Sayings about Extremes & Extremists
People who have little to do are excessive talkers. ~ Traditional Proverb
Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong. ~ Zen Proverb
We pay when old for the excesses of youth. ~ Traditional Proverb
If sweetness be excessive, it is no longer sweetness. ~ African Proverb
The excess of one is the shortage of another. ~ Arabian Proverb
A bow that is bent too far will break. ~ Italian Proverbs
While yearning for excess we lose the necessities. ~ Iranian Proverbs
Quotations about Extremes & Extremists
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.~ Bertrand Russell
Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery. ~ Plato
In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.~ Roy Hattersley
He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation.~ Charles Caleb Colton
Nothing fools people as much as extreme passion.~ Bishop Hall
Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Women are ever in extremes; they are either better or worse than men. ~ Jean de la Bruyere
All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between these extremes. ~ Lord David Cecil
There seems to be one quality of mind which seems to be of special and extreme advantage in leading him to make discoveries. It was the power of never letting exceptions go unnoticed.~ Francis Darwin
I worked myself up from nothing to extreme poverty.~ Groucho Marx
It is a hard but good law of fate, that as every evil, so every excessive power, wears itself out. ~ Johann Gottfried von Herder
The best things carried to excess are wrong. ~ Charles Churchill
No violent extreme endures.~ Thomas Carlyle
Extremes, though contrary, have the like effect; extreme heat mortifies, like extreme cold; extreme love breeds satiety, as well as extreme hatred. ~ George Chapman
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. ~ William Blake
This woman did not fly to extremes; she lived there. ~ Quentin Crisp
Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.~ Plato
Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self-solitude is the enemy of well-being.~ John Updike
Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a man deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost.~ Thomas Merton
Sensual excess drives out pity in man. ~ Marquis de Sade
Extremes are ever neighbors; ’tis a step from one to the other. ~ James Sheridan Knowles
What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.~ Robert F. Kennedy
All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men, as we know them today. It springs from the anguish of great souls. From the souls of men not formed, but deformed in factories whose inspiration is pelf.~ Alexander Trocchi
It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess. ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Avoid extremes. ~ Cleobulus of Lindos
The extreme delight we experience in talking about ourselves should warn us that those who listen do not share it.~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld
Almost anything carried to a logical extreme becomes depressing. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin
Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not. ~ Xenophon
Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage. ~ Plutarch
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Always in a moment of extreme danger things can be done which had previously been thought impossible.~ General Erwin Rommel
The peril of the hour moved the British to tremendous exertions, just as always in a moment of extreme danger things can be done which had previously been thought impossible. Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.~ General Erwin Rommel
I’m interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.~ Clint Eastwood
The extreme limit of wisdom — that’s what the public calls madness.~ Jean Cocteau
When your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme.~ Jiminy Cricket
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. ~ W. Somerset Maugham
All evils are equal when they are extreme.~ Pierre Corneille
What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. ~ Robert F. Kennedy
Extremes are vicious, and proceed from men; compensation is just, and proceeds from God. ~ Jean de la Bruyere
The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives. ~ Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
We must remember how apt man is to extremes–rushing from credulity and weakness to suspicion and distrust. ~ Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton
The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook. ~ Thomas Campbell
In our extreme youth, in our most humiliating sorrow, we think we are alone. When we are older we find that others have suffered too. ~ Suzanne Moarny
The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity. That is, something that can’t be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn’t be happy with.~ Joseph Brodsky
It is the nature of men having escaped one extreme, which by force they were constrained long to endure, to run headlong into the other extreme, forgetting that virtue doth always consist in the mean.~ Sir Walter Raleigh
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.~ George Bernard Shaw
Youth is ever apt to judge in haste, and lose the medium in the wild extreme.~ Aaron Hill
Extreme views are never just; something always turns up which disturbs the calculations formed upon their data. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr
Everything in excess is opposed to nature. ~ Hippocrates
Introversion, at least if extreme, is a sign of mental and spiritual immaturity.~ Pearl S. Buck
Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the haughtiness of humility. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Nothing exceeds like excess. ~ Al Jourgensen
Excess of wealth is cause of covetousness. ~ Christopher Marlowe
Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess! ~ Charles Dickens
Men are as much blinded by the extremes of misery as by the extremes of prosperity. ~ Edmund Burke
When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy. ~ Salman Rushdie
Partial culture runs to the ornate, extreme culture to simplicity.~ John Christian Bovee
Simplicity, carried to an extreme, becomes elegance.~ Jon Franklin
Every extreme attitude is a fight from the self.~ Eric Hoffer