Being Right Quotes

Rule Number One is this: If you're open to learning, you get your life-lessons delivered as gently as the tickle of a feather. But if you're defensive, if you stubbornly persist in being right instead of learning the lesson at hand, if you stop paying attention to the tickles, the nudges, the clues - boom! Sledgehammer. ~ Gay Hendricks

Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right. ~ Igor Stravinsky

Righteousness doesn't mean being right. It means showing love, compassion and understanding no matter what you think is right. ~ L.J. Vanier

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. ~ Thomas Paine

The attraction of cynicism was that it so often put you in the right, as if being right led directly to happiness. ~ Richard Russo

Forget about enlightenment.
Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind singing in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing, and the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be.
Not the saint you're striving to become.
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You're already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Breathe out, touch in, let go. ~ John Welwood

Better you forgive than being right. Put your pride in your pocket and bring out Love for CHRIST sake. ~ James C. Uwandu

The thing is, about a character, it's not about being right, it's about the truth. The truth comes from within, so you have to search as an artist for the truth. ~ Russell Hornsby

I propose a toast. Here's to being right all the time. May God and history forgive us. They all clinked glasses to that. ~ John Scalzi

Humanity is higher than religion, so says my religion. ~ Shahla Khan

I look at him more than a little shocked by his words knowing how much he likes being right being in charge most people do. ~ Alyson Noel

Controllers want to prove that their perspective is the correct one. That proves that they are right - as a matter of self-worth, not just of accuracy. Controllers equate being right with being effective. ~ Fred Kofman

But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob; it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right. ~ Ray Stannard Baker

I'm very comfortable being right," she admitted.

"We all are. But sometimes it's a lonely place. ~ Susan Mallery

What's wrong with discourses about the obvious is that they corrupt consciousness with their easiness, with the speed with which they provide one with moral comfort, with the sensation of being right. ~ Joseph Brodsky

Pride is not your friend.
He would have you think he is, that he affords you strength and courage, but in truth he robs you of your health and by slow, diluted degrees steals your might. He is a crafty and cunning liar who would have you think that stubborn, unapologetic, superior, boastful, and popular are admirable traits. Pride would convince you that being right is more crucial than being kind. He would have you sever relationships, even turn your back on family and friends rather than utter a humble apology. To do so is beneath you, pride would say. He would have you fight like a raptor and gnash your teeth while jutting out an inflexible jaw to defend and protect him, regardless of who is hurt in the process. He would use and demean you in order to puff up and fortify himself. He would destroy your life and every meaningful association before casting you aside without a hint of remorse.
Again, Pride is not your friend. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Having him hold me like that was the only good thing out of it all, having him hold me and being right there with me. I just wished he could have held me harder and tighter and made the bad feelings, the dirty feelings, go away. But I don't think you can hold a person that tight, so tight that she's in your heart, way inside your skin, being cleaned and warmed by your blood. (11) ~ Susan Shaw

This is what you left, I thought. The vindication of the choice you made to leave that night. Vindication and horror. Sometimes being right isn't all it's cracked up to be: how many times in the last few years I thought about bitter fruit, how when what you are right about is
well you can't even look at it. ~ Peter Heller

Being right is based upon knowledge and experience and is often provable. Knowledge comes from the past, so it's safe. It is also out of date. It's the opposite of originality. Experience is built from solutions to old situations and problems. The old situations are probably different from the present ones, so that old solutions will have to be bent to fit new problems (and possibly fit badly). Also the likelihood is that, if you've got the experience, you'll probably use it. This is lazy. Experience is the opposite of being creative. If you can prove you're right you're set in concrete. You cannot move with the times or with other people. Being right is also being boring. Your mind is closed. You are not open to new ideas. You are rooted in your own rightness, which is arrogant. Arrogance is a valuable tool, but only if used very sparingly. Worst of all, being right has a tone of morality about it. To be anything else sounds weak or fallible, and people who are right would hate to be thought fallible. So: it's wrong to be right, because people who are right are rooted in the past, rigid-minded, dull and smug. There's no talking to them. ~ Paul Arden

From Wonder: When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind.
Mr Brown's September Precept ~ ― RJ Palacio

Talking to the parents of older kids was helpful for me, since the parents of kids the same age as yours won't admit how horrible their children are ... you can either practice being right or practice being kind. Screaming in the car helped. [p. 94] ~ Anne Lamott

Complaining and reactivity are favorite mind patterns through which the ego strengthens itself. For many people, a large part of their mentalemotional activity consists of complaining and reacting against this or that. By doing this, you make others or a situation "wrong" and yourself "right." Through being "right," you feel superior, and through feeling superior, you strengthen your sense of self. In reality, of course, you are only strengthening the illusion of ego. Can you observe those patterns within yourself and recognize the complaining voice in your head for what it is? ~ Eckhart Tolle

Ok, she was close to being right. I did have a thing about cats. And I didn't particularly have a good reason for feeling that way. It was as if it was, innate. Tara on the other hand had this freakish affinity towards them, or should I say, they towards her. It was like she had the fresh scent of salmon that only cats could smell. It was endearing, and a little creepy. ~ Kimberly Raiser

I observed an eighteen-year-old friend of one of our daughters talking to his mother on the telephone. As he hung up the phone in frustration he said, "She makes me so angry, she's always telling me what to think and where to go and how to do things." He was obviously upset and filled with anger. I told him he had one of two choices. He could either continue to practice being right, or practice being kind. If you insist on being right you will argue, get frustrated, angry, and your problem will persist with your mom, I explained. If you simply practice being kind, you can remind yourself that this is your mom, she's always been that way, she will very likely stay that way, but you are going to send her love instead of anger when she starts in with her routine. A simple statement of kindness such as, "That's a good point, Mom, I'll think about it," and you have a spiritual solution to your problem. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

But gratitude would not have me love you as I do. Love was inspired by what you are - the good, the bad, and even the foolish, which is what you're being right now. ~ Mary Jo Putney

To search for a solutions, knowing that the problem is insoluble; to serve, while smiling at what one serves; to subject oneself to an iron discipline, without end and without profit; to write, in the profound conviction that one's work has no importance; to know, to understand, and to tolerate, while constantly bearing in mind the painful uselessness of being right ... ~ Henry De Montherlant

things - Feeling Safe, Being Right, Feeling Good, and Looking Good. If any of these conditions are challenged, we become fearful. ~ Peter Coughter

The feelings he aroused in her were like a complete realignment of her being, right down to the molecular level. ~ Lisa Marie Rice

Nietzsche wrote, "One often contradicts an opinion when it is really only the tone in which it has been presented that is unsympathetic". Or, as The Dude put it: "You're not wrong, Walter - you're just an asshole". Less quotable, and often overlooked, is Walter's response: "Okay, then." The Walters of the world don't mid being assholes; what matters to them is being right. ~ Tim Kreider

Give up being right. Instead radiate peace, harmony, love, and laughter from your heart. ~ Deepak Chopra

Look at the people who review. Look at their commitment to being "right" and "safe". If I had listened to my critics I would have given up years ago. ~ John Fante

He had decided before the accident not to chase them anymore, but the circumstances of the accident made him fear for Lilia's safety. he would never bring her in, not anymore; all he wanted now was to watch over her. Michaela had been reading his notes for years, but his notes were only part of it: the other part was the way he woke up at night in his bed in Montreal and knew where Lilia was, the way he could glance at a map of the United Staes and realize with absolute, inexplicable certainty that she was in West Virginia, the way he tried to ignore his terrifying clairvoyance and forget where she was and couldn't, the way he knew where she was but had to keep driving south to check, the horror of always being right: he saw her face in the crowd on Sunset Boulevard, he stepped into a hardware store in St. Louis at the moment she stepped out of the deli across the street, he stood on a corner in a run-down neighborhood in Chicago and watched her emerge from an apartment building down the block. After each sighting he returned north more depleted, more frightened, less intact. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

There is a horror that sometimes comes with being right. ~ Samantha

There is a world of difference between being clever and being right. ~ Ian Driscoll

The most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face. ~ Sydney J. Harris

True love is not:
A person's looks
A person's career or accomplishments
Longevity of a relationship
Children together
Memories made
Words spoken or declared
Chance meetings you feel are fate
Hobbies and interests shared
Or, Religious beliefs in common
True love is:
Seeing the potential in someone and helping them to rise and meet it. It is selfless. It doesn't care about being right or winning. It cares about you choosing right. It is your heart breaking when they go against the goodness in their nature and it is your heart rejoicing when he or she does something so generous and kind for others, that it inspires you to be even better. It is confidence that doesn't seek to possess, rather to set your soul free. ~ Shannon L. Alder

Me, I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right. ~ David Mitchell

It is, indeed, a trial to maintain the virtue of humility when one can't help being right. ~ Judith Martin

Violence is the method of ignorance, the weapon of the weak. The strong of heart and brain need no violence, for they are irresistible in their consciousness of being right. ~ Alexander Berkman

We learn nothing by being right. ~ Elizabeth Bibesco

Brilliance in a scientist does not consist in being right more often but in being wrong about more interesting topics. ~ Kent Beck

Identifying a potential threat feels curiously good. You're like a gazelle that smells a lion and can't relax until it sees where the lion is. Seeing a lion feels good when the alternative is worse. We seek evidence of threats to feel safe, and we get a dopamine boost when we find what we seek. You can also get a serotonin boost from the feeling of being right, and an oxytocin boost from bonding with those who sense the same threat. This is why people seem oddly pleased to find evidence of doom and gloom. But the pleasure doesn't last because the "do something" feeling commands your attention again. You can end up feeling bad a lot even if you're successful in your survival efforts. ~ Loretta Graziano Breuning

We're all guilty of saying things, especially on social media, that hurt one another, that leave scars, and damage relationships. As I stumble over my mistakes in this area, I'm coming to realize that relationships with good people are precious things that should not be taken lightly. They are never worth risking for the sake of being right about some triviality that won't be remembered a month or a year from now. ~ Bobby Adair

What humans want most of all, is to be right. Even if we're being right about our own doom. If we believe there are monsters around the next corner ready to tear us apart, we would literally prefer to be right about the monsters, than to be shown to be wrong in the eyes of others and made to look foolish. ~ David Wong

The most important tactic in an argument next to being right is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without an embarrassing loss of face. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

I will live by the best I can discern today. Tomorrow I may find out I was wrong. Since I do not live by being right, I am not destroyed by being wrong. ~ Verna J. Dozier

Jovinderpihainu breaks it. You are right to ask, Shari. But there is a difference between being honest and being right. Honest men lie all the time, believing that they tell the truth. Much evil is borne on the back of honest ~ James Frey

We rolled back the clock in a full company meeting and shared each of the steps that came together to help us arrive at this decision that was going to impact everyone on the team. We wanted to show people what "risk being right" looked like to us. How ~ Jonathan Raymond

Attachment to being right creates suffering. When you have a choice to be right, or to be kind, choose kind and watch your suffering disappear. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

The proof of a thing's being right is that it has power over the heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us. ~ John Ruskin

Being right too soon is socially unacceptable. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

A man's pride will cause him to do things you never dreamed possible. He got fired up about being right and blocked out everything else. ~ Bette Lee Crosby

It's not about being liberal or conservative, it's about being human.
It's not about being rich or poor, it's about being alive and happy.
It's not about being right, it's about being considerate and compassionate. ~ Karen L. Syed

When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind. - Dr Wayne W. Dyer ~ R.J. Palacio

Our pride is tied up in being right. We tend to favor data that confirm our beliefs, so we don't see alternatives. Too often, leaders practice defense routines that become self-reinforcing. ~ Nina Easton

Love wasn't about being right or wrong, but about standing up and helping when your partner's back was bowed. He would likely do the same for her someday. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Being right is massively overrated, especially when it comes at the expense of being compassionate and kind. ~ Scott Stabile

No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone. ~ Thomas Paine

Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. ~ Philip Roth

I'm used to criticism, but I'm also used to being right. ~ Calvin W. Allison

Think back for a moment on your own history
not just where you were born or where you grew up, but the circumstances that contributed to your being right here, right now. What were the moments along the way that wounded or scared you? Chances are, you've had a few. But here's what's remarkable: You are still here, still standing. ~ Oprah Winfrey

I don't want you to say anything. I want you to listen. You know, being confident isn't the same as being right. ~ William Landay

As you you deeply into your own awareness, and relax the self-contraction, and dissolve into the empty ground of your own primordial experience, the simply feeling of Being-right now, right here-is it not obvious at once? ~ Ken Wilber

I always say people would rather be nice than right. I like to be nice too, but come on. People frequently ask me, what is my definition of politically correct. My answer is always the same: the elevation of sensitivity over truth. People would rather be nice than right, rather be sensitive than true. Well, being nice and sensitive are important, but they're not more important than being right; they're not more important than the truth. ~ Bill Maher

Too many times I've been wrong, I guess being right takes too long. ~ Drake

Music does not depend on being right, on having good taste and education and all that." "Indeed. Then what does it depend on?" "On making music, Herr Haller, on making music as well and as much as possible and with all the intensity of which one is capable. ~ Hermann Hesse

Vindication and horror. Sometimes being right isn't all it's cracked up to be: how ~ Peter Heller

There is a story they tell, about a girl dared by her peers to venture to a local graveyard after dark. This was her folly: when they told her that standing on someone's grave at night would cause the inhabitant to reach up and pull her under, she scoffed. Scoffing is the first mistake a woman can make.

I will show you, she said.

Pride is the second mistake.

They gave her a knife to stick into the frosty earth, as a way of proving her presence and her theory.

She went to that graveyard. Some storytellers say that she picked the grave at random. I believe she selected a very old one, her choice tinged by self-doubt and the latent belief that if she were wrong, the intact muscle and flesh of a newly dead corpse would be more dangerous than one centuries gone.

She knelt on the grave and plunged the blade deep. As she stood to run she found she couldn't escape. Something was clutching at her clothes. She cried out and fell down.

When morning came, her friends arrived at the cemetery. They found her dead on the grave, the blade pinning the sturdy wool of her skirt to the ground. Dead of fright or exposure, would it matter when the parents arrived? She was not wrong, but it didn't matter any more. Afterwards, everyone believed that she had wished to die, even though she had died proving that she could live.

As it turns out, being right was the third, and worst, mistake. ~ Carmen Maria Machado

No amount of hatred can prevent an enemy from being right sometimes. ~ Wes Fesler

Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right. ~ Donald A. Norman

Don't work to hard on appearing to be right, but on being right ~ Yuri Van Der Sluis

On this basic - being right and doing right the whole world can unite. ~ Swami Vivekananda

This need to be right has put a huge burden on me, one that I never deserved to have to carry. Part of it, I know, is cultural
in this age of information at a moment's notice, we've come to expect people to have answers
the right answers
at the drop of a hat. I feel very fortunate that over the last decade or so I've been able to leave the need to be right behind me and move on with my life with a more healthy perspective. I'm now willing not just to admit that I'm wrong, but also to stick my neck out with ideas or thoughts that may be wrong. The possibility of being wrong no longer threatens my emotional well-being; if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and I learn from that. ~ Tom Walsh

That Hegelian dialectics should provide a wonderful instrument for always being right, because they permit the interpretations of all defeats as the beginning of victory, is obvious. One of the most beautiful examples of this kind of sophistry occurred after 1933 when the German Communists for nearly two years refused to recognize that Hitler's victory had been a defeat for the German Communist Party. ~ Hannah Arendt

And as we should all know by now, anytime you predict failure you have an excellent chance of being right. ~ Jeff Lindsay

She shakes her head but her lips lift. "Stop." "Stop what?" "Being right." She groans and leans back against the couch in a huff. "I hate that we're all so worked up over it and you say a few words, and now everything makes sense again. ~ Krista Ritchie

I absolutely know that you can, under your own steam, dissolve the shell that separates you from a higher experience of Self and a much better life. You don't need gurus or to be catapulted into super-natural experiences by dramatic events - you are becoming such a high-frequency being right here in your physical body, that what used to be meta-physical, trans-personal, and para-normal is now almost ordinary." - from Frequency: The Power of Personal Vibration ~ Penney Peirce

Between being 'right' and being kind, I know which way I vote. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

But being confident you are right is not the same as being right. ~ Steven D. Levitt

I am not so interested in religion or dogma of any kind. It is too restrictive for me, too organizational, too hierarchical, and too tied up in power and being right. You call it a "rabid evangelism." ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Gabi, I was noticing, was a very forgiving person. I've noticed that sometimes smart people aren't. They're more interested in being right, being on top, and they think that means crushing the competition with their huge brains. But Gabi didn't need to put others down to raise herself up. Interesting. ~ Carlos Hernandez, Sal And Gabi Break The Universe

Baby!" he hissed. "Silly little bleater! Go home to your mother and drink milk. What do you understand of such things? But the others, listen. Tash is only another name for Aslan. All that old idea of us being right and the Calormenes wrong is silly. We know better now. The Calormenes use different words but we all mean the same thing. Tash and Aslan are only two different names for you know Who. That's why there can never be any quarrel between them. Get that into your heads, you stupid brutes. Tash is Aslan: Aslan is Tash ~ C.S. Lewis

I think if you're behind the times, you've failed. I think the only way to measure success is being right on time with what people want. ~ Chuck Barris

As our appreciation of happiness in relationship increases, we take notice of the things that tend to take us away from this feeling. One major catalyst taking us away is the need to be right. An opinion that is taken too seriously sets up conditions that must be met first before you can be happy. In relationships, this might sound like 'You must agree with or see my point of view in order for me to love and respect you.' In a more positive feeling state, this attitude would seem silly or harmful. We can disagree, even on important issues, and still love one another - when our own thought systems no longer have control over our lives and we see the innocence in our divergent points of view.

The need to be right stems from an unhealthy relationship to your own thoughts. Do you believe your thoughts are representative of reality and need to be defended, or do you realize that realities are seen through different eyes? Your answer to this question will determine, to a large extent, your ability to remain in a positive feeling state.

Everyone I know, who has put positive feeling above being right on their priority list has come to see that differences of opinion will take care of themselves. ~ Richard Carlson

He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak. ~ Michel De Montaigne

No, no. I trust your judgement. Implicitly. You're just wrong. ~ Hy Conrad

Granted it is easy at least comparatively to find pleasure in error when there's nothing at stake. But that can't be the whole story since all of us have been known to throw tantrums over totally trivial mistakes. What makes illusions different is that for the most part we enter in them by consent. We might not know exactly how we are going to err but we know that the error is coming and we say yes to the experience anyways.


In a sense much the same thing could be said of life in general. We can't know where your next error lurks or what form it will take but we can be very sure that it is waiting for us. With illusions we look forward to this encounter since whatever minor price we paid in pride is handily outweighed by curiosity at first and by pleasure afterward. The same will not always true when we venture past these simple perceptual failures to more complex and consequential mistakes But nor is willing the embrace of error always beyond us. In fact this might be the most important thing that illusions can teach us: that is is possible at least some of the time to find in being wrong a deeper satisfaction then we would have found being right. ~ Kathryn Schulz

We all know the Navy is never wrong, but in this case it was a little weak on being right. ~ Wendell Mayes

I've a devil of a habit for being right. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Well, they got that habit from us. We always wanted to be seen to be right. To be on the right side of an issue. More so even than doing anything. Being right was always the most important thing. ~ Zadie Smith

There is a price we pay for being attached to a narrow view of being right. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

He swallows, keeping his tormented eyes on mine. "I hate this. I hate what it's doing to me. I hate that I'm tired of doing the right thing."
This time I swallow roughly and tilt my head back, boldly pushing my hips into his, "Then stop being right. ~ L.A. Bressett

Most of us try to spend so much effort in being proven right that we get tired even before start working towards being better. Instead of looking at a logical solution to an issue the concentration shifts to proving our point, and in the process we end-up becoming an issue. ~ ShahenshahHK

Sometimes I hated it when I was right, but I always hated it when someone else was. Especially when their being right made me wrong. I'm irrational that way. It's something I'm working on. ~ Lisa Shearin

Looking back on 200 years of feminist agitation in this country, we've got to get it that the moral high ground doesn't get us anything. Pleading with powerful men never gets us what we need. Talking doesn't do it. Being right doesn't do it. Hardball politics does it ... and a political strategy. ~ Naomi Wolf

With age comes self-awareness, or something that looks like self-awareness, and so I try to be on the lookout for patterns of behavior, choices I'm making where I'm trying too hard, giving too much, reaching too intently for being right when right is what someone else wants me to be. It's scary, though, trying to be yourself and hoping yourself is enough. It's scary believing that you, as you are, could never be enough. ~ Roxane Gay

Being right is less important to us than the freedom to be wrong. ~ Jean Rostand

The sooner you decide that it is alright to believe the opposite of what the masses do, and that it is alright to trust the universe, and you choose to be happy rather than be right, the sooner you will be happy. ~ Malti Bhojwani

I don't get paid to be nice. I get paid to be right. ~ R.L. Griffin

Like a wind, like a storm, like a fire, like an earthquake, like a mud slide, like a deluge, like a tree falling, a torrent roaring, an ice floe breaking, like a tidal wave, like a shipwreak, like an explosion, like a lid blown off, like a consuming fire, like spreading blight, like a sky darkening, a bridge collapsing, a hole opening. Like a volcano erupting.

Surely more than just the actions of people: choosing, yielding, braving, lying, understanding, being right, being deceived, being consistent, being visionary, being reckless, being cruel, being mistaken, being original, being afraid . . . ~ Susan Sontag