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Decency Quotes

Browse 448 quotes about Decency.

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Decency Quotes

“For when man comes to front the everlasting God, and look the splendor of His judgments in the face, personal integrity, the dream of spotlessness and innocence, vanishes into thin air: your decencies and your church-goings and your regularities and your attachment to a correct school and party, your gospel formulas of sound doctrine--what is all that, in front of the blaze of the wrath to come?”

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Book:Sermons Preached at Brighton
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“Motherhood, to be sure, receives a great deal of sentimental adulation, but only if it is committed in accordance with rules which have been prescribed by a predominantly masculine society. Per se it is accorded no respect whatever. When it results from a sexual relationship which has been duly sanctioned by organized society, it is holy, no matter how much it may transgress the rules of decency, health, or common sense. Otherwise it is a sin meriting social ostracism for the mother and obloquy for the child - an ostracism and obloquy, significantly enough, in which the father does not share.”

IfsMayChildrenDoeHas BeensMatterEnoughMotherFatherSocialSinResultsDealsCommonShareHolyCommittedMotherhoodCommon SenseOrganizedSentimentalMasculineDecencyNo RespectAdulationOstracismSocial Ostracism
Author:Suzanne La Follette
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“If men pride themselves on the fact that Jesus Christ was born of their sex, the answer is that this was necessary for the sake of decency, for if he had been a woman, it would have been impossible for Jesus to go out at all hours of the day and the night and mingle with the crowds to convert them and to help and save mankind, without creating a scandal.”

IfsMenHas BeensFactsHelpingNightJesusSexChristBornHoursAnswersImpossibleMankindPrideCreatingJesus ChristSakeCrowdsScandalDecency
Author:Marie de Gournay
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“I know that I come from mid-20th century America, urban, specifically downtown New York, specifically an Italian-American area, Roman Catholic - that's who I am. And a part of what I know is there's a decency to people who tried to make a living in the kind of world that was around us and also the Skid Row area of the Bowery; it impressed me.”

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Author:Martin Scorsese
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“The difference between smartphones and cigarettes is this: a cigarette robs 10 minutes from your lifespan, but at least has the decency to wait and withdraw all that time in bulk as you near the end of your life - whereas a smartphone steals your time in the present moment, by degrees. Five minutes here. Five minutes there. Then you look up and you're 85 years old.”

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Author:Charlie Brooker
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“There is no incompatibility between moral clarity and intellectual firepower, between faith in God and humility -- in fact, they're mutually dependent, between a strong conviction that we must go to war and an abundant compassion for any that may die as a result, and between political conservatism and personal decency.”

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Author:David Limbaugh
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“It is not easy to explain why God permits evil; but it is impossible for an atheist to explain the existence of goodness. How could a spiritless, soul-less, cross-less, Godless universe become the center of faith, purity, sacrifice, and martyrdom? How can decency be the decent thing if there is no God? Since God is love, why should we be surprised that want of it should end in pain, hate, broken hearts, and war?”

IfsWantShouldHeartWarSoulEndsPainHateUniverseEvilEasyExistenceImpossibleSacrificeBrokenGoodnessCrossesAtheistPurityDecentPermitDecencyThere Is No GodMartyrdomGod Is Love
Author:Fulton J. Sheen
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“The disassociation between inner belief and outer behaviour allowed many people to enjoy a sense of retaining their inner decency while at the same time not risking any loss of livelihood, any compromise over career ambitions, let alone any potentially more sanctions; hence never revealing any signs of disagreement or openly showing anything less than apparently full commitment to the regime and its policies”

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Author:Mary Fulbrook
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“I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them merely a veil over this "truth," a most welcome veil over a pudendum--and so a matter of decency and modesty, and nothing else.”

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Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“You can be a thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics, poetry, conscience, or decency. For 'Natural Selection' has no moral significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose, no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole universe had been produced by such Selection, only fools and rascals could bear to live.”

IfsStillsWholeMightPoetryPurposeUniverseImaginationNaturalDealsMoralFoolBearsEvolutionConscienceIntelligenceAccidentsProofSignificanceMetaphysicsSelectionDecencyUnnaturalThoroughNatural SelectionRascalsAppropriateness
Author:George Bernard Shaw
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“... until both employers' and workers' groups assume responsibility for chastising their own recalcitrant children, they can vainly bay the moon about "ignorant" and "unfair" public criticism. Moreover, their failure to impose voluntarily upon their own groups codes of decency and honor will result in more and more necessity for government control.”

ChildrenGovernmentResultsResponsibilityGroupsHonorMoonCriticismManagementAssumingWorkersIgnorantCodeUnfairDecencyEmployersRecalcitrant
Author:Mary Barnett Gilson
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“All right, so there he is, our representative to the world, Mr. Western Civilization, in codpiece and pantyhose up there on the boards, firing away at the rapt groundlings with his blank verses, not less of a word-slinger and spellbinder than the Bard himself and therefore not to be considered too curiously on such matters as relevance, coherence, consistency, propriety, sanity, common decency.”

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Author:Marvin Mudrick
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“People don't walk around thinking of themselves as bad people. You're part of the environment that you grow up in, and there can be decency in that. I always try to find a little glimmer of that, in anything that I do, because you can find places where there's humor or lightness in something that's deep and profound, and that tends to resonate more and make people more human. As an actor and performer, I think it resonates more with the audience when you do have the payoff.”

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Author:Jimmy Smits
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“In my judgment the people of no nation can lose their liberty so long as a Bill of Rights like ours survives and its basic purposes are conscientiously interpreted, enforced and respected so as to afford continuous protection against old, as well as new, devices and practices which might thwart those purposes. I fear to see the consequences of the Court's practice of substituting its own concepts of decency and fundamental justice for the language of the Bill of Rights as its point of departure in interpreting and enforcing that Bill of Rights.”

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Author:Hugo Black
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“You must be respectful and assenting, but without being servile and abject. You must be frank, but without indiscretion, and close, without being costive. You must keep up dignity of character, without the least pride of birth, or rank. You must be gay, within all the bounds of decency and respect; and grave, without the affectation of wisdom, which does not become the age of twenty. You must be essentially secret, without being dark and mysterious. You must be firm, and even bold, but with great seeming modesty.”

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Author:Lord Chesterfield
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