Degrading Quotes

• The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Teaching, Aggravation, Church

  85 Copy quote

• The soul that is within me no man can degrade.

  Frederick Douglass

  Life, Being Yourself, Men

  W. E. B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington (2012). “Three African-American Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, p.48, Courier Corporation

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• Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

  Emily Bronte

  Love, Romantic, Anniversary

  Wuthering Heights ch. 9 (1847)

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• Girls can wear jeans, cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, 'cause it's okay to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading.

  Charlotte Gainsbourg

  Girl, Cutting, Boys

  27 Copy quote

• The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wisdom, Workout, Children

  Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough (1963). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.130, Hackett Publishing

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• I think there's something degrading about having a husband for a rival. It's humiliating if you fail and commonplace if you succeed.

  Christopher Hampton

  Husband, Thinking, Rivals

  24 Copy quote

• The message of women's liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education.

  Jane Rule

  Education, Aggravation, Messages

  Jane Rule (2013). “A Hot-Eyed Moderate: Essays”, p.140, Open Road Media

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• The submission of her body without love or desire is degrading to the woman's finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding.

  Margaret Sanger

  Aggravation, Desire, Body

  24 Copy quote

• Cloning looks like a degrading of parenthood and a perversion of the right relation between parents and children.

  Leon Kass

  Children, Parent, Looks

  39 Copy quote

• Cruelty to men and to the lower animals as well, which would have passed unnoticed a century ago, now shocks the sensibilities and is regarded as wicked and degrading.

  Elihu Root

  Animal, Men, Aggravation

  Elihu Root (1916). “Addresses on International Subjects”

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• As President, I will end once and for all the use of taxpayer funds to promote the National Endowment for the Arts and other programs that subsidize amoral and degrading activities.

  Gary Bauer

  Art, President, Use

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• If anyone wonders why the airlines are not doing well it is because flying has been made such an unpleasant and degrading experience.

  Keith Henson

  Aggravation, Flying, Wonder

  24 Copy quote

• Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots cause it's okay to be a boy. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading cause you think being a girl is degrading

  Madonna Ciccone

  Girl, Independent, Cutting

  25 Copy quote

• You think that being a girl is degrading, but secretly, you'd love to know what it's like, wouldn't you?

  Charlotte Gainsbourg

  Girl, Thinking, Knows

  24 Copy quote

• The photographs of Iraqi prisoners being subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment by their captors, and the reports of acts of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and other acts of maltreatment shock the conscience.

  Ed Markey

  Abuse, Photograph, Treatment

  24 Copy quote

• After all is said that can be said upon the liquor traffic, its influence is degrading upon the individual, the family, politics and business, and upon everything that you touch in this old world.

  Billy Sunday

  Sports, World, Politics

  Billy Sunday, William Thomas Ellis (1917). “Billy Sunday, the Man and His Message: With His Own Words which Have Won Thousands for Christ”

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• To sleep around is absolutely wrong for a woman; it's degrading and it completely ruins her personality. Sooner or later it will destroy all that is feminine and beautiful and idealistic in her.

  Barbara Cartland

  Beautiful, Women, Sleep

  63 Copy quote

• Science without respect for human life is degrading to us all and reflects a hollow and deceptive philosophy, a philosophy that we as a people should never condone.

  Nathan Deal

  Philosophy, Aggravation, People

  24 Copy quote

• A mutual and satisfied sexual act is of great benefit to the average woman, the magnetism of it is health giving. When it is not desired on the part of the woman and she has no response, it should not take place. This is an act of prostitution and is degrading to the woman's finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding.

  Margaret Sanger

  Marriage, Average, Giving

  Family Limitation (1914)

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• Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Sports, Confused, Real

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1962). “The Image or What Happened to the American Dream”

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• To strive with an equal is dangerous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, degrading.

  Seneca the Younger

  Mad, Argument, Strive

  46 Copy quote

• Authority is quite degrading.

  Oscar Wilde

  Authority

  "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" (1891)

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• But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you-the social reformers-see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them.

  Isaiah Berlin

  Freedom, Men, Essence

  60 Copy quote

• Whoever debases others is debasing himself.

  James A. Baldwin

  African American, Wise Words, Humiliation

  "Letter from a Region in My Mind" by James Baldwin, www.newyorker.com. November 17, 1962.

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• Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking, or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; to me, the female sex is not the weaker sex.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Sex, Men, Evil

  Mahatma Gandhi (2005). “All Men Are Brothers”, p.156, A&C Black

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