Basic Decency Quotes & Sayings

In my judgment the people of no nation can lose their liberty so long as a Bill of Rights like ours survives and its basic purposes are conscientiously interpreted, enforced and respected so as to afford continuous protection against old, as well as new, devices and practices which might thwart those purposes. I fear to see the consequences of the Court's practice of substituting its own concepts of decency and fundamental justice for the language of the Bill of Rights as its point of departure in interpreting and enforcing that Bill of Rights. — Hugo Black

A campaign ought to demonstrate the basic human decency of the candidate. That means your First Amendment rights end at the tip of your opponent's nose - even in the matter of political rhetoric. — Mike Pence

that there's some meaning, some willfulness to life. Fairness. Basic decency. Good things happen — Nicola Yoon

It was easy for me to be ridiculed and for both men and women to perceive that maybe I'm a bit crazy because I'm educated in the West and I have lost some of my basic decency as an African woman. — Wangari Maathai

Sweet Pea, the way you eat means you got tits and ass. This is good because I like tits and ass. This is bad because Tack and Lawson like 'em just as much as me. Then he shoved his noodles and veg into his mouth and said with his mouth full, Tack maybe more. — Kristen Ashley

I feel deeply my responsibility to teach sacred things. I am so aware that the world is changing and will be vastly different from the one I have known. Values have shifted. Basic decency and respect for good things are eroding. — James E. Faust

Their love was something which coloured the air between them like sunlight. — Joanne Harris

If I have to bet, I am going to bet on those lakes. I am going to bet on the basic decency that is still at the core of this community. I am going to bet on that decency expanding to embrace the people it has left out and behind, and on that embrace being reciprocated. Not because anything is "inevitable" but because I met too many people applying hope. It — Thomas L. Friedman

But she would not think better of him just because he possessed the decency not to blackmail her. Refusing to take advantage of a woman should be a basic part of any man's character, and lauding him for it would be like commending someone for having lungs to breathe with. — Meljean Brook

A better politics is one where we appeal to each other's basic decency instead of our basest fears. — Barack Obama

Standard languages are inventions, most of them confined to a recent period in human history. They are codes that give access not to clear thinking and basic decency but to the structured parts of our lives such as job interviews, political speeches, literary essays, novels, and the like. They signal education and learning, but they are not the same thing as education and learning. — Robert Lane Greene

The basic goal of labor will not change. It is - as it has always been, and I am sure always will be - to better the standards of life for all who work for wages and to seek decency and justice and dignity for all Americans. — George Meany

This is a kindness, a thing done to another human being for no reason other than compassion. A private, dignified act of basic human decency, which history, being the bastard that it is, will probably neglect to commemorate. You — Alastair Reynolds

But with Naseem and me, it was like we had never known each other at all. It's a cruel, skewered ecosystem in which a high school student exists. I'm not trying to justify it. Things that at the time seem entirely logical, defensible even, can make a person years later ashamed. Not necessarily of acts one has perpetrated, but omissions of basic decency. Averted eyes, abruptly ended conversations, unextended offers to include. Such things are scythes across the backs of even the most normal teens. And Naseem, it was generally acknowledged, was not your most normal teen. — Ron Parsons

They are inherently good
the bad reactions aren't basic. Every human being is a child of God and has more good in him than evil
but circumstances and associates can step up the bad and reduce the good. I've got great faith in the essential fairness and decency
you may say goodness
of the human being — Norman Vincent Peale

I don't believe we're only motivated by our own self-interests. Often out of crisis comes this enormous wellspring of generosity and motivation. — Josh Fox

Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it. — Pablo Casals

A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency - issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights - the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious. — Gregory S. Paul

God has thickly strewn infinity with grandeur. — Alexander Smith

I'm one of six kids, and the eight of us lived for over a decade in either a bus or a boat. — Paul Farmer

I want to stay in the habit of 'glancing' at my problems and 'gazing' at my Lord. — Joni Eareckson Tada

You think you're superior to the others, don't you? We'll you're not. In fact you're worse for mistaking basic human decency for moral superiority. — Nenia Campbell

Nations don't start out. There is not a particular moment when they unveil the essence of themselves. They are always a work in progress. — Simon Schama

To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit.
To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves.
When we listen to the better angels of our nature, we find that they celebrate the simple things, the basic things
such as goodness, decency, love, kindness.
Greatness comes in simple trappings. — Richard M. Nixon

It's called basic human decency, and I deserve no credit for doing what every man should. — Courtney Milan

My mother and I are in the worst fight we've ever had, one that tests the concept of unconditional love, not to mention basic human decency. And the thing is, no one is right exactly. We both followed our hearts and had no choice but to hurt each other deeply. — Lena Dunham