Decent Man Quotes - Page 2

• A whole big, giant world full of men. Men with blue eyes. Brown eyes. Green eyes. And indescribable shades in between. Tall men. Short men. Skinny men. Built men. And all combinations thereof. Nice men (so I've heard, but never really seen). Mean men. Decent men, indecent. And who knows which is the best kind to have, to hold, to love? I'd say, with so many men in the world, it would pay to sample a few. Scratch that. More than a few. Lots and lots. And then a few more. And maybe, after years of research, you might find one worth not throwing back. But hey, the fun is in the fishing.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Fun, Nice, Eye

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• Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave. That is his normal condition. Of that I am firmly persuaded. He is made and constructed to that very end. And not only at the present time owing to some casual circumstance, but always, at all times, a decent man is bound to be a coward and a slave.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Age, Coward

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• Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Numbers, Secret

  "Notes from Underground". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Part 1, Chapter 11 (page 35), 1864.

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• Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don't understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for.

  Dalton Trumbo

  Sunday, Men, Thinking

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• I just loved him and he loved me... He was a most humble man, the most decent man I've ever met in my life and he always looked for the best in people to find positives and he said something to me that always remained with me. He said if you believe in the fatherhood of God you must necessarily believe in the brotherhood of man, it follows necessarily and even though I left the church and was not religious, that truth remained with me.

  Bob Hawke

  Love, Religious, Believe

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• I love my country, By which I mean, I am indebted joyfully, To all the people throughout its history, Who have fought the government to make right, Where so many cunning sons and daughters, Our foremothers and forefathers, Came singing through slaughter, Came through hell and high water, So that we could stand here, And behold breathlessly the sight, How a raging river of tears, Cut a grand canyon of light... Why can't all decent men and women, Call themselves feminists? Out of respect, For those who fought for this...

  Ani DiFranco

  Country, Daughter, Mean

  "Song: Grand Canyon (Educated Guess)". January 20, 2004.

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• Obama is making a choice now that will lead to the deaths of many thousands of civilians in Afghanistan by American hands. By ordinary standards of presidents, he is a decent man. But those standards aren't good enough. He's in a position either to kill or not to kill, and he's made the decision to kill.

  Daniel Ellsberg

  Men, Hands, Choices

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• The administration Ill bring is a group of men and women who are focused on whats best for America, honest men and women, decent men and women, women who will see service to our country as a great privilege and who will not stain the house.

  George W. Bush

  Country, Humor, Men

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• On the Vietnam War: I've lived under situations where every decent man declared war first and I've lived under situations where you don't declare war. We've been flexible enough to kill people without declaring war.

  Lewis Blaine Hershey

  War, Men, People

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• Man is full of desires: he loves only those who can satisfy them all. "This man is a good mathematician," someone will say. But I have no concern for mathematics; he would take me for a proposition. "That one is a good soldier." He would take me for a besieged town. I need, that is to say, a decent man who can accommodate himself to all my desires in a general sort of way.

  Blaise Pascal

  Love, Math, Men

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• My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not."

  Edward Kennedy

  Dream, Brother, War

  Ted Kennedy's eulogy for Robert Kennedy, St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City, www.nydailynews.com. August 26, 2009.

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• Instead of recognizing the State as ‘the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men,’ the run of mankind, with rare exceptions, regards it not only as a final and indispensable entity, but also as, in the main, beneficent. The mass-man, ignorant of its history, regards its character and intentions as social rather than anti-social; and in that faith he is willing to put at its disposal an indefinite credit of knavery, mendacity and chicane, upon which its administrators may draw at will.

  Albert J. Nock

  Running, Character, Men

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• It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

  H. L. Mencken

  Taken, Responsibility, Men

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• Every decent man had to be against fascism, period.

  Amos Oz

  Men, Periods, Fascism

  "'Everybody comes from somewhere.' An Interview with Writer Amos Oz". Interview with Prashanth Ramakrishna, logger.believermag.com. October 20, 2016.

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• don't let anything make you believe that there are not as many decent men in the world as women, and they're just as decent. Life isn't worth living unless you know that - and it's true.

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher

  Believe, Men, World

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1915). “The Bent Twig”

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• The job is interesting, and the task is difficult, but the man [Maigret] is just a decent man doing a very ordinary job.

  Rowan Atkinson

  Jobs, Men, Interesting

  Source: news.tvguide.co.uk

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• In every community there are little knots of fantastic extremists who loudly proclaim that they are striving for righteousness, and who, in reality, do their feeble best for unrighteousness. Just as the upright politician should hold in peculiar scorn the man who makes the name of politician a reproach and a shame, so the genuine reformer should realize that the cause he champions is especially jeopardized by the mock reformer who does what he can to make reform a laughingstock among decent men.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Reality, Men, Names

  Theodore Roosevelt (2012). “The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses”, p.22, Courier Corporation

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• If the village worker is not a decent man or woman, conducting a decent home, he or she had better not aspire after the high privilege and honour of becoming a village worker.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Home, Men, Becoming

  Mahatma Gandhi (1959). “India of My Dreams”, p.139, Rajpal & Sons

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• The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble; but every decent man is concerned if an innocent person is condemned.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Men, Innocent Person, Criminals

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• H. L. Mencken famously said that 'every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.' By now, however, I am no longer ashamed, because I do not identify with the government under which I live. Rather, I view it as a criminal organization that without provocation has chosen to make war on my just rights-not only mine, of course, but everyone's. Although this vile enterprise is my problem, because it robs and bullies me relentlessly and without mercy, it is not my responsibility: the nail is not the hammer.

  Robert Higgs

  War, Responsibility, Men

  Robert Higgs (2007). “Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government”, Independent Inst

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• Has it ever struck you that trout bite best on the Sabbath? God's critters tempting decent men.

  James M. Barrie

  Men, Rivers, Lakes

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• Mitt Romney, maybe the most moral and decent man who's ever run for president, ended up being a murderer, somebody who didn't care about animals, and a tax cheat.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Running, Animal, Men

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• Tony Blair is a decent man who genuinely thinks what he is doing is justified. But when he sees men such as George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld smirking and boasting as they announce their Shock and Awe offensive, we hope he understands why we believe we have been dragged into something we should have been fighting tooth and nail to stop.

  Piers Morgan

  Believe, Fighting, Men

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• There is no patent recipe for getting good citizenship. You get it by applying the old, old rules of decent conduct, the rules in accordance with which decent men have had to shape their lives from the beginning .. fundamental precepts, put forth in the Bible and embodied consciously or unconsciously in the code of morals of every great and successful nation from antiquity to modern times.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Successful, Men, Patents

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• There are two races of men in this world but only these two: the race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Men, Race, Two

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.70, Beacon Press

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