Obscene Quotes

• The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history.

  Dan Quayle

  Holocaust, Stupid Funny, Dumb Celebrity

  Campaign remark, Moore, Okla., 15 Sept. 1988. These remarks were quoted in the L.A. Times, 16 Sept. 1988.

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• The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.

  Dan Quayle

  Funny, Stupid, Mean

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• It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.

  Havelock Ellis

  Men, Atheism, Dignity

  HAVELOCK ELLIS (1930). “IMPRESSIONS & COMMENTS”

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• The secret thoughts of a man run over all things, holy, profane, clean, obscene, grave, and light, without shame or blame.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Running, Men, Ideas

  Thomas Hobbes (2008). “Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

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• In the NUDE, all that is not beautiful is obscene.

  Robert Bresson

  Beauty, Beautiful, Nudity

  Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.61, New York Review of Books

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• At male strip shows, it is still the women that we watch, the audience of women and their eager faces. They are more obscene than if they were dancing naked themselves.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Women, Dancing, Males

  Jean Baudrillard (1990). “Cool memories”, Verso

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• For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.

  Susan Sontag

  Death, Religious, Dying

  Susan Sontag (1979). “Illness as metaphor”, Vintage

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• Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Ideas, Body, Nobility

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook D 6, 1799.

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• Sex and obscenity are not synonymous. Obscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest.

  William J. Brennan

  Sex, Obscenity, Interest

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• Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind.

  Thomas Paine

  Bible, Religious, Faith Religion

  Thomas Paine (1877). “The Age of Reason”, p.15, Lyle Stuart

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• The only thing that is obscene is censorship.

  Craig Reucassel

  Censorship

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• We all lived in this century, I didn't live in this century.

  Dan Quayle

  Holocaust, Dumb Celebrity, Century

  Campaign remark, Moore, Okla., 15 Sept. 1988. These remarks were quoted in the L.A. Times, 16 Sept. 1988.

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• I think it is obscene that we should believe that we are entitled to end somebody's life, no matter what that person has supposedly done or not done.

  Richard Attenborough

  Believe, Thinking, Done

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

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• The First Amendment is not an altar on which we must sacrifice our children, families, and community standards. Obscene material that is not protected by the First Amendment can and must be prohibited.

  Orrin Hatch

  Children, Sacrifice, Community

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• But how is one to make a scientist understand that there is something unalterably deranged about differential calculus, quantum theory, or the obscene and so inanely liturgical ordeals of the precession of the equinoxes.

  Antonin Artaud

  Math, Understanding, Scientist

  Antonin Artaud, Susan Sontag (1976). “Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings”, p.497, Univ of California Press

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• It begins and ends with money. It's absurd in this day and age when we need so much money for education, health, for people, that a $100 million dollars can be spent on a film. It's obscene

  Kathleen Turner

  Birthday, People, Age

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• Bankruptcy is a sacred state, a condition beyond conditions, as theologians might say, and attempts to investigate it are necessarily obscene, like spiritualism. One knows only that he has passed into it and lives beyond us, in a condition not ours.

  John Updike

  Debt, Might, Sacred

  John Updike (1980). “People One Knows: Interviews with Insufficiently Famous Americans”

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• Vulgar and obscene, the papers run rumors daily about people in show business, tales of wicked ways and witless affairs.

  Carroll O'Connor

  Running, Business, People

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• Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Numbers, Names, Rivers

  Ernest Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway (2012). “Hemingway on War”, p.67, Simon and Schuster

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• Cancer patients are lied to, not just because the disease is (or is thought to be) a death sentence, but because it is felt to be obscene - in the original meaning of that word: ill-omened, abominable, repugnant to the senses.

  Susan Sontag

  Cancer, Disease, Patient

  Susan Sontag (1979). “Illness as metaphor”, Vintage

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• ...It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.

  Thomas Paine

  Atheist, Faith Religion, Atheism

  Thomas Paine “The Writings of Thomas Paine”, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Sex and obscenity are not synonymous.

  Lenny Bruce

  Sex, Obscenity

  Lenny Bruce (1992). “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People”, p.127, Simon and Schuster

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• I always said God was against art and I still believe it.

  Edward Elgar

  Inspiring, Art, Believe

  Letter to A. J. Jaeger, October 9, 1900.

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• The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.

  Thomas Paine

  Atheist, Faith Religion, Atheism

  Thomas Paine (1861). “The Age of Reason, etc”, p.7

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• Nothing that is expressed is obscene. What is obscene is what is hidden.

  Nagisa Oshima

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

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