Controversial Quotes

It's better to be controversial for the right reasons, than to be popular for the wrong reasons.

I don't see how you can write anything of value if you don't offend someone.

I've never tried to be controversial. The truth is controversial enough.

If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.

I always put in one controversial item. It makes people talk.

Innovators are inevitably controversial.

I've never intended to be controversial but it's very easy to be controversial in pop music because nobody ever is.

It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else.

If everyone thinks you're doing the right thing, then everyone would be doing it. Have a controversial strategy.

I'm controversial. My friends either dislike me or hate me

When you become controversial, when you want to promote new ideas, you need to be the face of it and not be scared.

Bad news drives out good news. The irrational is more controversial than the rational. Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent. One minute of Eldridge Cleaver is worth ten minutes of Roy Wilkins. The labor crises settled at the negotiating table is nothing compared to the confrontation that results in a strike ... normality has become the nemesis of network news.

I am really the most controversial artist in the world.

I like gold because it is a stabilizer; it is an insurance policy.

A good joke provides tension, and then, release of that tension. You build the tension by saying things that are controversial. The release is the laugh. The bigger the surprise or insight in your joke, the bigger the laugh.

When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important

I admire Madonna because she always did whatever she felt like doing. She went through some controversial periods when people rejected her, but she kept on reinventing herself.

It's never my intent to be controversial but I don't shy away from it.

I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.

Global warming is controversial, of course, but the controversy is mainly over whether human activity is driving it.

There are people who can talk sensibly about a controversial issue; they're called humorists.

I think that as I continue to write, my writing I hope will become more controversial and more provocative.

Just because you say something doesn't make it controversial, and it doesn't make you a bad person.

Show business is my life. When I was a kid I sold insurance, but nobody laughed.

Thinking of the universe as a computer is controversial.

It is pretty hard to find the right result to a controversial issue.

I don't mind being controversial. Even Jesus wasn't loved in his day.

If you've got a big mouth and you're controversial, you're going to get attention.

But, you know, sex is controversial, it just is and it always will be.

We are not supposed to have an opinion. If we have an opinion, it has to be controversial – that is how we are always projected. It is difficult.

I think controversy has this allusion of being controversial but it's totally not, which is why I'm trying to get away from it because it's just easy and automatic.

An extraordinary and controversial interpretation of Shakespeare's origins, which certainly provokes much thought. A radical analysis of Shakespeare's text, leading to a conclusion which is bound to amaze the reader and the scholar. Who was Shakespeare?

I was a controversial figure on my reservation when I was a kid. I was mouthy and opinionated and arrogant. Nothing has changed.

My experience in government is that when things are non-controversial and beautifully coordinated, there is not much going on.

I have never knowingly made a non-controversial speech in my life.

I just have my characters say my controversial opinions and then hide behind them.

There are some current 'theories' that, when divested of begged questions, reduce to the non-controversial statement, 'Here are some facts and there may be some relation between them.'

I decided I ought to pick a project that would not be controversial, that would not really cost the government a lot of money.

I know Reverend Jesse Jackson is controversial, and not a popular figure with many, but he hired me in 1984. He gave me my first job in politics.

The chief beneficiary of life insurance policies for young, single people is the life insurance agent.

Girls' feels very active and stirring a conversation and controversial, and you can't really ask for more as an actor.

If you have to say or do something controversial, aim so that people will hate that they love it and not love that they hate it.

It's not controversial to say that human activity is contributing in some way. The question is how serious that is.

I like controversy. The more controversial it gets, the more interesting it is.

If something is very, very funny but possibly controversial, if it's truly funny, then it's worth doing. Things aren't worth doing for the sake of being controversial.

How could anything non-controversial be of intellectual interest to grown-ups?

Many cartoons I've drawn have been controversial, perhaps a little before their time, certainly when I was getting started.

I get called 'controversial' all the time.

[Michael Flynn is] controversial among many people in the national security establishment, many people in the Republican mainstream. The thing about this appointment that, again, goes to me is most.

I have wondered if I might be placed on a watch list of some sort by the government, though. I know that the documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who is a friend and who has made documentaries about controversial Middle Eastern terrorists has had trouble at customs when she travels internationally - but nothing like that has happened to me.