I think controversy has this allusion of being controversial but it's totally not, which is why I'm trying to get away from it because it's just easy and automatic.
If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.
I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.
I'm controversial. My friends either dislike me or hate me
I just hope, in all honesty, that Steve will walk if he hits it, you know what I mean? I would hate to be bringing up my bent finger as a controversial decision. I hope he'll go nice and easy - caught in the covers or bowled middle stump. I just hope he doesn't get his pads in the way or his bat's wide enough to get a thin edge [on Steve Waugh's last innings]
About specific social issues, there is a great deal to say that departs very far from truism and is, accordingly, significant and controversial.
Obviously this prison has been controversial ever since the first detainees arrived in Guantanamo more than 14 years ago.
They [candidates] say, "I don't want to say anything controversial. " And so nobody covers them. Then they blame the journalists, saying "Why don't they write down what I said?" In congressional races, 90 percent of the time the answer is, "Because you are boring and you don't have anything that makes me interested in listening to you. Why the heck should somebody write it down? There's nothing here worth hearing. "
Let's put it in perspective at the United States Supreme Court, which hears maybe 60 cases a year, most of the cases are resolved without much dispute. The 10 or 15 that are controversial we all know about, and we hear about. The federal courts hear just a tiny sliver of the cases that go to court in this country. Most of the cases are in the state courts. And most legal issues never go to court. So, the legal system is actually not in jeopardy. At the same time, access to law is in jeopardy.
I admire Madonna because she always did whatever she felt like doing. She went through some controversial periods when people rejected her, but she kept on reinventing herself.
If you have to say or do something controversial, aim so that people will hate that they love it and not love that they hate it.
I have never knowingly made a non-controversial speech in my life.
. . . I feel the American public would be in a better position to exercise freedom of dietary choice if it were stated in bold print on the Goals and Food Selection pages that the value of dietary change remains controversial and that science cannot at this time insure that an altered diet will provide improved protection from certain killer diseases such as heart disease and cancer.
I was a controversial figure on my reservation when I was a kid. I was mouthy and opinionated and arrogant. Nothing has changed.
But, you know, sex is controversial, it just is and it always will be.
That such a perspective of the Declaration's 'Creator God' should sound so foreign and controversial to people today is a tragic and striking sign of how far we are removed from the thinking of our colonial fathers.
I look upon statistics as the handmaid of medicine, but on that very account I hold that it befits medicine to treat her handmaid with proper respect, and not to prostitute her services for controversial or personal purposes.
I worked for George Bush. I'm proud to have worked for him. I think that a lot of the most controversial things we did, that people didn't like and - and criticized us for, things like the terror surveillance program or the enhanced interrogation techniques, were things that allowed us to save lives.
I have wondered if I might be placed on a watch list of some sort by the government, though. I know that the documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who is a friend and who has made documentaries about controversial Middle Eastern terrorists has had trouble at customs when she travels internationally - but nothing like that has happened to me.
A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system.
