Indignity Quotes - Page 2

• I wouldn't go out of my way to experience the indignity of middle-age just because it might be good meat for a story.

  Roddy Doyle

  Age, Might, Way

  "Commitments" Author Pens Short Goodbyes To Youth". Interview with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. May 21, 2011.

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• I can't minimize the terror factor. As you get older you get more and more frightened because the terrible indignities of old age become closer to you.

  Woody Allen

  Age, Frightened, Terrible

  "Woody Allen gives you two for one in Melinda and Melinda". Interview with Julian Roman, movieweb.com. March 17, 2005.

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• Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Disappointment, Silence, Personality

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.312, Courier Corporation

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• My kids hear me behind my door, giggling like an idiot, and they roll their eyes at the blatant indignity of it all.

  Berkeley Breathed

  Kids, Eye, Doors

  "Bill is Back (Thank You Berkeley Breathed)". Interview With Seira Wilson, www.amazonbookreview.com. October 21, 2016.

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• I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed. The whites provoked the war; their injustices, their indignities to our families, the cruel, unheard of and wholly unprovoked massacre at Fort Lyon ... shook all the veins which bind and support me. I rose, tomahawk in hand, and I have done all the hurt to the whites that I could.

  Sitting Bull

  Hurt, War, Men

  "The Lance and the Shield" by Robert M. Utley, New York: Henry Holt and Co., (pp. 79-80), 1993.

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• Most trouble is unnecessary. Between the indignity of being born and the agony of dying enough bad things must of necessity happen to people. But we can't be satisfied with that. We have to go to work and see how much additional trouble we can create. Misunderstanding, turmoil, effort put on all the wrong things, and then more misunderstanding.

  Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett

  Agony, People, Effort

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• Survival often feels like an indignity.

  Guillermo del Toro

  Survival, Feels

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• We think of a feminist as someone a woman becomes in reaction to personal indignities and social injustices. But the truth is, such inequities only awaken her to the feminist she has always fundamentally been - that is, a person who understands that her first responsibility is to her own humanity. That's why, for my money, the first known use of the word 'feminist' is still the best, appearing in an 1895 book review: a woman who 'has in her the capacity of fighting her way back to independence.

  Susan Faludi

  Book, Responsibility, Fighting

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• These small indignities and minor cruelties take a toll. They add to the burden of stress and fatigue that is already present in the workplace and they have real consequences on the every day lives of workers.

  P. M. Forni

  Stress, Real, Tolls

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• Only liberals know how to make you freer on the job, which is where most of us suffer the gravest indignities in our lives.

  Rick Perlstein

  Jobs, Suffering, Knows

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• Empathising with the younger children on whom the same confidence trick was being imposed, I embarked on a crusade around the neighbourhood, telling all the kids that there was no Santa Claus. This reached the ears of the father of a neighbouring family, who reproved me for spoiling it for the little ones. Spoiling it! I could not understand what he meant. To my mind, they were being made fools of, and I was only saving them from this indignity.

  Barbara Smoker

  Children, Father, Kids

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• I don't want to be ordinary. I'm willing to do the work. I'm willing to suffer the indignities of comedy because I want to be great. I don't want to just be good. I want to be great.

  Judd Apatow

  Suffering, Ordinary, Want

  "Judd Apatow, Sarah Silverman, and Roseanne Barr Talk Judaism, F-bombs, and Radical Feminism". Interview with Judd Apatow, www.elle.com. June 12, 2015.

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• The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse.

  Francis Bacon

  Pain, Men, Rising

  'Essays' (1625) 'Of Great Place'

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• I was growing tired of all the fussing and prevaricating, of the stolen hours and the secret rendez-vous; of the small indignities and broad discomfort that are part and parcel of adultery.

  Vicki Baum

  Tired, Infidelity, Secret

  Vicki Baum (1964). “I know what I'm worth”, London

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• Anger can offer a sense of indignity to replace a sense of shame, and offer a voice-raised above others-which can finally be heard. Those voices are most effective when they are raised in unison, when they have mercy as well as anger behind them, and when, instead of roaring at the anger of old pain, they sing about the glorious possibilities of a future where anger has a smaller house than hope.

  Gina Barreca

  Pain, Anger, Voice

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• The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities.

  John Locke

  Pain, Men, Rising

  John Locke (1825). “The Conduct of the Understanding. By J. Locke ... Essays ... By Lord Bacon. With Sketches of the Lives of Locke and Bacon”, p.139

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• The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced... It’s one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala. It’s another thing for my son to be mistaken for a robber and to be handcuffed or, worse, if he happens to be walking down the street and is dressed the way teenagers dress.

  Barack Obama

  Teenager, Son, Irritation

  "We Can Still Make a Difference". Interview with Jess Cagle, Sandra Sobieraj Westfall, people.com. December 29, 2014.

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• There is dignity in your being even if there's indignity in what you're doing.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Dignity, Ifs

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• When you are insulted by someone or humiliated, guard against angry thoughts, lest they arouse a feeling of irritation, and so cut you off from love and place you in the realm of hatred. You should know that you have been greatly benefited when you have suffered deeply because of some insult or indignity; for by means of the indignity self-esteem has been driven out of you.

  Maximus the Confessor

  Christian, Self Esteem, Mean

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• One thing I've learned, in the face of all kinds of indignities, domestic workers take so much pride in their work and love the children they care for.

  Ai-jen Poo

  Children, Pride, Faces

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• He thus reaps the full fruits which result from his toil and labors with the incentive of free enterprise to maximize his effort to achieve increasing production. Representing over a half of Japan's total population, the agriculture workers have become an invincible barrier against the advance of socialistic ideas which would relegate all to the indignity of state servitude.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Wisdom, Japan, Ideas

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• Your grandparents did not endure the indignities of a steerage journey to Ellis Island so that you could stand outside a discothèque and beg a wallpaper designer to take you in with him.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Journey, Islands, Grandparent

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• nobody ever dies of an indignity.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Embarrassment, Dies

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

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• We now undertake that we cannot rest while millions of our people suffer the pain and indignity of poverty in all its forms.

  Nelson Mandela

  Pain, People, Suffering

  Nelson Mandela (2003). “Nelson Mandela: from freedom to the future : tributes and speeches”, Jonathan Ball Publishers

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• [Humans'] capacity to intervene, to compare, to judge, to decide, to choose, to desist makes them capable of acts of greatness, of dignity, and, at the same time, of the unthinkable in terms of indignity.

  Paulo Freire

  Greatness, Judging, Dignity

  Paulo Freire (2000). “Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage”, p.53, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

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