Degradation Quotes - Page 6

• Any use of a human being in which less is demanded of him and less is attributed to him than his full status is a degradation and a waste.

  Norbert Wiener

  Use, Waste, Action

  Norbert Wiener (1950). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”

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• Let me say it openly: we are surrounded by an enterprise of degradation, cruelty, and killing which rivals anything the Third Reich was capable of, indeed dwarfs it, in that ours is an enterprise without end, self-regenerating, bringing rabbits, rats, poultry, livestock ceaselessly into the world for the purpose of killing them.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Self, Holocaust, Rabbits

  J. M. Coetzee (2016). “The Lives of Animals: The Lives of Animals [Princeton Classics]”, p.21, Princeton University Press

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• The smell of death overwhelmed us even before we passed through the stockade. More than 3200 naked, emaciated bodies had been flung into shallow graves. Others lay in the streets where they had fallen. ... Eisenhower's face whitened into a mask. Patton walked over to a corner and sickened. I was too revolted to speak. For here death had been so fouled by degradation that it both stunned and numbed us.

  Omar N. Bradley

  Smell, Holocaust, Naked

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• ... no man or woman should depend upon another for maintenance and necessaries. Family discord and social degradation will never end till each depends upon herself.

  Anandi Gopal Joshi

  Men, Maintenance, Social

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• It would have been a joy to me to be smiled upon, loved, encouraged, welcomed, and to obtain what I was so ready to give, kindness and goodwill. But to hunt down consideration and reputation - to force the esteem of others - seemed to me an effort unworthy of myself, almost a degradation.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Kindness, Giving, Joy

  "The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel". Book by Henri-Frédéric Amiel, translated by Mary Augusta Ward, 1882.

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• Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation.

  T. S. Eliot

  Exaltation, Degrees, Human Life

  T.S. Eliot (1950). “Selected Essays”

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• Why, since man and woman were created for each other, had He made their desires so dissimilar? Why should one class of women be able to dwell in luxurious seclusion from the trials of life, while another class performed their loathsome tasks? Surely His wisdom had not decreed that one set of women should live in degradation and in the end should perish that others might live in security, preserve their frappeed chastity, and in the end be saved.

  Madeleine Albright

  Men, Class, Desire

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• Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. 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, Peace, Revenge

  Charlotte Bronte (2004). “Jane Eyre”, p.26, Variocity

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• For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Charity, Hunger, Hungry

  Charlotte Bronte (2010). “Shirley and The Professor”, p.270, Everyman's Library

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• To exist as an advertisement of her husband's income, or her father's generosity, has become a second nature to many a woman who must have undergone, one would say, some long and subtle process of degradation before she sunk [sic] so low, or grovelled so serenely.

  Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

  Fashion, Husband, Father

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• contempt for the degradation of specialization and pedantry. Specialization develops only part of a man; a man partially developed is deformed.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Men, Contempt, Specialization

  Richard M. Weaver (2013). “Ideas Have Consequences”, p.56, University of Chicago Press

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• In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplishments and my money stead me nothing; but as much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my will, and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the same soul; he reveres and loves with me.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Latin, Eye

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.168, Penguin

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• ... bringing up daughters for nothing but marriage, mingles poison in the cup of domestic life, is traitorous to the virtue of both sexes, for neither suffers alone--is adverse to the happiness, to the development of conscience and to religion, and introduces to the dwellings of wretchedness and despair. The result of this degradation is pride, intemperance, licentiousness--nay, every vice, misery, and degradation.

  Harriot Kezia Hunt

  Daughter, Sex, Pride

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• There's degradation of the environment. But the real issue is the degradation of one's inner environment.

  Frederick Lenz

  Real, Buddhism, Issues

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• National prosperity is another name for death and degradation to millions of other races.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Race, Names, Prosperity

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.4312, Manonmani Publishers

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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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• The degradation to which you subject others comes back, sooner or later, to haunt you.

  Ken Follett

  Sooner Or Later, Subjects

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• Nothing in our society-with the exception of violence and fear-has been more effective in keeping women in their place than the degradation of the menstrual cycle.

  Christiane Northrup

  Our Society, Violence, Exception

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• I have heard painters acknowledge, though in that acknowledgment no degradation of themselves was intended, that they could do better without nature than with her; or as they express themselves, 'that it only put them out.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Painter, Heard, Acknowledge

  Sir Joshua Reynolds (1891). “Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses”

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• We must begin by acknowledging that there is a complete absence of two things in Indian Society. One of these is equality. On the social plane we have an India based on the principles of graded inequality, which means elevation for some and degradation for others. On the economic plane we have a society in which there are some who have immense wealth as against many who live in abject poverty.

  B. R. Ambedkar

  Mean, Two, Poverty

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• Every kind of reward constitutes a degradation of energy.

  Simone Weil

  Energy, Rewards, Kind

  Simone Weil (2002). “Gravity and Grace”, p.8, Psychology Press

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• If the world suffers from mental deterioration or from moral degradation, then something goes wrong at the very root of civilization or culture. Even though that civilization may drag out for a considerable period, it grows less and less vital and ultimately tumbles down.

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Civilization, Roots, Suffering

  Jawaharlal Nehru (1964). “Jawaharlal Nehru: Excepts from His Writings and Speeches”

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• What the new fertilizer technology has accomplished for the farmer is clear: more crop can be produced on less acreage than before. Since the cost of fertilizer, relative to the resultant gain in crop sales, is lower than that of any other economic input, and since the Land Bank pays the farmer for acreage not in crops, the new technology pays him well. The cost-in environmental degradation-is borne by his neighbors in town who find their water polluted. The new technology is an economic success-but only because it is an ecological failure.

  Barry Commoner

  Technology, Land, Water

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• I had great memories of growing up in a working class estate. I remember it being sunny all the time. So we're putting that on screen. It's not people wallowing in degradation.

  Ricky Gervais

  Growing Up, Memories, Class

  "Ricky Gervais Calls CEMETERY JUNCTION His SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. Plus Info on His New HBO Animated Series". Interview with Steve "Frosty" Weintraub, collider.com. September 16, 2009.

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• A foolish picture I live in disgust, degradation being eaten by lust.

  Ozzy Osbourne

  Art, Media, Lust

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