Controversy

Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate usually concerning a matter of opinion.

Quotes

• CONTROVERSY, n. A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!... Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did.
  • Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, (1953), p.53.

• Controversy may rage as long as it adheres to the presuppositions that define the consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encouraged within these bounds, thus helping to establish these doctrines as the very condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that freedom reigns.
  • Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions (1989)

• I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.

• Nora Ephron "Barney Collier's Book," Esquire (January 1976); republished in Scribble, Scribble (1978), ch. 10

• Controversy equalizes fools and wise men — and the fools know it.
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858), Chapter V.

• The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (1963).

• The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
  • Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish", Unpopular Essays (1950).

• During a period roughly parallel to Newton's lifetime, there was an active controversy between those, like Descartes, who believed that momentum is conserved in collisions and others led mainly by Leibniz who asserted that kinetic energy is conserved in collisions.
  • Carl G. Adler, "Connection between conservation of energy and conservation of momentum", as quoted in American Journal of Physics 44(5), p483, (1976)

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• When men differ in any matter of belief, let them meet each other manfully.
  • Francis Wayland, p. 162.

• No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy.
  • Lyman Beecher, p. 162.

• It is humbling to mankind to contemplate men capable of grasping eternal truths, fencing and debating in trivialities, like gladiators fighting with flies.
  • Désiré Nisard, p. 162.

• Doubtless there are times when controversy becomes a necessary evil. But let us remember that it is an evil.
  • Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, p. 162.