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Decency Quotes

Browse 448 quotes about Decency.

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Decency Quotes

“The more advanced the country, the more its citizens insist on a pure water supply, on laws against careless methods of preparing and handling food, and against the making and advertising of harmful drugs. Powerful vested interests with profits at stake compel the public authorities to fight a sustained battle against the assumption that the pursuit of individual profit is the best way to serve the general good.”

DecencyCommon Good
Book:In Place of Fear
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“The Chair [Justice Peter McClellan, former Chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse] seemed to see where he was going with this. 'Cardinal, you keep referencing back to authority and structural responsibility, but it is the case, isn't it, that within the Church you would expect and indeed might I suggest the community would expect - that each priest would act responsibly, regardless of their position?" He was met again with some vintage obfuscation, capped off with a familiar Pell trope: you people just don't understand my Church. 'To understand the Catholic Church's structure and who has authority, you go to Church law, and according to the canon law of the Church, you can there identify the different levels of responsibility - it might be a jurisdictional responsibility; it might be a moral responsibility at different levels. But it's from the canon law that you decide what the situation is within the Church.' And here the Chair got to the nub of Pell's true thinking on this, the bubble he finds himself in, where the ordinary rules of morality, decency and even criminal responsibility are leavened to varying degrees by byzantine Church structures. (p.203)”

MoralityDecencyPersonal ResponsibilityGeorge PellCriminal ResponsibilityInstitutional Authority
Book:Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell
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“All these years! All this time with us -- have you learned nothing?! You only live by the grace of our clan's tenet of forgiveness! Your judgement is shit! Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. Without decency, neither talent nor learning can make the human frame into a samurai.”

LearningForgivenessJudgementHospitalityDecencySamuraiRectitudeAtomic GardenKazumi
Book:Tokyo Ghost, Vol. 1: Atomic Garden
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“A smartphone allows you to choose your own adventure. So be a hero, not a villain. Don’t be your own worst enemy. No wasting time… No training your brain not to remember things, losing the skills necessary to read a fucking map… No trolling. Don’t make snarky remarks on comment threads or internet forums or social media. Just do good. Help others. If you’re out in the world and bored, which you shouldn’t be anyway, but still, if you feel like you need to get on your phone, be useful. Answer questions, offer advice. Look only for question marks when you scroll through your Facebook news feed. Log on to Reddit and comment on something you have firsthand knowledge of and real insight about. Give far more than you take. Never text and walk. And stop googling things as you think of them. Instead, write it down and look it up later. If you can’t remember to do this, then you didn’t deserve to know the answer. This will keep your mind active, agile; clear to really think. It will keep you sharp. Using the internet for information or socialization should be an activity, something you sit down for—it should not be used while out and about. You should not refuse the beauty of what’s in front of you for mere pixels of red, green, blue on a 3.5-inch screen. Otherwise, you’ll lose yourself. An abyss of ones and zeros will swallow you whole. Don’t be a dumb motherfucker with a smartass phone.”

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Book:In Limbo
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“We invariably have an internalised personal code of honour, an inner voice that embodies us with a sincere, strong sense of decency that surpasses Rag, Tag & Bobtail’s acquiescence to law and ethics. Think Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean, Terry McCann from Minder or the heroic English folklore outlaw, Robin Hood.”

DecencyRobin HoodEthics And Moral PhilosophyEthics And MoralityCode Of HonorCaptain Jack Sparrow
Book:Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe
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“What solidarity we do find exists despite the society, against all its realities, as an unending struggle between the innate decency of man and the innate indecency of the society. Can we imagine how men would behave if this decency could find full release, if society earned the respect, even the love of the individual?”

IfsMenRealityIndividualStruggleImagineActivismDespiteReleaseBehaveSolidarityInnateDecencyUnending
Book:The Murray Bookchin Reader
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“Watch it! It was robbed from other beings so it's HOT 'MERCHANDISE' and it's against the Law... the LAW OF DECENCY!!! Stay within this Law, steer clear of wool/pearl/silk/ fish bone/ fur/ivory/coral/ down/beeswax/honey/ cashmere/ lanolin/ feathers/ camel hair/flesh/milk/ eggs/ fish/ seafood/ other!!!”

LawAnimalWatchesClearHairHotFishesBonesFleshEggsHoneyAnimal RightsMilkPearlsFeathersDecencyFurSilkSteersSeafoodCamelsIvoryWoolMerchandiseCashmere
Author:Adela Popescu
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“They are inherently good - the bad reactions aren't basic. Every human being is a child of God and has more good in him than evil - but circumstances and associates can step up the bad and reduce the good. I've got great faith in the essential fairness and decency - you may say goodness - of the human being.”

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Author:Norman Vincent Peale
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“I believe that the essence of government lies with unceasing concern for the welfare and dignity and decency and innate integrity of life for every individual. I dont like to say this and wish I didnt have to add these words to make it clear but I willregardless of color, creed, ancestry, sex or age.”

BelieveGovernmentAgeLyingIndividualI BelieveWishSexClearColorIntegrityConcernDignityEssenceAddWelfareCreedsInnateDecencyAncestryGovernment Lies
Author:Lyndon B. Johnson
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“Liberty ... was a two-headed boon. There was first, the liberty of the people as a whole to determine the forms of their own government, to levy their own taxes, and to make their own laws.... There was second, the liberty of the individual man to live his own life, within the limits of decency and decorum, as he pleased -- freedom from the despotism of the majority.”

PeopleMenFirstsTwoWholeGovernmentFormLawIndividualJusticeLibertyHonorLimitsTaxesMajorityDetermineIndividualismTaxationDecencyDespotismBoonDecorum
Book:Alexander Hamilton: Lapham's Quarterly - Special Issue
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“One of the most important virtues of the American character is our ability to approach the complexities that life presents us with common sense and decency, .. The considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth. It is time for the president and the Congress to follow that common sense for the good of the country.”

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Author:Dick Gephardt
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“Crowds can be frightening. They have a way of impressing the low, base taste upon their members. Watching the way thousands of people in his audience could not think for themselves, could not find the courage to allow their ordinary feelings of decency and taste to prevail, I understood better how demagogues are possible.”

PeopleThinkingWayFeelingsAudienceTasteMembersLowsOrdinaryUnderstoodCrowdsFrighteningImpressDecency
Book:I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie
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“Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity.”

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Author:Cornel West
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“We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarceration and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it's necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and-perhaps-we all need some measure of unmerited grace.”

PeopleNeedsBelieveStatesSufferingI BelieveNationsCommunityJusticeLevelsCompassionGraceMassMercyExtremesAbsencePunishmentUnfairUnjustDecencyAbusiveIncarcerationVindictiveMass IncarcerationMistreated
Author:Bryan Stevenson
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“Our forebears are deserving of tribute for one indisputable reason, if for no other: without them we should not be here. Let us recognize that we are not the ultimate triumph but rather we are beads on a string. Let us behave with decency to the beads that were strung before us and hope modestly that the beads that come after us will not hold us of no account simply because we are dead.”

IfsShouldReasonUltimateAccountsTriumphBehaveStringsDecencyTributeDeservingBeads
Author:Robertson Davies
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“If there's any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it's flawed logic. It's just I simply can't accept that. It's unacceptable to think that there's any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.”

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Author:George W. Bush
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“The long history of mankind is studded with convergences, perhaps most notably in social systems and the use of artefacts and technology. But for human history, set in the arrow of time, there appears to be one intolerable stumbling-block. This is the catastrophic failure in human values and decency.”

HumansLongUseValuesSocialTechnologyMankindBlockHuman HistoryDecencyArrowsStumblingHuman ValuesSocial SystemsConvergenceStumbling BlocksArtefacts
Author:Simon Conway Morris
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