers or we can show them what God is really made of. We can show them that God is full of love and is the source of hope and every creative idea. People don't want to be told that their experiences were wrong or that their wrapper or someone else's wrapper is made of the wrong stuff. Instead, we get to be the ones to show them real love from God. — Bob Goff

Criminals, people who commit crimes, usually society rejects these people. They are also part of our society. Give them some form of punishment to say they were wrong, but show them they are part of society and can change. Show them compassion. — Dalai Lama

The senses get tired. Sometimes, long before the end, they say, I'm quitting - I'm getting out of this now. And then the person is less prepared to meet the world, and stays at home more, without some of what he needs if he is to go on.

If it all quits on him, he is really alone; in the dark, in the silence, numb hands, nothing in his mouth, nothing in his nostrils. He asks himself, Did I treat them wrong? Didn't I show them a good time? — Lydia Davis

One of the reasons I love Murder is that victims are, as a general rule, dead ... I don't make a habit of sharing this, in case people take me fore a sicko or- worse-a wimp, but give me a dead child, any day, over a child sobbing his heart out while you make him tell you what the bad man did next. Dead victims don't show up outside HQ to beg for answers, you never have to nudge them into reliving every hideous moment, and you never have to worry, and you never have to worry about what it'll do to their lives if you fuck up. They stay put in the morgue, light-years beyond anything I can do right or wrong, and leave me free to focus on the people who sent them there. — Tana French

If people want to pigeon hole you then just view it as an opportunity to prove them wrong and show that you are different to what they think you are. — Gordon Gee

I have had this desire my whole life to prove people wrong, to show them I could do things they didn't think I could do. — David Paterson

I've never been satisfied or even pleased with a film that I've done. I make them, I'm finished, I've never looked at one after. I don't like them because there's a big gap between what you conceive in your mind when you're writing and you don't have to meet the test of reality. You're home, you write and it's funny and beautiful and romantic and dramatic, and then you have to show up on a cold morning, and you don't have enough of this and this goes wrong and you make the wrong choice on something and you screwed up and you can't go back. — Woody Allen

but I want to tell them
that all of this shit
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
and if you can't see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there's something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
"they were wrong"
because maybe you didn't belong to a group or a click
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong

they have to be wrong — Shane L. Koyczan

When people say right person, wrong time, or wrong person, right time, it's usually a cop-out. They think that fate is playing with them. That we're all just participants in this romantic reality show that God gets a kick out of watching. But the universe doesn't decide what's right or not right. You do. Yes, you can theorize until you're blue in the face whether something might have worked at another time, or with someone else. But you know what that leaves you?" "Blue in the face?" I asked. "Yup. — Rachel Cohn

We know that every father has a personal responsibility to do right by their kids - to encourage them to turn off the video games and pick up a book; to teach them the difference between right and wrong; to show them through our own example the value in treating one another as we wish to be treated. And most of all, to play an active and engaged role in their lives. — Barack Obama

He didn't show you affection. He didn't do things for you because he knew you'd love them. And, baby, that's wrong. Your relationship with him was all about him. Not about you. It was about what he could take from you without having to give back. And that's ten sorts of fucked up. It's no way for a man to treat a woman he's supposed to cherish and protect. — Maya Banks