Quotes about opposition

Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.

— Francis Bacon

Opposition is true friendship.

— William Blake

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty helps us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.

— Edmund Burke

No government can be long secure without a formidable opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can be managed by the joint influences of fruition and hope. It offers vengeance to the discontented, and distinction to the ambitious; and employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who otherwise may prove traitors in a division or assassins in a debate.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

— Albert Einstein

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

— George Eliot

Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.

— Gene Fowler

I love opposition that has convictions.

— (Frederick II) Frederick The Great

Opposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity.

— Sigmund Freud

I respect only those who resist me; but I cannot tolerate them.

— Charles De Gaulle

One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.

— Robert F. Kennedy

The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.

— Walter Lippmann

I have spent many years of my life in opposition and I like the role.

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Opposition always enflames the enthusiast, never converts him.

— Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

If it is once again one against forty-eight, then I am very sorry for the forty-eight.

— Margaret Thatcher

It is easy and dismally enervating to think of opposition as merely perverse or actually evil -- far more invigorating to see it as essential for honing the mind, and as a positive good in itself. For the day that moral issues cease to be fought over is the day the word human disappears from the race.

— Jill Tweedie

Given a sufficient number of people and an adequate amount of time you can create insurmountable opposition to the most inconsequential idea.

— Source Unknown

Wherever there is a parliament, there must of necessity be an opposition.

— John Wagstaff