Controversy Quotes

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to… freedom of worship… and other fundamental rights may not be […]

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of “crackpot” than the stigma of conformity.

Controversy, for the most part, disfigures the question it seeks to elucidate.

These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland leads the […]

When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.

In a controversy, the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for truth and have begun striving for ourselves.

A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues is on the way to totalitarianism and death.

It is indeed the fate of controvertists, even when they contend for philosophical or theological truth, to be soon laid aside and slighted. Either the question is decided, and there is no more place for doubt and opposition; or mankind despair of understanding it, and grow weary of disturbance, content themselves with quiet ignorance, and […]

Controvertists cannot long retain their kindness for each other.

Controversies merely speculative are of small importance in themselves, however they may have sometimes heated a disputant, or provoked a faction.