Degrading Quotes - Page 3

• Contrary to our culture, the Biblical doctrine of Grace humbles us without degrading us, and elevates us without inflating us.

  Kenneth Boa

  Biblical, Grace, Doctrine

  9 Copy quote

• All forced virtue is degrading in it effect.

  Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie

  Virtue, Effects

  4 Copy quote

• The most degrading of human passions is the fear of death. It tears away the restraints and the conventions which alone make social life possible to man; it reveals the brute in him which underlies them all. In the desperate hand-to-hand struggle for life there is no element of nobility. He who is engaged upon it throws aside honor, he throws aside self-respect, he throws aside all that would make victory worth having - he asks for nothing but bare life.

  Gertrude Bell

  Death, Struggle, Passion

  73 Copy quote

• What one person sees as degrading and disgusting and bad for women might make some women feel empowered and beautiful and strong.

  Sasha Grey

  Beautiful, Strong, Might

  67 Copy quote

• ...If our houses, or clothes, our household furniture and utensils are not works of art, they are either wretched makeshifts, or, what is worse, degrading shams of better things.

  William Morris

  Art, Clothes, House

  William Morris, May Morris “The Collected Works of William Morris: Hopes and fears for art. Lectures on art and industry”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I certainly do not lament the decadence of knight errantry, nor wish to exchange the protection of the laws for that of the doughtiest champion who ever set lance in rest; but I do, in truth, believe that this knightly sensitiveness of honorable feeling is the best antidote to the petty soul-degrading transactions of every-day life, and that the total want of it is one reason why this free-born race care so very little for the vulgar virtue called probity.

  Frances Trollope

  Believe, Knights, Race

  5 Copy quote

• Persecution means an attempt to drive out, attempt to subjugate, and there are various ways that that can be done. Sarah Palin's opponents and her critics would like to see her leave the public square by insulting, degrading, demeaning, abusing and ridiculing her, and - by pretending that she has nothing to say.

  Matthew Continetti

  Mean, Squares, Insulting

  "Without Further Ado, Sarah Palin Returns". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. November 20, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't find the idea of sewing degrading. A thing is degrading when you are forced to do it, through economic reasons or through slavery or some other form of compulsion.

  Margaret Atwood

  Slavery, Reason, Economic

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe that almost all important, useful ideas are simple. Peter Whittle has recently put it nicely in an autobiographical essay. "If a piece of work is heavy and complicated then it is wrong." . . . Some writers feel that to express their ideas in simple terms is degrading. Some use complexity to disguise the paucity of their material. In fact, simplicity is a virtue and when, as here, it is both original and useful, it can represent a real advance in knowledge.

  Dennis Lindley

  Real, Work, Believe

  4 Copy quote

• Every answer he [President John Adams] gives to his addressers unmasks more and more his principles and views. His language to the young men at Philadelphia is the most abominable and degrading that could fall from the lips of the first magistrate of an independent people, and particularly from a Revolutionary patriot.

  James Madison

  Fall, Independent, Men

  5 Copy quote

• Every marriage moves either toward enhancing one another’s glory or toward degrading each other.

  Dan B. Allender

  Moving, Glory

  35 Copy quote

• Of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

  Booker T. Washington

  Hate, Men, Race

  Booker T. Washington, Louis R. Harlan (1981). “The Booker T. Washington Papers”, p.35, University of Illinois Press

  222 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing-was more degrading than for a woman to have to marry for a home. Love should be the sole reason. Surely those with a brain-to think, eyes to see and a mind-to reason must realise that the capitalist system must cease and a co-operative system prevail in its place.

  Vida Goldstein

  Love, Marriage, Women

  111 Copy quote

• Not for a million - years. I mean, I like the INXS boys, but I found the process very degrading, really. Reality television has eaten away at our standards of excellence. I don't like this whole culture, which has evolved, of TV being the king.

  Brian May

  Kings, Mean, Boys

  5 Copy quote

• The prevailing idea seems to be, that I come to God and ask Him for something that I want, and that I expect Him to give me that which I have asked. But this is a most dishonouring and degrading conception. The popular belief reduces God to a servant, our servant: doing our bidding, performing our pleasure, granting our desires. No, prayer is a coming to God, telling Him my need, committing my way unto the Lord, and leaving Him to deal with it as seemeth Him best.

  Arthur W. Pink

  Prayer, Ideas, Giving

  Arthur W. Pink (2007). “The Sovereignty of God”, p.107, Lulu.com

  229 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poverty is mean and degrading to the human spirit, whereas a life of conscious simplicity can have both a beauty and a functional integrity that elevates the human spirit.

  Duane Elgin

  Integrity, Mean, Simple

  Duane Elgin (2010). “Voluntary Simplicity Second Revised Edition: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich”, p.19, Harper Collins

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is better to give love. Hatred is a low and degrading motion and is so poisonous that no man is strong enough to use it safely. The hatred we think we are directing against some person or thing or system has a devilish way of turning back upon us. When we seek revenge we administer slow poison to ourselves. When we administer affection it is astonishing what magical results we obtain.

  Thomas Dreier

  Love, Strong, Revenge

  4 Copy quote

• Our enemies didn't adhere to the Geneva Convention. Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto death. But every one of us - every single one of us - knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them.

  John McCain

  America, Enemy, Different

  6 Copy quote

• Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity. I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortification of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and independence which only a very few can bear.

  Adolf Hitler

  Dirty, Taken, Men

  "Hitler Speaks". Book by Hermann Rauschning, p. 222, 1939.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Regarding factory-farmed animals We owe them a merciful death, and we owe them a merciful life. And when human beings cannot do something humanely, without degrading both the creatures and ourselves, then we should not do it at all.

  Matthew Scully

  Animal, Factories, Should

  4 Copy quote

• Imagine if the political elites in our country were forced to endure the same conditions at the airport as business travelers, families, senior citizens, and the rest of us. Perhaps this problem could be quickly resolved if every cabinet secretary, every member of Congress, and every department head in the Obama administration were forced to submit to the same degrading screening process as the people who pay their salaries.

  Ron Paul

  Senior, Country, Airports

  4 Copy quote

• We live in the digital age, and unfortunately it's degrading our music, not improving.

  Neil Young

  Age, Digital, Improving

  "Neil Young: Steve Jobs and I were working on new iPod" by Sean Michaels, www.theguardian.com. February 1, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• No theory is too false, no fable too absurd, no superstition too degrading for acceptance when it has become embedded in common belief. Men will submit themselves to torture and to death, mothers will immolate [burn] their children at the bidding of beliefs they thus accept.

  Henry George

  Faith, Mother, Children

  9 Copy quote

• We live in the digital age and, unfortunately, it’s degrading our music, not improving it  It’s not that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s being used isn’t doing justice to the art. The MP3 only has 5 percent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice.

  Neil Young

  Art, Data, Mp3

  32 Copy quote

• Only if you have some knowledge of the human sacrifices, the vicious temple rites, the degrading superstitions and customs that were practiced . . . can you realize how much the modern world owes to the Hebrew prophets, whose monotheism and moral teachings entered into Christianity and Islam.

  Carlton J. H. Hayes

  Teaching, Sacrifice, Islam

  7 Copy quote