Decency Quotes

• Decency is indecency's conspiracy of silence

  George Bernard Shaw

  Silence, Conspiracy

  'Man and Superman' (1903) 'Maxims: Decency'

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• Morals are private. Decency is public.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Moral, Privacy

  Rita Mae Brown (2011). “Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual”, p.84, Bantam

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• Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.

  Pablo Casals

  Courage, Peace, Kindness

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• As much as we need a prosperous economy, we also need a prosperity of kindness and decency.

  Caroline Kennedy

  Life, Appreciation, Kindness

  "THE DEMOCRATS: THE KENNEDY FACTOR; 40 Years Later, Invoking Spirit of New Frontier" by Adam Nagourney, www.nytimes.com. August 16, 2000.

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• If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

  Jerry Seinfeld

  Funny, Humor, Be Kind

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  It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Honesty, Hate

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• Aspire to decency. Practice civility toward one another. Admire and emulate ethical behavior wherever you find it. Apply a rigid standard of morality to your lives; and if, periodically, you fail ­ as you surely will adjust your lives, not the standards.

  Ted Koppel

  Inspiring, Practice, Morality

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• No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion; it is an evil government.

  Eric Hoffer

  Kindness, Government, Ill Will

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• God's most lordly gift to man is decency of mind.

  Aeschylus

  Men, Mind

  Aeschylus (2013). “Aeschylus II: The Oresteia”, p.51, University of Chicago Press

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• Ethics, decency and morality are the real soldiers

  Kiran Bedi

  Real, Soldier, Ethics

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• Decency and tolerance, to be of any value, must be capable of withstanding the severest strain.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Tolerance, Strain, Withstanding

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• Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Law

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• Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted, when we tolerate what we know to be wrong, when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy or too frightened, when we fail to speak up and speak out, we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.

  Robert Kennedy

  Eye, Blow, Speaks Out

  Remarks before the Joint Defense Appeal of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith, Chicago, Illinois, June 21, 1961.

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• The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Politics, Kind, Individualism

  Theodore Roosevelt (1951). “The Square Deal, 1901-1905”

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• If someone lacked decency or respect, I didn't allow that person to stay in my world.

  Gabrielle Union

  World, Persons, Ifs

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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.

  Bryan Stevenson

  Believe, Compassion, Punishment

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• I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried - who tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out.

  Paul Newman

  People, Guy, Helping

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• My cares and my inquiries are for decency and truth, and in this I am wholly occupied.

  Horace

  Truth, Inquiry, Care

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• Some things transcend politics and policy and the lust for power. Truth, honesty, integrity, decency and fairness are immutable values. They are the ethical substance of life. They ought to be cherished. To sell them out is to sell one's soul.

  Michael Short

  Leadership, Honesty, Integrity

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• A better politics is one where we appeal to each other’s basic decency instead of our basest fears.

  Barack Obama

  Appeals

  Sixth Presidential State of the Union Address, delivered 20 January 2015

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• Decency renders all things tolerable.

  Joseph Marie, baron de Gerando

  All Things, Tolerable

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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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• 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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• Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.

  H. L. Mencken

  Race, Literature, Dignity

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