Decency Quotes - Page 2

• In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant... He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever... You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you cant buy courage and decency, you cant rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him. He needs to have, in that much maligned word, but a good one nonetheless, a vision of the future he wishes to create.. But a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character - the courage and heart - to see it through.

  Peggy Noonan

  Courage, Strong, Clever

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• I believe that we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Believe, Should, Dies

  "Markings". Book by Dag Hammarskjold, 1964.

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• If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?

  Thomas Hardy

  Stories, Moral, Parables

  Thomas Hardy (2014). “Thomas Hardy: Selected Prose, Volume I”, p.65, Anthem Press

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• I believe in an ultimate decency of things.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Believe, Ultimate, I Believe

  Letter to Sidney Colvin, 23 August 1893, in Sidney Colvin (ed.) 'The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson' (1911) vol. 4, p. 211

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• I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

  Barack Obama

  Strong, Believe, Imperfection

  Speech at the 'Together We Thrive: Tucson and America' Memorial, delivered 12 January 2011, McKale Memorial Center, University of Arizona, Tucson

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• The point was living with grace, decency, and attention to the world, and breaking free of the artificial constructs in your own life.

  Scott Jurek

  Grace, Attention, World

  Scott Jurek, Steve Friedman (2012). “Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness”, p.105, A&C Black

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• Virtue and decency are so nearly related that it is difficult to separate them from each other but in our imagination.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Imagination, Virtue, Difficult

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• Decency requires that when a programme is approved by the majority, all should carry it out faithfully.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Faith, Majority, Should

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1986). “The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi: Non-Violent Resistance and Social Transformation”, Clarendon Press

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• Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-dealing, and commonsense."... "We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.""The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Honesty, Men, Squares

  Speech at New York State Fair, Syracuse, N.Y., 7 Sept. 1903 See Theodore Roosevelt 11

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• Freedom cannot always continue in comfort and convenience, cannot be assured without sacrifice, without truth and decency, without willingness to work, without downright honesty and honor, and readiness to keep the commandments and live within the law...there is no liberty without a real respect for law; no liberty if we forget God, or fail to remember the principles on which freedom is founded.

  Richard L. Evans

  Honesty, Real, Sacrifice

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• The test of one's decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring, and after one has found out that one can never please the people they wanted to please.

  Willa Cather

  Writing, Fighting, Caring

  Willa Cather (2013). “The Selected Letters of Willa Cather”, p.224, Vintage

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• Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Religion, Atheism

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.253, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence - providing they have the facts, providing they have the information.

  Studs Terkel

  Book, People, Information

  Religion & Ethics Newsweekly Interview, www.pbs.org. December 19, 2003.

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• I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Atheist, Ignorance, Humility

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• The laws of decency enforce themselves.

  Louise Colet

  Law

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• If you don't believe in God, all you have to believe in is decency. Decency is very good. Better decent than indecent. But I don't think it's enough.

  Harold MacMillan

  Believe, Thinking, Atheism

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• College is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So don't worry about your grade, or the results or success. Success is defined in myriad ways, and you will find it, and people will no longer be grading you, but it will come from your own internal sense of decency.

  Jon Stewart

  College, People, Worry

  Commencement Address at The College of William & Mary, delivered 21 May 2004

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• Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Men, Offense And Defense, Giving

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• But I am not discouraged. I do not despair for our country. I believe tonight, as I always have, that the essential decency, compassion and common sense of the American people will prevail.

  Jimmy Carter

  Country, Believe, Compassion

  "Carter: 'At stake is nothing less than our nation's soul'". edition.cnn.com. July 27, 2004.

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• Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world, and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Men, Discipline, Broken

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• Gratitude is the beginning of civility, of decency and goodness, of a recognition that we cannot afford to be arrogant. We should walk with the knowledge that we will need help every step of the way.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Gratitude, Needs, Arrogant

  Gordon B. Hinckley (2009). “Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes”, p.107, Harmony

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• It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life? Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?

  Alain de Botton

  Good Life, Taken, Ideas

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• your actions live after you till this globe is dissolved; they pass inevitably down as an inheritance from one generation to another. ... decency and integrity, courage and compassion, are always well worth while; they are not lost, but pass on down the generations; we are indeed the heirs of all the ages.

  Phyllis Bentley

  Integrity, Compassion, Age

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• Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.

  John Adams

  Names, Hypocrisy, Suffering

  "A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law" by John Adams, teachingamericanhistory.org. 1765.

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• Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written.

  William Faulkner

  Book, Pride, Honor

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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