Quotes About Opposition

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

Each story weaves together different viewpoints that-in the words of the sages-oppose one another yet are both true. These themes are the underpinnings of stories, the very motives that drive conflict, compromise, and eventual climax.

My hatred is a thousand times more powerful than all your good intentions.

He remained against Getúlio even after the 1937 coup.

All the Democrats who voted for him [Clarence Thomas] were from the South, the opposite of what had happened in 1967, when Southern Democratic senators opposed [Thurgood] Marshall. By 1991, blacks had become a core constituency of Southern senators, and Democrats feared alienating them with a vote against Thomas.

Discussing the bill wasn't easy, even in the abstract. Although Northern congressmen opposed dueling, supporting a law that seemed aimed at protecting themselves seemed cowardly.

They only tackle you when you've got the ball.

She hated his need to always win and he hated her coldness during their arguments. They fought about the exact color of the sky and which path they should take on a hunt. They disagreed passionately about whose fish was the best tasting. They could work up extreme hatred for each other at a moment's notice.

To have a good enemy, choose a friend: he knows where to strike.

I once saw a note on a Stasi file from early 1989 that I would never forget. In it a young lieutenant alerted his superiors to the fact that there were so many informers in church opposition groups at demonstrations that they were making these groups appear stronger than they really were. In one of the most beautiful ironies I have ever seen, he dutifully noted that, by having swelled the ranks of the opposition, the Stasi was giving the people heart to keep demonstrating against them.

It seemed to me we were fighting against the ice, which was all the while coming steadily nearer, covering more of the world with its dead silence, its awful white peace. By making war we asserted the fact that we were alive and opposed the icy death creeping over the globe.

I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words.

they need complex social and political conditions for their emergence—to produce a sense of community experience which makes for collective endeavour. Five conditions seem to be necessary for this: the existence of large numbers in the same situation; geographical concentration; identifiable targets of opposition; sudden events or changes in social position; and an intellectual leadership with readily understood goals. [Jeffery Weeks]

the intellectuals and ideologues behind these new movements have now found a set of issues they can unite around—issues that work across borders and are easy to sell online. Opposition to immigration, especially Muslim immigration, both real and imagined, is one of them; promotion of a socially conservative, religious worldview is another. Sometimes, opposition to the EU, or to international institutions more generally, is a third.

Certain patterns were followed almost everywhere: first the elimination of "right-wing" or anticommunist parties, then the destruction of the noncommunist left, then the elimination of opposition within the communist party itself.

I have never been afraid to stand up to the leadership on issues where we disagree. If you chose to keep Cambridge Labour, then I can continue to press the Government for the things that matter to you, in a way that members of the opposition are unable to.

the missionaries still see a growing anti-Americanism among the congregation.

So the wall was completed … in fifty-two days. When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God. NEHEMIAH 6:15 – 16

How would you learn right if you knew not wrong? How would you choose good if you knew not evil? How would you recognise the light if there were no darkness? How would you move if there were no resistance?

That is why there are forces which you call evil. In this universe there is no evil; all is good that comes to us from I´shvara, but it sometimes comes in the guise of evil that, by opposing it, we may draw out our strength.

I don't think I've ever been either militant or profound as an anti-Fascist. When the issue has come up, when certain things have come up, and I've been called on to express - literally, when I've been cornered, then I take a left-wing stand.

If you take over a programme from a longstanding incumbent, not everyone's going to like it.

I think that genetically we're programmed to battle each other.

Being in opposition takes some getting used to. As a former minister, you don't just lose your job and the enormous resources of the civil service, you also have to watch programmes that you were involved in being gradually dismantled.