Wrong Number Quotes & Sayings

I've never been the big recording star I'd love to be some day. I've had lots of hits off and on through the years but I've never had the success of other artists - one hit after another back-to-back-to-back and big hits, where every song is going to be number one. I'm not greedy or nothing. I just want everything. Is there something wrong with that? — Dolly Parton

I can't build a simple shelf. I have no idea how to change an oil filter on a car. I can't even stick a stamp on an envelope straight. And I'm always dialling the wrong number. But I have come up with a few original cocktails that people seem to like. — Haruki Murakami

To me, love is a pure idea forged in flesh, awkwardly maybe, but it had to connect to somewhere, despite twists and turns of underground cable. An all-too-perfect thing. Sometimes the lines get crossed. Or you get a wrong number. But that's nobody's fault. It'll always be like that, so long as we exist in this physical form. As a matter of principle. — Haruki Murakami

That men will perish and women will rule the earth?" Hannah replied. "Sorry, wrong number. For that request, you'll need to ring the department in charge of flying pigs. Do you want me to transfer you? I think they're busy at the moment working on a snowstorm in hell. — Dannika Dark

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation, And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had everything been wrong, we should certainly have heard. — W. H. Auden

This is a terrible confession to make, but after I left the Army I had a number of things to try. I had a great conceit to think that if all else failed I could always go to Hollywood. So when all else did fail I really went to Hollywood. And then I found out how wrong I was. — David Niven

...for example, if Freud is wrong, as i and many others believe, where does that leave any number of novels and virtually the entire corpus of surrealism, Dada, and certain major forms of expressionism and abstraction, not to mention Richard Strauss' 'Freudian' operas such as Salome and Elektra, and the iconic novels of numerous writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Virginia Woolf? It doesn't render these works less beautiful or pleasurable, necessarily, but it surely dilutes their meaning. They don't owe their entire existence to psychoanalysis. But if they are robbed of a large part of their meaning, can they retain their intellectual importance and validity? Or do they become period pieces? I stress the point because the novels, paintings and operas referred to above have helped to popularise and legitimise a certain view of human nature, one that is, all evidence to the contrary lacking, wrong. — Peter Watson

Tugging her purse strap up on her arm, she headed for the
door. "You have my cell number. I'll text you. If something goes
wrong and he pulls an axe, you'll be the first person I call."
Michelle groaned. "See, this is why I worry. The first person
you call is the police. Then you call me and tell me the authorities are
on their way and you're hiding in a closet."
"Yeah, ancient wooden closet door versus axe? And you call
me the illogical one? — Virginia Nelson

In the words of psychologists John Brebner and Chris Cooper, who have shown that extroverts think less and act faster on such tasks: introverts are "geared to inspect" and extroverts "geared to respond." But the more interesting aspect of this puzzling behavior is not what the extroverts do before they've hit the wrong button, but what they do after. When introverts hit the number nine button and find they've lost a point, they slow down before moving on to the next number, as if to reflect on what went wrong. But extroverts not only fail to slow down, they actually speed up. — Susan Cain

My name isn't Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it's forbidden. I tell myself it doesn't matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter. I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I'll come back to dig up, one day. I think of this name as buried. This name has an aura around it, like an amulet, some charm that's survived from an unimaginably distant past. I lie in my single bed at night, with my eyes closed, and the name floats there behind my eyes, not quite within reach, shining in the dark. — Margaret Atwood

He loved how much they loved each other. It was the thing he thought about when he woke up scared in the middle of the night. Not that they loved him - they were his parents, they had to love him. That they loved each other. They didn't have to do that. None of his friends' parents were still together, and in every case, that seemed like the number one thing that had gone wrong with his friends' lives. But Park's parents loved each other. They kissed each other on the mouth, no matter who was watching. What were the chances you'd ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a world away? The math seemed impossible. How did his parents get so lucky? — Rainbow Rowell

No one starts as a self-hater. But rack up all of your mistakes and take a large enough number of wrong turns in life and soon you stop trying to forgive yourself. Everywhere you look you find shame or failure staring back. — Andre Aciman

In every game, there's three teams out there. There's the two basketball teams and the team of officials. If the two teams are evenly matched, it can come down to number of possessions. If one out-of-bounds call goes the wrong way, that can be the difference. — Tom Heinsohn

I wanted us to share the sense that the number of wrong moves far exceeds the number of good moves, to share the frightening instability of the correct decision, to bond in being confounded. — Aleksandar Hemon

There are worse things than getting a call for a wrong number at 4 am. It could be a right number. — Doug Larson

Notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. — Booker T. Washington

They'd read about this in class, how stereotypes distorted, affected, reflected reality. Asians were peaceful. Gays were nonviolent. As were women. Blacks (and sometimes Mexicans) were rarely accused of hate crimes for a number of reasons, but the underlying logic was that they were naturally predisposed to violence and mischief, and so seldom was any attack on whites motivated by hate. Contrarily, it was extremely easy to claim, and prove, that a white perpetrated a hate crime. In fact, popular opinion among the liberals was that conservatives were motivated by hate in everything they did wrong: hiring practices, legal negotiations, and any criminal activity affecting blacks, Mexicans, or gays. If Denver decided that Daron had intended to send a message of terror, then Daron's every denial must have sounded like an attempt to protect his co-conspirators. — T. Geronimo Johnson

A number of Guru's feel that there is something wrong or sick about being gay. I think it really doesn't matter what your sexual preference is; what matters is the quality of your love. — Frederick Lenz

Opinions are easy," said Henry with a shrug. "So long as I know anything at all about a topic, I'm going to have an opinion. Sometimes that opinion is going to be wrong, but one of the great things about opinions is that you can change them. And if you share your opinions, you're much more likely to come across someone who disagrees with you and can help you to be less wrong, which is why I give my opinions so freely. Maybe the oathkeepers are nothing like what I imagine them to be. Maybe the small number of them I've met aren't representative of the whole. I don't think it's out of the question that I might meet an oathkeeper who's spent decades studying all of the same things that I've thought of and stands ready to demolish me in a debate. So long as I don't start thinking of my opinions as something sacred, there's no harm in them. So no, there's nothing that I can think of that I don't have an opinion on. — Alexander Wales

I've spent more than twenty years looking for answers, Roger, and I can tell you only one thing: There aren't any answers, only choices. I've made a number of them myself, and no one can tell me whether they were right or wrong. — Diana Gabaldon

Myron reached for the phone and dialed Win's number. After the eighth ring he began to hang up when a weak, distant voice coughed. "Hello?"
Win?"
Yeah."
You okay?"
Hello?"
Win?"
Yeah."
What took you so long to answer the phone?"
Hello?"
Win?"
Who is this?"
Myron."
Myron Bolitar?"
How many other Myrons do you know?"
Myron Bolitar?"
No, Myron Rockefeller."
Something's wrong," Win said.
What?"
Terribly wrong."
What are you talking about?"
Some asshole is calling me at seven in the morning pretending to be my best friend."
Sorry, I forgot the time. — Harlan Coben

Every Sunday my dad calls to ask if I went to church. And every Sunday I lie and say: Sorry. Wrong Number. — Anthony Jeselnik

There are a number of places on marine charts where even the most weathered sailors point and say, "Right there, nothing can go wrong. Everything has to go right." One place is the turbulent passage south of Cape Horn. Another is the dead center of the Indian Ocean. — Abby Sunderland

Since the topic is science, the non scientists don't get a vote. We shouldn't decide everything by polling the masses. This is the fallacy called Argumentum Ad Numerum, the idea that something is true because great number believe it, as in EAT SHIT, twenty trillions flies can't be wrong! — Bill Maher

I've been working in Haiti 28 years - I thought I'd sort of seen it ... I've gone through a number of coups, the storms of 2008, I thought, you know, that I'd seen things as bad as they were going to get, and I was wrong. — Paul Farmer

It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. — Paul Auster

Outside the guys' athletic dorms, I attempt to stand in front of Beth as she searches for my brother's room number. Beth wears a cotton T-shirt that hugs her slim form and ends a half inch short of her low-rise jeans. With her smooth skin tempting me in very right, yet wrong, places, I would bet my Jeep that the outfit doesn't have Scott's seal of approval. Don't get me wrong, I love it, and so does every guy walking in and out of the dorms. She's my girl and I prefer to be the only one looking at her. — Katie McGarry

Rule number one about your mate: he is completely wrong until you decide he is not. — Quinn Loftis

But maybe it's wrong of me to complain ... I'm alive after all ... and I lose an enemy or two every day ... cancer, apoplexy, gluttony ... it's a pleasure the number that pass on! ... I'm not hard to please ... a name! ... another! ... there are good things in life ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Understand this clearly: you can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to carve it; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool. — John Ruskin

Everyone I talked to was a recording-the bank, the elevator, your office, the school, a wrong number. You used to be able to call a wrong number and get a person. — Erma Bombeck

He looked from the phone to the unconscious figure of the Salesman. "What did you do to him?" he asked.
"He got the wrong number," Alex said. — Anthony Horowitz

My father-in-law saw me at a dance performance. The next day, I got a phone call, and the caller said, 'I'm Dhirubhai Ambani ... may I talk to Nita?' I said, 'It's a wrong number' and put down the phone. Then he called again ... and I said, 'If you're Dhirubhai Ambani, then I'm Elizabeth Taylor.' — Nita Ambani

He dialed the number that Health Partners had listed in their contact information. A pleasant southern voice answered, but Baldwin quickly realized it was voice mail. Damn, he was hoping to get a secretary. The voice gave him the option of hitting zero to speak to a live person, and he did just that. Muzak drifted out from his earpiece and he rolled his eyes. There was just something so wrong about hearing synthesized Aerosmith. "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)" just didn't work in the dulcet tones of elevator music. After — J.T. Ellison

In 1992, the federal Government actually issued more work authorizations to immigrants and temporary foreign workers than the net number of new jobs created by our economy. Something is fundamentally wrong when we have millions of American citizens and legal residents begging for jobs, and yet we are admitting thousands and thousands of immigrants a year with virtually no consideration to our employment needs or their employment skills. — Ronald Reagan

I hope you will like the little things I have sent you. You seem to be most interested in Railways just now, so I am sending you mostly things of that sort. I send as much love as ever, in fact more. We have both, the old Polar Bear and I, enjoyed having so many nice letters from you and your pets. If you think we have not read them you are wrong; but if you find that not many of the things you asked for have come, and not perhaps quite as many as sometimes, remember that this Christmas all over the world there are a terrible number of poor and starving people. I (and also my Green Brother) have had to do some collecting of food and clothes, and toys too, for the children whose fathers and mothers and friends cannot give them anything, sometimes not even dinner. I know yours won't forget you. So, my dears, I hope you will be happy this Christmas and not quarrel, and will have some good games with your Railway all together. Don't forget old Father Christmas, when you light your tree. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Jesus' words are slightly less shocking when you consider that exclusive claims to truth are more common than we know. Truth is, by its nature, exclusive. Two differing claims cannot both be right. Math teachers make exclusive claims all the time. They will tell you that the multiplication table is not up for negotiation. There are right answers and wrong ones. A doctor's prescription is an exclusive claim as well. It excludes every medication except the one that is written on the prescription paper. A person who gives you their phone number is telling you to exclude dialing all other numbers except the digits they have provided you. — Jon Morrison

You can only pretend that you're already dead and thus free yourself up to focus on three things: 1) finding and killing the enemy, 2) communicating the situation and resulting actions to adjacent units and higher headquarters, and 3) triaging and treating your wounded. If you love your men, you naturally think about number three first, but if you do you're wrong. The grim logic of combat dictates that numbers one and two take precedence. — Donovan Campbell

On Improbability:
There's an infinite number of things that can go wrong but only a finite number of things that can go right.
In the infinitude of unlikely events many will happen with unnerving frequency.
Tautology: A given improbable event isn't likely to happen.
Corollary: Shit happens, but you'll not know its ilk.
I'm certain that nothing is certain. — Kalifer Deil

At the G-20 summit, the White House accidentally listed a phone-sex line for journalists seeking an on-record briefing call for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. To which Bill said, 'Boy, did they get the wrong number.' — Jay Leno

Brookfield High School. How may I direct your call? No, sir, this is not a waste- disposal unit, I'm afraid you have the wrong number. — Jaclyn Moriarty

If the statistics are boring, you've got the wrong numbers. — Edward Tufte

Renormalization is just a stop-gap procedure. There must be some fundamental change in our ideas, probably a change just as fundamental as the passage from Bohr's orbit theory to quantum mechanics. When you get a number turning out to be infinite which ought to be finite, you should admit that there is something wrong with your equations, and not hope that you can get a good theory just by doctoring up that number. — Paul Dirac

That the West thinks that seven is lucky and the Chinese think eight is shows both that numerology is wrong and that it's popular across the world. Numbers feel mysterious and significant. So all you need to do to sound mysterious and significant is to pick a number, any number. — Mark Forsyth

What a strange revelation of self-esteem it is when people only love those who think and feel as they do - an extension of themselves, in fact! Even Christianity does not cure us, since one cannot feel right without assuming that the rest must be wrong. Personally I would rather feel wrong with everybody else than right all by myself: I like people different, and agree with the man who said that the worst of the human race is the number of duplicates. — Freya Stark

You listen to me this one time, Dahlia. If something goes wrong, anything at all, you haul butt out of here fast. You have the cell phone and the number. Call Lily. The Ghost Walkers will be here as soon as possible."
She caught him before he could turn away. "You listen to me this one time, Nicholas. If anything goes wrong, don't be a hero. Haul your butt out of there and in one piece. We'll call Lily, and she can send the others. — Christine Feehan

Imagine that you're an extremely modern car, equipped with a greater number of options and functions than most cars. You're faster and higher performance. You're very lucky. But it's not easy. Because no one knows exactly the number of options you have or what they enable you to do. Only you can know. And speed can be dangerous. Like when you're eight, you don't know how to drive. There are many things you have to learn: how to drive when it's wet, when it's snowy, to look out for other cars and respect them, to rest when you've been driving for too long. That's what it means to be a grown up.' I'm thirteen and I can see that I'm not managing to grow up in the right way: I can't understand the road signs, I'm not in control of my vehicle, I keep taking the wrong turnings and most of the time I feel like I'm stuck on the dodgems rather than on a race track. — Delphine De Vigan

Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns. The houses in the outskirts were all exactly alike, small square boxes painted gray. Each had a small, rectangular plot of lawn in front, with a straight line of dull-looking flowers edging the path to the door. Meg had a feeling that if she could count the flowers there would be exactly the same number for each house. In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it. She looked at Calvin, and saw that he, too, was puzzled. — Madeleine L'Engle

Children are often like hostages under the care of authority, with spankings and groundings nudging them like guns pointed at their skulls, threatening to shoot if the wrong words are uttered. — Maggie Young

Once upon a time there was a mother who, in order to become a mother, had agreed to change her name; who set herself the task of falling in love with her husband bit-by-bit, but who could n ever manage to love one part, the part, curiously enough, which made possible her motherhood; whose feet were hobbled by verrucas and whose shoulders were stooped beneath the accumulating guilts of the world; whose husband's unlovable organ failed to recover from the effects of a freeze; and who, like her husband, finally succumbed to the mysteries of telephones, spending long minutes listening to the words of wrong-number callers ... shortly after my tenth birthday (when I had recovered from the fever which has recently returned to plague me after an interval of nearly twenty-one years), Amina Sinai resumed her recent practice of leaving suddenly, and always immediately after a wrong number, on urgent shopping trips. — Salman Rushdie

How could I tell the doctor what was wrong with me? I didn't understand it myself. I couldn't articulate the pain; it was the pain of nothingness. My fear was of the weather, the atmosphere, the very air. What good did safety tips do me now? 'Avoid water, metal objects, rooftops; stay off the telephone in a storm, don't think glass can protect you; even if a storm was 8 miles away, you're still not safe from a strike. Avoid life perhaps that was the answer. The number one safety tip, stay away from it all. — Alice Hoffman

On Sunday, May 23rd, 1819, all of our people embarked ... " "Our people?" But they went on board themselves, not just some other people that belong to them. So he'd better say "travelling party". No, "the men under my command". But that was also wrong, since the phrase didn't include him, and he had installed himself on the Prince of Wales at the same time. "I and the men" pleased him as little as "the men and I". "We embarked in full number" was inaccurate; the "entire party including my own person" discouraged reading. "On Sunday, May 23rd, 1819, our entire party led by me embarked ... " - Well, now what? — Sten Nadolny

The message that President Obama delivered in his speech at Notre Dame was: morality is immoral. Pro-life is the extremist position, not a moral position. Yet we should compromise and work to reduce abortions. Where's the compromise between life and death - and why work to reduce the number of them occurring if there's nothing wrong with them? — Rush Limbaugh

The truth is everybody does it from time to time. People dial telephone numbers and they get a wrong number only to find that they've read the last two digits backwards. Everybody does it, but dyslexics have this tendency to a higher degree. — Caitlyn Jenner

It makes logical sense that 168 is a greater number than 17, so why would you shelve 168 first? Because a librarian is always right. To the common man, this looks wrong, but to the librarian, this is right, because a librarian is never wrong. — Scott Douglas

The fact that a thesis is flawed does not mean that we should not invest in it as long as other people believe in it and there is a large group of people left to be convinced. The point was made by John Maynard Keynes when he compared the stock market to a beauty contest where the winner is not the most beautiful contestant but the one whom the greatest number of people consider beautiful. Where I have something significant to add is in pointing out that it pays to look for the flaws; if we find them, we are ahead of the game because we can limit our losses when the market also discovers what we already know. It is when we are unaware of what could go wrong that we have to worry. — George Soros

A real Christian in an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest, and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passes knowledge. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

I had a friend in high school named Sally Newlyn who explained what had gone wrong with God's plan for the world. During one of her schizophrenic episodes, she told me that God had given mankind a finite number of souls. He set them free in the sky where they orbited silently until they were needed for the newly conceived. He intended for the souls to be reincarnated so that humanity would grow more generous and wise with each generation. But God had underestimated man's propensity to go forth and multiply, and so, on our planet today, millions of bodies were roaming the earth searching in the vain for a soul. — Kaylie Jones

You propound a complicated arithmetical problem: say cubing a number containing four digits. Give me a slate and half an hour's time, and I can produce a wrong answer. — George Bernard Shaw

I've played English a number of times, and used an English accent a number of times, so it becomes a little bit of an obstacle course to go, "Oh, that's teetering into Captain Jack-ville," or "This is teetering into Chocolat or Wonka." You've got to really pay attention to the places you've been. But, that's part of it. That's the great challenge. You may get it wrong. There's a very good possibility that you can fall flat on your face, but that's a healthy thing for an actor. — Johnny Depp

Think of a number, any number." "Er, five," said the mattress. "Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?" The — Douglas Adams

The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number. — P.G. Wodehouse

You can have very big local government. By big, I mean very engaged government. Do you measure it in terms of the number of laws? Number of employees? You could make arguments for either one. I tend to think the axis of the size of government is the wrong concern. But I do think that situating power more locally is a legitimate approach. — Zephyr Teachout

Lesson number one, she muttered, love is beyond your grasp. Lesson two: nowhere is it written that you're guaranteed fairness. And three: there's only right and wrong. — Sandy Blair

The Dopey Science Creed: 1. I maintain that my life has no purpose and no meaning. The same is true for the entire universe. There is no purpose to anything. 2. I affirm that my morals come from my genes and my conditioning, not from decisions I make. Free will is an illusion. My personal identity is an illusion. 3. There are no "good" deeds, or "good people." There is no "bad," "evil," or "wrong" either. 4. Every report of encounters with spirits, angels, ghosts, and supernatural beings is bunk. The credibility or number of witnesses doesn't matter - it's all bunk. 5. I am my physical brain and nothing more. The death of my body is the death of me. — Alex Tsakiris

In the spring of 2009, I was the 217th person ever to be diagnosed with anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. Just a year later, that figure had doubled. Now the number is in the thousands. Yet Dr. Bailey, considered one of the best neurologists in the country, had never heard of it. When we live in a time when the rate of misdiagnoses has shown no improvement since the 1930s, the lesson here is that it's important to always get a second opinion.
While he may be an excellent doctor in many respects, Dr. Bailey is also, in some ways, a perfect example of what is wrong with medicine. I was just a number to him (and if he saw thirty-five patients a day, as he told me, that means I was one of a very large number). He is a by-product of a defective system that forces neurologists to spend five minutes with X number of patients a day to maintain their bottom line. It's a bad system. Dr. Bailey is not the exception to the rule. He is the rule. — Susannah Cahalan

Where was I? What had been done? I replied that I was in the recovery room and that he had detached the lateral rectus muscle of the right eye and attached the plaque containing radioiodine (I-125, to be precise) to the sclera. I said that I was sorry it was not radioactive ruthenium instead of iodine (I have a thing for the platinum metals) but that 125, at least, was memorable for being the smallest number that was the sum of two squares in two different ways. I startled myself as I said this; I had not thought it out before - it just jumped into my mind. (I realized, a few minutes later, that I was wrong - 65 is the smallest such number.) — Oliver Sacks

A spirit of license makes a man refuse to commit himself to any standards. The right time is the way he sets his watch. The yardstick has the number of inches that he wills it to have. Liberty becomes license, and unbounded license leads to unbounded tyranny. When society reaches this stage, and there is no standard of right and wrong outside of the individual himself, then the individual is defenseless against the onslaught of cruder and more violent men who proclaim their own subjective sense of values. Once my idea of morality is just as good as your idea of morality, then the morality that is going to prevail is the morality that is stronger. — Fulton J. Sheen

I gave a speech once," he said suddenly and apparently unconnectedly. "You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number." "Er, five," said the mattress. "Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?" The mattress was much impressed by this and realized that it was in the presence of a not unremarkable mind. It willomied along its entire length sending excited little ripples through its shallow algae-covered pool. — Douglas Adams

Oh dear,"cried Rhonda just then, for Mr. Benedict, awash in strong emotion, has gone to sleep.with a sudden loud snore he toppled forward into the attentive arms of Rhonda and Number Two, who eased him to the floor.
"What's wrong with him?" Constance asked.
"He has narcolepsy," said Kate.
"He steals a lot?"
"That's kleptomania," Sticky said. "Mr. Benedict sleeps a lot. — Trenton Lee Stewart

It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong. — Jeremy Bentham

Immoral: Inexpedient. Whatever in the long run and with regard to the greater number of instances men find to be generally inexpedient comes to be considered wrong, wicked, immoral. If mans notions of right and wrong have any other basis than this of expediency; if they originated, or could have originated, in any other way; if actions have in themselves a moral character apart from and nowise dependent on, their consequences-then all philosophy is a lie and reason a disorder of the mind. — Ambrose Bierce

What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it. — C.S. Lewis

Is something wrong, Lieutenant North?" "Beware of Carrington," he said. "Mr. Carrington was very kind," she said. "He made no untoward remarks." "He's already got you lined up in his mind as his next wife. He's buried one already." Her breath came fast, and spots of color lodged in her cheeks. "What happened to his other wife?" Surely she wasn't interested! "She died in childbirth." "Recently?" He dropped his gaze. "No," he muttered, struggling to maintain his temper. "About ten years ago." "The poor man," she murmured. She removed her hand from John's arm. "But I'm not interested in becoming wife number two." "I'm relieved to hear it," he said. She tipped her head. "Are you? Why would that concern you?" "He's much too old for you," he said. She smiled, and her dimple appeared. "Surely he's not more than fifty." "As I said. An old man. — Colleen Coble

In a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority ... and that oppression of the majority will extend to far great number, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. Under a cruel prince they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their sufferings; but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are deprived of all external consolation: they seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species. — Edmund Burke

I'm not saying Obama is right on everything. Of course not. He may be wrong on a number of things. But what I do know is that he behaves like a very, very sane man almost all the time. — John Cleese

I've always been intrigued, for example, by the way that many people use the analogy of a train to describe their companies. Massive and powerful, the train moves inexorably down the track, over mountains and across vast plains, through the densest fog and darkest night. When things go wrong, we talk of getting "derailed" and of experiencing a "train wreck." And I've heard people refer to Pixar's production group as a finely tuned locomotive that they would love the chance to drive. What interests me is the number of people who believe that they have the ability to drive the train and who think that this is the power position - that driving the train is the way to shape their companies' futures. The truth is, it's not. Driving the train doesn't set its course. The real job is laying the track. — Ed Catmull

Crowdsourcing can greatly increase the number of ideas entering the front-end of the innovation funnel, however, using the wrong source can result in a large number of inappropriate ideas, and the lack of defined process for managing the progress of ideas through the funnel can result in the funnel becoming blocked. — D. James Kennedy

The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong. — Jeremy Bentham

The universe would appear to be something like a piece of cheese; it can be sliced in an infinite number of ways- and when one has chosen his own pattern of slicing, he finds that other men's cuts fall at the wrong places. — Kenneth Burke

I leave the number and a short
message on every green Volvo
in town

Is anything wrong?
I miss you.
574-7423

The phone rings constantly.
One says, Are you bald?
Another, How tall are you in
your stocking feet?

Most just reply, Nothing's wrong.
I miss you, too.

Come quick. — Ronald Koertge

I hope I'm wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy - worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region. — Madeleine Albright

"I've ... " he began.
He could have completed that any number of ways: " ... botched everything." " ... loved you since I laid eyes on you." " ... been a complete idiot for you." " ... never deserved you." " ... been so wrong about everything that matters in life."
"I love you." He hadn't planned to say it.
She went still.
She kissed her fingers, and laid them on his lips, stopping him from saying anything more.
"Thank you," she said. "Don't follow me. — Julie Anne Long

Is it just or reasonable, that most voices against the main end of government should enslave the less number that would be free? more just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow-slaves. They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always right to win it and to keep it, whenever they have power, be the voices never so numerous that oppose it. — John Milton

'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' is just one of those movies that's like a page of history. You can't really go wrong. It's a prequel. It's not like number three. Which is really cool, to be the before as opposed to the after. — Diora Baird

This is just your penis having the feels for my vagina. Your penis is making prank calls! and every single time your penis makes a prank call, my vagina answers the phone. And then you hang up. Or your penis claims wrong number or misdial or no hablo Ingles. It's infuriating, and it's called genital call me maybe. — Penny Reid

What's wrong with being number two? — Morrie Schwartz.

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone? — James Thurber

I have no patience with people who want to tell me what's wrong. I only want to hear from the person who first tells me the solution and then fills me in on the problem. I don't want to hear that your basement is flooded. I want to hear that you've found the number to the cleanup company. Then tell me why you're calling them. — Earl G. Graves, Sr.

Any number of things were sure to go wrong - from tripping on the stairs and flashing the prince a sexy metal thigh,[ ... ] — Marissa Meyer

Our society is not held together primarily by law and its enforcement but most importantly by those who voluntarily obey the unenforceable because of their internalized norms of righteous or correct behavior. Religious belief in right and wrong is a vital influence to produce such voluntary compliance by a large number of our citizens. — Dallin H. Oaks

It turns out to be very difficult to devise a theory to describe the universe all in one go. Instead, we break the problem up into bits and invent a number of partial theories. Each of these partial theories describes and predicts a certain limited class of observations, neglecting the effects of other quantities, or representing them by simple sets of numbers. It may be that this approach is completely wrong. If everything in the universe depends on everything else in a fundamental way, it might be impossible to get close to a full solution by investigating parts of the problem in isolation. Nevertheless, it is certainly the way that we have made progress in the past. — Stephen Hawking

By the time I got to the phone and dialed John's number, I was out of breath with excitement. "You are not going to believe this," I blurted out.
"What's the matter?" Hr sounded concerned.
"Are you sitting down?"
"Yeah, sure, Pattie. What's wrong?" God only knows what John was thinking at this point.
"GOD IS REAL!" I practically shouted in his ear. I waited for John to react in a dramatic way, almost disbelieving way. I expected him to say, "No way! C'mon! Get out of town!" After all, I thought I was telling him something he didn't already know, something that would turn his world upside down like it did mine. — Pattie Mallette

We need to reshape the movement as one of grassroots activists, and not 'professional activists' who populate the seemingly endless number of national animal rights groups. For many people, activism has become writing a check to a national group that is very pleased to have you leave it to them. Although it is important to give financial support to worthy efforts only, giving money is not enough and giving to the wrong groups can actually do more harm than good. — Gary L. Francione

What's wrong with being number 2? — Mitch Albom

My phone buzzes and I fish it from my pocket, expecting Tacey or maybe my parents checking in to make sure I'm okay. But it's an unfamiliar number.
Do you blame yourself?
I read the words once. Twice. I see Stella's locker door swinging open and I hear a train whistle, but neither are happening. It's all in my head. I force myself to take a breath and head outside. This text is a wrong number. It's not for me, and it's definitely not about Stella.
And then another message.
Do you wish you'd done something? What if you still could?
I text back quickly.
I think you have the wrong number.
I don't have the wrong number, Piper. — Natalie D. Richards

Somebody's going to be reading, right? Wrong. They're FBing. Doing a Number Two. Maybe I shouldn't have had those chilli peppers. Hope y'all having a good day! - Coming from a toilet not far from you. xxxx — Hope Barrett

When it all come down to it, the thing that matters most in a relationship is principles [ ... ] We have the same idea what's right and what's wrong, and that's got us through any number of things. If you can have that with someone, then you're most of the way toward love. Not just lover-love. Any kind of love. — David Levithan

The number 1 thing that I don't want to see in a story is when characters exist simply to be proven wrong. — Brandon Sanderson

What's been most helpful to me is realizing that those times when all the heads in the room turn and look at me as if I was crazy, reinforce my own leadership capability. Because I've been in a number of those settings where I've been right. And I've been right often enough that now when it happens I don't automatically think, "Oh, my, what's wrong with me?" or "Ohhh, I must not be ready for this role," or "They know so much more than I do." — Mitchell Baker