Decent Quotes - Page 35

• Reformers have long observed city people loitering on busy corners, hanging around in candy stores and bars and drinking soda popon stoops, and have passed a judgment, the gist of which is: "This is deplorable! If these people had decent homes and a more private or bosky outdoor place, they wouldn't be on the street!" That judgment represents a profound misunderstanding of cities. It makes no more sense than to drop in at a testimonial banquet in a hotel and conclude that if these people had wives who could cook, they would give their parties at home.

  Jane Jacobs

  Party, Drinking, Home

  Jane Jacobs (1989). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, Vintage

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• As the Americans slaughter millions of turkeys every year for the celebration of their deliverance, the Indians, who should be celebrated as saviors, have long been slaughtered. There was even a time when a white man was paid a very decent price for every Indian scalp he could produce.

  Friedrich Durrenmatt

  Men, White Man, Years

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• Iraq may still have a decent outcome...but even if it becomes Switzerland, we overpaid for it.

  Thomas Friedman

  Iraq, Switzerland, May

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• You can be slum-born and slum-bred and still achieve something worth while; but it is a stupid inverted snobbishness to be proud of it. If one had a right to be proud of anything, it would be of a continued decent tradition back of one.

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould

  Stupid, Pride, Proud

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1920). “Modes and Morals”

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• The things I care about are the most pedestrian things in the world. I care about good ice cream and being a good dad and a decent husband.

  Michael Ian Black

  Dad, Husband, Ice Cream

  "The Best-Laid Plans of Michael Ian Black". Interview with Royal Young, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 27, 2012.

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• What we have to do is make sure that here in America, if you work hard, you can get ahead. If you worked hard, not only did you have a good job, but you also had decent benefits, decent health care. We've got to make sure that we're doing everything we can to expand the middle class and people who are working hard can get into the middle class.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, Hard Work, Class

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• Muslims have been an almost entirely benevolent force in the 20th century. They did not wreak the havoc the Western powers wreaked on the world. They have not come anywhere near to the environmental degradation that we've done to the planet. So I think Muslims need to be seen in the proper light. They're mostly decent, hardworking people, people with deep family values, and they want to live in peace.

  Hamza Yusuf

  Thinking, Light, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I would assume that there is a greater amount of joy for you in being able to write and help produce your own stuff and make a decent living, but not get rich versus always doing the other stuff that you don’t write, and make more money.

  Julie Delpy

  Writing, Joy, Able

  "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. January 22, 2014.

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• If we have a decent sort of cat to begin with, and have always treated it courteously, and aren't cursed with meddling, bullying natures, it's a pleasure to let it do as it pleases. With children, this would be wicked and irresponsible, so raising children involves a lot of effort and friction. They need to be taught how to tie their shoes and multiply fractions, they need to be punished for pocketing candy in the grocery store, they need to be washed and combed and forced to clean up their rooms and say please and thank you. A cat is our relief and our reward.

  Barbara Holland

  Bullying, Children, Cat

  Barbara Holland (1989). “Secrets of the Cat: It's [sic] Lore, Legend, and Lives”

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• Now the only decent way to get something done is to get it done by somebody who quite likes doing it.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Done, Way, Likes

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton (2004). “D. H. Lawrence: Late Essays and Articles”, p.276, Cambridge University Press

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• An industry that cannot pay its workers a decent living wage has no right to exist.

  Fiorello H. La Guardia

  Pay, Workers, Living Wage

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• I don't think women can have it all. I just don't think so...My husband and I have been married for 34 years, and we have two daughters. And every day you have to make a decision about whether you are going to be a wife or a mother. In fact, many times during the day you have to make those decisions...We co-opted our families to help us. We plan our lives meticulously so we can be decent parents. But if you ask our daughters, I'm not sure they will say that I've been a good mom.

  Indra Nooyi

  Family, Leadership, Mom

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• I came then to a conviction that has never left me: that there is too much for me to attend to in this mortal life without overspeculation on the immortal, that it is not necessary to my peace of mind or to my effort to be a decent and useful person, to have a definite assurance about the affairs of the next world.

  Ida Tarbell

  Afterlife, Effort, Mind

  Ida M. Tarbell (2015). “All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography”, p.23, Ravenio Books

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• And I want women to be modest in their appearance. They should wear decent and appropriate clothing and not draw attention to themselves by the way they fix their hair or by wearing gold or pearls or expensive clothes. For women who claim to be devoted to God should make themselves attractive by the good things they do.

  Paul the Apostle

  Clothes, Hair, Gold

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• Wrap thyself in the decent veil that the arts or the graces weave for thee, O human nature! It is only the statue of marble whose nakedness the eye can behold without shame and offence!

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Art, Eye, Grace

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• My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects its weak. What I see in my country, progressively over these years, is that the rich have got richer, the poor have got poorer. The rich have become indifferent through a philosophy of greed, and the poorer have become hopeless because they're not properly cared for. That's actually something that is happening in many Western societies. Your own, I am told, is not free from it.

  John le Carre

  Country, Philosophy, Years

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• Investors, of course, can, by their own behavior make stock ownership highly risky. And many do. Active trading, attempts to "time" market movements, inadequate diversification, the payment of high and unnecessary fees to managers and advisors, and the use of borrowed money can destroy the decent returns that a life-long owner of equities would otherwise enjoy. Indeed, borrowed money has no place in the investor's tool kit.

  Warren Buffett

  Long, Tools, Use

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• We say we are trying to buy into businesses with excellent economics, run by honest and able people at a decent price. We buy very few securities, so we look at it as "focused" investing.

  Warren Buffett

  Running, People, Trying

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• Perjury is often bold and open. It is truth that is shamefaced - as, indeed, in many cases is no more than decent.

  Charles Darling, 1st Baron Darling

  Perjury, Cases

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• Those vices [luxury and neglect of decent manners] are vices of men, not of the times.
  [Lat., Hominum sunt ista [vitia], non temporum.

  Seneca the Younger

  Men, Luxury, Vices

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• Nothing fans me into such a state of peaceful mental somnambulance as the intellectual antics of a person who displays his learning, not from vanity always, but frequently because it is all he has got; no real sense, no wisdom of his own, merely much good stuff he has learned from other sources. He spreads it like a garment as any other decent person would to hide the thinness of his shanks.

  Corra May Harris

  Real, Vanity, Peaceful

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• Make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Let the children have their night of fun and laughter... resolved that by our daring, these same children shall not be denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

  Winston Churchill

  Laughter, Children, Fun

  Winston Churchill (1953). “War Speeches: From June 25, 1941 to September 6, 1943”

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• The psychological pain--and the ethical shame--of American poverty are made greater by the fact that this country possesses the wealth and the energy to raise all children to a minimally decent standard of living.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Country, Pain, Children

  Kenneth Keniston, Carnegie Council on Children (1977). “All our children: the American family under pressure”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• I would feel no hesitation in saying that it is the responsibility of a decent human being to give assistance to a child who is being attacked by a rabid dog, but I would not intend this to imply that in all imaginable circumstances one must, necessarily, act in accordance with this general responsibility.

  Noam Chomsky

  Dog, Children, Responsibility

  "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" by Noam Chomsky, www.nybooks.com. April 20, 1967.

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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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