Decent Life Quotes

• In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.

  Nelson Mandela

  Hunger And Poverty, Hunger Poverty, Justice

  Twitter post from Jan 21, 2016

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  Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life . . .

  Nelson Mandela

  Justice, Overcoming, Fundamentals

  Nelson Mandela (2012). “Notes to the Future: Words of Wisdom”, p.141, Simon and Schuster

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• Can we really believe that we are living a good life, an ethically decent life if we don't do anything serious to help reduce poverty around the world and help save the lives of children or adults who are likely to die if we don't increase the amount of aid we are giving.

  Peter Singer

  Children, Good Life, Believe

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• Income inequality has no necessary connection with poverty, the lack of material resources for a decent life, such as adequate food, shelter, and clothing. A society with great income inequality may have no poor people, and a society with no income inequality may have nothing but poor people.

  Robert Higgs

  People, Connections, Income

  45 Copy quote

• I decided that I was ready to assume this position when I discovered that the chance to save the country was very meager. I was prepared to sacrifice myself for this country and its 90 million people. They want food, fuel and electricity and yearn for a decent life. Any president who does not pay attention to such details or is unable to provide the minimum level of stability should leave office.

  Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

  Country, Sacrifice, People

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• There is not way that you can have a decent life as a man if you aren't awake and aware every moment. Show up for your own life. Don't pass your days in a stupor, content to swallow whatever watery ideas modern society may bottle feed you through the media, satisfied to slumber through life in an instant gratification sugar coma. The most extraordinary gift you've been given is your own humanity, which is about consciousness. So honor that consciousness.

  Eustace Conway

  Men, Media, Ideas

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• If there is a God, you owe him far more than a morally decent life.

  Timothy Keller

  If There Is A God, Decent, Ifs

  Timothy Keller (2013). “Encounters with Jesus: Unexpected Answers to Life's Biggest Questions”, p.30, Penguin

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• What was wrong with me? I had a decent life. I was healthy. I wasn't starving or maimed by a land mine or orphaned. Yet somehow, it wasn't enough. I had a hole in me, and everything I took for granted slipped through it like sand. I felt like I had swallowed yeast, like whatever evil was festering inside me had doubled in size.

  Jodi Picoult

  Land, Evil, Healthy

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Collection #4: Change of Heart, Handle with Care, and House Rules”, p.788, Simon and Schuster

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• The proclamation of the Gospel is destined primarily to the poor, to those who often lack the essentials for a decent life. The good news is first announced to them, that God loves them before all others and comes to visit them through the acts of charity that the disciples of Christ carry out in his name.

  Pope Francis

  Names, Essentials, News

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• Sustainable development is not an option! It is the only path that allows all of humanity to share a decent life on this, one planet. Rio+20 gives our generation the opportunity to choose this path.

  Sha Zukang

  Opportunity, Our Generation, Giving

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• We owe them [animals] a decent life and a decent death, and their lives should be as low-stress as possible. That's my job. I wish animals could have more than just a low-stress life and a quick, painless death. I wish animals could have a good life, too, with something useful to do. People were animals, too, once, and when we turned into human beings we gave something up. Being close to animals brings some of it back.

  Temple Grandin

  Jobs, Good Life, Stress

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• Like the character I played in Jekyll, we all have different masks we put on for different occasions. As much as we all want to lead decent lives, we're also attracted by the idea that something dark may lurk within us.

  James Nesbitt

  Character, Dark, Ideas

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

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• These are things I'd never seen before, they were very disturbing and they were very compelling to try and do something to change the situation for the animals. Farm animals are providing us with the food to stay alive, so I think we really owe them a decent life while they are alive.

  Jan Cameron

  Animal, Thinking, Trying

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• The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.

  John Holdren

  Design, Challenges, Essentials

  "White House Science Adviser Advocated 'De-Development' of the United States" by Christopher Neefus, www.cnsnews.com. July 28, 2009.

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• A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States...De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation...Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.

  John Holdren

  Mean, Reality, America

  "White House Science Czar Says He Would Use ‘Free Market’ to ‘De-Develop the United States’" by Nicholas Ballasy, www.cnsnews.com. September 16, 2010.

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• What we have done with the American Indian is its way as bad as what we imposed on the Negroes. We took a proud and independent race and virtually destroyed them. We have to find ways to bring them back into decent lives in this country.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Country, Independent, Race

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• You've got a generation of young men - almost all are young men - in situations of great economic hardship, where they don't really have work. The chances of them making a decent life for themselves, of making a family, living in a kind of decent, happy way, are very, very remote. It's very hard for them to ever even have that as a dream, so when people are that deprived of the ordinary hope of human beings, it creates anger. And that anger can be channeled by unscrupulous persons, whether secular or religious leaders, and there's been a lot of that.

  Salman Rushdie

  Dream, Religious, Men

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• No matter how much I wanted all those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction -- toward anarchy and poverty and craziness. That maddening delusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas Goat.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Men, Goats, Matter

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “The Rum Diary: Film Tie-in Edition”, p.140, A&C Black

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• The people who keep asking if they can't lead a decent life without Christ, don't know what life is about; if they did they would know that 'a decent life' is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, People, Asking

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.113, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life, and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.

  Temple Grandin

  Animal, Thinking, Giving

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

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• It seemed to him that in Annawadi, fortunes derived not just from what people did, or how well they did it, but from the accidents and catastrophes they dodged. A decent life was the train that hadn’t hit you, the slumlord you hadn’t offended, the malaria you hadn’t caught.

  Katherine Boo

  People, Malaria, Fortune

  Katherine Boo (2012). “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum”, p.13, Portobello Books

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• In the evaluation of the dominant moods of any historical period it is important to hold fast to the fact that there are always islands of self-sufficient order — on farms and in castles, in homes, studies, and cloisters — where sensible people manage to live relatively lusty and decent lives: as moral as they must be, as free as they may be, and as masterly as they can be. If we only knew it, this elusive arrangement is happiness.

  Erik Erikson

  Happiness, Home, People

  "Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History".

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• Of all the characteristics needed for both a happy and morally decent life, none surpasses gratitude. Grateful people are happier, and grateful people are more morally decent.

  Dennis Prager

  Gratitude, Grateful, People

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• They were two lovely choices. One of them meant giving up every chance of a decent life forever...and the other one scared me out of my mind.

  Frederik Pohl

  Giving Up, Two, Choices

  "Gateway". Book by Frederik Pohl, April 1977.

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