Quotes Tagged "ridicule"

It is never ridicule, but a compliment, that knocks a philosopher off his feet. He is already positioned for every possible counter-attack, counter-argument, and retort...only to find a big bear hug coming his way.

I esteem myself happy to have as great an ally as you in my search for truth. I will read your work ... all the more willingly because I have for many years been a partisan of the Copernican view because it reveals to me the causes of many natural phenomena that are entirely incomprehensible in the light of the generally accepted hypothesis. To refute the latter I have collected many proofs, but I do not publish them, because I am deterred by the fate of our teacher Copernicus who, although he had won immortal fame with a few, was ridiculed and condemned by countless people (for very great is the number of the stupid). {Letter to fellow revolutionary astronomer Johannes Kepelr}

Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth.

Take lightly what you hear about individuals. We need not distort trust for our paltry little political agendas. We tend to trust soulless, carried information more than we trust soulful human beings; but really most people aren't so bad once you sit down and have an honest, one-on-one conversation with them, once, with an open heart, you listen to their explanations as to why they act the way they act, or say what they say, or do what they do.

Ridicule is the best test of truth.

The devil's happy when the critics run you off.

He who makes fun of a short and fat man’s weight is much less cruel than he who makes fun of his height.

The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.

Although I’m a bit tentative about it all, I would like to say that if my death saved your life I would gladly engage in such an exchange. But if I must make that exchange knowing that you are likely to reject it, and that you will turn on it and brutally ridicule it until the beauty of my sacrifice is altogether destroyed, I cannot imagine taking such an action. Yet, God does that every single day.

I don't ridicule religion, it ridicules itself.

If you’ve ever done anything extraordinary in your life, always remember, no amount of ridicule can ever rob you of your achievements.

Some things are made funny to some people by their ignorance.

[Responding to the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce's question whether he traced his descent from an ape on his mother's or his father's side] A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who … plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.

I have buckets of sympathy for the obese, often subject to cruelty, ridicule, denunciation, and contempt.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.

Suburban houses and tin sheds are often the objects of ridicule.