Decency Quotes - Page 14

• How our governments need standards of integrity! How our communities need yardsticks to measure decency! How our neighborhoods need models of beauty and cleanliness! How our schools need continued encouragement and assistance to maintain high educational standards! Rather than spend time complaining about the direction in which these institutions are going, we need to exert our influence in shaping the right direction. A small effort by a few can result in so much good for all of mankind.

  L. Tom Perry

  Encouragement, Integrity, Educational

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• And if you're going to criticize me for not finishing the whole thing and tying it up in a bow for you, why, do us both a favor and write your own damn book, only have the decency to call it a romance instead of a history, because history's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied. It ain't a pretty package, but then it's not your birthday that I know of so I'm under no obligation to give you a gift.

  Orson Scott Card

  Book, Writing, Giving

  Orson Scott Card (1996). “Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker”, p.8, Macmillan

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• Common decency is a core part of who people are.

  E. J. Dionne

  Common Decency, People, Core

  Source: www.pbs.org

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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?

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Atheist, Pain, Hate

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• That laughter costs too much which is purchased by the sacrifice of decency.

  John Quinton

  Laughter, Sacrifice, Cost

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• I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy.

  Yann Martel

  Clever, Self, Law

  Yann Martel (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.170, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense; for war is the slaughter of human beings, temporarily regarded as enemies, on as large a scale as possible.

  Jeannette Rankin

  Peace, War, Ubuntu

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• If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it

  David Foster Wallace

  Jobs, Children, Thinking

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• A real gentleman is as polite to a little girl as to a woman.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Girl, Real, Gentleman

  Louisa May Alcott (2015). “Louisa May Alcott Premium Edition - 16 Novels in One Volume: Little Women Trilogy & Other Novels (Illustrated): Moods, The Mysterious Key and What It Opened, An Old Fashioned Girl, Work, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Under the Lilacs, Jack and Jill, Behind a Mask, The Abbot's Ghost, A Modern Mephistopheles…”, p.1640, e-artnow

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• Politics are not my concern.... They impressed me as a dog's life without a dog's decencies.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Dog, Pet, Politics

  Rudyard Kipling (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)”, p.3846, Delphi Classics

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• As you know, in this democracy, in order to have a healthy democracy, we have to get to the common good. But the only way to get to the common good is if we have a common set of facts, which we don't seem to have today, and we have a common level of decency. And my problem with the president and what happened today and why I think it affects the country as a whole is, first, we bring up our kids better than this. We teach them not to do this. We tell them not to do this, and it is not the right standard of behavior.

  Matthew Dowd

  Country, Kids, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• [The church's] job is to provide permanent solace and spiritual leadership to the people as a whole, whatever their government at the moment, so long as it stays within the bounds of moral decency.

  James A. Michener

  Spiritual, Jobs, Government

  "Poland" by James A. Michener (p. 591), 1983.

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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!!!

  Adela Popescu

  Animal, Hair, Law

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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?

  Murray Bookchin

  Struggle, Reality, Men

  Janet Biehl, Murray Bookchin (1999). “The Murray Bookchin Reader”, p.115, Black Rose Books Ltd.

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• 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?

  Frederick William Robertson

  Dream, Integrity, Party

  Frederick William Robertson (1873). “Sermons Preached at Brighton”, p.109

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• Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition, but the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency.

  Bob Dylan

  Enemy, Politics, Masters

  Song: Slow Train, Album: Slow Train Coming, 1979

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• It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observations of time and place and of decency in general, that what is called taste by way of distinction consists; and which is in reality no other than a more refined judgment.

  Edmund Burke

  Reality, Skills, Way

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  I thought you'd have the decency to change. But babe, I guess you didn't take that warning, cause I'm not about to look at your face again.

  Avril Lavigne

  Looks, Warning, Faces

  Song: Too Much To Ask, Album: Let Go, 2002

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• I believe that poverty is often the result of inappropriate behavior - out-of-wedlock births, dropping out of school, crime and drugs - which should not be rewarded. But often it isn't, and common decency requires that we take care of the least of these.

  Joe Klein

  Believe, School, Inappropriate Behavior

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• Fog and hypocrisy - that is to say, shadow, convention, decency - these were the very things that lent to London its poetry and romance.

  Ada Leverson

  Fog, Hypocrisy, Romance

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• You judge a society by the decency of living of the weakest

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Judging

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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.

  Norman Vincent Peale

  Children, Evil, May

  Modern Maturity magazine Interview, December-January 1975-76.

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• And die with decency.

  Thomas Otway

  Death, Dies

  Nicholas Rowe, James Thompson, Richard Steele, Richard-Brinsley Sheridan, Thomas-John Dibdin (1815). “Tamerlane. A Tragedy”

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• The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man's complexity and the strength and decency of his longings. Where we can describe, step by step, minute by minute, our not altogether unpleasant struggle to put ourselves into a viable and devout relationship to our beloved and mistaken world.

  John Cheever

  Struggle, Men, Records

  National Book Award, September 1958.

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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.

  Robertson Davies

  Triumph, Reason, Should

  "Haunted by Halloween". The New York Times, October 31, 1990.

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