Decency Quotes - Page 6

• The only difference between the women I've dated and Charles Manson is that Manson has the decency to look like a nut case when you first meet him.

  Richard Jeni

  Nuts, Differences, Looks

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• Skepticism's bad rap arises from the impression that, however necessary the activity, it can only be regarded as a negative removal of false claims. Not so... Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise. The alternate model is rationality itself, tied to moral decency--the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Powerful, Rap, Exercise

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• Love always seeks for betterment, for ways of making life more workable, joyful, whole, and beautiful. Love examines every option available to bring about an improvement in life. This kind of discernment is an act of decency, not an act of judgment. Rigid philosophies of judgment will seek to establish structure as a substitute for decency, control as a substitute for trust, and the mind as a substitute for higher awareness.

  Glenda Green

  Inspirational, Beautiful, Spiritual

  Glenda Green (2002). “Love Without End: Jesus Speaks--”, p.285, Fideli Publishing Inc.

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• Goods produced under conditions which do not meet a rudimentary standard to decency should be regarded as contraband and not allowed to pollute the channels of international commerce.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Presidential, Standards, Should

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• We attach our feelings to the moment when we were hurt, endowing it with immortality. And we let it assault us every time it comes to mind. It travels with us, sleeps with us, hovers over us while we make love, and broods over us while we die. Our hate does not even have the decency to die when those we hate die-for it is a parasite sucking OUR blood, not theirs. There is only one remedy for it. [forgiveness]

  Lewis B. Smedes

  Forgiveness, Hurt, Hate

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• Is there decency left in American politics?

  Byron Dorgan

  American Politics, Left

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• Human life cannot be formless. We live by patterns. We move in comradeships. Conformity is evil when it distorts, flattens, and erases fruitful ways, strong ideas, natural identities; it is evil when it is a steamroller. But a man cannot escape being part of a milieu - and a recognizable part - unless he flees naked to a cave, never to return. The sensible thing is to use hard thinking to find the right way to live and then to live that way. What matters is living with dignity, with decency, and without fear.

  Herman Wouk

  Strong, Moving, Men

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• More and more clearly every day, out of biology, anthropology, sociology, history, economic analysis, psychological insight, plain human decency and common sense, the necessary mandate of survival that we shall love all our neighbors as we do ourselves, is being confirmed and reaffirmed.

  Ordway Tead

  Common Sense, Historical, Survival

  Attributed to Ordway Tead in "The Forbes scrapbook of Thoughts on the business of life", p. 66, 1950.

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• Harden our hearts. To the innocents in the womb and we have hardened our hearts. To the need for compassion and mercy and. Fellow feeling. And charity. And decency in this world.

  Alan Keyes

  Heart, Compassion, Feelings

  Alan Keyes' Speech at McKay Events Center in Orem, Utah, www.c-span.org. September 22, 2000.

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• In addition to fines, violators of decency standards could be required to air public service announcements serving educational and informational needs of children.

  Charles W. Pickering

  Children, Educational, Air

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• I see the great continuities in New Zealand history as being decency and common sense and up until now when we've confronted these things we've been able to talk them through, and I'm sure we will with this issue as well.

  Michael King

  Issues, Common Sense, Able

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• Life and study have persuaded me of the openness of history. There is no inevitability in history. Thinking about what might have happened, what could have happened, is a necessary element in trying to understand what did happen. And if, as I believe, individual acts of decency and courage make a difference, then they need to be recorded and remembered.

  Fritz Stern

  Believe, Thinking, Differences

  Fritz Stern (2007). “Five Germanys I Have Known”, p.10, Macmillan

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• If you must commit suicide ... always contrive to do it as decorously as possible; the decencies, whether of life or of death, should never be lost sight of.

  George Henry Borrow

  Suicide, Suicidal, Sight

  Lavengro Ch. XXIII

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• The eyes are witnesses that the heavens revolve in the space of twenty- four hours. But certain men, either from the love of novelty, or to make a display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth moves; and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves....Now, it is a want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God and to acquiesce in it.

  Philipp Melanchthon

  Honesty, Moving, Eye

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• The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.

  Walter Lippmann

  Ambition, Men, Animal

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.129, Harvard University Press

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• The death penalty exacts a terrible price in dollars, lives and human decency. Rather than tamping down the flames of violence, it fuels them while draining millions of dollars from more promising efforts to restore safety to our lives.

  Robert M. Morgenthau

  Flames, Safety, Effort

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• The International Brigade was not formed to protect freedom and democracy. It was founded as a tool of of the Comintern, to promote the interests of the Soviet Union - and thereby of Joseph Stalin, the butcher of millions. It made political sense for the International Brigade to recruit non-communists - useful fools was what Lenin had called such people in an earlier manipulation of gullible decency - but of course most were then vetted by the NKVD, the Soviet Union's secret police.

  Kevin Myers

  War, People, Political

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• Western civilization, Christianity, decency are struggling for their very lives. In this worldwide civil war, race prejudice is our most dangerous enemy, for it is a disease at the very root of our democratic life.

  Mordecai

  War, Struggle, Race

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• I respect a person that has had to fight and howl for his decency.

  Tennessee Williams

  Fighting, Howl, Persons

  Tennessee Williams (2009). “The Night of the Iguana”, p.105, New Directions Publishing

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• There are those without decency who must be fought without hesitation, without pity.

  Henri

  Pity, Hesitation

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• A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency - issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights - the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.

  Gregory S. Paul

  Religious, Atheist, Children

  "Why do Americans still dislike atheists?". www.washingtonpost.com. April 29, 2011.

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• As for plenty, we had not only for necessity, conveniency and decency, but for delight and pleasure to superfluity.

  Margaret Cavendish

  Delight, Pleasure, Plenty

  Margaret Cavendish (2000). “Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader”, p.42, Broadview Press

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• A child is not an adult, a child didn't ask to be here. Any man that doesn't take care of his responsibilities to his family and to his children, do me a favor STOP calling yourself a man..at least have the decency to admit that you're a boy. You don't know what manhood is.

  Stephen A. Smith

  Children, Responsibility, Boys

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• In the horrifying calculus of self-deception, the greater the pain we inflict on others, the greater the need to justify it to maintain our feelings of decency and self-worth.

  Carol Tavris

  Pain, Self Worth, Feelings

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• Men, you are about to embark on a great crusade to stamp out runaway decency in the west. Now you men will only be risking your lives, whilst I will be risking an almost certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

  Harvey Korman

  Men, Awards, Actors

  "Fictional character: Hedley Lamarr". "Blazing Saddles", www.imdb.com. 1974.

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