
Controversial Quotes of Beloved Historical Figures
First published: Monday May 24th, 2021
What if Twitter had existed for hundreds of years? Here are some politically-incorrect quotes that would have ended up with historical figures getting canceled.
Albert Einstein

Roald Dahl
Teddy Roosevelt
Benjamin Franklin

Friedrich Nietzsche
Winston Churchill
Mohandas Gandhi
Nelson Mandela
Note: Unlike other entries, this is not an original quote. It is the lyrics to a song sung by Mandela and other ANC leaders.
Queen Victoria

John Lennon
The Dalai Lama
Mother Teresa
Che Guevara

Muhammad
Jesus
Jesus, of course, was speaking in metaphors – not promoting the actual use of swords. This subtlety would be lost on today's Twitter mobs.
Martin Luther King Jr.
From a letter that Martin Luther King Jr. wrote to a teenage boy experiencing same-sex attraction.
Barack Obama

Barack Obama made this statement in November 2008 while campaigning for President. That was the same year that California residents voted to ban gay marriage. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in all 50 states, and today it is supported by a large majority of Americans. What a huge turnaround in such a short time.
Want more? Make sure to check out People Who Said Positive Things About Mussolini.
He was pretty good, especially if you look at who came after him
Of course I can't say whether Obama was genuinely against gay marriage or just held that stance because it was safe.
MG, regardless of religion Obama was an excellent president altogether.
And Regarding the Quote, as the Political Landscape changed, Obama's position changed too.
1. he once wore a tan suit to a press conference
2. he once had dijon mustard on a hot dog
3. he once neglected to wear a flag pin on his lapel
4. he signed the ACA, which was basically Republican Bob Dole's healthcare plan from the 90s, and helped a few million Americans get health insurance.
5. during his presidency the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya was attacked and a few people died. Though literally dozens of independent investigations and more than 30 Congressional hearings repeatedly found no fault or wrong doing on the part of Obama or the State Department. But Fox News *would not* stop talking about it...
7. He bowed when he met the king of Saudi Arabia
8. He once took a selfie in the Oval Office using a selfie stick
9. There was a photo of him taken in the Oval Office where we was not wearing a suit jacket.
10. He once went out biking and wore a helmet that some people thought was dorky.
11. He wore "mom jeans"
12. He once saluted a US Marine while exiting an aircraft with a cup of coffee in his hand.
I am literally not making up any of this stuff...
Perhaps the one legitimately controversial thing he did, which the Republicans actually loved for the most part but he did get a lot of flak from Democrats and Libertarians... that would be his extensive use of targeted drone strikes. US drones killed over 4,000 people in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia in these 8 years. Around 10% were untargeted civilians.
some years later the same failed businessman presided over a pandemic that killed at least 600,000 Americans, but was just super put-out that the media wouldn't talk about what a fantastic job he did handling it. and he still hasn't resigned though he was voted out of office 7 months ago.
"We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry every night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet."
When Clutch thinks about this I guess he thinks of multiple sclerosis, down's syndrome, and whatever made our last president the way he is.
I understand some people feeling threatened by designer babies. They imagine everyone selecting against things like...dwarfism... and vitiligo... and maybe Asperger's... and there are people now who have those things who are beautiful, productive, and valuable members of society in their own way. I mean with Asperger's it seems like a very high percentage of the most brilliant and creative people in history may have been on the spectrum.
If those things are too utopian, then the lines between innovation, education, and obsessiveness start to get blurry. Is the education of good health and wellness much different from reducing the chances of obesity? Is laser eye surgery that far from strong eyesight? Asking questions like those may suggest we're closer to utopia than most think. Obviously, it would still be a vast distance away, but with the way people are, innovation moves us towards ideas like this anyway.
When it does happen, it will be massively disruptive to society.
For example, in the United States, women want to marry tall men. Women express an average preference of 6'2" which is the 94th percentile and nearly 5 inches taller than the average. With genetic engineering, heights would rapidly increase as people want to be "taller than average". The end point of this arms race is one in which everyone is a giant.
This is just one consequence, and by far not the largest.
I'm not sure whether I agree with you or not, but I don't think what you're talking about would qualify as eugenics.
Forced or involuntary sterilizations and euthanization of undesirables were examples of this idea, or similar ones, taken too far. The core idea behind eugenics is to propagate desirable genes while eliminating undesirable ones. How exactly you do this is secondary.
But I don't think this will ever happen on a large scale (again). Especially since genetic modification is probably much easier.
also, i cant be the only one to think publicly admitting to having a "little girl fetish" is kinda problematic, especially considering iirc kalbahamut is a school teacher
I disagree that the world would be worse if everyone had higher IQs. I know that being ignorant, irrational, ill-informed, etc is not necessarily the same thing as being unintelligent. But there is some correlation. And I can think of all sorts of problems caused by mass stupidity, greater than my routine annoyance at having to deal with these people.
How do you think it would be worse? Fewer people satisfied with menial jobs? I really can't think of how it would be worse.
-Adolf Hitler
Finger lickin' good!
-Donald Trump
There's still the chance that what I've heard is bollocks, but even if that is the case, there are different levels of racism (as jmellor brought up). Che thinking Black people are inferior does not mean he thinks they are deserving of civil war.
Einstein saying this has the implication (out of context, at least) that the Chinese supplanting all other races is a real threat, even if small. It seems to buy into the idea that there is a global conspiracy for Chinese to supplant all other races.
Of course, the Chinese state is currently orchestrating numerous genocides, and Taiwan embraced settler-colonialism against the island's native peoples, and ancient Chinese history long included the absorbing of other peoples into Han identity…
but the situation is still precarious because of the long and disgusting history of Chinese exclusion in at least the US, and anti-Chinese racism as a whole is often tied to the sentiment Einstein shared.