Controversy Quotes

“At first, they'll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they'll dislike you.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Controversial' as we all know, is often a euphemism for 'interesting and intelligent.”
― Kevin Smith

“I have discovered with advancing years that few things are entirely black or white, but more often different shades of grey.”
― Jeffrey Archer, A Prisoner of Birth

“As for what it's against - the story is against those who pervert and misuse religion, or any other kind of doctrine with a holy book and a priesthood and an apparatus of power that wields unchallengeable authority, in order to dominate and suppress human freedoms.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish... but that's only if it's done properly.”
― Banksy, Wall and Piece

“Bitter people are not interested in what you say, but what you hide.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“If you have to say or do something controversial, aim so that people will hate that they love it and not love that they hate it.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I have always thought that if women's hair posed so many problems, God would certainly have made us bald.”
― Marjane Satrapi, The Complete Persepolis

“So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'That's an interesting question?' Mr. Chiba: 'The story with animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'Yes. The story with animals is the better story.' Pi Patel: 'Thank you. And so it goes with God.”
― Yann Martel

“A rebel adult often seems like a glorious savior, whereas a rebel child often seems like a little devil.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“The crazy creatives are the creatives who never go completely mad. They aren't so easily disheartened by the seemingly endless amounts of scrutiny that creative individuals tend to receive because they, like insanity, are the ones who feed off of opposition and negative feedback and manage to continue along with a healthy ambition. It is the crazy that teaches us to use our gifts wisely and own all the attackers.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“People don't want children to know what they need to know. They want their kids to know what they ought to need to know. If you're a teacher you're in a constant battle with mildly deluded adults who think the world will get better if you imagine it is better. You want to teach about sex? Fine, but only when they're old enough to do it. You want to talk politics? Sure, but nothing modern. Religion? So long as you don't actually think about it. Otherwise some furious mob will come to your house and burn you for a witch.”
― Nick Harkaway, The Gone-Away World

“Within any important issue, there are always aspects no one wishes to discuss.”
― George Orwell

“Taxonomy is described sometimes as a science and sometimes as an art, but really it’s a battleground.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

“The love of conflict is most evident when opposing forces join sides to defeat the peacemaker.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“A writer is one who communicates ideas and emotions people want to communicate but aren't quite sure how, or even if, they should communicate them.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“If you believe that I'm a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut.”
― Ice-T

“I always ask myself one question: what is human? What does it mean to be human? Maybe people will consider my new films brutal again. But this violence is just a reflection of what they really are, of what is in each one of us to certain degree.”
― Kim Ki-duk

“Those who stand for different causes during different generations often experience the same oppositions and the same difficulties as those of the previous and the next generations. That is the basis of history repeating itself.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“After writing the letter Sybil lost almost two days. "Coming to," she stumbled across what she had written just before she had dissociated and wrote to Dr. Wilbur as follows: It's just so hard to have to feel, believe, and admit that I do not have conscious control over my selves. It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would be easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.”
― Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

“Christianity, like genius, is one of the hardest concepts to forgive. We hear what we want to hear and accept what we want to accept, for the most part, simply because there is nothing more offensive than feeling like you have to re-evaluate your own train of thought and purpose in life. You have to die to an extent in your hunger for faith, for wisdom, and quite frankly, most people aren't ready to die.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I got really offended when my single 'Smile' got banned [during after-school hours] from MTV in the U.K. because it had the word fuck in it. They said, 'We don't want kids to grow up too quickly.' But then you have Paris Hilton and the Pussycat Dolls taking their clothes off and gyrating up against womanizing, asshole men, and that's acceptable. You're thinking your kids are gonna grow up quicker because they heard the word fuck than from thinking they should be shoving their tits in people's faces?”
― Lily Allen

“Peaceful disputes are maintained when men sincerely believe that they are morally, logically correct about the issues at hand. It is when neither side is really certain that wars are instigated.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“How could anything non-controversial be of intellectual interest to grown-ups?”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“I'm starting to think that my level of intrigue outweighs my fear of controversy.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Several psychologists (L. Armstrong, 1994; Enns, McNeilly, Corkery, & Gilbert, 1995; Herman, 1992; McFarlane & van der Kolk, 1996; Pope & Brown, 1996) contend that the controversy of delayed recall for traumatic events is likely to be influenced by sexism. Kristiansen, Gareau, Mittleholt, DeCourville, and Hovdestad (1995) found that people who were more authoritarian and who had less favorable attitudes toward women were less likely to believe in the veracity of women’s recovered memories for sexual abuse. Those who challenged the truthfulness of recovered memories were more likely to endorse negative statements about women, including the idea that battered women enjoy being abused. McFarlane and van der Kolk (1996) have noted that delayed recall in male combat veterans reported by Myers (1940) and Kardiner (1941) did not generate controversy, whereas delayed recall in female survivors of intrafamilial child sexual abuse has provoked considerable debate.”
― Rachel E. Goldsmith

“In the controversy that followed the prince's remarks, his most staunch defender was professor John Taylor, a scholar whose work I had last noticed when he gave good reviews to the psychokinetic (or whatever) capacities of the Israeli conjuror and fraud Uri Geller. The heir to the throne seems to possess the ability to surround himself—perhaps by some mysterious ultramagnetic force?—with every moon-faced spoon-bender, shrub-flatterer, and water-diviner within range.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“For wordsmiths and masters of words, without necessarily being harsh with words, the words have a tendency to shoot straight to the hearts of people, and this either deeply touches them or deeply angers them. Like the apostles in all their loving controversies are those who are masters of words while combining this gift with truth.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Some concepts are so incredibly risky they take an honest fool to try to articulate them.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Prejudice in this country is like chapters in a book. Chapter One: Hating the Africans and Indians. Chapter Two: Don't forget the Irish. Chapter Three: Polish jokes."..... "Hispanics? Latinos? Whatever you call us? Maybe we're Chapter Fifteen or Sixteen on the East Coast, but we're the preface in the West.”
― Emilie Richards, Endless Chain