This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is wrong to believe that frank sentiments and the candor of the mind are the exclusive share of the young; they ornament oftentimes old age, upon which they seem to spread a chaste reflection of the modest graces of their younger days, where they shine with the same brightness as those flowers which are often seen peeping, fresh and laughing, from among ruins.
Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible.
Wrong |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
Wrong |
The wise man does no wrong in changing his habits with the times.
If oppression and wrong should gain the ascendancy, and injustice stalk abroad in the land, and all else fail him; nevertheless his humblest roof, and all things that are sheltered beneath it, would find, somehow, someway, a final refuge and protection in the Supreme Court of the United States.
Injustice | Injustice | Oppression | Wrong |
There is but one quality necessary for the perfect understanding of character, one quality that, if man have it, he may dare to judge—that is, omniscience. Most people study character as a proofreader pores over a great poem: his ears are dulled to the majesty and music of the lines, his eyes are darkened to the magic imagination of the genius of the author; that proofreader is busy watching for an inverted comma, a misspacing, or a wrong font letter. He has an eye trained for the imperfections, the weaknesses.
Character | Genius | Imagination | Magic | Man | Music | People | Study | Understanding | Wrong |
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself.
Disrespect | Lying | Man | Order | Truth |
Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.
Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one.
Frank Herbert, formally Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr.
Nature does not make mistakes. Right and wrong are human categories.
Frances Wright, known as Fanny Wright
Now here is a departure from the first principle of true ethics. Here we find ideas of moral wrong and moral right associated with something else than beneficial action. The consequent is, we lose sight of the real basis of morals, and substitute a false one.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and petty ones to fear.
Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
Right is right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong.
George Soros, Hungarian as Soros György, born Schwartz György
The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it's possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.
George Augustus Sala, fully George Augustus Henry Sala
Not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.