Degradation Quotes - Page 3

• That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave.

  Patricia Hill Collins

  White, Slave Girl, Female

  Patricia Hill Collins (2002). “Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment”, p.92, Routledge

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• Through it [Science] we believe that man will be saved from misery and degradation, not merely acquiring new material powers, but learning to use and to guide his life with understanding. Through Science he will be freed from the fetters of superstition; through faith in Science he will acquire a new and enduring delight in the exercise of his capacities; he will gain a zest and interest in life such as the present phase of culture fails to supply.

  Ray Lankester

  Faith, Believe, Science

  "The Advancement of Science: Occasional Essays & Addresses". Book by Ray Lankester, p. 108-9, "Biology and the State", 1890.

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• Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Struggle, Ambition, Hunting

  Mahatma Gandhi (1958). “Collected Works”

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• A little weeping, a little wheedling, a little self-degradation, a little careful use of our advantages, and then some man will say .Come, be my wife! With good looks and youth marriage is easy to attain. There are men enough; but a woman who has sold herself, even for a ring and a new name, need hold her skirt aside for no creature in the street. They both earn their bread in one way. Marriage for love is the most beautiful external symbol of the union of souls; marriage without it is the least clean traffic that defiles the world.

  Olive Schreiner

  Marriage, Beautiful, Love Is

  The Story of an African Farm pt. 2, ch. 4 (1883)

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• Ireland, as distinct from her people, is nothing to me; and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for "Ireland," and can yet pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, shame and degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland-yea, wrought by Irishmen upon Irish men and women, without burning to end it, is, in my opinion, a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements he is pleased to call Ireland.

  James Connolly

  Liars, Heart, Men

  James Connolly (1987). “Labour in Irish history ; The re-conquest of Ireland ; Socialism and nationalism”

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• Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.

  W. E. B. Du Bois

  Country, Lynching, Civilization

  "Reconstruction and Africa" (1919)

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• There are those... who enter the world in such poverty that they are deprived of both the means and the motivation to improve their lot. Unless these unfortunates can be touched with the spark which ignites the spirit of individual enterprise and determination, they will only sink back into renewed apathy, degradation and despair. It is for us, who are more fortunate, to provide that spark.

  Aga Khan IV

  Determination, Motivation, Mean

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• That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Real, Law, Long

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1898). “Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences, 1815-1897”, p.318, UPNE

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• Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness.

  Sigmund Freud

  Vices, Illness, Sexuality

  Letter to an American mother, 9 Apr. 1935

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• Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?

  Patrick Henry

  Real, Gun, Differences

  Speech on the Federal Constitution, Virginia Ratifying Convention, on June 09, 1788. "The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution". Book edited by Jonathan Elliot, volume 3, p. 168-169, 1836.

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• The people who, during the election, were so wise, so moral, so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward to degradation. . . . If people are as incapable, as immoral, and as ignorant as the politicians indicate, then why is the right of these same people to vote defended with such passionate insistence?

  Frederic Bastiat

  Wise, Perfect, People

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• Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day.

  Khaled Mashal

  Israel, Humiliation, Humiliated

  Address at the Al-Murabit Mosque in Damascus, Al-Jazeera TV, February 3, 2006.

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• The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency.

  George Orwell

  Military, War, Suffering

  George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.190, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• So many sins against the poor cry out to high heaven! One of the most deadly sins is to deprive the laborer of his hire. There is another: to instill in him paltry desires so compulsive that he is willing to sell his liberty and his honor to satisfy them. We are all guilty of concupiscence, but newspapers, radios, television, and battalions of advertising men (woe to that generation!) deliberately stimulate our desires, the satisfaction of which so often means the degradation of the family.

  Dorothy Day

  Mean, Men, Heaven

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• What about our refusal to look squarely at the degradation of the planet we inhabit? In the last election cycle many candidates refused even to acknowledge the hard science, irrefutable science, of climate change. The president, while readily accepting the facts, has done far too little to alter them. How long are we, are you, prepared to wait?

  David Remnick

  Long, Waiting, President

  David Remnick's Commencement Address at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, news.syr.edu. May 11, 2014.

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• Pornography as propaganda, according to feminist analysis, represents women as objects who love to be abused, and teaches men practices of degradation and abuse to carry out upon women.

  Sheila Jeffreys

  Men, Practice, Feminist

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• The seriousness of ecological degradation lays bare the depth of man's moral crisis... Simplicity, moderation, and discipline as well as the spirit of sacrifice must become a part of everyday life.

  Pope John Paul II

  Sacrifice, Men, Discipline

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• The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honorable term 'female physician' should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women.

  Elizabeth Blackwell

  Motherhood, Abortion, Female

  Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (2016). “Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women: Autobiographical Sketches”, p.25, Library of Alexandria

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• In a nuclear age, and in an age of serious environmental degradation, apocalyptic belief creates a serious second order danger. The precarious logic of self-interest that saw us through the Cold War would collapse if the leaders of one nuclear state came to welcome, or ceased to fear mass death.

  Ian Mcewan

  War, Self, Order

  "The day of judgment, part two" by Ian McEwan, www.theguardian.com. May 31, 2008.

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• “God,” she cried, “what is love? Man seeking his own head? The human head, so rented by misery that even the teeth weigh! She couldn't tell me the truth because she had never planned it; her life was a continual accident, and how can you be prepared for that? Everything we can't bear in this world, some day we find in one person, and love it all at once.”

  Djuna Barnes

  Honesty, Liars, Men

  "Nightwood".

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• For both of us, I think, it had to do with our weakened power to love. It is strange that enslavement should have that effect – not just the fantastic degradation, not just the fear and the boredom and all the rest, but also the layered injustice, the silent injustice. So all right. We’re back where we started. To you, nothing – from you, everything. They took it from me, it seems, for no reason, other than that I value it so much.

  Martin Amis

  Thinking, Should Have, Boredom

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• Freedom of the press is perhaps the freedom that has suffered the most from the gradual degradation of the idea of liberty.

  Albert Camus

  Freedom, Ideas, Liberty

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.102, Vintage

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• I hold another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling, for it extends hope to all; it makes eternity a rest - a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last; with this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low. I live in calm, looking to the end.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Crush, Revenge, Home

  Charlotte Brontë “Jane Eyre”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• ... In contrast to the "banality of evil," which posits that ordinary people can be responsible for the most despicable acts of cruelty and degradation of their fellows, I posit the "banality of heroism," which unfurls the banner of the heroic Everyman and Everywoman who heed the call to service to humanity when their time comes to act. When that bell rings, they will know that it rings for them. It sounds a call to uphold what is best in human nature that rises above the powerful pressures of Situation and System as the profound assertion of human dignity opposing evil.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Powerful, Hero, People

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• Poverty does not produce unhappiness: It produces degradation.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Doe, Poverty, Unhappiness

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