Personal Dignity Quotes - Page 3

• Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

  Charles Dickens

  People, Coats, Holiness

  Charles Dickens (1839). “Oliver Twist”, p.141

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• Work is about more than making a living, as vital as that is. It's fundamental to human dignity, to our sense of self-worth as useful, independent, free people.

  William J. Clinton

  Independent, Self Worth, People

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• From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength.

  Cesar Chavez

  Inspirational, Strength, Success

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• In the 21st Century I believe the mission of the United Nations will be defined by a new, more profound, awareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life, regardless of race or religion.

  Kofi Annan

  Believe, Race, Profound

  Kofi Annan's Nobel Lecture in Oslo, Norway, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 2001.

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• So what we're talking about here is human rights. The right to live like a human. The right to live, period. And what we're facing in Africa is an unprecedented threat to human dignity and equality.

  Bono

  Equality, Rights, Talking

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• Mao appears to be quite free from symptoms of megalomania, but he has a deep sense of personal dignity, and something about him suggests a power of ruthless decision when he deems it necessary.

  Edgar Snow

  Decision, Dignity, Mao

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• When we speak of being vulnerable, it suggests being especially vulnerable to pain. People for whom personal dignity and self-sufficiency are everything, do all they can to shut it out. Noli mi tangere. They are well aware that any intimate relationship has pain in it, forces a special kind of awareness, is costly, and so they try to keep themselves unencumbered by shutting pain out as far as it is possible to do so.

  May Sarton

  Pain, Intimate Relationships, Self

  May Sarton (2014). “Recovering: A Journal”, p.176, Open Road Media

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• The enemies of living life; outdated little liberals, afraid of their own independence; lackeys of thought, enemies of the person and freedom, decrepit preachers of carrion and rot! What do they have: gray heads, the golden mean, the most abject and philistine giftlessness, envious equality, equality without personal dignity, equality as understood by a lackey or a Frenchman of the year ninety-three...And scoundrells, above all, scoundrels, scoundrels everywhere!

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Live Life, Mean, Years

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• What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality, is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindeness, personal dignity, even the sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience.

  John Stuart Mill

  Christian, Religious, Ideas

  "On Liberty". Philosophical work by John Stuart Mill, 1859.

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• It is sufficiently evident from many circumstances, that the doctrine of the divinity of Christ did not establish itself without much opposition, especially from the unlearned among the Christians, who thought that it savoured of Polytheism , that it was introduced by those who had had a philosophical education, and was by degrees adopted by others, on account of its covering the great offence of the cross , by exalting the personal dignity of our Saviour.

  Joseph Priestley

  Christian, Philosophical, Divinity

  Joseph Priestley (1871). “A History of the Corruptions of Christianity”, p.19

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• The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Mean, People, Voting

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• I think the tragic feeling is invoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing -- his sense of personal dignity.

  Arthur Miller

  Character, Thinking, Feelings

  Arthur Miller (2016). “Collected Essays: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.23, Penguin

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• The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence, or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men.

  T. Coleman Andrews

  Pride, Men, Self

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• If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America - even those designated as ‘unlawful enemy combatants.’ If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles.

  Alberto J. Mora

  Men, Rights, Law

  "The Memo". Interview with Jane Mayer, www.newyorker.com. February 27, 2006.

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• Saying that, he was suddenly himself again, despite his lunatic hair and eyes: a man whose personal dignity went so deep as to be nearly invisible... It was more than diginity. Integrity? Wholeness? Like a block of wood not carved. The infinite possibility, the unlimited and unqualified wholeness of being of the uncommitted, the nonacting, the uncarved: the being who, being nothing but himself, is everything.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Block, Integrity, Eye

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• Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Independence, Gauges

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.75, Penguin

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• In two weeks the sheeplike masses of any country can be worked up by the newspapers into such a state of excited fury that men are prepared to put on uniforms and kill and be killed, for the sake of the sordid ends of a few interested parties. Compulsory military service seems to me the most disgraceful symptom of that deficiency in personal dignity from which civilized mankind is suffering today.

  Albert Einstein

  Country, Military, Party

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• Why would a person prefer the accusations of guilt, unworthiness, ineptitude — even dishonor and betrayal — to real possibility? This may not seem to be the choice, but it is: complete self-effacement, surrender to the “others,” disavowal of any personal dignity or freedom — on the one hand; and freedom and independence, movement away from the others, extrication of oneself from the binding links of family and social duties-on the other hand. This is the choice that the depressed person actually faces.

  Ernest Becker

  Betrayal, Real, Depressed Person

  "The Denial of Death".

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• Nothing puts the dignity in personal dignity (or the freedom in personal freedom) like the self in self-rule.

  John Longenecker

  Gun, Self, Citizens

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• There is a feeling of personal dignity and independence in grasping, literally, the power to back your refusal to be a target of a violent crime with lethal force. This is not a sense of power, it is now the experience of escaping from a sense of powerlessness.

  John Longenecker

  Gun, Escaping, Feelings

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• Sex divorced from love is the thief of personal dignity.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Sex, Love Is, Thieves

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• Personal dignity is to be measured with the yardstick of one's conscience, not with that of other people's judgement.

  Fausto Cercignani

  People, Judgement, Yardsticks

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  The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity.

  Jackie Robinson

  Treasure, Dignity, Possession

  Jackie Robinson, Alfred Duckett (2013). “I Never Had It Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson”, p.33, Harper Collins

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• Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence.

  Ayn Rand

  Men, Independence, Principles

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.877, Penguin

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• The vow of celibacy is a matter of keeping one's word to Christ and the Church. a duty and a proof of the priest's inner maturity; it is the expression of his personal dignity.

  Pope John Paul II

  Maturity, Expression, Servant Of God

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