Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction is capable of producing the last effects of heroism; which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy, in a good or bad cause, in wisdom or folly.
William Hazlitt
Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy; we do not easily believe beyond what we see.
Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
Obstinacy is the strength of the weak. Firmness founded upon principle, upon the truth and right, order and law, duty and generosity, is the obstinacy of sages.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
The obstinacy of the indolent and weak is less conquerable than that of the fiery and bold.
Johann Kaspar Lavater
Firmness or stiffness of the mind is not from adherence to truth, but submission to prejudice.
John Locke
Obstinacy and contention are common qualities, most appearing in, and best becoming, a mean and illiterate soul.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
Jonathan Swift
Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause, and of obstinacy in a bad one.
Laurence Stern
The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
[Optimism is] the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.
Voltaire
Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.
Robert Peel
Never suffer your courage to exert itself in fierceness, your resolution in obstinacy, your wisdom in cunning, nor your patience in sullenness and despair.
Charles Palmer