Bad Taste Quotes

• Genius creates, and taste preserves.

  Alexander Pope

  Sublime, Intelligence, Genius

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• Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Witty, Laughter

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• Everyone has taste, yet it is more of a taboo subject than sex or money. The reason for this is simple: claims about your attitudes to or achievements in the carnal and financial arenas can be disputed only by your lover and your financial advisers, whereas by making statements about your taste you expose body and soul to terrible scrutiny. Taste is a merciless betrayer of social and cultural attitudes. Thus, while anybody will tell you as much (and perhaps more than) you want to know about their triumphs in bed and at the bank, it is taste that gets people's nerves tingling.

  Stephen Bayley

  Sex, Attitude, Simple

  Stephen Bayley (2000). “General Knowledge”, Booth-Clibborn

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• Good taste is the excuse I've always given for leading such a bad life

  Oscar Wilde

  Failure, Taste, Excuse

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “Oscar Wilde's Wit and Wisdom: A Book of Quotations”, p.4, Courier Corporation

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• Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

  Alexander Pope

  Design, Sublime, Genius

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• A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.

  Dorothy Parker

  Fashion, Nice, Inspiration

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• It's bad taste to be wise all the time, like being at a perpetual funeral.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Wise, Wisdom, Funeral

  D. H. Lawrence (2008). “Complete Poems by Lawrence: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition”, p.312, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste-it's hearty, it's healthy, it's physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I'm against.

  Diana Vreeland

  Inspirational, Fashion, Nice

  Diana Vreeland (1997). “D.V.”

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• To understand bad taste one must have very good taste.

  John Waters

  Taste, Very Good, Good Taste

  "Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste". Book by John Waters, 1981.

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• What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Giving, Literature, Taste

  Charles Baudelaire, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden (2006). “Intimate Journals”, p.49, Courier Corporation

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• I voted Republican this year; the Democrats left a bad taste in my mouth.

  Monica Lewinsky

  Stupid, Years, Mouths

  38 Copy quote

• Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.

  Mel Brooks

  Inspiring, Funny Inspirational, Truth

  Quoted in John Robert Columbo, Popcorn in Paradise (1980)

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• Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste.

  Arnold Bennett

  Character, Taste, Good Taste

  1930 In the Evening Standard, 21 Aug.

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• We all need a splash of bad taste. No taste is what I am against.

  Diana Vreeland

  Fashion, Needs, Taste

  Diana Vreeland (1997). “D.V.”

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• Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.

  Charles Bukowski

  Taste, Millionaire, Good Taste

  Charles Bukowski (2009). “Hollywood”, p.94, Canongate Books

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• Obviously, ISU will be primed for revenge and wants to get that bad taste of the last game out of their mouth.

  Jim Les

  Revenge, Games, Mouths

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• I am very attracted by bad taste-it is a lot more exciting than that supposed good taste which is nothing more than a standardized way of looking at things.

  Helmut Newton

  Way, Taste, Exciting

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• It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few of them for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular estimate of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque.

  Albert Einstein

  Character, Fate, Science

  Albert Einstein (2011). “The World As I See It”, p.35, Open Road Media

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• The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating. The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak. Here Camp taste supervenes upon good taste as a daring and witty hedonism. It makes the man of good taste cheerful, where before he ran the risk of being chronically frustrated. It is good for the digestion.

  Susan Sontag

  Witty, Exercise, Men

  "Notes on 'Camp'" by Susan Sontag, note 54, (p. 291), 1964.

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• Bad taste is a species of bad morals.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Taste, Moral, Species

  "They Shoot Footage, Don’t They?" by Ellen Leventry, www.beliefnet.com.

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• One is born with good taste. It's very hard to acquire. You can acquire the patina of taste. But what Elsie Mendl had was something else that's particularly American––an appreciation of vulgarity. Vulgarity is a very important ingredient in life. I'm a great believer in vulgarity––if it's got vitality. A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste––it's hearty, it's healthy, it's physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I'm against.

  Diana Vreeland

  Appreciation, Nice, Thinking

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• At bottom, to be colored means that one has been caught in some utterly unbelievable cosmic joke, a joke so hideous and in such bad taste that it defeats all categories and definitions.

  James A. Baldwin

  Mean, Race, Taste

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• I think bad taste should be a felony.

  Margo Kaufman

  Thinking, Hatred, Taste

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• If you give a little credit to the concept of the artist, I think you ought to indulge excesses a bit, because that reflects the personality of the writer. Now if a joke is in bad taste or it's not funny, okay, that's awhole different thing, but how you craft a joke is really what the writer's job is, and I don't think that technique should be subject to any editorial constraints.

  Bill Watterson

  Jobs, Thinking, Artist

  Source: bob.bigw.org

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• Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, peccaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc.

  Henry Miller

  Sports, Suicide, Fashion

  Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.177, New Directions Publishing

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