Devil's Advocates Quotes

Either help or give up. Right now devil's advocate is just another name for asshole.

When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as “Mother” Teresa on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course of this, I discovered that the pope during his tenure had surreptitiously abolished the famous office of “Devil’s Advocate,” in order to fast‐track still more of his many candidates for canonization. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono.

Today the devil as a wolf in supposedly a new suit of sheep’s clothing is enticing some men to parrot his line by advocating planned government guaranteed security at the expense of our liberties.

That’s the thing about people who love to play devil’s advocate!’ I shouted. ‘There’s no emotional involvement in it for you, there’s nothing at stake!

Like LaVey, I had a also discovered what happens when you say something powerful that makes people think. They become afraid of you, and they neutralize your message by giving you a label that is not open to interpretation-- as a fascist, a devil worshipper or an advocate of rape and violence.

Too bad real boyfriends aren’t as awesome as book boyfriends.” “At least real boys don’t get brainwashed by the enemy and try to kill you?” I said, trying to play devil’s advocate.

He had fallen into the error of all liberals: the belief that men are prepared to reform themselves, that good will attracts good will, that truth has leavening virtue of its own.

Each of us can walk only the path he sees at his own feet. Each of us is subject to the consequences of his own belief.

I don't believe in miracles, only unexplained facts.

If prayer fails I am in a greater darkness yet, not knowing whether I have presumed too much or believed too little.

But things were changing. Everywhere one looked the boundary between the moral and the wicked seemed to be degrading. Elizabeth Cady Stanton argued in favor of divorce. Clarence Darrow advocated free love. A young woman named Borden killed her parents.

We are ants on the carcass of the world, spawned out of nothing, going busily nowhere. One of us dies, the others crawl over us to the pickings.

What manner of men had lived in those days...who had so eagerly surrendered their sovereignty for a lie and a delusion? Why had they been so anxious to believe that the government could solve problems for them which had been pridefully solved, many times over, by their fathers? Had their characters become so weak and debased, so craven and emasculated, that offers of government dole had become more important than their liberty and their humanity? Had they not know that power delegated to the government becomes the club of tyrants? They must have known. They had their own history to remember, and the history of five thousand years. Yet, they had willingly and knowingly, with all this knowledge, declared themselves unfit to manage their own affairs and had placed their lives, which belonged to God only, in the hands of sinister men who had long plotted to enslave them, by wars, by "directives," by "emergencies." In the name of the American people, the American people had been made captive.

The man who does good in doubt must have so much more merit than one who does it in the bright certainty of belief. "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold..." A warning against the smugness of inherited faith.

You can’t always save a person from drowning. Sometimes it’s best to throw them a life preserver so they can learn how to save themselves.

Gideon was playing the devil’s advocate. Alex had seen the man get truly annoyed by his questions and it was a hilarious and terrifying experience all at once.

Whenever you feel like feeling like a devil's advocate, Bible-thump. That, in a worldly world, is the great irony and satire of evangelism.

Working on the editorial page had sharpened Whitney's mind and coarsened her feelings, so she treated every subject as theoretical and abstract. Devil's advocate? Whitney could have been the devil's mentor.

God shows us the path; the Devil shows us the possibilities.

Devil’s advocate reviews. Premortems. Conversations with a skeptical discussion partner. A cognitive checklist that reminds us of our biggest biases and our past mistakes.

I feel the life slipping out of me. When the pain comes, I cry out, but there is no prayer in it, only fear. I kneel and recite my office and the Rosary but the words are empty - dry gourds rattling in the silence. The dark is terrible and I feel so alone. I see no signs but the symbols of contradiction. I try to dispose myself to faith, hope and charity, but my will is a blown reed in the winds of despair.

He sees by faith an unseen Savior, who . . . loved him, gave Himself for him, paid his debts for him, bore his sins, carried his transgressions, rose again for him, and appears in Heaven for him as his Advocate at the right hand of God. He sees Jesus — and clings to Him. Seeing this Savior and trusting in Him — he feels peace and hope and willingly does battle against the foes of his soul. He sees . . . his own many sins, his own weak heart, a tempting world, a busy devil — and if he looked only at them, he might well despair. BUT he sees also a mighty Savior, an interceding Savior, a sympathizing Savior — His blood, His righteousness, His everlasting priesthood — and he believes that all this is his own. He sees Jesus — and casts his whole weight on Him. Seeing Him, he cheerfully fights on, with a full confidence that he will prove more than conqueror through Him that loved him (Romans 8:37).

No one played devil’s advocate, a figure that every group needs to avoid foolish or even disastrous decisions like this. It was reminiscent of President John Kennedy’s “disastrous” decision to invade Cuba in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.11

Inspired in part by Steinhardt, Nygren conducts a “devil’s advocate review” before buying any stock. One analyst on his team presents the bullish case. Another is tasked with “putting together the strongest bearish case.… By better understanding what we’re betting against, we’re more likely to make the right decision.

Confident, assertive, wily. Angel of Justice. Angel of Vengeance. The Trickster. The Iblis. I was the devil’s advocate, and my job was to provide much–needed balance. How ironic that the very concept I scorned was what I was meant to create.

I was lost a long time, without knowing it. Without the Faith, one is free, and that is a pleasant feeling at first. There are no questions of conscience, no constraints, except the constraints of custom, convention and the law, and these are flexible enough for most purposes. It is only later that terror comes. One is free - but free in chaos, in an unexplained and unexplainable world. One is free in a desert, from which there is no retreat but inward, toward the hollow core of oneself. There is nothing to build on but the small rock of one's own pride, and this is a nothing, based on nothing... I think, therefore I am. But what am I? An accident of disorder, going no place.

Ferencz asked, “Do I have to look up to heaven or down to the Devil to find the culprit?” The rabbi replied in Yiddish, “Do not look up or down—take my advice—kik vek!

No one can break the Queen of the First Circle.

I was a fire starter once. I could talk to anyone when I was drinking. I played therapist, devil’s advocate, clown.

His face, normally a brighter shade of corpse, turned just a little red.

If you play devil's advocate with political correctness, you'll get the horns - deliberate misinterpretation leading to you being fully demonized.

Even in sin, the act of love -done with love- is shadowed with divinity. Its conformity may be at fault, but its nature is not altered, and its nature is creative, communicative, splendid in surrender. It was in the splendor of my surrender to Nina and she to me, that I first understood how a man might surrender himself to God -if a God existed. The moment of love is a moment of union -of body and spirit- and the act of faith is mutual and implicit.

On the day when you again allow abominable men to confiscate your freedom, your money, your lives, your private property, your manhood and your sacred honor, in the name of "security' or "national emergency' you will die, and never again shall you be free. If plotters again destroy your Republic, they will do it by your greedy and ignorant assent, by your disregard of your neighbors' rights, by your apathy and your stupidity. We were brought to the brink of universal death and darkness because we had become that most contemptible of people -- an angerless one. Keep alive and vivid all your righteous anger against traitors, against those who would abrogate your Constitution, against those who would lead you to wars with false slogans and cunning appeals to your patriotism.

I believe in saints as I believe in sanctity. I believe in miracles as I believe in God, who can suspend the laws of His own making. But I believe, too, that the hand of God writes plainly and simply, for all men of good will to read. I am doubtful of His presence in confusion and conflicting voices.

[It] could be argued that the favorite sin of Satan would not be vanity, as described in 'Devil's Advocate', or even unbelief in the existence of the devil, as described in 'The Usual Suspects,' but the imagining of a generic, Christless God. The very essence of the Christian faith centers on the identity of Jesus Christ as God's only begotten Son, who alone is the source of salvation and author of faith (Acts 4:12). So it stands to reason that Satan's favorite sin is the belief in a God without Jesus, because that is a god without atonement or redemption and that is what populates hell in the name of heaven.

In Hebrew, satan means an advocate of the alternative, the one who makes the arguments you don't know how to refute." Michelangelo looked to the old Jew, still grinning wickedly in the corner. "That satan is my best friend.

Greg cut in thoughtfully, “Not to play devil’s advocate—” At this, we all scoffed. All of us. Even Quinn. Synchronized eye-rolling. Greg clutched his chest and turned an offended look on his wife. “Et tu, Fiona? Et. Tu.” “Please.” Fiona gave her husband a dry look. “You have an honorary degree in advocacy for the devil from Harvard.” “And you passed the bar in the sixth circle of hell.” Matt grinned. “Just get on with it,” Quinn mumbled under his breath,

One solved nothing by waving the commandments like a bludgeon at people's heads. There was no point in shouting damnation at a man who was already walking himself to hell on his own two feet. One had to pray for the Grace of God and then go probing like a good psychologist for the fear that might condition him to repentance or the love that might draw him toward it.

Jesus became our advocate or lawyer, and it is important that we never talk to the devil without our attorney present. We also should not do for the devil what he cannot do for himself. He cannot touch us; he can only talk to us. So when we self-destruct, we are doing for the devil what he cannot do for himself.

In the end they had lost everything, their freedom as men, their rights as men, their dignity as men, and had become nothing else but slaves of an omnipotent State, working endlessly, half-starved, half-clothed, half-sheltered in ruined buildings, endlessly spied upon, supervised, commanded by the Military and treated like dogs.

If you ever find yourself in a tight, unanimous group, you must speak your mind, even if your team does not like it. Question tacit assumptions, even if you risk expulsion from the warm nest. And, if you lead a group, appoint someone as devil’s advocate. She will not be the most popular member of the team, but she might be the most important.

I’m always playing devil’s advocate in my head, which gets so damn exhausting, but the devil…she just won’t shut up.

Be true to your authenticity and innovate with brave ammunition.

Loving someone isn’t dangerous. Falling in love with the wrong someone is.

Because you can only be tethered to someone for so long before the cord begins to strangle you.

Part of caring about someone is accepting their flaws and their pain. Carrying bits and pieces of it with you, so they don’t have to bear all of it on their own.

Evil is merely the absence of good.

I can't tell you why God made you the way you are any more than I can tell you why he's planted a carcinoma in my stomach to make me die painfully while other men die peacefully in their sleep. The cogs of creation seem to slip all the time. Babies are born with two heads, mothers of families run crazy with carving knives, men die in plague, famine and thunderstorms. Why? Only God knows.

Do not keep talking to the Devil’s Advocate Guy or Gal aka DAG. I’m not against playing Devil’s Advocate, because a lot can be gleaned from it. However, when it comes to topics such as homophobia, sexism and racism, a particular kind of DAG tends to rear its ugly head. This person isn’t interested in having a fruitful discussion that will enrich everyone involved, nor do they have any intention to have an open and frank discussion about a difficult subject. This person is simply a shit-starter. Someone who is bored and wants to derail a conversation or has some inner rage that they are dying to unleash. During my days of blogging about race, I have encountered this person often. They start out as seemingly run-of-the-mill people, perhaps sharing slightly bias statistics but asking enough questions to seem like they are open to ideas. Eventually though, DAG will lose their cool, and reveal themselves for who they are.

A shocking ultimatum is issued; choose the victim or it defaults to someone you hold dear. And she has just minutes to decide. As each crime becomes more brutal, she is forced to play devil’s advocate as she chooses the next target." WITNESS

The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class- leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families,— sundering husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers,—leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth desolate. We see the thief preaching against theft, and the adulterer against adultery. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! all for the glory of God and the good of souls! The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time. The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.

Other priests, he knew, found an intense pleasure in the raw, salty dialect of peasant conversation. They picked up pearls of wisdom and experience over a farmhouse table or a cup of wine in a workingman's kitchen. They talked with equal familiarity to the rough-tongued whores of Trastevere and the polished signori of Parioli. They enjoyed the ribald humor of the fish market as much as the wit of a Cardinal's dinner table. They were good priests too, and they did much good for their people, with a singular satisfaction to themselves.

Something ugly and painful twists my insides, puncturing the dam of anguish I’ve tried so hard to hold back. “You’re not capable of loving me the way I love you. You’re not capable of choosing me…you never will be. Even though I choose you with every single breath I take.

Look at yourself! You're a priest. You know damn well that if I were setting out to make a girl at this moment instead of young Paolo, you'd take an entirely different view. You'd disapprove, sure! You'd read me a lecture on fornication and all the rest. But you wouldn't be too unhappy. I'd be normal... according to nature! But I am not made like that. God didn't make me like that. But do I need love the less? Do I need satisfaction less? Have I less right to live in contentment because somewhere along the line the Almighty slipped a cog in creation?... What's your answer to that Meredith? What's your answer for me? Tie a knot in myself and take up badminton and wait till they make me an angel in heaven, where they don't need this sort of thing any more? I'm lonely! I need love like the next man! My sort of love!

What the Court will decide is another matter - a legality, based on the canonical rules of evidence, and irrelevant, it seems to me, to the fundamental facts, that the finger of God is here and tat the heaven of goodness in this man is still working in the lives of his people.

And in fact, I myself do not believe that anybody ever looked into the world with a distrust as deep as mine, seeming, as I do, not simply the timely advocate of the devil, but, to employ theological terms, an enemy and challenger of God; and whosoever has experienced any of the consequences of such deep distrust, anything of the chills and the agonies of isolation to which such an unqualified difference of standpoint condemns him endowed with it, will also understand how often I must have sought relief and self-forgetfulness from any source—through any object of veneration or enmity

Very true, but then a lot of the confessions were voluntary.” “So who would volunteer such things?” “Doubtless people who were mentally disturbed.” “Ah, another reliable source!” “Oh, well, you’re probably right about that too, Lieutenant. I’m just playing devil’s advocate.” “You do it so well.” “Look, one thing that

Six Thinking Hats: describes six different roles we play on teams and shows the benefits of each role. Each is represented by a different colored hat. Most people have one dominant hat color, with one or two other colors close behind. A person who is drawn to the facts and is very logical wears the white hat. A person most comfortable generating new ideas wears the green hat. A person who uses intuition to make decisions wears the red hat. A person who is very organized and process-oriented wears the blue hat. A "devil's advocate", who uncovers what won't work wears the black hat. A person eager to make everyone happy wears the yellow hat.

CHARLIE Have you ever wondered—I am being devil’s advocate now—if just possibly he hadn’t “capitalized,” so to speak, on the backwardness he found here? MARTA (Tightly) Mr. Morris, I am not a very complicated person. I believe that people are what they do. You may think it simple-minded of me if you like—but if you don’t understand the depth of his sacrifice merely by being here—

Even the most sacred things are not to be honored before the Devil has had his say against them. But since the evil advocate is always able to think of further objections, absolute certainty can never be achieved. He is also allowed to go to extremes, to make use of polemics, mockery or slander. A sentimental plea for tolerance and decorum is merely an attempt to protect one's own cowardice.

Be thankful for your achievements; be thankful for your accomplishments, no matter how big or small. Be thankful for the mind to complete the accomplishments. Be thankful for your past, present, and future. And know that if you are creating success stories you will find that average is how you began, above average is then where you will stand! Lest you forget the strong develop and improve; the weak get frantic, digress and deviate.

Mother Goose decided Alex was panicking enough for the both of them. She took a deep breath and tried being positive by playing devil’s advocate. “There’s no way of telling what happened to your brother,” she said. “But it’s very possible he crossed into Neverland safely and we’re worrying for nothing. And if he did, once he arrives in the fairy-tale world with the others, it won’t take them long to realize something happened to us. Even if he doesn’t, I have no doubt someone will find us. It may take time,

There is no passion in your life, my son. You have never loved a woman, nor hated a man, nor pitied a child. You have withdrawn yourself too long and you are a stranger in the human family. You have asked nothing and given nothing. You have never known the dignity of need nor gratitude for a suffering shared. This is your sickness. This is the cross you have fashioned for your own shoulders. This is where your doubts begin and your fears too – because a man who cannot love his fellows cannot love God either.

The ever-reliable Bill Thompson filled the gap with a new character, Wallace Wimple. Wallace gave new meaning to the word “wimp,” for this was the nickname pinned on him by Fibber McGee. Wimple was terrified of his “big old wife,” the ferocious, often-discussed but never-present “Sweetie Face.” Also in 1941 came Gale Gordon as Mayor LaTrivia, who would arrive at the McGee house, start an argument, and become so tongue-tied that he’d blow his top. A year later, all these characters disappeared: Gordon went into the Coast Guard, and when Thompson joined the Navy, four characters went with him. With LaTrivia, Boomer, Depopoulous, Wimple, the Old Timer, and Gildersleeve all on the “recently departed” list, Fibber found a new devil’s advocate in the town doctor. Arthur Q. Bryan, who had played the voice of Elmer Fudd in the Warner Brothers cartoons, became Doc Gamble, continuing the verbal brickbats begun by Gildersleeve. Their squabbles could begin over a disputed doctor bill—McGee always disputed doctor bills—or erupt out of nowhere about anything at all.

My daughter lived more than six years with an incurable disease that filled her head with devils that literally hounded her to death, and she did it while laughing, painting, writing poetry, advocating and bringing joy to the people around her. She was the bravest person I have ever known, and her suicide doesn't change that. "Natalie will help our society to move forward," a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins Hospital wrote me upon learning of the suicide. "She is helping us to look at mental illness with the respect, the compassion and the dignity it deserves." I hope so. Natalie would have loved that legacy.

However, perhaps the most insidious aspect of the New Age movement is what I call the Optimism Gestapo, or those who regulate and insist on positive thinking by any means necessary, where any criticism or expression of negative or painful emotions are disdained. I once brought up to an Ashtar Command "ascencionist" (i.e. someone who believes that extraterrestrials will come and save her), the fact that democratic senator Paul Wellstone may have been murdered in order to get republican Norm Coleman elected. Before I could elaborate, she cut me off by saying, "It was just his time." She was intolerant of the fact that I dared interfere with the reality she was creating, free of conspiracy, cutthroat politicians, and skullduggery. And the more I have played devil's advocate with New Agers, the more I have discovered that such intolerance is the norm. For there currently is a belief amongst New Agers that anything negative that one expresses will only further magnetize negativity. However, those who pursue this line of thinking just end up repressing their negative emotions, only to have them burst forth in uncontrollable ways…. Anyone seeking a supportive metaphysical community should first ask themselves if their ability to think independently is being compromised. For keeping one's metaphysical radar functioning is most important in a world crawling with "forced cheer" gurus, COINTELPRO channelers, and self-help authors.

People always confuse intelligence with rational thinking and skepticism. I think it’s a big mistake to assume anyone that follows a cult, religion, political party we don’t like, etc is “stupid.” But it’s fair to say that if you follow something irrational, you are acting irrationally (at least as it pertains to that one specific act.) People can be smart - even brilliant - without necessarily being rational. Sometimes it’s easy for people to be skeptical to most things, but with one or two glaring blind spots. If you don’t spend a good portion of time playing devil’s advocate with your own dearly held beliefs, odds are that there will be at least a couple of them that are irrational, even if you’re one of the smartest people around.

Is there not also the profoundest pleasure in bitterness? No satisfaction, no victory, will ever be the equivalent of the bitter plenitude of the sense of injustice. It revels in itself. It draws on the very roots of an inner revenge on existence. Who, in the light of that, could claim to give a definition of happiness? Complex as is this entanglement of good and evil, so too is it difficult to pass beyond good and evil when the very distinction between the two has disappeared. One may reject all this. The fact remains that the hypothesis of evil, of the lack of distinction between good and evil and our deep complicity with the worst, is always present, rendering all our actions impenetrable. But it is itself a principle of action and doubtless one of the most powerful. I am playing devil's advocate here. But if you reject this hypothesis you can always think in terms of a wager of the Pascalian type. What Pascal says, more or less, is this: you can always content yourself with a secular existence and its advantages, but it's much more fun with the hypothesis of God. With just a few sacrifices to make in exchange for eternal salvation, the advantages are much greater. Where we are concerned, this same wager becomes: you can always get by with the hypothesis of good and happiness, but it's much more fun with the hypothesis of evil. A variant of the same wager would be: you can always get by with the hypothesis of reality, but it's much more fun with the hypothesis of radical illusion.

I do not believe that one can maintain a situation in which a man toils and works a whole year, only to get a ludicrous salary, and another just sits down in a leather seat and gets enormous sums for it. This is a condition unworthy of man. [-] After all, there are two worlds which confront each other. And they are right when they say: “We can never reconcile ourselves to the National Socialist world.” For how could a narrow-minded capitalist possibly declare his agreement with my principles? It would be easier for the devil to go to church and take holy water. [-] This is the first state in our German history which, as a matter of principle, eliminated all social prejudice in the assignment of social positions, and this not only in civilian life. I myself am the best proof of that. I am not even an advocate; just think of what this means! And still I am your Fuhrer! [-] What was it that I asked of the outside world Nothing but the right of Germans to unite, and second, that what was taken away from them be restored. I asked for nothing which might have implied a loss for another people. How often have I offered my hand to them Immediately after my rise to power. For what does armament mean? It gobbles up so much manpower. And especially I who regard work as the decisive factor, I had wished to employ German manpower for other plans. And, my Volksgenossen, I believe it became common knowledge that I have plans of some substance, beautiful and great plans for my Volk. I have the ambition to make the German Volk rich, the German lands beautiful. I wish the standard of living of the individual to increase. I wish us to develop the most beautiful and best culture. I wish theater to be an enjoyment affordable for the entire Volk and not only for the upper ten thousand as in England. Beyond this, I wish the entirety of German culture to benefit the Volk. These were enormous plans which we possessed, and for their realization I needed manpower. Armament just takes men away. I made proposals to restrict armament. But all they did was laugh at me. [-] For it was quite clear: what was I before the World War? An unknown, nameless man. What was I during the War? A small, common soldier. I bore no responsibility for the World War. But who are the folk who lead England once again today The very same people who were already agitating before the World War. It is the same Churchill, who was already the vilest warmonger in the World War, and the late Chamberlain who agitated just as much then. And the whole audience (Korona) that belongs there, and naturally that people which always believes that with the trumpets of Jericho it can destroy the peoples: these are the old specters which have arisen once more! Adolf Hitler – speech to the workers of a Berlin December 10, 1940

To Urbain Grandier, for example, the Good Fairy had brought, along with solid talents, the most dazzling of all gifts, and the most dangerous -eloquence. Spoken by a good actor - and every great preacher, every successful advocate and politician is, among other things, a consummate actor - words can exercise an almost magical power over their hearers. Because of the essential irrationality of this power, even the best-intentioned of public speakers probably do more harm than good. When an orator, by the mere magic of words and a golden voice, persuades his audience of the rightness of a bad cause, we are very properly shocked. We ought to feel the same dismay whenever we find the same irrelevant tricks being used to persuade people of the rightness of a good cause. The belief engendered may be desirable, but the grounds for it are intrinsically wrong, and those who use the devices of oratory for instilling even right beliefs are guilty of pandering to the least creditable elements in human nature.

while the capacity for white people to sustain challenges to our racial positions is limited—and, in this way, fragile—the effects of our responses are not fragile at all; they are quite powerful because they take advantage of historical and institutional power and control. We wield this power and control in whatever way is most useful in the moment to protect our positions. If we need to cry so that all the resources rush back to us and attention is diverted away from a discussion of our racism, then we will cry (a strategy most commonly employed by white middle-class women). If we need to take umbrage and respond with righteous outrage, then we will take umbrage. If we need to argue, minimize, explain, play devil’s advocate, pout, tune out, or withdraw to stop the challenge, then we will. White fragility functions as a form of bullying; I am going to make it so miserable for you to confront me—no matter how diplomatically you try to do so—that you will simply back off, give up, and never raise the issue again. White fragility keeps people of color in line and “in their place.

Another common form of mental illness is bipolar disorder, in which a person suffers from extreme bouts of wild, delusional optimism, followed by a crash and then periods of deep depression. Bipolar disorder also seems to run in families and, curiously, strikes frequently in artists; perhaps their great works of art were created during bursts of creativity and optimism. A list of creative people who were afflicted by bipolar disorder reads like a Who’s Who of Hollywood celebrities, musicians, artists, and writers. Although the drug lithium seems to control many of the symptoms of bipolar disorder, the causes are not entirely clear. One theory states that bipolar disorder may be caused by an imbalance between the left and right hemispheres. Dr. Michael Sweeney notes, “Brain scans have led researchers to generally assign negative emotions such as sadness to the right hemisphere and positive emotions such as joy to the left hemisphere. For at least a century, neuroscientists have noticed a link between damage to the brain’s left hemisphere and negative moods, including depression and uncontrollable crying. Damage to the right, however, has been associated with a broad array of positive emotions.” So the left hemisphere, which is analytical and controls language, tends to become manic if left to itself. The right hemisphere, on the contrary, is holistic and tends to check this mania. Dr. V. S. Ramachandran writes, “If left unchecked, the left hemisphere would likely render a person delusional or manic.… So it seems reasonable to postulate a ‘devil’s advocate’ in the right hemisphere that allows ‘you’ to adopt a detached, objective (allocentric) view of yourself.” If human consciousness involves simulating the future, it has to compute the outcomes of future events with certain probabilities. It needs, therefore, a delicate balance between optimism and pessimism to estimate the chances of success or failures for certain courses of action. But in some sense, depression is the price we pay for being able to simulate the future. Our consciousness has the ability to conjure up all sorts of horrific outcomes for the future, and is therefore aware of all the bad things that could happen, even if they are not realistic. It is hard to verify many of these theories, since brain scans of people who are clinically depressed indicate that many brain areas are affected. It is difficult to pinpoint the source of the problem, but among the clinically depressed, activity in the parietal and temporal lobes seems to be suppressed, perhaps indicating that the person is withdrawn from the outside world and living in their own internal world. In particular, the ventromedial cortex seems to play an important role. This area apparently creates the feeling that there is a sense of meaning and wholeness to the world, so that everything seems to have a purpose. Overactivity in this area can cause mania, in which people think they are omnipotent. Underactivity in this area is associated with depression and the feeling that life is pointless. So it is possible that a defect in this area may be responsible for some mood swings.

By the authority of God Almighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and of the holy canons, and of the undefiled Virgin Mary, mother and patroness of our Saviour, and of all the celestial virtues, angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, powers, cherubins and seraphins, and of all the holy patriarchs, prophets, and of all the apostles and evangelists, and of the holy innocents, who in the sight of the Holy Lamb, are found worthy to sing the new song of the holy martyrs and holy confessors, and of the holy virgins, and of all the saints together, with the holy and elect of God, may he be damn'd. We excommunicate, and anathematize him, and from the thresholds of the holy church of God Almighty we sequester him, that he may be tormented, disposed, and delivered over with Dathan and Abiram, and with those who say unto the Lord God, Depart from us, we desire none of thy ways. And as fire is quenched with water, so let the light of him be put out for evermore, unless it shall repent him' and make satisfaction. Amen. May the Father who created man, curse him. May the Son who suffered for us curse him. May the Holy Ghost, who was given to us in baptism, curse him May the holy cross which Christ, for our salvation triumphing over his enemies, ascended, curse him. May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God, curse him. May St. Michael, the advocate of holy souls, curse him. May all the angels and archangels, principalities and powers, and all the heavenly armies, curse him. [Our armies swore terribly in Flanders, cried my uncle Toby,---but nothing to this.---For my own part I could not have a heart to curse my dog so.] May St. John the Pre-cursor, and St. John the Baptist, and St. Peter and St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and all other Christ's apostles, together curse him. And may the rest of his disciples and four evangelists, who by their preaching converted the universal world, and may the holy and wonderful company of martyrs and confessors who by their holy works are found pleasing to God Almighty, curse him. May the holy choir of the holy virgins, who for the honor of Christ have despised the things of the world, damn him May all the saints, who from the beginning of the world to everlasting ages are found to be beloved of God, damn him May the heavens and earth, and all the holy things remaining therein, damn him. May he be damn'd wherever he be---whether in the house or the stables, the garden or the field, or the highway, or in the path, or in the wood, or in the water, or in the church. May he be cursed in living, in dying. May he be cursed in eating and drinking, in being hungry, in being thirsty, in fasting, in sleeping, in slumbering, in walking, in standing, in sitting, in lying, in working, in resting, in pissing, in shitting, and in blood-letting! May he be cursed in all the faculties of his body! May he be cursed inwardly and outwardly! May he be cursed in the hair of his head! May he be cursed in his brains, and in his vertex, in his temples, in his forehead, in his ears, in his eye-brows, in his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his nostrils, in his fore-teeth and grinders, in his lips, in his throat, in his shoulders, in his wrists, in his arms, in his hands, in his fingers! May he be damn'd in his mouth, in his breast, in his heart and purtenance, down to the very stomach! May he be cursed in his reins, and in his groin, in his thighs, in his genitals, and in his hips, and in his knees, his legs, and feet, and toe-nails! May he be cursed in all the joints and articulations of the members, from the top of his head to the sole of his foot! May there be no soundness in him! May the son of the living God, with all the glory of his Majesty and may heaven, with all the powers which move therein, rise up against him, curse and damn him, unless he repent and make satisfaction! Amen. I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, my heart would not let me curse the devil himself with so much bitterness!

holes that contract? Doesn’t that mean black holes go against nature?” Carrie Barclay liked to play Devil’s Advocate for no other reason than to drive her teachers crazy. She got a sadistic thrill out of finding holes in her teachers’ lessons and many of them went home exhausted to a bottle of wine. Birbeck, on the other hand, knew Carrie’s game and occasionally liked to play it. “Actually, quite the opposite,” he answered. “The fact that black holes behave in opposition to the nature of the Universe only proves the Universe’s proclivity for expansion. It is their opposition that makes them completely natural. The Universe is filled with opposites. Up and down, in and out, light and dark. Remember the first Newtonian law of physics, ‘Every action …’” “‘… has an equal and opposite reaction,’” answered the entire class in monotone unison. Jade looked around at her new classmates, surprised at their Pavlovian response.

Know the devil in you. How else will you counter him?

The Devil in us has created God to justify our actions.

the best system is probably one that involves encouraging negative feedback in person: finding subordinates you trust and asking them what other people complain about most; encouraging a “Devil’s Advocate” mentality during projects and meetings; or asking subordinates what the least-best thing about a particular project is (“yes I know you think this project is wonderful. But if you were to think it wasn’t wonderful, what would you think wasn’t wonderful about it?”) Ultimately, your biggest strengths will be your simple awareness that negative feedback must exist in your organisation, and your determination to keep looking for it despite the psychological temptation for positives to be reinforced.

Look, I just needed to make sure that you were sure.” “Why didn’t you just ask?” “Sometimes I figure I have to play devil’s advocate.” I could have done without the drama. The office declined to prosecute the case.

The devil is called "the accuser of our brothers and sisters" (Revelation 12 v 10). "Accuser" is legal language. Satan brings a case against you and says that you don't really find favor in God's eyes, because of who you are and what you have done. He is a guilt-producing prosecutor. The only way to fight an unscrupulous lawyer is to find a better one! Thankfully, in Jesus, that is exactly what you have. Jesus is called our "advocate" (1 John 2 v 1); he is your lawyer. Jesus stands before our Father in heaven and makes a case for you. He successfully states that you are innocent before the Judge of heaven and earth because he has paid the price for your sins. You are not guilty. When you feel attacked by the evil one - when he tells you you're on your own, or unforgiven, or that life is out of control - tell him to take it up with your divine attorney, Jesus.

Christ had made bishops and a Pope - but never a cardinal. Even the name held more than a hint of illusion - cardo, a hinge - as if they were the hinges on which he gates of Heaven were hung. Hinges they might be, but the hinges were useless metal, unless anchored firmly into the living fabric of the Church, whose stones were the poor, the humble, the ignorant, the sinning and the loving, the forgotten of the princes, but never the forgotten f God.

Even in the United States, I recommend that you appoint someone in every meeting to play devil’s advocate. That person’s job is to argue against what is being proposed by emphasizing the negatives, such as tough competitors or regulatory hurdles. In that manner, the meeting avoids the problem of “in-house baseball,” where everyone agrees on a proposal without careful analyses of the counterarguments. I’ve attended too many meetings that proceeded as if the firm faced no serious competitors or resource constraints.10

...the best causes sometimes need the best advocates.

Killing or eating animals is an act of beasts. Stirs within the devil. Sorry. It spurs evil. Thus is truth - at least the metaphysical.

Create ways to foster alternative view and constructive criticism. Assign people to play the devils advocate, taking opposing viewpoints so you can see the holes in your position. Get people to wage debates that argue different sides of the issue. Have an anonymous suggestion box that employees must contribute to as part of the decision-making proces. Remember, people can be independent thinkers and team players at the same time, help them fill both roles.

Dalio loved the cacophony, which provided an opportunity for both sides to learn. Instead of assigning a devil’s advocate, Dalio was uncovering actual areas of disagreement. “The greatest tragedy of mankind,” Dalio says, “comes from the inability of people to have thoughtful disagreement to find out what’s true.

I’m serious,” Donovan grunts, throwing the crumpled ball at Nolan. “Even if they succeeded, they were fucked. Two teenage rich kids running away to do what? Become farmers? They had servants that did everything for them. They wouldn’t have lasted a week.” Kaleb sighs from the other side of Connor. “That’s not the point of the play. It’s a commentary on values and what you have to lose when you let petty things get in the way of what truly matters, your family and loved ones.

Kate Millett: Marxist, feminist, advocate for gay rights, for new sexuality, for new spousal relationships, and on and on. She channeled her revolutionary energies into a campaign to take down marriage and family, the backbone of American society. And she practiced what she preached. Though she was married, she practiced lesbianism, becoming bisexual. She had started that lifestyle at Columbia while writing Sexual Politics. This would, predictably, end her marriage to her husband, who found the trashing of these norms unnatural and detrimental to the health of their marriage. Of course, to many in our brave new world, this makes Kate a heroine. Today, the bio for Kate Millett at the “GLBTQ” website hails her as a “groundbreaking” “bisexual feminist literary and social critic.

SUMMARY: QUESTIONER LIKELY STRENGTHS: Data-driven Fair-minded (according to his or her judgment) Interested in creating systems that are efficient and effective Willing to play devil’s advocate Comfortable bucking the system if it’s warranted Inner-directed Unwilling to accept authority without justification

for teams to flag problems that they see. On a monthly basis, bring people together to review them and figure out which ones are worth solving. 9. Stop assigning devil’s advocates and start unearthing them. Dissenting opinions are useful even when they’re wrong, but they’re only effective if they’re authentic and consistent. Instead of assigning people to play the devil’s advocate, find people who genuinely hold minority opinions, and invite them to present their views. To identify these people, try appointing an information manager—make someone responsible for seeking out team members individually before meetings to find out what they know. 10. Welcome criticism. It’s hard to encourage dissent if you don’t practice what you preach. When Ray Dalio received an email criticizing his performance in an important meeting, copying it to the entire company sent a clear message that he welcomed negative feedback. By inviting employees to criticize you publicly, you can set the tone for people to communicate more openly even when their ideas are unpopular.

Ignorance and Arrogance Thud Manifesting a Labyrinth from a Flood They are brothers, share the same Blood It is from them that Apathy can Bud Devil’s advocate rests in the Mud Showing its assets like a Stud Projection of right and wrong without Consent These brothers never say a word they Meant

While it can be appealing to assign a devil’s advocate, it’s much more powerful to unearth one. When people are designated to dissent, they’re just playing a role. This

I’ve seen one technique that generally succeeds in improving our average level of wisdom: adopting a go-to cross-check rule that’s simple enough to become part of your routine anytime you’re doing something important. Here are five cross-check rules that I’ve seen people deploy effectively: “Don’t Default,” “Devil’s Advocate,” “Mandate Dissent,” “Never Say Never,” and “Pre-mortem.

Amber Run – I Found Lana Del Rey – Lust for Life Tove Lo – Cool Girl Jaymes Young – I’ll be Good The Lumineers – Sleep on the floor Hozier – Work Song The Neighborhood – Daddy Issues Selena Gomez - Fetish

Knowledge of our inevitable deaths is the ally of the disconsolate. It is their source of comfort, their devil’s advocate, their excuse, and their hindrance.

you don’t always have to commit murder to kill someone.

We are striving for a point of reference, and the only one which can ever be pertinent to man is the Divine point of reference. Only then will affirmations have any verity.

Honest doubt is the devil's advocate that honest faith requires

Idle hands are the devils greatest tools. But it’ll be good to notice that the tools sharpened by idle heads. You are idle because that’s the job your mind gave you!

Innovation is now recognized as the single most important ingredient in any modern economy.

Right now devil’s advocate is just another name for asshole.