Obstinacy: Difference between revisions

Quotes about obstinacy:

Sourced

• An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty.
  • Bishop Joseph Butler, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 437.

• His still refuted quirks he still repeats,
  New-raised objections with new quibbles meets;
  Till sinking in the quicksand he defends,
  He dies disputing, and the contest ends.
  • William Cowper, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 437.

• Obstinacy is ever most positive when it is most in the wrong.
  • Madame Necker; reported in Louis Klopsch, ed., Many Thoughts of Many Minds: A Treasury of Quotations From the Literature of Every Land and Every Age (1896), p. 195.

Unsourced

• People first abandon reason, and then become obstinate; and the deeper they are in error the more angry they are.
  • Blair

• An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him.
  • Alexander Pope

• Most other passions have their periods of fatigue and rest, their suffering and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound is mortal.
  • Thomas Paine

• Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy; we do not easily believe beyond what we see.
  • La Rochefoucauld

• Obstinacy and vehemency in opinion are the surest proofs of stupidity.
  • Barton

References

• Klopsch, Louis, 1852-1910 (1896). Many Thoughts of Many Minds.