Quotes & Sayings About Being Innocent

We are at war to liberate Iraq, to protect the people of the United States and other countries from the devastating impact of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction being used by terrorists or the Iraqi government to kill thousands of innocent civilians. — Paul Cellucci

As Deborah sits below a tree to give advice to her people, the cat could envision itself above Deborah. In the cats mind, the visual allusion would first point to the prophetess as being a predator. This consideration would not be hard to reach for the lucid intelligent cat as she is giving advice to her people here as how to engage in war. Envisioning this text, the cats would find it hard not to recognize the predatory nature of the human beneath it. This fact means that Deborah becomes, in feline hermeneutics, the antagonist. The prophetess would be seen as a danger to the cat. This could lead the cat to deduce that the enemy of the prophetess was a fellow protagonist. Then the advice that Deborah gave to Barak would seem as a malicious attack on a ally or worse an innocent. — Leviak B. Kelly

The Americans of the United States do not let their dogs hunt the Indians as do the Spaniards in Mexico, but at bottom it is the same pitiless feeling which here, as everywhere else, animates the European race. This world here belongs to us, they tell themselves every day: the Indian race is destined for final destruction which one cannot prevent and which it is not desirable to delay. Heaven has not made them to become civilized; it is necessary that they die. Besides I do not want to get mixed up in it. I will not do anything against them: I will limit myself to providing everything that will hasten their ruin. In time I will have their lands and will be innocent of their death.
Satisfied with his reasoning, the American goes to church where he hears the minister of the gospel repeat every day that all men are brothers, and that the Eternal Being who has made them all in like image, has given them all the duty to help one another. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Our Voice is our most powerful tool against these evil people who prey on the innocent, we should never be silent and let them continue to harm people. By being silent we are telling them it is "Okay to continue". I firmly believe if you choose to stand with those who wish to keep the victim silent you are yourself guilty of a crime against humanity
- Misty Griffin — Misty Griffin

What the hell are you tryng to do?"
She gave him an innocent stare. "Why, have a conversation. I suppose you're out of practice."
He glared,narrow-eyed, then turned away. "I'm going for a walk," he muttered.
"Lovely." Gennie slipped her arm through his. "I'll go with you."
"I didn't ask you," Grant said flatly, stopping again.
"Oh." Gennie batted her eyes. "You're trying to charm me by being rude again. It's so difficult to resist. — Nora Roberts

There's a line in one of my dad's novels about the most beautiful parts of the female anatomy being the ones that are the most innocent - the ones that have never been scandalized by nudity. — Matthew Norman

The Internet has spawned an abusive malevolent platform that cyber stalkers and trolls can use to harm people in the real world and ruin their victims lives forever with their permanent posts. Cyberspace can also be used to hunt those that prey on innocent people, so that those who live by the malicious words may also feel the repugnant feeling of being stalked and hunted even in their own false sense of anonymity. — Don A. Holbrook

After all, they (the pro-vaccine lobbyists) say to themselves, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. But the eggs being broken are small, helpless, and innocent babies, while the omelette is being enjoyed by the pediatricians and vaccine manufacturers. — Harris L Coulter

Look,Nik.I can't lose you. We can be partners.With you by my side,and with the band backing us,we could take over. I want you by my side in the High Court?"
"What does that even mean? We'd be ... together? Like, together, together?"
Cole gave a sly smile. "We'd rule hand in hand. And as far as being together, we'd be as together as you'd allow."
Annoyingly,my cheeks got all warm, and I turned away, frustrated at my reaction. I stood and went over to my desk chair to sit down.
Cole chuckled. He pushed himself off the floor and walked closer to me,and the Shade at my shoulder pulled toward him. I wanted to hit it.
"Stay over there," I said.
"Why?" He held his hands up, all innocent-like. "Does my nearness affect you? That's what happens when you spend a century with someone. — Brodi Ashton

After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil. — Dan Simmons

I stared up at the sky and raised my middle finger, just in case God was watching. I don't like being spied on. — Annabel Pitcher

He said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being.
Jean Valjean about Cossette — Victor Hugo

I seemed like a baby bird keeping its truly innocent animal lusts hidden under its wing. I was being tempted, not by the desire of possession, but simply by unadorned temptation itself. — Yukio Mishima

One evening in one of those Over-the-Rhine cafes which were plentiful along Vine Street of the Cincinnati of the nineties, a traveling salesman leaned across his stein of Moerlein's Extra Light and openly accused Ray Schmidt of being innocent. — Fannie Hurst

To confess a fault freely is the next thing to being innocent of it. — Publilius Syrus

Of course innocent mistakes occur but the accumulated insults and indignations caused by racial presumptions are destructive in ways that are hard to measure. Constantly being suspected, accused, watched, doubted, distrusted, presumed guilty, and even feared is a burden born by people of color that can't be understood or confronted without a deeper conversation about our history of racial injustice. — Bryan Stevenson

There's a fine line between being sweet and innocent and being a tough broad. — Phyllis George

When an entire segment of the world is burned and reduced to a lawless battleground for thugs and mercenaries, a land where government does not exist, where the slate of history is being wiped out and hope has drowned in gallons of innocent blood, the only respite comes in the form of the open seas and what lies beyond the horizon. So ships are boarded and pain is tolerated just a little while longer. — Aysha Taryam

In God's pattern of justice, He takes the risk of the guilty going free but not the innocent being punished. — Max Anders

Most of the time, perhaps 99 percent of the time, the defendant is guilty; his screams are the final protest of a human being about to lost his most precious possession, his freedom. — Elizabeth F. Loftus

The most valuable thing [Anton LaVey] did that day was to help me understand and come to terms with the deadness, hardness and apathy I was feeling about myself and the world around me, explaining that it was all necessary, a middle step in an evolution from an innocent child to an intelligent, powerful being capable of making a mark on the world. — Marilyn Manson

We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men's necessities, while elsewhereshe was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim's shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell. — Henry David Thoreau

I think that the older I get and the more comfortable I get with myself, the more I realize that art is about relinquishing control of your emotions and being vulnerable and innocent. — K.d. Lang

Abuse manipulates and twists a child's natural sense of trust and love. Her innocent feelings are belittled or mocked and she learns to ignore her feelings. She can't afford to feel the full range of feelings in her body while she's being abused - pain, outrage, hate, vengeance, confusion, arousal. So she short-circuits them and goes numb. For many children, any expression of feelings, even a single tear, is cause for more severe abuse. Again, the only recourse is to shut down. Feelings go underground. — Laura Davis

The word 'innocence' means 'incapable of being hurt'. To have a mind that is not capable of being hurt, does not mean that it has built up a lot of resistance - on the contrary, such a mind is dying to everything that it has known in which there has been conflict, pleasure and pain. Only then is the mind innocent; that means it can love. You cannot love with memory, love is not a matter of remembrance, of time. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Despite being discredited, the studies by Kanin and McDowell named above are still routinely cited on numerous websites dedicated to advancing the notion that American society suffers from an epidemic of spurious rape allegations by malicious women, resulting in the wrongful conviction of many thousands of innocent men. — Jon Krakauer

So it must be!" thought Prince Andrei as he was driving out of the avenue of the house at Bald Hills. "She, a pathetic, innocent being, stays to be devoured by a senile old man. The old man feels he's to blame, but cannot change himself. My boy is growing up and rejoices at life, in which he will be the same as everybody else, the deceived or the deceiver. I'm going to the army - why? I don't know myself, and I wish to meet a man whom I despise, in order to give him an occasion to kill me and laugh at me! — Leo Tolstoy

My worth changes with every choice I make and every action I take. I can choose myself to uselessness or to being valuable. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Takano Masamune- " Maybe it's just me being rebellious, but...when I'm shown something so innocent and pure, it forces me to see the filthy part of myself even more and it pisses me off...it makes me want to break him. — Shungiku Nakamura

Camus-boy, you're always going to be the same you, just older. It's not like there's a moment when you wake up and go, Shit, I'm grown-up, I don't feel like myself anymore.'
I don't tell him, but this is the scariest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life. Being grown-up should feel like a big transition. It can't be something that, despite my best efforts, I've been drifting closer and closer to every summer. It needs to be a shock. I need to know at what point to stop holding on. And that moment will suck, and probably every moment after that will suck, but at least I'll know that everything that came before really was valid. I really was young and innocent. I wasn't fooling myself. — Hannah Moskowitz

Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death. — Rollo May

Their cynicism was complete and terrible: details, like the lying signs outside the underground chambers of the crematoriums that announced in seven languages, "BATHS," whereas in reality they were gas chambers; the boxes of cyclon gas,5 which were labeled, "POISON: FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF PARASITES," the parasites being, of course, the untold thousands of innocent Jews murdered in the space of a few minutes. Who knows just how far the lie went? — Miklos Nyiszli

Amid the screams of his leaving, I leaned down and whispered, "You just can't help it, can you?"
His expression innocent, he asked, "Help what?"
Smiling, I kissed his cheek. "Being ridiculously attractive. — S.C. Stephens

We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself. — Albert Camus

So, to meditate is to purge the mind of its self-centered activity. And if you have come this far in meditation, you will find there is silence, a total emptiness. The mind is uncontaminated by society; it is no longer subject to any influence, to the pressure of any desire. It is completely alone, and being alone, untouched it is innocent. Therefore there is a possibility for that which is timeless, eternal, to come into being. This whole process is meditation. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

In the unspoilt state of innocent childhood, practically every human being has a natural and direct feeling for the existence of God Almighty. But as time passes, this faith may be deflected and people start believing in other powers - political, economic or social. — Nirmala Srivastava

Children being children, however, the grotesque Hopping Pot had taken hold of their imaginations. The solution was to jettison the pro-Muggle moral but keep the warty cauldron, so by the middle of the sixteenth century a different version of the tale was in wide circulation among wizarding families. In the revised story, the Hopping Pot protects an innocent wizard from his torch-bearing, pitchfork-toting neighbours by chasing them away from the wizard's cottage, catching them and swallowing them whole. — J.K. Rowling

If we read the text alone, assuming that the word 'cross' can only derive its meaning from the later death of Jesus, then its appearance in the text must be an anachronism read back into the story after the crucifixion. This conclusion becomes unnecessary if the cross, being the standard punishment for insurrection or for the refusal to confess Caesar's lordship, already had a clear definition in the listener's awareness. 'Take up your cross' may even have been a standard phrase of Zealot recruiting. The disciple's cross is not a metaphor for self-mortification or even generally innocent suffering; 'if you follow me, your fate will be like mine, the fate of a revolutionary. You cannot follow me without facing that fate. — John Howard Yoder

Jesus Christ was innocent too,' said Svejk, 'and all the same they crucified him. No one anywhere has ever worried about a man being innocent. Maul halten und weiter dienen ['Grin and bear it and get on with the job'] - as they used to tell us in the army. That's the best and finest thing of all. — Jaroslav Hasek

But the waves kept moving, with the white wake of the ship traced in them for an instant, and then smoothed over by the water. And it was as if my own footsteps were being erased behind me, the footsteps I'd made as a child on the beaches and pathways of the land I'd left, and the footsteps I'd made on this side of the ocean, since coming here; all the traces of me, smoothed over and rubbed away as if they had never been, like polishing the black tarnish from the silver, or drawing your hand across dry sand.
On the edge of sleep I thought: It's as if I never existed, because no trace of me remains, I have left no marks. And that way I cannot be followed. It is almost the same as being innocent.
And then I slept. — Margaret Atwood

But she's the Pastor's wife ... Do you not understand the irony of this whole situation?" he said clearly enjoying himself. "One evil being at your door, kissing the hand of your adopted mother who's married to the Pastor with whom you live. You, the sweet, innocent, unscathed mate of my twin brother who renounces what he is, but is also ... an evil being. I mean, you can't write this stuff. — Shelly Crane

Personally, I think it is better for me to love myself and enjoy being me, than to please someone else by pretending to be someone I'm not. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning 'placed on top', 'added', 'appended', 'foreign'. Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions, but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being. — Anne Carson

The doves, as we know, must be killed according to the law before Mary's purification can be acknowledged and ratified. Any ironic or irreverent disciple of Voltaire will find it difficult to resist making the obvious remark that, things being what they are, purity can be maintained only so long as there are innocent creatures to sacrifice in this world, whether turtledoves, lambs, or others. — Jose Saramago

The child watched its disappearance--he was astounded but dreamy. His stupefaction was complicated by a sense of the dark reality of existence. It seemed as if there were experience in this dawning being. Did he, perchance, already exercise judgment? Experience coming too early constructs, sometimes, in the obscure depths of a child's mind, some dangerous balance--we know not what--in which the poor little soul weighs God.

Feeling himself innocent, he yielded. There was no complaint-THE IRREPROACHABLE DOES NOT REPROACH.
(The Man Who Laughs) — Victor Hugo

Ever since Hugo Waverly had returned to London, he had been keeping on eye on Cedric's sisters, particularly Horatia. Waverly had a way of creating collateral damage and Lucien would do anything to keep these innocent ladies safe. But she mustn't know he was watching over her. He'd spent the last six years being outwardly cold to her, praying she'd stop gazing at him in that sweet, loving way of hers.
It was cruel of him, yes, but if he did not create some distance, he'd have had her on her back beneath him. She was too good a woman for that, and he was far too wicked to be worthy of her. Rather like a demon falling for an angel.

-Lucien's thoughts. His Wicked Seduction (The League of Rogue's book 2) — Lauren Smith

There is something simply beautiful and simply innocent, in being human. It is just so innocent and beautiful. I love it. — C. JoyBell C.

Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings: but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since. — William Shakespeare

Ladies and gentlemen, Im going to prove to you not only that Freddy Quimby is guilty, but that he is also innocent of not being guilty — Lionel

The favorite device of the devil, ancient and modern, is to force a human being into a more or less artificial class, accuse the class of unnamed and unnameable sin, and then damn any individual in the alleged class, however innocent he may be. — W.E.B. Du Bois

So far, the official definitions of terrorism have the role of demonizing the enemies of the United States and Israel, and of sanitizing recourse to indiscriminate force by both governments that causes widespread death of innocent civilians. This double standard is built around the current way in which the vocabulary of terrorism is being used in this country. — Richard A. Falk

Ah, but it wasn't just her lovely face that haunted him. Nor the soft, lush body he was increasingly desperate to see liberated from that woolen cocoon. It was the way she'd so willingly owned up to the truth. The way her spirit had sparked when he'd told her to put aside her art. The way she'd practically made sweet, innocent love to him with her eyes when he'd said he cared if she lived or died.
Good Lord. The laughable irony of it. He'd wasted weeks of his adolescence memorizing sonnets, spent years perfecting little murmured innuendos. Only to learn the most seductive phrase in the English language was something akin to: All things being equal, I'd rather not see you mauled by a shark. — Tessa Dare

Lawyers are alright, I guess - but it doesn't appeal to me", I said. "I mean they're alright if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn't. — J.D. Salinger

Why target two and a half million innocent newborns and children?" Barbara Loe Fisher asks of the hep B vaccine. The implication behind the word innocent is that only those who are not innocent need protection from disease. All of us who grew up during the AIDS epidemic were exposed to the idea that AIDS was a punishment for homosexuality, promiscuity, and addiction. But if disease is a punishment for anything, it is only a punishment for being alive. When I was a child, I asked my father what causes cancer and he paused for a long moment before saying, "Life. Life causes cancer." I took this as an artful dodge until I read Siddhartha Mukherjee's history of cancer, in which he argues not only that life causes cancer but that cancer is us. "Down to their innate molecular core," Mukherjee writes, "cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves." And this, he notes, "is not a metaphor. — Eula Biss

Oh what a morning it was, that first morning of Mrs. Sweet awaking before the baby Heracles with his angry cries, declaring his hunger, the discomfort of his wet diaper, the very aggravation of being new and in the world; the rays of sun were falling on the just and unjust, the beautiful and the ugly, causing the innocent dew to evaporate; the sun, the dew, the little waterfall right next to the village's firehouse, making a roar, though really it was an imitation of the roar of a real waterfall; the smell of some flower, faint, as it unfurled its petals for the first time: oh what a morning! — Jamaica Kincaid

Antidepressants are the biggest fraud in the world. Number one, Prozac gives you a royal soft-on like you wouldn't believe, and number two you never know all the side effects. I look at the pharmaceutical companies as the drug barons, the psychopharmcologists as the mules and the patients as the victims. They're innocent because they think they're being cured. — Robert Evans

During the war, the holders of power in all countries found it necessary to bribe the populations into cooperation by unusual concessions. Wage-earners were allowed a living wage, Hindus were told they were men and brothers, women were given the vote, and young people were allowed to enjoy those innocent pleasures of which the old, in the name of morality, always wish to rob them. The war being won, the victors set to work to deprive their tools of advantages temporarily conceded. — Bertrand Russell

An innocent little human being was solely dependent on me! I took all the CPR and breastfeeding classes and learned quite a bit. — Tichina Arnold

Pondering the legitimate modern day problem of intellectual bullies. Self-proclaimed smarties attacking the innocent.

They revel in being politically correct, all-loving and open-minded while not applying these principles to themselves.

The ultimate double standard in the name of truth and acceptance. It's sad.

This is not a post about anyone in particular. This is an observation over years.

Have you seen it? Call it out when you do.

The offender won't know what to do because they know that you know their game. — Richie Norton

It is so basic. A human being is an innocent part of nature. Our civilization has distorted this universal quality that allows us to feel at home in our skin. Other animals have coats that they accept, but the human race has yet to come to terms with being nude. — Ruth Bernhard

It's hard to see how anyone can fail to care about innocent children and animals being blown up by landmines. — Twiggy

He said he didn't need a lawyer because he was innocent. I tried not to grimace, so I just ground my teeth. When you're innocent, you really need a lawyer because of police and prosecution foul-ups. To say nothing of the average citizen's tendency to get scared and confused when being questioned by cops. — Paul Levine

We are frequently being reminded that no criticism or teaching is ever completely politically "innocent." True, but should we accept the swing to the indoctrination of an unqualifiedly negative attitude, which fosters a sense of alienation, of being a powerless victim? And should we permit a simplistic view of "power" to trigger simplistic notions of alternatives and processes of social change? — Louise M. Rosenblatt

You knew about the labor camps, though. About the massacres."
"It is easy to be lied to when you don't know any of those people firsthand. It's easy to believe when your king tells you that the people in Endovier deserve to be there because they're criminals or rebels who tried to slaughter innocent Adarlanian families."
"And how many of your countrymen would stand against your king if they, too, learned the truth? If they stopped to consider what it would be like if it were their family, their village, being enslaved or murdered? — Sarah J. Maas

There is no worse feeling than being unable to assuage the suffering of the innocent. — Adriana Trigiani

One day, Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen at the usual dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton - a pound and a half of the worst end of the neck - when Charlotte being called out of the way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah Claypole, being hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly devote to a worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young Oliver Twist. Intent upon this innocent amusement, Noah put his feet on the table-cloth; and pulled Oliver's hair; and twitched his ears; and expressed his opinion that he was a 'sneak'; and furthermore announced his intention of coming to see him hanged, whenever that desirable event should take place; and entered upon various topics of petty annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-boy as he was. But, — Charles Dickens

In societies reduced to blur and glut, terror is the only meaningful act. There's too much everything, more things and messages and meanings that we can use in ten thousand lifetimes. Inertia-hysteria. Is history possible? Is anyone serious? Who do we take serious? Only the lethal believer, the person who kills and dies for faith. Everything else is absorbed. The artist is absorbed, the madman in the street is absorbed an processed and incorporated. Give him a dollar, put him in a TV commercial. Only the terrorists stand outside. The culture hasn't figured out how to assimilate him. It's confusing when they kill the innocent. But this is precisely the language of being noticed, the only language the West understands. The way they determine how we see them. The way they dominate the rush of endless streaming images. — Don DeLillo

If all that I know as being alive will end one day, shouldn't I be grateful that I still get to enjoy it now? — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric. — Osamu Dazai

The mere fact of an American being present could help save the lives of innocent people. That's why I believe in the importance of bearing witness, to become a voice for the voiceless. — Bianca Jagger

I respect animals. I have more sympathy for an injured or dead animal than I do for an injured or dead human being, because human beings participate and cooperate in their own undoing. Animals are completely innocent. There are no innocent human beings. — George Carlin

But when General Ziaul Haq introduced the strict blasphemy - 295 A, B, C - of Pakistan's penal code, then from 1986 to today there are hundreds cases that are registered under the protection of blasphemy law. And until today, no case against any minorities, and especially Christians, is proved in the higher court. The lower court would order punishment but the higher court would always acquit people. So it proves that this law is being used as a tool of victimization against minorities and innocent people of Pakistan. — Shahbaz Bhatti

Director Park always talked to me about her in a very innocent way, that the story was of her coming of age and her sexual awakening and her going from girl to woman and that she had the same desires and hopes as other young people in terms of being very infatuated, which comes in the form of her uncle, which is very unconventional. — Mia Wasikowska

Things I learned from a man called "The Nazarene"
1- Being poor does not equal being miserable.
2- People will judge you, but their judgment should not define who you are.
3- Going against what others hold as true is not necessarily a bad thing.
4- Everyone is sacred.
5- Life is sometimes a lonely and dry place, like desert, but those times are there to help us meditate on what is truly important in our lives.
6- Complaining or getting angry because there is a storm in our lives solves nothing; embrace the storm and keep calm.
7- Treasure and protect the children of the world, they hold the key of what is pure and innocent; they are the way to freedom.
8- We are free to be who we want to be, it is our choice to be slaves or kings.
9- Fear nothing.
10- The person you don't like is also your neighbor.
11- The words following "I AM" define who we are, we must choose wisely. — Martin Suarez

John Lewis said, You have to be taught the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence. In the religious sense, in the moral sense, you can say that in the bosom of every human being, there is a spark of the divine. So you don't have a right as a human to abuse that spark of the divine in your fellow human being. From time to time, we would discuss that, if you have someone attacking you, beating you, spitting on you, you have to think of that person. Years ago that person was an innocent child, an innocent little baby. What happened? Did something go wrong? Did someone teach that person to hate, to abuse others? You try to appeal to the goodness of every human being and you don't give up. You never give up on anyone. — Krista Tippett

We stopped to dine at Baltimore, and being now in Maryland, were waited on, for the first time, by slaves. The sensation of exacting any service from human creatures who are bought and sold, and being, for the time, a party as it were to their condition, is not an enviable one. The institution exists, perhaps, in its least repulsive and most mitigated form in such a town as this; but it is slavery; and though I was, with respect to it, an innocent man, its presence filled me with a sense of shame and self-reproach. — Charles Dickens

In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists. Maybe ten of them at the outside. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent. One twenty-thousandth of a percent. That's pretty rare all right. Now, say you've got some software that can sift through all the bank records, or toll pass records, or public transit records, or phone call records in the city and catch terrorists 99 percent of the time. In a pool of twenty million people, a 99 percent accurate test will identify two hundred thousand people as being terrorists. But only ten of them are terrorists. To catch ten bad guys, you have to haul in and investigate two hundred thousand innocent people. — Cory Doctorow

They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they're all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city children who are trapped in dilapidated schools can't learn and won't learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else's problem to take care of. — Barack Obama

Just being yourself is the easiest thing you can do. It doesn't take much effort. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Besides, she had just reached the autumnal period of womanhood, in which reflection is combined with tenderness, in which the beginning of maturity colours the face with a more intense flame, when strength of feeling mingles with experience of life, and when, having completely expanded, the entire being overflows with a richness in unison with its beauty. Never had she possessed more sweetness, more leniency. Secure in the thought that she would not err, she abandoned herself to a sentiment which seemed to her justified by her sorrows. And, moreover, it was so innocent and fresh! What an abyss lay between the coarseness of Arnoux and the adoration of Frederick! — Gustave Flaubert

If being premenstrual is "innocence," does that make those of us with periods guilty? And this really gets to the heart of the matter: These concerns aren't about lost innocence; they're about lost girlhood. The virginity movement doesn't want women to be adults.

Despite the movement's protestations about how this focus on innocence or preserving virginity is just a way of protecting girls, the truth is, it isn't a way to desexualize them. It simply positions their sexuality as "good" - worth talking about, protecting, and valuing - and women's sexuality, adult sexuality, as bad and wrong. The (perhaps) unintended consequences of this focus is that girl's sexuality is sexualized and fetishized even further. — Jessica Valenti

The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being. — Victor Hugo

She had never in her life met such an innocent. In nearly everyone who had ever lived there was at least one small splinter of evil. There was none in him: she knew it when she saw him up on that windowsill the night before, the lightning shocking the world behind him. His eagerness, his deep kindness, these were the benefits of his privilege. This peaceful sleep of being born male and rich and white and American and at this prosperous time, when the wars that were happening were far from home. This boy, told from the first moment he was born that he could do what he wanted. All he needed was to try. Mess up over and over, and everyone would wait until he got it right. She — Lauren Groff

My children are unaffected by me being an actress because that's the way I like to keep it. I love the fact that they are so innocent about my star status. Sometimes, they come running to me and say, 'Mom, you are on TV.' — Madhuri Dixit

Motherhood changed you from the second you looked into the big, innocent eyes of your child. Within an instant, you had an unlimited supply of love for that precious, tiny being. They would forever be yours, and you would forever be the one person who would always love them, protect them, cherish them, worry about them, and fight for them.
Everything else felt minor in comparison. — Max Monroe

Being a cat means beautiful, agile, innocent, brave, curious and trust also honorable respect for as much as not so doing bribery. — Sekar Arum

I like being innocent, but know now when I am being taken for a ride. — Shilpa Shetty

When somebody is flying airplanes into buildings and killing innocent people in the name of God, it makes you question why do they have that interpretation and somebody else has another interpretation, and how many people of Muslim faith would agree with that, and what are the different aspects of different people's religions that is so divisive, rather than being unifying? — Madeleine Albright

If it shall be necessary, through sentences of excommunication against their persons and of interdict against their lands, all backsliding being put an end to, they compel them to fulfil their vows. — Pope Innocent III

When we hunt or fish, we deliberately kill a defenseless being who wishes us no harm. This is a direct violation of the First Precept. It is absolutely forbidden to Buddhists. As to eating meat, we know that the only way we can obtain it is for an animal to be killed. Therefore, when we eat meat, it is our intent that an innocent animal should die to satisfy our addiction to flesh. And that underlying intention, no matter how well hidden behind a smokescreen of rationalizations will block the growth of compassion and create negative karma. — Norm Phelps

[I]t being reasonable and just, I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a Wolf or a lion ... — John Locke

But i do love her more. She's amazing. Innocent, yes, but so damn passionate. It's like we're one person and we instinctively know what the other needs. The love she has for me seeps right into my skin whenever she touches me, Aaron. It's that intense. Being with her was like nothing i've ever experienced in my life. — Kahlen Aymes

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.-Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

When you choose to act on your problems, you cease to be a victim of circumstance and become a force of change; that's when you transition to not only being a survivor, but to being a leader or hero too, and an inspiration to those still in the victim's mindset. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

It is written, 'Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves' (Mt. 10:16). Being like serpents means not ignoring the attacks and wiles of the devil. Like is quickly shown to like. The simplicity of the dove denotes purity of action. — Syncletica Of Alexandria

What people don't understand is when punk started it was so innocent and not aware of being looked at or being a phenomenon and that's what everyone gets wrong. You can't consciously create something that's important, it's a combination of chemistry, conditions, the environment, everything. — Siouxsie Sioux

Oh, Jesus," he said, wheezing with the effort it took to control
himself. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "You little
innocent. I'm fluent in French, but it isn't my first language." It
was plain by the mortified expression in those green eyes that she
didn't understand, so he explained. "Baby , if I can still think
clearly enough to speak French, then I'm not totally involved in
what I'm doing. It may sound pretty , but it doesn't mean
any thing. Men are different from women; the more excited we are,
the more like cavemen we sound. I could barely speak English with
you, much less French. As I remember, my vocabulary
deteriorated to a few short, explicit words, 'fuck' being the most
prominent."
To his amazement, she blushed, and he smiled at this further
evidence of her charming prudery. "Go to sleep," he said gently.
"Lindsey didn't even rate a replay. — Linda Howard

I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his perhaps being innocent. It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, for if he were innocent, what then on earth was I? — Henry James

I'm alive now, but I don't know if I will be tomorrow. The state of being alive is not guaranteed, but should I let that stop me from living? — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Because of an innocent misunderstanding you think that you are a human being in the relative world seeking the experience of oneness, but actually you are the One expressing itself as the experience of being a human being. — Adyashanti