Presumption will be easily corrected; but timidity is a…

Timidity is a disease of the mind, obstinate and fatal; for a man once persuaded that any impediment is insuperable has given it, with…

— Samuel Johnson

Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring through timidity.

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Of all kinds of credulity, the most obstinate is that of party-spirit; of men, who, being numbered, they know not why, in any party,…

— Samuel Johnson

Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint…

— Samuel Johnson

Such is the uncertainty of human affairs, that security and despair are equal follies; and as it is presumption and arrogance to anticipate triumphs,…

— Samuel Johnson

Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy; we do not easily believe beyond what we see.

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The pastoral labours of the archbishop of Constantinople provoked and gradually united against him two sorts of enemies; the aspiring clergy, who envied his…

— Edward Gibbon

A powerful portfolio of physiological and behavioural evidence now exists to support the case that fish feel pain and that this feeling matters. In…

— John Webster

Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is…

— David Hume

Few men are so obstinate in their atheism, that a pressing danger will not compel them to acknowledgment of a divine power…

— Plato

Those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings; Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realised, High…

— William Wordsworth

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

— Bertrand Russell

Charlotte slammed the paper down onto her desk with an exclamation of rage. “Aloysius Starkweather is the most stubborn, hypocritical, obstinate, degenerate—” She broke…

— Cassandra Clare

Many are obstinate with regard to the pathway once they have set upon it, few with regard to the goal.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Obstinate people can be divided into the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish.

— Aristotle