Obscenity Quotes - Page 2

• The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Life, Atheist

  "Letters from the Earth" (1940)

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• Obscenity is our name for the uneasiness which upsets the physical state associated with self-possession, with the possession of a recognized and stable individuality.

  Georges Bataille

  Self, Names, Upset

  Georges Bataille (1977). “Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo”, Arno Press

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• I shall not attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description (of pornography), and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

  Potter Stewart

  Succeed, Kind, Description

  Jacobellis v. Ohio (concurring opinion) (1964)

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• My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the decent obscurity of a learned language.

  Edward Gibbon

  Obscurity, Language, Decent

  Edward Gibbon (1900). “The Memoirs of the Life of Edward Gibbon with Various Observations and Excursions”

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• The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress.

  Renata Adler

  Sex, Loneliness, Ambition

  Renata Adler (1970). “Toward a radical middle: fourteen pieces of reporting and criticism”

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• Slavery is an obscenity. It is not just stealing someone's labor; it is the theft of an entire life.

  Kevin Bales

  Slavery, Stealing, Theft

  Kevin Bales (1999). “Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy”, p.7, Univ of California Press

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• Western people often see obscenity where there is only symbolism.

  Sir John Woodroffe

  Symbolism, People, Western

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• I don't want a moratorium on the death penalty. I want the abolition of it. I can't understand why a country [USA] that's so committed to human rights doesn't find the death penalty an obscenity.

  Desmond Tutu

  Country, Usa, Rights

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• And I think there's something about conservatives frankly - and the Left, when it comes to their channels of persuasion, are unpersuasive. They are, most of them are hate-filled, obscenity-clogged rants of anger and hatred.

  Karl Rove

  Hate, Anger, Thinking

  "NewsBusters Interview: Karl Rove Slams Lefty Blogosphere, Talks Media, Praises iPhone". Interview with Matthew Sheffield, www.newsbusters.org. March 21, 2008.

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• There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.

  Renata Adler

  Philosophy, Littles, Cocktail Parties

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• The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things - bad language and whatever - it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition.

  George Carlin

  Religious, Ideas, Superstitions

  "Counterculture Comedian George Carlin Dies at 71". www.foxnews.com. June 23, 2008.

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• The words themselves are clean, so are the things to which they apply. But the mind drags in a filthy association, calls up some repulsive emotion. Well, then, cleanse the mind, that is the real job. It is the mind which is the Augean stables, not language.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Jobs, Real, Mind

  D. H. Lawrence (1966). “Selected Poems of D.h. Lawrence”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• It showed a kind of obscenity you see only in nature, an obscenity so extreme that it dissolves imperceptibly into beauty.

  Richard Preston

  Kind, Extremes

  Richard Preston (2012). “The Hot Zone: The Chilling True Story of an Ebola Outbreak”, p.98, Random House

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• A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wiresto the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Home, America, Exhibitions

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• The world today is so full of violence, obscenity, war, the failure of political systems. I try to make movies that make people a bit more confident. But that doesn't mean being sugary.

  Rouben Mamoulian

  War, Mean, People

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• When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. ... there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

  Albert Camus

  Sleep, Men, Speaks Out

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.177, Vintage

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• Obscenity, who really cares. Propaganda, all is phony.

  Bob Dylan

  Art, Media, Care

  Song: It's Alright, Ma, Album: Bringing All Back Home, 1965

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• In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that individual communities should set obscenity standards. Whenever a case is tried, it will be based on a community standard for that particular place.

  Larry Flynt

  Community, Individual, Should

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• Pornography and obscenity...work by specialism and fragmentation. They deal with a figure without a ground - situations in which the human factor is suppressed in favor of sensations and kicks.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Favors, Figures, Situation

  "Letters of Marshall McLuhan" by Marshall McLuhan, (p. 514), 1987.

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• The nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters. ... Obscenity is too valuable a commodity to chuck around all over the place; it should be taken out of the safe on special occasions only.

  Dorothy Parker

  Beautiful, Taken, Thinking

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• The prison guards are capable of committing daily atrocities and obscenities, smiling the smile of the angels all the while.

  Jean Harris

  Angel, Prison Guards, Atrocities

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• just as violence is the last refuge of the inarticulate, so it is also the first resort of the incompetent, the easy out for the man who is capable of expressing himself only in the most primitive and vulgar of dramatic terms. He leaves us with only the obscenity of violence per se - and the pornographer thereof will always be with us, in film as in any other medium. And so will his audience.

  Judith Crist

  Men, Lasts, Violence

  Judith Crist (1968). “The private eye, the cowboy, and the very naked girl: movies from Cleo to Clyde”

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• We who have witnessed the obscenity of war and experienced its horror and terrible consequences have an obligation to rise above our pain and suffering and turn the tragedy of our lives into a triumph.

  Ron Kovic

  Pain, War, Suffering

  "The Forgotten Wounded of Iraq" by Ron Kovic, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 18, 2006.

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• In families there are frequently matters of which no one speaks, nor even alludes. There are no words for these matters. As the binding skeleton beneath the flesh is never acknowledged by us and, when at last it defines itself, is after all an obscenity.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Family, Skeletons, Flesh

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• ...What is at stake is civilization and humanity, nothing less. The idea that everything is permitted, as Nietzsche put it, rests on the premise of nihilism and has nihilistic implications. I will not pretend that the case against nihilism and for civilization is an easy one to make. We are here confronting the most fundamental of philosophical questions, on the deepest levels. In short, the matter of pornography and obscenity is not a trivial one, and only superficial minds can take a bland and untroubled view of it.

  Irving Kristol

  Philosophical, Views, Civilization

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