Obscene Quotes - Page 5

• As with companions so with books. We may choose those which will make us better, more intelligent, more appreciative of the good and the beautiful in the world, or we may choose the trashy, the vulgar, the obscene, which will make us feel as though we've been 'wallowing in the mire.

  David O. McKay

  Beautiful, Book, Intelligent

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• The allegation of some progressives that America is an evil empire is not simply wrong—it is obscene.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  America, Evil, Empires

  Dinesh D'Souza (2014). “America: Imagine a World without Her”, p.101, Regnery Publishing

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• It is morally obscene to regard wealth as an anonymous, tribal product and to talk about 'redistributing' it.

  Ayn Rand

  Money, Novelists, Famous Women

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.27, Penguin

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• The President's announcement sounded less like a national energy plan than like a page from an election-year play book. This Administration's plan to reduce obscene oil company profits is to regulate them less.

  Nick Rahall

  Book, Years, Play

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• So much of my work involved the Vietnam War that it would have been obscene to show it in a gallery. But now, it’s different; it’s important to remember and to enable the young to discover what to some of us is still so present.

  Martha Rosler

  War, Important, Different

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• I pass by that it is very culpable to be facetious in obscene and smutty matters.

  Isaac Barrow

  Matter, Facetious

  Isaac Barrow (1830). “The Works of Dr. Isaac Barrow”, p.366

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• Before, I'd photograph anything. I didn't think there was anything more or less obscene about any part of the body.

  Jock Sturges

  Photography, Thinking, Artist

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• I didn't think there was anything more or less obscene about any part of the body. Now, I recognize that there are certain postures and angles that make people see red, which are evidence of original sin or something, and I avoid that.

  Jock Sturges

  Thinking, Artist, People

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• But alas, the most terrifying aspect of the whole fascist episode is the dark fact that most of its poisons are generated not by evil men or evil peoples, but by quite ordinary men in search of an answer to the baffling problems that beset every society.

  John T. Flynn

  Dark, Men, Evil

  "As We Go Marching".

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• Truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal.

  Keith Johnstone

  Ideas, Truth Is, Psychotic

  Keith Johnstone (1981). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.83, Routledge

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• It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene.

  Thomas Paine

  Religious, Jesus, Father

  Thomas Paine (1875). “The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology”, p.154

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• Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.

  Henry James, Sr.

  Spiritual, Flower, Night

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• Women should be obscene, not heard.

  Groucho Marx

  Should, Heard

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• If the corporations have their way, the Earth will be killed, and that's in your lifetime. It's revolting to me that students are being trained to work in corporations. It's obscene to me that the corporations are running the world. We've got to get cross. Anger is an appropriate emotion.

  Helen Caldicott

  Running, Work, World

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• Cruelty practiced as a matter of social principle or public policy, and presented to the community as a means to a higher goal is the most obscene and decadent phenomenon of any civilization.

  Vernon Howard

  Mean, Animal, Civilization

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• President Obama announced this week that he is going to start sending out his own messages personally on Twitter. And today Anthony Weiner said, “It’s a trap, don’t do it!” But President Obama’s tweets are a little different than Anthony Weiner’s. When Obama sends out pictures of something obscene, it’s the unemployment numbers.

  Jay Leno

  Numbers, President, Different

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• At school any spontaneous act was likely to get me into trouble. I learned never to act on impulse, and that whatever came into my mind first should be rejected in favour of better ideas. I learned that my imagination Wasn’t ‘good’ enough. I learned that the first idea was unsatisfactory because it was (1) psychotic; (2) obscene; (3) unoriginal. The truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal.

  Keith Johnstone

  School, Ideas, Imagination

  Keith Johnstone (2017). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.82, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• All the mega corporations on the planet make their obscene profits off the labor and suffering of others, with complete disregard for the effects on the workers, environment, and future generations. We have a straightforward proposal: if they want public money, we want public control. It's that simple.

  Derrick Jensen

  Simple, Suffering Of Others, Want

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• In some ways, risk-taking is the ultimate act of self-indulgence , an obscene insult to the preciousness of life. And yet, how can one dismiss something that persists despite every reasonable theory that it shouldn't?

  Sebastian Junger

  Self, Risk, Way

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• The beard, being a half-mask, should be forbidden by the police - It is, moreover, as a sexual symbol in the middle of the face, obscene: that is why it pleases women.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Police, Half, Beard

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• I've been told that I am evil. I've been told that I am behind the persecution of millions of Americans. That I have encouraged hate toward gays. I've received both very brief and obscene messages, and very long and literate messages that tell me a vote for Crash was vote for homophobia.

  Roger Ebert

  Hate, Gay, Long

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• I find that if you take the various popular song forms to their logical extremes, you can arrive at almost anything from the ridiculous to the obscene-or, as they say in New York, sophisticated.

  Tom Lehrer

  Song, New York, Ridiculous

  "I wanna go back to Dixie". Song by Tom Lehrer, 1960.

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• ... though not invariably the worst choice, war is always an obscene horror.

  Ellen Glasgow

  War, Choices, Horror

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• On two subjects the overwhelming majority of people regarded their own opinions as Absolute Truth, and sincerely believed that anyone who disagreed with them was immoral, outrageous, sinful, sacrilegious, offensive, intolerable, stupid, illogical, treasonable, actionable, against the public interest, ridiculous, and obscene. The two subjects were (of course) sex and religion.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Sex, Stupid, Two

  Robert A. Heinlein (1988). “To Sail Beyond the Sunset”

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• Has the art of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene, and low down, andits salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Politics, Entertainment

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