Obscenity Quotes

• Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity - these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed.

  Mark Twain

  Animal, Men, Ashamed

  Mark Twain (2009). “Mark Twain’s Book of Animals”, p.119, Univ of California Press

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• It's true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Eye, Matter, Taste

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• Sex and obscenity are not synonymous.

  Lenny Bruce

  Sex, Obscene

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

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• I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material but I know it when I see it.

  Potter Stewart

  Today, Kind, Pornography

  Jacobellis v. Ohio (concurring opinion) (1964)

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• Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

  Bertrand Russell

  Elderly, Umpires, Ignorant

  Look Magazine, February 23, 1954.

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• The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.

  Rod Serling

  Caring, Drawing, Feelings

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• The justices have constitutionally protected obscenity in libraries, filth over cable television, and now unlimited internet pornography.

  Phyllis Schlafly

  Justice, Library, Television

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• Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to expressions of its own morality but to those of another.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Motherhood, Expression, Abuse

  Herbert Marcuse (1971). “An Essay on Liberation”, p.8, Beacon Press

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• Here is the piece. If you can't say fornicate can you say copulate or if not that can you say co-habit? If not that would have to say consummate I suppose. Use your own good taste and judgment.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Funny, Humorous, Taste And Judgment

  Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.413, Simon and Schuster

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• You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity.

  Roman Polanski

  War, People, Upset

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

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• The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Atheism, Age

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.1618, Delphi Classics

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• Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk.

  Henry Miller

  Add, Literature, Cleansing

  Henry Miller, Frank L. Kersnowski (1994). “Conversations with Henry Miller”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

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• If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth.

  Tim O'Brien

  Honesty, Fearless, Care

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.66, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?

  Rex Stout

  Trials, Literature

  Rex Stout (2013). “Fer-de-Lance/The League of Frightened Men”, Bantam

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• Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art -- or almost the only stuff.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Art, Passion, Literature

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton (2000). “The Selected Letters of D. H. Lawrence”, p.135, Cambridge University Press

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• Obscenities... I think a lot of dumb people do it because they can't think of what they want to say and they're frustrated. A lot of smart people do it to pretend they aren't very smart - want to be just one of the boys.

  Andy Rooney

  Smart, Thinking, Boys

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• Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Beauty, Forever, Secret

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1840). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.41

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• Obscenity is our name for the uneasiness which upsets the physical state associated with self-possession, with the possession of a recognized and stable individuality.

  Georges Bataille

  Self, Names, Upset

  Georges Bataille (1977). “Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo”, Arno Press

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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, Interest, Deals

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• I don't know how one actually would define obscenity. I'm sure the definition is different according to the age one is living in.

  Jane Alexander

  Age, Different, Definitions

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• The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Life, Atheist

  "Letters from the Earth" (1940)

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• The violence and obscenity are left unadulterated, as manifestation of the mystery and pain which ever accompanies the act of creation.

  Anais Nin

  Pain, Violence, Mystery

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• The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress.

  Renata Adler

  Sex, Loneliness, Ambition

  Renata Adler (1970). “Toward a radical middle: fourteen pieces of reporting and criticism”

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• My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the decent obscurity of a learned language.

  Edward Gibbon

  Obscurity, Language, Decent

  Edward Gibbon (1900). “The Memoirs of the Life of Edward Gibbon with Various Observations and Excursions”

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• I shall not attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description (of pornography), and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

  Potter Stewart

  Succeed, Kind, Description

  Jacobellis v. Ohio (concurring opinion) (1964)

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