Rectitude Quotes

It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.

The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it's the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it's the fools that form the overwhelming majority.

It is better to be approximately right than to be precisely wrong.

The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposition position. I assume that markets are always wrong… most of the time the trend prevails; only occasionally are the errors corrected. It is only on those occasions that one should go against the trend. This line of reasoning leads me to look for the flaw in every investment thesis. ... I am ahead of the curve. I watch out for telltale signs that a trend may be exhausted. Then I disengage from the herd and look for a different investment thesis. Or, if I think the trend has been carried to excess, I may probe going against it.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.

The greatest man is he who chooses the Right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard.

There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is that there is very little about which one can be certain.

Alas, how many have been persecuted for the wrong of having been right?

It’s not what I as a judge believe is right. It is what I believe the normal man of reasonable ability and integrity believes is right.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.

Fighting for what is right is not always popular but is always necessary.

Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.

I’ve never found the truth to be fair and balanced.

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so

What I learned from clerking for Judge Guido Calabresi and for Justice Steven Breyer was that there is no position, regardless of how wrong you think it is, that does not have some arguments in its favor, and you have to find them. And then, no matter how right your own position is, you must look for the weaknesses in that they are always there. You must be willing to find them and possibly change your approach or your mind on the subject.

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America …. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation.

History privileges no right side, and the arc [of history] can bend so that it loops back upon us.

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that are not so

Be sure you are right, then go ahead.

… right is more precious than peace.

Prior to the Revolution, the great majority, or rather the great body of our people had been so long accustomed to the practice and convenience of having slaves, that very few among them ever doubted the propriety and rectitude of it.

The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error.

To all the little girls watching, never forget you are valuable, powerful and deserving of every opportunity in the world.