Taboo Quotes - Page 2

• Sex is no longer a serious taboo. Teenagers sometimes know more about it than adults.

  Alan Watts

  Sex, Teenager, Adults

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.5, Souvenir Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no policy too sensitive to question, and no subject so taboo that you cannot even mention it.

  Lee Hsien Loong

  Sensitive, Policy, Subjects

  The Straits Times, January 17, 2000.

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think there is a natural thing that you feel when you've written something taboo because you just don't want to expose the people you're close to.

  Irvine Welsh

  Thinking, People, Want

  Source: gapersblock.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world is slowly evolving into a place where the things that we have seen as being taboo are starting to open up a bit more.

  Manu Bennett

  World, Starting, Evolve

  4 Copy quote

• The alternative which I favor is to renounce all euphemisms and grasp the nettle of the word atheism itself, precisely because it is a taboo word carrying frissons of hysterical phobia. Critical mass may be harder to achieve than with some non-confrontational euphemism, but if we did achieve it with the dread word atheist, the political impact would be all the greater.

  Richard Dawkins

  Atheist, Impact, Political

  11 Copy quote

• I know I will be breaking a taboo. But I'm sure that it will provoke a new discussion. It's time things change. I feel 30 and want to look that way again.

  Brigitte Nielsen

  Looks, Want, Way

  25 Copy quote

• The type of figleaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.

  Freda Adler

  Social Taboos, Culture, Morality

  13 Copy quote

• But in most cases even the possibility that the correlations reflect shared genes is taboo.

  Steven Pinker

  Possibility, Genes, Cases

  7 Copy quote

• Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.

  Lewis Mumford

  Technology, Arbitrary, Novelty

  9 Copy quote

• As men begin to grow civilized, they cease to be satisfied with mere taboos.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Satisfied, Grows

  Bertrand Russell (1987). “Bertrand Russell on ethics, sex, and marriage”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• We don't use the term 'working class' here because it's a taboo term. You're supposed to say 'middle class,' because it helps diminish the understanding that there's a class war going on.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Class, Understanding

  20 Copy quote

• The eurozone status quo is neither tolerable nor stable. Mainstream economists would call it an inferior equilibrium; I call it a nightmare - one that is inflicting tremendous pain and suffering that could be easily avoided if the misconceptions and taboos that sustain it were dispelled.

  George Soros

  Pain, Suffering, Nightmare

  8 Copy quote

• How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Faith, Eye

  "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are". Book by Alan Watts, 1966.

  69 Copy quote

  Show source

• Storytelling is our oldest form of remembering the promises we have made to one another and to our various gods, and the promises given in return; it is a way of recording our human emotions and desires and taboos.

  Jane Yolen

  Promise, Desire, Way

  Jane Yolen (1981). “Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie and Folklore in the Literature of Childhood”, Philomel

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As for language, almost everything goes now. That is not to say that verbal taboos have disappeared, but merely that they have shifted somewhat. In my youth, for example, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can say them, but you can't say 'girl'.

  Tom Lehrer

  Girl, Example, Youth

  11 Copy quote

• This transmissibility of taboo is a reflection of the tendency, on which we have already remarked, for the unconscious instinct in the neurosis to shift constantly along associative paths on to new objects.

  Sigmund Freud

  Reflection, Neurosis, Path

  Sigmund Freud (2003). “Totem and Taboo”, p.40, Routledge

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's fun to explore areas that are taboo that you're not allowed to in real life as an actor.

  Michelle Pfeiffer

  Fun, Real, Actors

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you are raised to believe that anything having to do with sex is forbidden and taboo, then of course that's all you want to know about. That becomes your complete and utter fascination. That is the surest way to interest a child.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Sex, Children, Believe

  4 Copy quote

• A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, May, Might

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.120, Xist Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Infinitely more taboos, on television.

  Rod Serling

  Television

  Source: www.rodserling.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All the things that are taboo are the things that are not normal, and all the things that are not normal are the things that are exclusively about physically being a woman.

  Caitlin Moran

  Normal, Being A Woman

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To look without fear is a good subversive tool, undermining taboos.

  Wolfgang Tillmans

  Tools, Looks, Undermining

  7 Copy quote

• I have friends of mine who have died of AIDS and many of those friends...did not tell me until the very end...because they felt that there was a stigma, a taboo, attached to it...now we have more women infected with HIV/AIDS, many of those women were infected by their husbands who did not tell them

  Bianca Jagger

  Husband, Hiv, Aids

  7 Copy quote

• There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.

  George Carlin

  Sex, Attitude, Ideas

  "Carlin's response? More than 7 dirty words", www.today.com. March 13, 2004.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Especially for those of us living in the Western culture, death to a large extent is still a taboo subject. It's considered something dreadful that shouldn't be happening. It's usually denied. The fact of death is not faced. What we don't realize in Western culture is that death has a redemptive dimension.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Western Culture, Facts, Dimensions

  Source: www.soulwise.net

  6 Copy quote

  Show source