Opposition

(190 votes)   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
1804-1881, British Statesman, Prime Minister

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(131 votes)   I respect only those who resist me; but I cannot tolerate them.

Charles De Gaulle
1890-1970, French President during World War II

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(130 votes)   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
1879-1955, German-born American Physicist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(119 votes)   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
1819-1880, British Novelist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(117 votes)   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
1889-1974, American Journalist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

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

Margaret Thatcher
1925-, British Stateswoman, Prime Minister (1979-90)

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

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

Source Unknown

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(112 votes)   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
1729-1797, British Political Writer, Statesman

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(106 votes)   I love opposition that has convictions.

(Frederick II) Frederick The Great
1712-1786, Born in Berlin, King of Prussia (1740-1786),

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(103 votes)   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

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(100 votes)   Wherever there is a parliament, there must of necessity be an opposition.

John Wagstaff

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website