Quotes & Sayings About Common Decency

One of the most important virtues of the American character is our ability to approach the complexities that life presents us with common sense and decency, .. The considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth. It is time for the president and the Congress to follow that common sense for the good of the country. — Dick Gephardt

But I am not discouraged. I do not despair for our country. I believe tonight, as I always have, that the essential decency, compassion and common sense of the American people will prevail. — Jimmy Carter

Again, we may decry the color-prejudice of the South, yet it remains a heavy fact. Such curious kinks of the human mind exist and must be reckoned with soberly. They cannot be laughed away, nor always successfully stormed at, nor easily abolished by act of legislature. And yet they must not be encouraged by being let alone. They must be recognized as facts, but unpleasant facts; things that stand in the way of civilization and religion and common decency. They can be met in but one way - by the breadth and broadening of human reason, by catholicity of taste and culture. — W.E.B. Du Bois

I grew up in the Midwest, so I have sort of an honorable moral code. But I moved to a city and joined a sort of fast crowd. A lot of people who grew up in the city sort of aren't aware of manners and other ways of life and 'common decency.' — Derek Blasberg

Ever has common decency paved the way to uncommon folly. — Jay Lake

More and more clearly every day, out of biology, anthropology, sociology, history, economic analysis, psychological insight, plain human decency and common sense, the necessary mandate of survival that we shall love all our neighbors as we do ourselves, is being confirmed and reaffirmed. — Ordway Tead

The common bond of humanity and decency that we share is stronger than any conflict, any adversity. Fighting for your convictions is important. But finding peace is paramount. Knowing when to fight and when to seek peace is wisdom. Ubuntu was right. — Wes Moore

In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms. — H.L. Mencken

Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency, instead of letting campus barbarians run amok? — Thomas Sowell

And who has prayed for Satan? In eight hundred years, who has had the common decency to pray for the one sinner who needed it most? — Mark Twain

I have had some experiences with love, or think I have, anyway, although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as "common decency." I treated somebody well for a little while, or maybe even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in turn. Love need not have had anything to do with it. — Kurt Vonnegut

Most asylum seekers do get permanent visas, so the earlier they receive the appropriate help, the faster they will become part of the community. They'll get jobs and start paying taxes too. They will see Australia as a nation with a sense of care and concern. That's so important for a cohesive society. It helps build a sense of belonging. And in terms of common decency, it's what should be happening ... For God's sake, this is Australia, people should be treated with decency and humanity. — Malcolm Fraser

Did freedom have to mean abolishing common decency? — Francine Rivers

Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please - a little less love, and a little more common decency'. — Kurt Vonnegut

WE DEMOCRATS are deeply flawed people, but we do stick to our guns, and believe in decency and public spiritedness and have refused to hitch our wagon to yahooism and intolerance and have supported government as a necessary force for good to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty . . . — Garrison Keillor

REJECT THE LIES AND VIOLENCE. STAND FOR LOVE, TRUTH, DECENCY AND THE COMMON GOOD. — Bryant McGill

Once I fucked you, it would be all over for me. I had to have a guarantee I could get you back. Christ, Blue, the first time I saw you, I wanted to throw you over the couch and fuck you."
Blue flushed but smiled a little. "So why didn't you?"
"Common decency."
"Highly overrated. — S.E. Jakes

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office. — H.L. Mencken

If it weren't happening, he would have sworn that their reproduction speed alone violated the laws of thermodynamics - or at least common decency. The — Evan Currie

Indeed. And here is a new one for you: I love you, Alexander Cameron. More than common sense or decency should allow. Your strength frightens me and your stubbornness angers me, and I believe you to be a truly dangerous threat to a woman's inbred gentility, but there you have it. And unless you are prepared to give me several honest and convincing reasons why I should do otherwise, I intend to remain here at Achnacarry as your wife, as your lover if you will have me, as the mother of your sons, of which -please God- there will be many. — Marsha Canham

Money doesn't buy taste, personality, or common decency. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

One of the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. ... [This] convention protects them, and so they proceed with their blather unwhipped and almost unmolested, to the great damage of common sense and common decency. that they should have this immunity is an outrage. There is nothing in religious ideas, as a class, to lift them above other ideas. On the contrary, they are always dubious and often quite silly. Nor is there any visible intellectual dignity in theologians. Few of them know anything that is worth knowing, and not many of them are even honest. — H.L. Mencken

There is no absolute right or wrong, good or evil, but there are good manners and common decency. — K.J. Parker

I see the great continuities in New Zealand history as being decency and common sense and up until now when we've confronted these things we've been able to talk them through, and I'm sure we will with this issue as well. — Michael King

Motherhood, to be sure, receives a great deal of sentimental adulation, but only if it is committed in accordance with rules which have been prescribed by a predominantly masculine society. Per se it is accorded no respect whatever. When it results from a sexual relationship which has been duly sanctioned by organized society, it is holy, no matter how much it may transgress the rules of decency, health, or common sense. Otherwise it is a sin meriting social ostracism for the mother and obloquy for the child - an ostracism and obloquy, significantly enough, in which the father does not share. — Suzanne La Follette

Against such a background one can easily imagine the shock that must have gripped readers of The Times of London, who turned to their paper one morning in January 1882 and found a lengthy report on a parliamentary speech by the attorney general concluding with the unexpectedly forthright statement: "The speaker then said he felt inclined for a bit of fucking." Not surprisingly, it caused a sensation. The executives of The Times were so dumbstruck by this outrage against common decency that four full days passed before they could bring themselves to acknowledge the offense. — Anonymous

I believe that poverty is often the result of inappropriate behavior - out-of-wedlock births, dropping out of school, crime and drugs - which should not be rewarded. But often it isn't, and common decency requires that we take care of the least of these. — Joe Klein

Alabama citizens, like the vast majority of Americans, respect and value the meaning of decency, and appreciate public institutions that reflect the common values of our society. — Mike Rogers

I believe deeply that we canot solve the challenges of your time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have differnt stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren. This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. — Barack Obama

... there's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is - common decency. — Albert Camus

We are passing through an eerie phase of history in which the things that everyone really knows are treated as unheard-of doctrines, a time in which the elements of common decency are themselves attacked as indecent. Nothing quite like this has ever happened before. Although our civilization has passed through quite a few troughs of immorality, never before has vice held the high moral ground. — J. Budziszewski

Deep down, the boringly pragmatic Liberal Party has a sunnier view of human nature than the passionately idealistic Labor Party because we are prepared to put more trust in the common sense and decency of our fellow Australians. — Tony Abbott

Honor sometimes means doing something very unwise. Behaving like an idiot is better than dishonor. To this day I blush for having chosen sensible restraint over common decency. — Amelie Nothomb

There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense. — Jeannette Rankin

When one man has been under very remarkable obligations to another, with whom he subsequently quarrels, a common sense of decency, as it were, makes of the former a much severer enemy than a mere stranger would be. To account for your own hard-heartedness and ingratitude in such a case, you are bound to prove the other party's crime. It is not that you are selfish, brutal, and angry at the failure of a speculation
no, no
it is that your partner has led you into it by the basest treachery and with the most sinister motives. From a mere sense of consistency, a persecutor is bound to show that the fallen man is a villain
otherwise he, the persecutor, is a wretch himself. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Buffett was a billionaire who drove his own car, did his own taxes, and still lived in a home he had bought in 1958 for $31,500. He seemed to answer to a deeply rooted, distinctly American mythology, in which decency and common sense triumphed over cosmopolitan guile, and in which an idealized past held firm against a rootless and too hurriedly changing present. — Roger Lowenstein

Most of us care about one another. Human beings have considerably more in common with one another than they do differences. One's religion, political persuasion, family, financial and social status, or vocation does not hamper the common thread of personal decency running through most of humankind. — Jon M. Huntsman Sr.

It is no disparagement to the garden to say it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns ... It will remain a garden only if someone does all these things to it ... If you want to see the difference between [the garden's] contribution and the gardener's, put the commonest weed it grows side by side with his hoes rakes, shears, and a packet of weed killer; you have put beauty, energy, and fecundity beside dead, steril things. Just so, our 'decency and common sense' show grey and deathlike beside the geniality of love. — C.S. Lewis

I think being on a set where people aren't being treated as equals, and with just a common level of decency and respect, is really uncomfortable. — Gaby Hoffmann

All right, so there he is, our representative to the world, Mr. Western Civilization, in codpiece and pantyhose up there on the boards, firing away at the rapt groundlings with his blank verses, not less of a word-slinger and spellbinder than the Bard himself and therefore not to be considered too curiously on such matters as relevance, coherence, consistency, propriety, sanity, common decency. — Marvin Mudrick

Rome tolerated every abominable practice, embraced every foul idea in the name of freedom and the rights of the common man. Citizens no longer carried on deviant behavior in private, but pridefully displayed it in public. It was those with moral values who could no longer freely walk in a public park without having to witness a revolting display.
What happened to the public censors who protected the majority of citizenry from moral decadence? Did freedom have to mean abolishing common decency? Did freedom mean anyone could do anything they wanted anytime they wanted, without consequences? — Francine Rivers

In Wright Morris's novel Plains Song, the narrator asks, "Is the past a story we are persuaded to believe, in the teeth of the life we endure in the present?" The question is always open. How we treat our world and each other grows from our vision of how we have come to where we are. Ultimately, of course, the issue is not survival but decency and common sense. Everything passes, the psalmist reminds us. No one escapes. The best we can hope is to learn a little from the speaking dead, to find in our deep past some help in acting wisely in the teeth of life. — Elliott West

Karate is not about techniques and their execution, but about boldness, integrity and fight for justice and common good — Soke Behzad Ahmadi

We should strive to treat each other with common Human Decency — Dr. Seuss

If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: 'To fight against Fascism,' and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: 'Common decency. — George Orwell

School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not. — H.L. Mencken

If onThe serious way Mark talked about the rule reminded Charlay what a marvelous age ten was. And Charley thought it was a pity that everybody couldn't stay ten for the rest of their lives. I everybody were ten, Charley thought, meybe rules and common decency and horse sense would have a Chinaman's chance. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

There is onslaught is the accelerating momentum of technologies and instrumental mentalities that are exterminating spontaneity, undermining love and common decency. It's a thief of time and includes all the palpable and subtle violations of body, mind, and spirit done in the name of science, government, enterprise, progress, and profit. — Stephanie Mills

This is why I say that the individual's most potent weapon is a stubborn belief in the triumph of common decency. — Paul Rusesabagina

Should a woman keep her pants on in the streets or not? Shall she remove them, say, at the moment of going to church, for a more intimate reminder of her sexuality in relation to God? What difference does it make if that woman is a lemon vendor and sells you lemons in the streets without using underwear? Moreover, what difference would it make if she sits down to write theology without underwear? The Argentinian woman theologian and the lemon vendors may have some things in common and others not. In common, they have centuries of patriarchal oppression, in the Latin American mixture of clericalism, militarism and the authoritarianism of decency, that is, the sexual organisation of the public and private spaces of society. However, — Marcella Althaus-Reid

Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency. — H.L. Mencken