The Wrong Side Of Right Quotes & Sayings

We all want to live in a world where we can make a difference ... That's why Spider-Man fights the good fight. Or Captain Marvel. Or me. Or ... There are a lot of us. And we don't all wear masks these days. Iron Man went public. So did Captain America. Others. Probably because it's harder to keep secrets in an internet surveillance age. But I think some of it, too, is that the ethical paradox can wear you down. No one on the white-hat side has ever hidden his or her identity with less than noble intent: to make the fight about something bigger than us. To represent a greater justice, where the focus can be on right and wrong ... and not on whether the bad guys will exact reprisal on those close to us. And sometimes you have to lie ... because you can justify a lie if lives are riding on it. Even as you fight for, as the saying goes, truth and justice ... even if you're a lawyer who has sworn to live by the truth ... you willingly bear false witness. — Mark Waid

I think what hurts the most is that I just really want to belong. I want to stand inside the circle of other people and be noticed for the right things, but it seems like the wrong things are always bigger. And all the advie I've ever read
smile more, be yourself, dream big, stay positive
seems to have some darker side that's never mentioned. — Jane Devin

There were a lot of botched kills throughout the eastern part of Kentucky when the work fell outside his control. Six or seven years ago, a man from Perry County was shot point blank in the head and left for dead in the middle of downtown. Problem was, the bullet had traveled between the man's scalp and his skull halfway across his head and exited the same way it had entered on the other side. The whole thing had left him with only fingernail-sized contusions on both sides of his head. He identified the guy who shot him and saw him arrested and convicted of attempted murder.
Now, it's true that a situation like that was a rare one, but part of doing a job right was minimizing the chance for something to go wrong. — Sheldon Lee Compton

The demagogic propagandist must therefore be consistently dogmatic. All his statements are made without qualification. There are no grays in his picture of the world; everything is either diabolically black or celestially white. In Hitler's words, the propagandist should adopt "a systematically one-sided attitude towards every problem that has to be dealt with." He must never admit that he might be wrong or that people with a different point of view might be even partially right. Opponents should not be argued with; they should be attacked, shouted down, or, if they become too much of a nuisance, liquidated. The morally squeamish intellectual may be shocked by this kind of thing. But the masses are always convinced that "right is on the side of the active aggressor. — Aldous Huxley

So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. — Alexander Hamilton

Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

It's sort of weird to see doors out of context like this, leading to nowhere, knowing that eventually each of them will be bought and put to use, like this one will become the front door of someone's childhood home that they will remember forever, and that one will be the back door that always squeaks when you try to sneak out at night. How things go from meaningless or unknown to significant with just one purchase, one decision, one encounter one night with the one right person. Or the wrong one. What can I say? Home Depot brings out my existential side. — Eve Jagger

War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to "a war against" whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the "right" side and therefore will win. Right makes might. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Then the man smiled, and his smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, going up in the right cheek and down in the left.
There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about this. Many people have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it is even attractive. But in all Syme's circumstances, with the dark dawn and the deadly errand and the loneliness on the great dripping stones, there was something unnerving in it. There was the silent river and the silent man, a man of even classic face. And there was the last nightmare touch that his smile suddenly went wrong. — G.K. Chesterton

Leaving the criminal law on one side, what is the difference between the liability under the mill acts or statutes authorizing a taking by eminent domain and the liability for what we call a wrongful conversion of property where restoration is out of the question. In both cases the party taking another man's property has to pay its fair value as assessed by a jury, and no more. What significance is there in calling one taking right and another wrong from the point of view of the law? — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

If you belong to an in-group of good, or saved, or elite people, you can only know that you're in because someone else is out. You cannot live on the right side of the tracks without there being a wrong side of the tracks, so you ought to be grateful to the outside for having the privilege of being on the inside. — Alan Watts

Even if torture works, it cannot be tolerated
not in one case or a thousand or a million. If their efficacy becomes the measure of abhorrent acts, all sorts of unspeakable crimes somehow become acceptable. I may have found myself on the wrong side of government on torture. But I'm on the right side of history. There are things we should not do, even in the name of national security. One of them, I now firmly believe, is torture. — John Kiriakou

What we need," he wrote, "is to turn out of colleges young men with ardent convictions on the side of right; not young men who can make a good argument for either right or wrong, as their interest bids them. — Edmund Lester Pearson

There's never a right or wrong side in a divorce case, but, given the human capacity for hate, the breakup of a legal relationship so tied to emotion often brought out the worst in people. — Kenneth Eade

I know the difference between right and wrong. Right is when I do everything he tells me to. Wrong is when I question why. But every now and then a simple slap across the side of the head is a good way to remind me. - excerpt from: freefalling — Darlenne Susan Girard

War is too messy to produce easy heroes and villains; there are always brave people on the wrong side, and evil men among the victors, and a mass of perfectly ordinary people struggling to survive and understand in between. Away from the battlefields, war forces individuals to make impossible choices in circumstances they did not create, and could never have expected. Most accommodate, some collaborate, and a very few find an internal compass they never knew they had, pointing to the right path. — Ben Macintyre

You know those afternoons," he asks, drawing a shaking breath, "where you're just going along, doing fine, and then afternoon comes and it feels like you've just got the wind knocked out of you and everything is wrong?" He sighs and slowly pushes himself so he's sitting upright. His shoulders are slumped. "That's all," he says. "It's just one of those afternoons."
We are silent for a minute. Then he lies back down on the couch.
I should say I love him. I should say it will be all right. But it won't.
I walk down the hall to my bedroom. I lie down on my side and stare at the wall, the blue-flowered wallpaper next to my nose. Despite my best efforts, I start to cry.
I know those afternoons. — Marya Hornbacher

Don't you squire me. There's something going on down here, something wrong; I can feel it in my boots and, believe me, they're the most sensitive boots that ever were. The man who runs the village pub knows everything - I know that and so do you. If you're not on my side you're in my way and you know something, I can see it in your eyes. If it turns out you knew something of importance about the blacksmith you'll have invited yourself to be an accessory after the fact, with a free option, if I can get the bit between my teeth, of before the fact, which leaves you right in the middle, and that's a fact. — Terry Pratchett

Humans are often more stupid than they realize. Because of our weaknesses are so easily exploited. Just like a child's clumsy fingers messing up the buttons on a shirt. It's easy to mock someone who buttoned his shirt wrongly. It's easy to mock someone who had buttoned wrongly yet remains oblivious to it. But there are also people who completely fail to realize that they buttoned them all wrongly. Just a moment's error, a wrong choice, traps us on the road of no return. But who can reprimand them for that? Why can't humans be lonely? Why can't we yearn for those right by our side? On such a cold lonely night, who can stand to bear it alone? Imagine the fright when we realize the severity of our mistakes. Whoever said love was a happy affair? — Yuuri Eda

There are few occasions in any argument where one side is completely right and the other comprehensively wrong. This is one of them. Jack Lew's Treasury was spot on and the German response utterly ludicrous. The US Treasury Department's underlying analysis was founded on basic macroeconomics that Berlin, and the Eurogroup (as I have personally witnessed), refuses to acknowledge. — Yanis Varoufakis

The Mafia's involvement with gay bars is ironic on so many levels. Macho guys ruled gangland but supported a subculture for nelly queens. Most mobsters were evil sociopaths motivated only by financial self-interest but nevertheless were doing a good thing in providing social spaces for the gay community. The mob was on the wrong side of the liquor laws by serving gay folk but on the right side of the 14th Amendment in arguing for equal protection. The Mafia exploited an oppressed community but advanced the gay cause. — Phillip Crawford Jr.

I press my hands against my face and split myself in two. Push away the side that's the truth because that's the side that wants to be angry at him for how wrong he is because of all the things he doesn't know. I focus on the side I've shown to him. There's so much missing, but it's better that it's missing. And as long as it's missing, that makes everything he's saying to me now - right. — Courtney Summers

If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals ... We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs. We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us
create who we are. It is we who created the system. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009) — Haruki Murakami

Candor will oblige us to admit that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions; and it cannot be doubted that much of the opposition which has made its appearance, or may hereafter make its appearance, will spring from sources, blameless at least, if not respectable - the honest errors of minds led astray by preconceived jealousies and fears. So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, — Alexander Hamilton

You couldn't changed history. But you could get it right to start with. Do something differently the FIRST time around.
This whole business with seeking Slytherin's secrets ... seemed an awful lot like the sort of thing where, years later, you would look back and say, 'And THAT was where it all started to go wrong.'
And he would wish desperately for the ability to fall back through time and make a different choice.
Wish granted. Now what? — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Imagine you come upon a house painted brown. What color would you say the house was?"
"Why brown, of course."
"But what if I came upon it from the other side, and found it to be white?"
"That would be absurd. Who would paint a house two colors?"
He ignored my question. "You say it's brown, and I say it's white. Who's right?"
"We're both right."
"Non," he said. "We're both wrong. The house isn't brown or white. It's both. You and I only see one side. But that doesn't mean the other side doesn't exist. To not see the whole is to not see the truth. — Megan Chance

In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of "the common good" and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed. In this world irrationality clings to man like his shadow so that the right things get done for the wrong reasons?afterwards, we dredge up the right reasons for justification. It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral; a world where "reconciliation" means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it. — Saul Alinsky

Throe accepted the soup and went over to where Xcor had been sitting. Sinking down to the floor, he put the brass box on the far side of himself and began to eat.
Xcor joined him on the stain of the blood he had shed during the day, and in silence, they completed their reunion. But it was not over, at least not on Xcor's part.
His regret stayed with him, the heaviness of the burden of his actions altering him forever, like an injury that had scarred over and healed wrong.
Or rather, in this case ... healed right. — J.R. Ward

We call the one side [of humanity] religion, and we call the other science. Religion is always right ... Science is always wrong; it is the very artifice of men. Science can never solve one problem without raising ten more problems. — George Bernard Shaw

Efficiency, of course, is futile ... It has no philosophy for incidents before they happen; therefore it has no power of choice. An act can only be successful or unsuccessful when it is over; if it is to begin, it must be, in the abstract, right or wrong. There is no such thing as backing a winner; for he cannot be a winner when he is backed. There is no such thing as fighting on the winning side; one fights to find out which is the winning side. If any operation has occurred, that operation was efficient ... A man who thinks much about success must be the drowsiest sentimentalist; for he must be always looking back. If he only likes victory he must always come late for the battle. For the man of action there is nothing but idealism. — G.K. Chesterton

Whenever I hear an American say Aussies drive on the 'wrong side of the road,' I just lose it. You ever think about how those people grew up driving on the 'wrong side of the road,' watched a lot of people get hurt on the 'wrong side of the road,' die on the 'wrong side of the road,' while other people cheered from the 'right side of the road'? Australia has a thing called Highway Fights, so it's touchy. — Russell Crowe

As president, he immediately invited the gay activists who helped elect him to "LGBT" receptions at the White House, where he assured them that crusty Americans could one day be cajoled out of their "worn arguments and old attitudes." "Welcome to your White House," he burbled, promising to support every item on the LGBT agenda: "We've been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration." They do. Should Obama win a second term, the justices he appoints will almost certainly unveil a bogus new constitutional right to gay marriage, discovered within the "penumbras" of Lawrence v. Texas. At which point Obama, drawing upon the faux-pained honesty he has perfected, can regurgitate what he wrote in his memoirs: that he was once on "the wrong side of history" but has now happily come into the light. — Phyllis Schlafly

Cricket walks several steps behind me. It's a careful distance. I wonder if he's looking at my butt.
WHY DID I JUST THINK THAT? Now my butt feels COLOSSAL. Maybe he's looking at my legs. Is that better? Or worse? Do I want him looking at me? I hold on to the bottom of my dress as I climb into the backseat and crawl to the other side. I'm sure he's looking at my butt. He has to be. It's huge, and it's right there, and it's huge.
No. I'm acting crazy.
I glance over, and he smiles at me as he buckles his seat belt.
My cheeks grow warm.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? — Stephanie Perkins

Sure, I can talk like you, but I choose not to, It's like an art, you know? Picasso had to prove to the world he could paint the right way, before he goes putting both eyes on the side of a face ... See if you paint wrong because that's the best you can do, you just a chump. But you do it because you want to? Then you're an artist ... You can take that to the grave and dig it up when you need it. — Neal Shusterman

The really tough choices ... don't center upon right versus wrong. They involve right versus right. They are genuine dilemmas precisely because each side is firmly rooted in one of our basic, core values. — Rushworth Kidder

The only thing worse than being on the wrong side of an argument is to be on the right side with no one listening. — Evan Esar

Also, as a rule of thumb, if you find yourself defending your inalienable right to make someone else feel like garbage, you're on the wrong side of the argument. — Rich Burlew

The senator cleared his throat, uncomfortable. This was probably new to him - the sensation of being ignored. I could've taught him a thing or two about it. — Jenn Marie Thorne

I melt and swell at the moment of landing when one wheel thuds on the runway but the plane leans to one side and hangs in the decision to right itself or roll. For this moment, nothing matters. Look up into the stars and you're gone. Not your luggage. Nothing matters. Not your bad breath. The windows are dark outside and the turbine engines roar backward. The cabin hangs at the wrong angle under the roar of the turbines, and you will never have to file another expense account claim. Receipt required for items over twenty-five dollars. You will never have to get another haircut.
A thud, and the second wheel hits the tarmac. The staccato of a hundred seat-belt buckles snapping open, and the single-use friend you almost died sitting next to says:
I hope you make your connection.
Yeah, me too.
And this is how long your moment lasted. And life goes on. — Chuck Palahniuk

To not look at the data is foolish, but to look at the data as having all the answers is even more foolish. It is a collision of new-school statistics and statisticians against old-school managers, coaches, and instructors. Neither side is right, neither is wrong; there is so much to be gained from listening to both sides. — Tim Kurkjian

Australia is filled with roundabouts and everyone drives on the wrong side of the road. In the end we decided to split up the work and I feverishly watched the GPS and yelled, Left! Right! ROUNDABOUT! — Jenny Lawson

There, flanking either side of the walkway were a pair of raised fountains. The base of each was a shell-shaped bowl filled with water and lily pads. Standing in each bowl was the masculine version of Boticelli's famous "Birth of Venus". The man stood in the same pose as Venus, left hand coyly drawn up o cover his chest, right down by his genitals, yet instead of covering them, he held his optimistically endowed penis, pointing it upward. Water jetted from each penis, and over into the basin of the twin statue opposite. The water didn't flow in a smooth stream though. It spurted. "Please tell me there is something wrong with his water pressure" Cassandra said. "No, I believe that's the desired effect. — Kelley Armstrong

I either play cops or criminals - I'm either on the right side of the law or the wrong side. I gravitate toward edgier material because it suits my nature. I find it fascinating to play. I'm just that kind of person. — Marg Helgenberger

I think Frankie Valli did everything right. He kept singing. And you also have to remember, he was confined to a certain society, which was this sort of like - the wrong side of the law kind of society of Italian guys from the streets of Belleville, New Jersey. So he found his way. — John Lloyd Young

If sheep do not have the constant care of a shepherd, they will go the wrong way, unaware of the dangers at hand. They have been known to nibble themselves right off the side of a mountain ... And so, because sheep are sheep, they need shepherds to care for them. The welfare of sheep depends solely upon the care they get from their shepherd. Therefore, the better the shepherd, the healthier the sheep. — Kay Arthur

I wanna be drunk when I wake up, on the right side of the wrong bed. — Ed Sheeran

I want that there should be a belief, a faith in the possibility of removing mountains to the side of right. If we believe that war is wrong, as everyone must, then we ought to believe that by proper efforts on our part, it may be done away with. — Lucretia Mott

He saw all those private aspects of me - and I mean not just sexual private parts, but my darker side, my meanness, my pettiness, my self-loathing - all the things I kept hidden. So that with him I was completely naked, and when I was feeling the most vulnerable - when the wrong word would have sent me flying out the door forever - he always said exactly the right thing at the right moment. He didn't allow me to cover myself up. He would grab my hands, look me straight in the eye and tell me something new about why he loved me. — Amy Tan

I am ashamed of a human race that can continue to allow the sordid ambitions of politicized groups who genuinely feel that right is on their side, and can therefore instigate such atrocities in the name of their own sense of right and wrong. — Ralph Steadman

It's certainly not too late to change to the winning side. But you know, you also have the freedom to stay just where you are. That's what it means to be an American. That's the miracle of America. Freedom to believe means the freedom to believe the wrong thing, after all. Just as freedom of speech gives you the right to stay silent. — Neil Gaiman

Please do, however, allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:
"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."
Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be? — Haruki Murakami

You'll never have the chance to work this stuff out unless you give yourself the chance. — Jenn Marie Thorne

There are two sides to every story, as if that explains and justifies everything! You know what I say when someone tells me that? I say well of course there are two sides to every story, and one side is WRONG! — Nikki Sex

The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right. — Mark Twain

Oh, stick a cork in it, B," Jen snarled at Decebel.
Vasile cocked his head to the side as he looked at Jen. "B?"
"Yeah. Ya know, for Beta. Although, I like it because I could also be calling him the technical term for a female dog and he wouldn't know it. So really, calling him B totally works to my advantage," Jen explained in all seriousness.
Everyone turned when a quick burst of laughter came from the right side of the room. When Sorin saw everyone turn their eyes on him, he quickly began coughing.
Holding up his hands, he finally composed himself. "Pardon me, Alpha. I seemed to have swallowed wrong."
"You have to be careful while swallowing smart ass comments, Sorin," Jen teased.
"They tend to have a choking effect. — Quinn Loftis

At the beginning of the semester, when you asked who I loved the most, an image of my mother popped in my head. When you asked me who I loved the most for the second time, it wasn't an image of my mother. Instead, it was replaced by an image of a strawberry blonde with big, blue eyes.
It took me a long time to figure out the exact moment I fell in love with her, partly because I denied that I did until it was too late.
I fucked up so badly and did so many things wrong, to the point of no return, so I let her go. The selfless part inside of me wants to say I did the right thing, and the selfish part of me thinks I made the biggest mistake of my life. I guess the selfless side won out because, every time I look at her and see what I did, I realize I don't deserve her.
I was never supposed to fall in love with her, but that was the best mistake of my life. I will always love her; I have ever since I purposely bumped into her in the hallway. — Sarah Brianne

A person who doesn't understand both sides of an issue can't relate to the side he is trying to sway, so his words will bounce off of them without leaving any impression. — Daniel Willey

When we would show any one that he is mistaken, our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject,
for his view of if is generally right on this side,
and admit to him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment, that he was not wrong in his judgment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole case. — Blaise Pascal

People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable clients. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things, are too passionately in love with somebody who is not worth so much attention, and so on. There is a kind of floating charge of energy in them which is not attached to its right object and therefore tends to apply exaggerated dynamism to the wrong situation. — Marie-Louise Von Franz

Get your life turned right-side-out again. Like a shirt that comes out of the dryer wrong-side-out, you need to turn your life right-side-out before putting it on again. Every day. — Lionel Fisher

Innocent?" He was incensed at her suggestion he was somehow responsible for this mess. "I've done nothing wrong, I intend nothing wrong. I am innocent!"
"Half the evil in this world occurs while decent people stand by and do nothing wrong. It's not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed."
"Even when it's stupid to try?" he asked with savage sarcasm.
"Especially then," she replied sweetly. "That's how it's done, Trell. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost. That's how you do it. — Robin Hobb

There is much debate in this country over abortion. I have always found it puzzling. There are the right-to-lifers who say that abortion is the equivalent of murder. Then there are those who say a woman's right of free choice must be preserved. What has always struck me as odd is that each side is convinced that only it is right, and the other is wrong.
I feel they are both wrong. No one should take away another person's right to choose. And no one should kill an unborn infant. Of course I could just as easily say both sides are right, but I won't. It's a paradox that can't be resolved. I think it is better to admit that than pretend there is a resolution. — Christopher Pike

Don't take the wrong side of an argument just because your opponent has taken the right side. — Baltasar Gracian

Life may be compared to a piece of embroidery, of which, during the first half of his time, a man gets a sight of the right side, and during the second half, of the wrong. The wrong side is not so pretty as the right, but it is more instructive; it shows the way in which the threads have been worked together — Arthur Schopenhauer

I was raised by my grandmother. She instilled everything into me. She taught me right from wrong from day one. I remembered everyday, being 4 or 5 years old, and walking to school, she would be like, Raise your right hand and stay on the right side of the street and make sure you do the right thing in school. — Nick Cannon

Her body didn't give a damn that he was all wrong for her, it wanted him anyway. Badly. Either oblivious of or not wanting to encourage the attraction between them, Wade looked down at his mug as though he wasn't comfortable holding her gaze at such close range, and took a sip. As he swallowed, one side of his mouth curved up and he let out an appreciative groan that seemed to reverberate right through her, heating her blood. Startled, she drank in the almost dreamy expression on his angular face and imagined that same look right after he'd enjoyed an intensely satisfying orgasm. Erin couldn't be positive, but if his reaction to a simple cup of coffee made him groan like that, she was pretty sure it had been a while since he'd had one of those, too. And man, the idea of being the one to end his dry spell was way too freaking hot for her own good. — Kaylea Cross

All political movements are like this
we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility. — Doris Lessing