Wrong Things Quotes

I said all the wrong things. Except when I was busy saying all the mean ones and in the end I hated everybody and everything. ~ Augusten Burroughs

Newspapers are closed if they print the wrong things in Iran. Iranian journalists or Iranian-American journalists, for that matter, I think are pressured in a lot of different ways, expected to give information to intelligence services. Americans can be thrown out of the country. ~ Steve Inskeep

Once you assume your right to interfere in other people's problems they become in some ways more of a worry than your own, for with your own you can at least do what you think best, but other people always show such a persistent tendency to do the wrong thing. ~ Marion Milner

The penalty for planting the wrong thing in the wrong place is death. ~ Cassandra Danz

It doesn't make sense to have to do the wrong thing in order to do the right thing. ~ Jim DeMint

If you're always thinking thoughts of lack, not enough, and struggle, you're moving toward the wrong things. ~ Joel Osteen

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

If I heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times from Ray Hunt. He said 'make the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy'. Then he said 'but don't make the wrong thing impossible'. Well ... you learn from making mistakes. It's that simple. ~ Buck Brannaman

We as Christians are called to battle.
The problem is, we don't fight about the right things and we do fight about the wrong things. We aren't getting in the battle that we should and so we fight over petty, insignificant things. Why? Because we are bored. We are soldiers created for fighting against the enemy, Satan, but instead we fight against each other. ~ Lisa Bedrick

Entrepreneurs go through real problems and come up with real solutions. It's not fake. You can do all the right things and still lose. You can do all the wrong things and still will. ~ Ben Huh

I suppose that's one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment. ~ Charlie Chaplin

Being in the neighborhood and the poverty stricken environment that I grew up in, I took a detour. I gravitated towards some of the individuals that did a lot of the wrong things with the right intentions. ~ Kevin Gates

If you get involved in music expecting to make a living out of it, then you've picked the wrong thing to do. That shouldn't really be in your mind. ~ Jarvis Cocker

The place where you're from defines who you are. You put yourself in the wrong situation, the wrong things happen. ~ Vince Staples

[Riley] slapped his hands to his face and then dropped them as if in surrender. 'I always say the wrong thing around you. Look, can we start over?'
Over?"
Yes. Over. Wipe the board clean.'
But I would have to go back to hating you and not trusting you' I said
Oh, well don't do that.' He paused and chewed his lip. 'Does that mean you like and trust me now?' "
- Riley and Trella ~ Maria V. Snyder

If you're not doing some things that are crazy, then you're
doing the wrong things. ~ Larry Page

Life doesn't change when you meet a guy and life doesn't fall apart when you break up with one. We are teaching young female readers the wrong things through books not only expressing this point, but also using these two concepts as turning plot points of novels. ~ Meghan Blistinsky

Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal. ~ Aldo Leopold

If you give up on your principles I don't think that's being pragmatic ... Doing the wrong thing, even partially, isn't being practical ... if you have the right ideas and are forceful enough ... I think you can get the support you need. ~ Ron Paul

About me as a drinker: I wasn't much of one and had a short, bad history of doing it. The few times I'd tried drinking I either became too much like myself or not enough, but either way it was always calamity on top of calamity and I found myself saying way too much about too little and doing the wrong things in the wrong places. Once, at my boss's Christmas party, I passed out for a minute - passed out but still, like a zombie, remained fully ambulatory and mostly functional - and when I came to, I found myself in my boss's kitchen, the refrigerator door open and me next to it at the counter, spreading mayonnaise onto two slices of wheat bread and licking the knife after each pass before I stuck it back in the jar. I heard someone cough or gag, looked up, and saw the kitchen's population staring at me, all of their mouths open and slack, obviously wondering what I thought I was doing, exactly, and all I could think to say was, "Sandwich." Which is what I said. And then, to prove my point, whatever the point was, I ate it. The sandwich, that is. ~ Brock Clarke

Most trouble is unnecessary. Between the indignity of being born and the agony of dying enough bad things must of necessity happen to people. But we can't be satisfied with that. We have to go to work and see how much additional trouble we can create. Misunderstanding, turmoil, effort put on all the wrong things, and then more misunderstanding. ~ Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett

It's much nicer to be praised than to be damned. But you have to have a certain sense of your own priorities and ideas about what works and what doesn't because otherwise, if you're just looking for eternal validation all the time, you can be motivated by the wrong things and I don't think it's as personally satisfying in your own work. ~ Ben Affleck

So this is how a person can come to despise himself-knowing he's doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop. ~ Daniel Keyes

What fools we all are. We girls. Afraid of the wrong things, at the wrong times. Afraid of a burdened face, when outside, outside waiting for you are fires you cannot imagine. Men, holding matches up to your gasoline eyes. Flames, flames all around you, licking at your just-born breasts, your just-bled body. And infernos. Infernos as wide as the world. Waiting to impoverish you, make you ash, and even the wind, even the wind. Even the wind, my dear, she thought, watching you burn, willing it, passing over you, and through you. Scattering you, because you are a girl, and because you are ash. ~ Shobha Rao

You think if someone does a brave deed quite suddenly, then he or she could never do a mean one? You are wrong. We all have good and bad in us, and we have to strive all the time to make the good cancel out the bad. We can never be perfect - we all of us do mean or wrong things at times - but we can at least make amends by trying to cancel out the wrong by doing something worthy later on. ~ Enid Blyton

I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. ~ Charles Bukowski

Maybe I've been wanting the wrong things. ~ Adam Gidwitz

Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing. ~ Ford Madox Ford

Your typical suburban mom worries all the time, but she worries about the wrong things ~ Lisa Scottoline

We [ Paverment] were definitely unafraid of playing wrong notes and singing wrong things. We could be fearlessly bad! ~ Stephen Malkmus

For example, I came to my exams very well prepared, but if the professor were suddenly to ask me, "Do you know from what works I derive the authority on the basis of which I teach this subject in this university?" I wouldn't know what to answer. But the others knew. So I moved among them fearful of saying and doing the wrong things. ~ Elena Ferrante

Brand marketers don't believe that ad-tech companies view brands as true partners. Ad-tech companies think brand marketers are paying attention to the wrong things. And publishers, with a few important exceptions, feel taken advantage of by everyone. ~ John Battelle

I think the wrong things are kept private ~ Nan Goldin

...[he] understood that some things mattered and some things did not and that the happy people in this world were those who could easily and rapidly distinguish between the two. The term unhappiness referred to the feeling of taking the wrong things seriously. ~ Arthur Phillips

We spend our lives getting caught up in all the wrong things
led astray by our minds, our egos, seeing ourselves as separate from each other, rather than listening to the truth that lies within our own hearts, the truth that we are all connected, we are all in it together. ~ Alyson Noel

Nobody says the words anymore, but somehow the violence still remains. If I didn't want the violence to remain, I had to do a hell of a lot more than just say the right things and not say the wrong things. ~ Jason Reynolds

I think so many times we feel like we're lacking something in our lives and we try to fill it with the wrong things. Sometimes it's drugs, sometimes it's a relationship you shouldn't be in. ~ Stacie Orrico

We must do what we conceive to be the right thing, and not bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we are going to be successful. Because if we don't do the right thing, we'll be doing the wrong thing, and we will just be part of the disease, and not a part of the cure. ~ E.F. Schumacher

The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery. ~ William Kingdon Clifford

If one generation does not see how to absolutely solve things that are wrong today, another generation shall surely come to suffer from the same wrong things tomorrow! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Her face was luminous and hopeful; she'd go into the dark with him in a heartbeat, sharp teeth and all. Human girls were stupid that way. No, not stupid. Primal in their skin, without even knowing it. The things that made thier pulse quicken were all the wrong things, but Mihai didn't take advantage of it, except for the free tea. ~ Laini Taylor

I think the willingness to listen is really a matter of confidence. You can't be so superconfident in your abilities that you ignore what others say, and you can't be so diffident in your abilities that you think that if they say something, you will be so taken in that you will do the wrong thing. When you are confident about your abilities and also fully aware of what you don't know you are willing to listen to outside experts with the full sense that if you don't find it worthwhile you will ignore it. ~ Raghuram Rajan

Strong passions are the precious raw material of sanctity. Individuals that have carried their sinning to extremes should not despair or say, "I am too great a sinner to change," or "God would not want me." God will take anyone who is willing to love, not with an occasional gesture, but with a "passionless passion," a "wild tranquility." A sinner, unrepentant, cannot love God, any more that a man on dry land can swim; but as soon as he takes his errant energies to God and asks for their redirection, he will become happy, as he was never happy before. It is not the wrong things one has already done which keep one from God; it is the present persistence in that wrong. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

What is to be expected of them is not treachery, or physcial cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing. ~ George Orwell

Our criminal institutions are full of creeps like you who do wrong things, and many of them were driven to these crimes by the horrible force called music. ~ Frank Zappa

Of all the errors one could make, God's gospel plan is the wrong thing to be wrong about. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

We put our values in the wrong things. And it leads to very disillusioned lives. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

We are bound to meet wrong things for wrong things are bound to meet us but, when things go wrong, don't be wrong, let things be wrong ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Because it was the right thing?"
"Oh shit, I hope not."
"Afraid of becoming noble?" he asked, his eyes twinkling.
"That too. But basically, that's the worst reason I can think of for killing. 'That its the right thing to do'. You kill out of outrage or fury or to keep from dying or something like it, that's fine. Hell, kill them rather than bother with them - or be bothered by them. But if you're killing them because 'its the right thing to do', its only the right thing because you've done so many wrong things up until then to make that spot. It's not the right thing to do. It's the best of the last of your choices."
"That's the longest I've ever heard you talk at one time."
"That's because you never ask me about my hair. ~ John Steakley

Once you are enlightened, you don't do wrong things. You don't take to wrong things. Then you start understanding all these prophets, all these great incarnations, you start understanding what they were. Then you understand that all these religions have come out of one Tree of Life, which is spirituality. ~ Nirmala Srivastava

Have you ever loved anything?"

"Yes. Yes. All the wrong things. The hunt, and darkness, and winter, and you, Godmother. ~ Elizabeth Wein

Our entire life we chase the wrong things because we think having more money and buying more stuff will make us more happy. But it doesn't. You know why a billionaire has 100 Ferraris? Because 99 weren't enough. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

Still, I also know that most people, including me, tend to applaud the wrong things: the showy, dramatic record-setting sprint rather than the years of dogged preparation or the unwavering grace displayed during a string of losses. ~ Chris Hadfield

Many religious fundamentalists around the world would like to see the establishment of theocracies - states where religion and government are closely intertwined. While some just reject separation of [name of place of worship] and state, others go further and insist that one religion's tenets be made law.

The normal arguments for a theocracy are that, for example, it would lend a greater sense of morality to the making and enforcement of laws. Or that as our laws were originally derived from some moral commandments in a particular religion, it makes sense to enthrone this religion as chief in the state.

Basically, theocrats can talk until the cows come home about how great it would be if we were ruled by God, how great it would be if our laws followed God's laws, and so forth. But this vision of theocracy will never come to be, and should never come to be.

The fundamental problem with every theocracy is that is innately unfair. Not just unfair to those who do not follow the state religion, but also unfair to those who do not follow the state religion as it is understood and interpreted by the humans who run the state.

After all, who really believes that all the Muslims in any of the Islamic theocracies we have today are happy? Those who believe the wrong things about Islam from one particular point of view are mercilessly vilified - the present civil war in Iraq is an excellent example.

Why a theocracy would be unfair ~ John Lee

But it's not enough to know right from wrong. You need the strength to do what's right, even when what you want most in the world is the wrong thing. ~ Cinda Williams Chima

The moment you begin to depend on audience reaction, you're doing the wrong thing. You're doin' it wrong, it's a mistake, it's not right. You can't allow yourself, no matter what, to depend on them. ~ Bruce Springsteen

I hate when models say 'Oh, plastic surgery is just a wrong thing. What are you talking about? You won the genetic lottery. You look like this specimen that's making people everywhere feel insecure and you're going to ridicule someone for getting plastic surgery? ~ Tyra Banks

But she hadn't been able to take root. She'd remembered the wrong things, and forgotten too much. She'd remembered how to kill and how to hate, and she'd forgotten how to grow. ~ Naomi Novik

You give a lot of great advice about what to do. Do you have any advice of what not to do?


Don't do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don't stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don't fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don't focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fall out. Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore. Don't seek joy at all costs. I know it's hard to know what to do when you have a conflicting set of emotions and desires, but it's not as hard as we pretend it is. Saying it's hard is ultimately a justification to do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do - have the affair, stay at that horrible job, end a friendship over a slight, keep loving someone who treats you terribly. I don't think there's a single dumbass thing I've done in my adult life that I didn't know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself - as I did every damn time - the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I'm learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I've still got work to do. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Deep down, underneath all his layers of stupidity, he's a really good man. He may act out far too many selfish thoughts, says all the wrong things at all the wrong times, but behind closed doors he's a best friend. I understand that he has idiotic tendencies and I can still love him for it. He may not be someone that you feel comfortable sitting next to at a dinner party but for me, he's someone that I feel comfortable sharing my life with. ~ Cecelia Ahern

Educational romanticism asks too much from students at the bottom of the intellectual pile, asks the wrong things from those in the middle, and asks too little from those at the top. ~ Charles A. Murray

But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything. ~ Jim Butcher

We are all mistaken sometimes; sometimes we do wrong things, things that have bad consequences. But it does not mean we are evil, or that we cannot be trusted ever afterward. ~ Alison Croggon

That's the trouble with witnesses. They always look at the wrong things. ~ Craig Rice

Successful businesses measure and count things. I think that's a safe assumption on top of which we can drop the following hypothesis: unsuccessful business either measure nothing, the wrong things, too many things, or finally, they measure the right things but they don't communicate the measurements efficiently. ~ Dick Costolo

I dislike interaction. The less I say the better I feel. I was naturally a loner. I didn't want conversation, or to goanywhere. I didn't understand other people who wanted to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I was drawn to
all the wrong things: I was lazy
, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non
-
being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I
really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. Relationships never worked with me. I alwayslost interest. I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. ~ Charles Bukowski

I like to bring people together so we don't waste opportunities and resources and keep doing the wrong things when we know better. Corporate America makes great things and things that can hurt us. They have to be part of the solutions. There's nothing to say you don't make a profit by doing good. ~ Teresa Heinz

The inhibitor of creativity isn't potential it's fear. We worry about saying the wrong thing or looking foolish so we govern our imagination. ~ Josh Linkner

We want him to see that as a result of being parented by imperfect parents, he (she) chooses the wrong people for the right things, and chooses the right people for the wrong things. And most of all, they do not want to see it. ~ Karl A. Menninger

One of these days I'm going to say the wrong thing to the wrong mage, and I'll be spending the rest of my days searching for Mrs Right Toad. ~ Elf Sternberg

We're still a sexophobic society, afraid of the wrong things for the wrong reasons. ~ Mary Calderone

Dying," Morrie suddenly said, "is only one thing to be sad over, Mitch. Living unhappily is something else. So many of the people who come to visit me are unhappy." Why?
"Well, for one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own. Most people can't do it. They're more unhappy than me-even in my current condition.
"I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving, caring souls. How many people can say that? ~ Mitch Albom

When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right ones a fighting chance- Victoria Barron- dedicated attorney and protagonist of Misplaced ~ SL Hulen

Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet - for me, anyway - all that's worth living for lies in that charm? ~ Donna Tartt

This is why you need everyone you know after a disaster, because there is not one right response. It's what paralyzes people around the grief-stricken, of course, the idea that there are right things to say and wrong things and it's better to say nothing than something clumsy. ~ Elizabeth McCracken

when the paint on the car starts to chip and the gadget gets tossed into the closet with all the others, you can't help but wonder if you've been pouring all your hard-earned money into the wrong things. ~ Carl Richards

The more you do the right thing, the harder it is to do the wrong thing. ~ Maria Ressa

We have too many of the wrong things in common to be more than sex, and the realization is freedom to me. ~ Lisa Renee Jones

A part of me understands the need to keep order, but another part worries that we are being led to fear the wrong things. It's just like Chinatown and all the laws passed to contain us. We were never the enemy. The enemy was our country's own fear. ~ Stacey Lee

What the media are telling you to be afraid of are the wrong things ... Fear is a necessary ingredient of our survival instincts. ~ Michael Moore

When I stop chasing all the wrong things in life all the good things start to fall into my lap. ~ Danny Castillo

Babylon is everywhere. You have wrong and you have right. Wrong is what we call Babylon, wrong things. That is what Babylon is to me. I could have born in England, I could have born in America, it make no difference where me born, because there is Babylon everywhere. ~ Bob Marley

I saw a lot of people taking the wrong routes, coming up as a kid, just doing the wrong things. ~ Akeem Ayers

Simply put, a woman's brain is not her friend when it comes to confidence. We think too much and we think about the wrong things. Thinking harder and harder and harder won't solve our issues, though, it won't make us more confident, and it most certainly freezes decision making, not to mention action. Remember, the female brain works differently from the male brain; we really do have more going on, we are more keenly aware of everything happening around us, and that all becomes part of our cognitive stew. Ruminating drains the confidence from us. Those negative thoughts, and nightmare scenarios masquerading as problem solving, spin on an endless loop. We render ourselves unable to be in the moment or to trust our instincts because we are captive to those distracting, destructive thoughts, which gradually squeeze all the spontaneity out of life and work. We have got to stop ruminating. ~ Katty Kay

It's not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That's the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering? ~ John Green

In truth search can no more be considered independent of the Web than the Web can work without search. This symbiotic relationship brings forth all sorts of issues because it becomes part of a traditional push and pull where the Web, represented by those who actively work in it, wants to push all the wrong things, while search wants to pull in everything. ~ David Amerland

Occasionally we all do wrong things from right motives. Only time can prove us right or wrong. The past is the past. Nothing can change it now, and who is to say that it was all wrong, anyway? ~ Mary Balogh

Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right. ~ Warren Bennis

In Specter, history becomes what never happened. People mess things up, forget and remember all the wrong things. What's left is fiction. ~ Daniel Wallace

Here are the things I know for sure: When you think you're right, you are most likely wrong. Things that break - be they bones, hearts, or promises - can be put back together but will never really be whole. And, in spite of what I said, you can miss a person you've never known. I learn this over and over again, ~ Jodi Picoult

I love you, but I don't know how to help you. I still don't! I'm an emotional delinquent and I say wrong things all the time, but I want to be better for you. I promise that. It doesn't matter to me that you're ill and it doesn't matter if I have to give up everything, because you're worth it. You're worth it all because you are magnificent, you are. Magnificent and gorgeous and brilliant and kind and good and I just . . . love you, Percy. I love you so damn much. ~ Mackenzi Lee

Sometimes the right thing gets done for the wrong reason and sometimes, unfortunately, the wrong thing gets done for the right reason. ~ James Carville

I didn't accomplish what I set out to do, but I realized I had set out to do the wrong things ~ Jane McGonigal

If we don't plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don't have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don't have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind. ~ Maya Angelou

Why not? It's natural selection. Just like nature." I wrinkled my nose. "Boudas love this argument, because it gives them an excuse to do all the wrong things. 'I'm sorry I screwed your sister and got my penis stuck in your German shepherd. It's in my nature. I just couldn't help myself. ~ Ilona Andrews

Well, I contend that freedom is another word for soul and that by not giving a fuck to all the wrong things, and conserving your fucks for the ones that make you happy, you stand to gain the kind of freedom that some people might even describe as… dare I say… "soul-affirming. ~ Sarah Knight

Nobody wants to hear that you will try your best. It is the wrong thing to say. It is like saying 'I probably won't hit you with a shovel.' Suddenly everyone is afraid you will do the opposite. ~ Lemony Snicket

But nobody lives in a universal thing called culture. They live only in specific cultures, each of which differ from one another. Plays written and produced in Germany are three times as likely to have tragic or unhappy endings than plays written and produced in the United States. Half of all people in India and Pakistan say they would marry without love, but only 2 percent of people in Japan would do so. Nearly a quarter of Americans say they are often afraid of saying the wrong things in social situations, whereas 65 percent of all Japanese say they are often afraid. In their book Drunken Comportment, Craig MacAndrew and Robert B. Edgerton found that in some cultures drunken men get into fights, but in some cultures they almost never do. In some cultures drunken men grow more amorous, but in some cultures they do not. ~ David Brooks

We desire the wrong things, and we desire right things in the wrong way. And both are deadly - like eating pleasant poison. ~ John Piper

I ... was impulsive and skinny, and wished that I could be more like a character in a novel, so I would finally stop blurting out the wrong things at the wrong time. ~ Yvonne Woon