Benjamin Franklin
Inventor, Statesman, Author
"If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed."
Offending quotes
Offending
78 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Noam Chomsky
Linguist, Philosopher, Activist
"If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you're doing something wrong."
Horatio Nelson
Admiral
"My greatest happiness is to serve my gracious King and Country and I am envious only of glory; for if it be a sin to covet glory I am the most offending soul alive."
Alec Baldwin
Actor
"I suppose if the offending paparazzi was wearing a hoodie and I shot him, it would all blow over."
Billy Graham
Evangelist, Author
"Our society strives to avoid any possibility of offending anyone - except God."
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Topics related to Offending
Browse quotes that often appear alongside offending — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Offending quotes (page 1 of 4)
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"If it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul."
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"Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse"
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"I might as well enquire,” replied she, “why with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?"
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"As a well-known great man would have said if he had thought of it, "Don't go around offending people just because it can be done sitting down.""
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"By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; It yearns me not if me my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires: But if it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive."
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"Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits; the other recreates and revives them."
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"If Christianity is really true it will be offending and correcting you somewhere."
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"I often look ridiculous in Japan. There's really no way to eat in Japan, particularly kaiseki in a traditional ryokan, without offending the Japanese horribly. Every gesture, every movement is just so atrociously wrong, and the more I try, the more hilarious it is."
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"I don't like offending people, and it's easy to offend people when you don't know as much as they do. This group knows more about what it takes to lead in this way than I ever will. My goal is to push people, but I need to do it from a place of respect."
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"Let's not become so worried about not offending anybody that we lose the ability to distinguish between respect and paranoia."
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"There is something in the eloquence of the pulpit, when it is really eloquence, which is entitled to the highest praise and honour. The preacher who can touch and affect such an heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long worn thread-bare in all common hands; who can say any thing new or striking, any thing that rouses the attention, without offending the taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man whom one could not (in his public capacity) honour enough."
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"We may, without offending any laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct, but entertaining."
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"God is speaking to us. But are we listening to Him? When our conscience begins to nudge us for whatever reason, we might have this low-level misery or uneasiness about whatever it is we've done or we're about to do. At times like this, it's wise to prayerfully consider whether we're offending God with our actions."
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"How often, being moved under a false cause, if the person offending makes a good defense and presents us with a just excuse, are we angry against truth and innocence itself?"
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