Decency Quotes - Page 7

• 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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• 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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• Once you've stopped loving someone breaking his or her heart's just an unpleasant chore you have to get behind you. My God, you really don't love me anymore, do you? No matter your decency the victim's incredulity's potentially hilarious. You manage not to laugh.

  Glen Duncan

  Heart, Loving Someone, Laughing

  Glen Duncan (2011). “The Last Werewolf (The Last Werewolf 1)”, p.64, Canongate Books

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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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• She understood the genre constraints, the decencies were supposed to be observing. The morally cosy vision allows the embrace of monstrosity only as a reaction to suffering or as an act of rage against the Almighty. Vampire interviewee Louis is in despair at his brother’s death when he accepts Lestat’s offer. Frankenstein’s creature is driven to violence by the violence done to him. Even Lucifer’s rebellion emerges from the agony of injured price. The message is clear: By all means become an abomination—but only while unhinged by grief or wrath.

  Glen Duncan

  Brother, Grief, Mean

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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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• You're no angel. You're Fallen. You just haven't had the decency to lose your wings. [Reaver]

  Larissa Ione

  Angel, Wings, Reavers

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• Your own brain ought to have the decency to be on your side!

  Terry Pratchett

  Your Side, Brain, Sides

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• Is he a scumbag in training?” Richard glanced at the gunman. “At least have the decency to hold the gun properly, you fool. If you don’t know how, pass it to someone who does. I’m not going to suffer being shot at by anything less than a full- fledged lowlife. (Richard)

  Ilona Andrews

  Gun, Training, Suffering

  Ilona Andrews (2012). “Steel's Edge”, p.22, Penguin

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• If God kills, lies, cheats, discriminates, and otherwise behaves in a manner that puts the Mafia to shame, that's okay, he's God. He can do whatever he wants. Anyone who adheres to this philosophy has had his sense of morality, decency, justice and humaneness warped beyond recognition by the very book that is supposedly preaching the opposite.

  Dennis McKinsey

  Spiritual, Atheist, Philosophy

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• You do not want a war. You have known violence, you have suffered loss, but you have seen nothing of war. War is not just the business of death; it is the anti-thesis of life. Hope, tortured and flayed, reason, dismembered, grinning at its limbs in its lap. Decency, raped to death... You will be a murderer and more.

  Joss Whedon

  War, Loss, Lap

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• I just -- I know my own heart and I love you, Turner. And if you have even the tiniest shred of decency, you'll say something because I've said everything I possibly can, and I can't bear the silence, and -- oh for heaven's sake! Will you at least blink?" He couldn't even manage that.

  Julia Quinn

  Love You, Heart, Silence

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• You're a great brother. You give us a heart attack worrying about your heart attack, which you didn't even have the decency to have!

  Groucho Marx

  Funny, Witty, Brother

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• I watched as Humphrey Bogart’s character used beans as a metaphor for the relative unimportance in the wider world of his relationship with Ingrid Bergman’s character, and chose logic and decency ahead of his selfish emotional desires. The quandary and resulting decision made for an engrossing film. But this was not what people cried about. They were in love and could not be together. I repeated this statement to myself, trying to force an emotional reaction. I couldn’t. I didn’t care. I had enough problems of my own.

  Graeme Simsion

  Selfish, Character, Emotional

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• If I had any decency, I'd be dead. Most of my friends are.

  Dorothy Parker

  Complaining, Complaints, My Friends

  Dorothy Parker, Stuart Y. Silverstein (2009). “Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker”, p.65, Simon and Schuster

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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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• In a very real sense, we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet, even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity.

  Norbert Wiener

  Real, Looks, May

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.40, Da Capo Press

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• We cannot change the way the world is, but by opening ourselves to the world as it is, we may find that gentleness, decency and bravery are available - not only to us, but to all human beings.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Bravery, World, May

  Chogyam Trungpa (2010). “The Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa: Volume Eight: Great Eastern Sun; Shambhala; Selected Writings”, p.107, Shambhala Publications

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• I always wanted to be an outrage to public decency and a threat to women. And this is one of the few occupations where you're not only allowed that, but you're encouraged.

  David Lee Roth

  Occupation, Outrage, Threat

  "Van Halen invent hair metal" by Michael Hann, www.theguardian.com. June 11, 2011.

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