Despicable Quotes - Page 2

• I have always considered it despicable to grovel for your life as if life were a favor. If you cannot live the way you want, there is no point in living

  Reinaldo Arenas

  Favors, Want, Way

  Reinaldo Arenas (2010). “Before Night Falls”, p.9, Profile Books

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• What Clinton did with Lewinsky was despicable but was no threat to the nation. That he lied about it repeatedly and to the public is a reason for us to cease to trust him and for him to resign.

  Donella Meadows

  Trust, Reason, Lied

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• Unfortunately these are not isolated incidents, and the people of Reunion are the first to be horrified by this despicable barbarity which mars the image of their island.

  Brigitte Bardot

  Islands, People, Mars

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• The Slothful do not have the time to become virtuous or despicable.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Sloth, Laziness, Virtuous

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• The eleventh commandment, "Thou shalt not be found out" is despicable, but nevertheless, it is the one thing you can never get away from.

  Emily Post

  Lying, Dishonesty, Found

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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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• We know well enough when we're being unjust and despicable. but we don't restrain ourselves because we experience a certain pleasure, a primitive sort of satisfaction in moments like that.

  Ugo Betti

  Bullying, Unjust, Satisfaction

  Ugo Betti (1964). “Struggle Till Dawn”, San Francisco, Chandler

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• If a man that is desperately sick today, did believe he should arise sound the next morning; or a man today, in despicable poverty, had assurance that he should tomorrow arise a prince: would they be afraid to go to bed....?

  Richard Baxter

  Death, Christian, Morning

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• It's weak and despicable to go on wanting things and not trying to get them.

  Marion Milner

  Trying, Goes On, Weak

  Marion Milner (2011). “A Life of One's Own”, p.19, Taylor & Francis

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• The charges are false and despicable. I have not received a fair hearing. This is un-American. All the lawyering will provoke an untoward outcome.

  Catherine Crier

  Outcomes, Hearing, Provoking

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• If there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that — in a way, although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we're starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play.

  Steven Weinberg

  Art, Stars, Drama

  "The Faith of Scientists: In Their Own Words". Book edited by Nancy K. Frankenberry, 2008.

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• I can play a man who's despicable. But I'll still look inside him to find a point of connection. If I can find that kernel, audiences will relate to me.

  Forest Whitaker

  Men, Play, Connections

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• There are people in need of help. Charity is one of the nobler human motivations. The act of reaching into one's own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else's pocket is despicable and worthy of condemnation.

  Walter E. Williams

  Motivation, Men, People

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• To Brian Ellis, you owe my family and this community and apology for a disgusting and despicable smear campaign.

  Justin Amash

  Apology, Community, Campaigns

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• There's still a lot I'm angry about, a lot of human behaviour that's appalling and despicable, but you choose what you can fight against. I always thought if I could just put something in words perfectly enough, people would get the idea and it would change things.

  Neil Peart

  Fighting, Ideas, People

  "Q and A with Neil Peart of Rush". Interview with Mike Doherty, www.macleans.ca. August 13, 2012.

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• We like to think of industrialization as being despicable. I don't really know what to make of it. There’s something terribly brittle about it. I suppose I would still prefer to sit under a tree with a picnic basket rather than under a gas pump, but signs and comic strips are interesting as subject matter. There are certain things that are usable, forceful, and vital about commercial art. We're using those things – but we're not really advocating stupidity, international teenagerism, and terrorism.

  Roy Lichtenstein

  Art, Thinking, Interesting

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• Nothing is more despicable than the old age of a passionate man. When the vigour of youth fails him, and his amusements pall with frequent repetition, his occasional rage sinks by decay of strength into peevishness; that peevishness, for want of novelty and variety, becomes habitual; the world falls off from around him, and he is left, as Homer expresses it, to devour his own heart in solitude and contempt.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Fall, Heart, Men

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• Colombe Josse is the older Jesse daughter. Colombe Jesse is also a sort of tall blonde leek who dresses like a penniless Bohemian. If there is one thing I despise, it is the perverse affectation of rich people who go around dressing as if they were poor, in second-hand clothes, ill-fitting gray bonnets, socks full of holes, and flowered shirts under threadbare sweaters. Not only is it ugly, it is also insulting: nothing is more despicable than a rich man's scorn for a poor man's longing.

  Muriel Barbery

  Daughter, Gratitude, Men

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• The rush to attribute culpability to a minority after an act of mass murder is a rush to exonerate the general public – how can we specify the ways in which the killer was not “one of us”? When the shooter comes from a racial or religious group, this is a relatively simple if despicable enterprise. When they are just another white male, the only remaining option is to locate a disability diagnosis.

  Ari Ne'eman

  Religious, Simple, White

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• What’s the difference? Fill a hundred pits with dead Northmen, congratulations, have a parade! Kill one man in the same uniform as you? A crime. A murder. Worse than despicable. Are we not all men? All blood and bone and dreams?

  Joe Abercrombie

  Dream, Military, Congratulations

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• Saddam Hussein's regime is despicable, he is developing weapons of mass destruction, and we cannot leave him doing so unchecked. He is a threat to his own people and to the region and, if allowed to develop these weapons, a threat to us also.

  Tony Blair

  Mass Destruction, People, Hussein

  "Tony Blair's key quotes", www.theguardian.com. April 26, 2007.

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• I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence, look again at the extra employment a new country added to our dominions gives.

  Cecil Rhodes

  Country, Race, Giving

  "Confession of Faith". Essay by Cecil Rhodes, 1877.

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• But I cannot forgive those who did not care about more than their own glory or well-being. They thought they were civilized. They were despicable. Damn them all.

  Susan Sontag

  Forgiving, Care, Culture

  Susan Sontag (1992). “The Volcano Lover”

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• As long as parents and teachers in general shall fall under the established rule, it is clear that politics and modes of government will educate and infect us all. They poison our minds, before we can resist, or so much as suspect their malignity. Like the barbarous directors of the Eastern seraglios, they deprive us of our vitality, and fit us for their despicable employment from the cradle.

  William Godwin

  Teacher, Fall, Government

  William Godwin (1798). “Enquiry Concerning Political Justice: And Its Influence on Morals and Happiness”, p.49

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• A transition from an author's book to his conversation is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur, and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fear, Book, Writing

  Samuel Johnson (1827). “The Rambler”, p.13

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