Quotes & Sayings About Decency

He dumped me again!' She narrows her eyes on Tom accusingly. I drop my bag by my desk and watch as Victoria fires all sorts of accusations at a very guilty looking Tom. 'Don't ask me to come out with you ever again,' she spits, pointing her pen at him. 'Friday, you cleared off with the scientist, and last night you didn't even have the decency to go home with the same man!'

'Tom!' I gasp sarcastically. 'I thought the scientist was your soul mate?'

'He still might be,' Tom defends himself in a high pitched voice. 'I'm just sampling what's on offer before I decide on what to invest in. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

Yes, I pray and go to church and read my Bible. But sometimes I shake my fist at God. It's not the picture of peace I realize, and I certainly make no claims of wearing the armor of God. I'm lucky if I can get the underwear of decency on, all right? — Rene Gutteridge

Morals are private. Decency is public. — Rita Mae Brown

Personally, I'm tired of hearing the whole have-you-no-decency routine from people who have made quite clear that they possess none themselves. — Glenn Reynolds

Writing of only one small part of the broader problem, namely the single-minded pursuit of individualistic 'rights,' [Don] Feder is not wrong to conclude:

Absent a delicate balance--rights and duties, freedom and order--the social fabric begins to unravel. The rights explosion of the past three decades has taken us on a rapid descent to a culture without civility, decency, or even that degree of discipline necessary to maintain an advanced industrial civilization. Our cities are cesspools, our urban schools terrorist training camps, our legislatures brothels where rights are sold to the highest electoral bidder. — D. A. Carson

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

Miriva refused to believe that human decency should be a privilege given only to a small few, and when she complained to her mother that she did not want to be a broodmare for the sake of alliances between the villages, her mother slapped her and sent her to the fields to pick mehazi beans — Ash Gray

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

There are people who carry decency and optimism around with them, who seem to cleanse every atmosphere they settle in, and you can't tell such people things, it is too disruptive. — Alice Munro

Young people are moving away from feeling guilty about sleeping with somebody to feeling guilty if they are *not* sleeping with someone. — Margaret Mead

Did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god i'm glad i'm dead because death is always better than dishonor? did they say i'm glad i died to make the world safe for democracy? did they say i like death better than losing liberty? did any of them ever say it's good to think i got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? did any of them ever say look at me i'm dead but i died for decency and that's better than being alive? did any of them ever say here i am i've been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it's wonderful to die for your native land? did any of them say hurray i died for womanhood and i'm happy see how i sing even though my mouth is choked with worms? — Dalton Trumbo

The most painful part of street life is the loss of dignity, and that sends people over the edge. Dignity is the glue that holds the mind, body, and spirit together, and once that is gone, the person breaks apart, held together only by skin. Street life corrodes the decency that lines the soul of every wakeful human. — Kristina Wandzilak

But you could've at least told me. Instead of dropping me like a one night stand, you could've had the decency to break up with me instead of leaving me wondering for years ... — Gayle Forman

My decency is simply a pose and so is my generosity. — M. T. Panchal

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

The story of Daniel Lord and the Legion of Decency goes to a central contention of this book: in the United States, it is industrial structure that determines the limits of free speech. — Tim Wu

Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity. — Cornel West

I am not a member of the chamber of commerce for show business, believe me, but there are some really good people in the business, and [Tom] Hanks has this everyman decency onscreen, but he actually is that guy. — Kurt Fuller

You should have had the decency to die when you needed to."
"Sorry," I admitted. "I've been going through a bit of a rebellious streak. I swear it's almost over. — Ally Carter

In addition to fines, violators of decency standards could be required to air public service announcements serving educational and informational needs of children. — Charles W. Pickering

I had met plain women, even ugly women, whose physical shortcomings had been remedied by the spirit within, their decency and kindness even effecting a kind of transformation upon them, softening the bluntness of their features. This was not such a woman. The blight was inside her, and no restyling of her hair, no careful use of cosmetics, no pretty dresses could have made her any less unsettling than she was. — John Connolly

I attended the public schools.And I have happy memories and strong memories of those days and good memories of the good sense and the decency of my friends and my neighbors. — Samuel Alito

I'm under the impression that this notion of decency is disappearing from our society where conflicts are made worse on cinema and on television, where people are nasty and cruel on the Internet and where, in general, everybody seems to be very angry. — Helen Mirren

Our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty. The objective is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all other human beings and all other living creatures. — Gaylord Nelson

A good many of our higher-bracket businessmen might have been just as rich, just as powerful, but more respected and infinitely happier, if they had taken the slower and longer road of absolute ethical integrity and moral decency. — Og Mandino

The first monster that an audience has to be scared of is the filmmaker. They have to feel in the presence of someone not confined by the normal rules of propriety and decency. — Wes Craven

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

I understand the most profound and simplest Truth of all: Any time any of us reaches out, any time we pour even a drop of love, compassion, simple human decency (no matter how small; how seemingly insignificant) into the sea of earthly existence - we are, each and every one of us - the being called Mercy. — J.M. DeMatteis

My cares and my inquiries are for decency and truth, and in this I am wholly occupied. — Horace

She answered: please believe me, what has happened in my family is not what you think. I can say only this - that everything I learned about human decency I learned here. I learned nothing from you except how to be suspicious. I didn't know what hate was until I lived among you and saw you hating every day. They even had to pass laws to keep you from hating. I despise your quick answers, your slogans in the subways, and most of all I despise your lack of good manners: you'll never have 'em as long as you exist. — Harper Lee

I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way of preaching in the fields, of which Whitfield set me an example on Sunday; having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin, if it had not been done in a church. — John Wesley

As a moral and social institution, a weekly rest is invaluable. It is a quiet domestic reunion for the bustling sons of toil. It ensures the necessary vacation in those earthly and turbulent anxieties and affections, which would otherwise become inordinate and morbid. It brings around a season of periodical neatness and decency, when the soil of weekly labour is laid aside, and men meet each other amidst the decencies of the sanctuary, and renew their social affections. But above all, a Sabbath (one day of rest in seven) is necessary for man's moral and religious interests. — Robert Dabney

The only difference between Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. is that at least Vegas has the decency to admit the town is full of hookers and crooks. — Glenn Beck

Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

But Bill Clinton had the good taste to lie about his sexual peccadillos. He had the honor and the decency to want to cover it up. — Lynn Samuels

Morality, taken as apart from religion, is but another name for decency of sin. — Horace Bushnell

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

Trust ran both ways. How could he ask her to trust him when he hardly trusted her?
He would trust her, in her love, in her strength, in her decency and fortitude.
And when the time came, he would find the strength in himself. — Sherry Thomas

I wanted to do something decent at last, and I wanted to be rewarded for my decency.
p 284 — Frank Huyler

Nothing is more heart-breaking than the demise of decency. — Guo Moruo

There is no need to be longwinded as a pastor, but there is a difference between being longwinded and preaching for a long time. Preachers should be conscious of time because God does everything in decency and order; nonetheless, God's word is not on the clock! — Monica Johnson

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

I love our shared island, our shared Ireland and its core decency. I love it for its imagination and its celebration of the endless possibilities for our people. — Michael D. Higgins

Love always seeks for betterment, for ways of making life more workable, joyful, whole, and beautiful. Love examines every option available to bring about an improvement in life. This kind of discernment is an act of decency, not an act of judgment. Rigid philosophies of judgment will seek to establish structure as a substitute for decency, control as a substitute for trust, and the mind as a substitute for higher awareness. — Glenda Green

I feel lousy about the pain that I've caused my wife and kids. I feel guilty and conscience-stricken, and all of those things you think sentimental, but which my generation calls simple human decency. And I miss my home, because I'm beginning to get scared shitless, because all of a sudden it's closer to the end than the beginning, and death is suddenly a perceptible thing to me, with definable features. — William Holden

I had wished to find in philosophy and religion a remedy for my disgrace; I searched out an asylum to secure me from love ... duty, reason and decency, which upon other occasions have some power over me, are here useless. The Gospel is a language I do not understand when it opposes my passion ... but when love has once been sincere how difficult it is to determine to love no more! 'Tis a thousand times more easy to renounce the world than love. I hate this deceitful, faithless world; I think no more of it ... — Pierre Abelard

I want the young people to pay attention because, see, back when I first met Barack, we started dating, he had everything going for him. All right, ladies, listen to this. This is what I want you to be looking for. Yes, he was handsome-still is. I think so. He was charming, talented, and oh-so smart, truly. But that is not why I married him. Now, see, I want the fellas to pay attention to this. You all listening? What truly made me fall in love with Barack Obama was his character. You hear me? It was his character. It was his decency, his honesty, his compassion and conviction. — Michelle Obama

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

There are few things more discomfiting than a spontaneous outburst of genuine decency from someone you're determined to dislike for no good reason. — Gregory David Roberts

On matters of race, on matters of decency, baseball should lead the way. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

The best place for discovering what a man is is the heart of the desert. Your plane has broken down, and you walk for hours, heading for the little fort at Nutchott. You wait for the mirages of thirst to gape before you. But you arrive and you find an old sergeant who has been isolated for months among the dunes, and he is so happy to be found that he weeps. And you weep, too. In the arching immensity of the night, each tells the story of his life, each offers the other the burden of memories in which the human bond is discovered. Here two men can meet, and they bestow gifts upon each other with the dignity of ambassadors. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Most of my heroes are just decent people. Decency is rare and underrated. — Sherman Alexie

Stories don't teach us to be good; it isn't as simple as that. They show us what it feels like to be good, or to be bad. They show us people like ourselves doing right things and wrong things, acting bravely or acting meanly, being cruel or being kind, and they leave it up to our own powers of empathy and imagination to make the connection with our own lives. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. It isn't like putting a coin in a machine and getting a chocolate bar; we're not mechanical, we don't respond every time in the same way ...
The moral teaching comes gently, and quietly, and little by little, and weighs nothing at all. We hardly know it's happening. But in this silent and discreet way, with every book we read and love, with every story that makes its way into our heart, we gradually acquire models of behaviour and friends we admire and patterns of decency and kindness to follow.
Philip Pullman from his Award Lecture, Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award Recipient 2005 — Philip Pullman

Without moral progress, stimulated by faith in God, immorality in all its forms will proliferate and strangle goodness and human decency. Mankind will not be able to fully express the potential nobility of the human soul unless faith in God is strengthened. — James E. Faust

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

Have you no honor? No decency? No damn brains? You don't kill me with bullets. You just piss me off. And you just ruined my friggin' favorite coat. For that, you die. (Wulf) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Thus the young ladies are as much ashamed of being cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ornaments, beyond decency and cleanliness: neither did I perceive any difference in their education made by their difference of sex, only that the exercises of the females were not altogether so robust; and — Jonathan Swift

The fairest state of them all, this tranquil and beloved domain - what has it now become? A nursery for Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas. A monstrous breeding farm to supply the sinew to gratify the maw of Eli Whitney's infernal machine, cursed be that blackguard's name! In such a way is our human decency brought down, when we pander all that is in us noble and just to the false god which goes by the vile name of Capital! Oh, Virginia, woe betide thee! Woe, thrice woe, and ever damned in memory be the day when poor black men in chains first trod upon thy sacred strand! — William Styron

Inej was always trying to wring little bits of decency from him. — Leigh Bardugo

To feel pity, to be carried away by the pleasure of hearing a clever argument, to listen to the claims of decency are three things that are entirely against the interests of an imperial power. — Thucydides

It really is amazing how some young people feel that short stature and small minds are a sign of superiority. I wonder what ever happened to decency and courtesy? — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

In the horrifying calculus of self-deception, the greater the pain we inflict on others, the greater the need to justify it to maintain our feelings of decency and self-worth. — Carol Tavris

We fight for autonomy over so many areas of our lives - for decency and democracy and freedom, for suffrage, for the right to have some say over our lives, some control - and then in the central question of what we are to do with our days, with our working lives, we give all that freedom away in return for a pay cheque. And are content to be bored and obedient, resentful and uninvolved and tired. This is such a standard, universally accepted feature of the modern world - that we will dislike and be bored by our work - that we have forgotten to notice that it doesn't make any sense. — John Lanchester

If you have been told that you are late and unreliable more than once, then not only do you lack punctuality, but you also lack decency and seriousness, which is certainly very annoying. — Auliq Ice

I've been nothing but kind to you. I'm not some sort of monster."
"No, you're the man who sits idly by, congratulating yourself on your decency, while the monster eats his fill. At least a monster has teeth and a spine. — Leigh Bardugo

So we may well believe that the King's men were shriven on the night before they fought. Something of the young man's vision had penetrated to his captains and his soldiers. Something of the new ideal of the Round Table which was to be born in pain, something about doing a hateful and dangerous action for the sake of decency
for they knew that the fight was to be fought in blood and death without reward. They would get nothing but the unmarketable conscience of having done what they ought to do in spite of fear
something which wicked people have often debased by calling it glory with too much sentiment, but which is glory all the same. This idea was in the hearts of the young men who knelt before the God-distributing bishops
knowing that the odds were three to one, and that their own warm bodies might be cold at sunset. — T.H. White

There is not much mental distance between a feeling of having been screwed and the ethic of total retaliation, or at least the kind of random revenge that comes with outraging the public decency. — Hunter S. Thompson

It was a time of turmoil at colleges and universities. And I saw some very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly. And I couldn't help making a contrast between some of the worst of what I saw on the campus and the good sense and the decency of the people back in my own community. — Samuel Alito

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

Decency can push almost any interaction into the cooperative frame. — Steven D. Levitt

A woman without a degree of decency and delicacy is unsexed. — Charlotte Mary Yonge

The world would be a much better place if people treated one another with decency and respect. There is no reason to be cruel to someone who is down or has any sort of problem, physical or otherwise. Trust me, man. I know. And today, if you're being bullied, you do not have to just suck it up. If you have or your child has a problem, tell someone in authority and talk about the pain. There are a lot of people out there who provide helpful guidance and support, like counselors, spiritual leaders, teachers, coaches, etc., all you need to do is reach out. Bullying is a problem that has really left its mark on our society, and I know there is more we can all do to stop it. — Dick Vitale

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies. — William Faulkner

It seemed that young people, despite their fundamental decency, now had to buy into a mind-set which made viciousness and treachery come easy. — Irvine Welsh

What happened to our nation on a September day set in motion the first great struggle of a new century. The enemies who struck us are determined and they are resourceful. They will not be stopped by a sense of decency or a hint of conscience
but they will be stopped. — George W. Bush

The only goal is the decency of means. — Stefan Themerson

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

Say what you will about 'decency' but I happen to be a fan of skimpy tube tops and really short skirts. — Cyma Rizwaan Khan

We've defined decency down now that we look at the entertainment value of it, whether the acting is good, the writing is good, the story is good, no matter the depravity, we'll watch it. — Rush Limbaugh

I just
I know my own heart and I love you, Turner. And if you have even the tiniest shred of decency, you'll say something because I've said everything I possibly can, and I can't bear the silence, and
oh for heaven's sake! Will you at least blink?
He couldn't even manage that. — Julia Quinn

I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks: the ghost of a linnen decency yet haunts us. — John Milton

Watch it! It was robbed from other beings so it's HOT 'MERCHANDISE' and it's against the Law ... the LAW OF DECENCY!!! Stay within this Law, steer clear of wool/pearl/silk/ fish bone/ fur/ivory/coral/ down/beeswax/honey/ cashmere/ lanolin/ feathers/ camel hair/flesh/milk/ eggs/ fish/ seafood/ other!!! — Adela Popescu

Remember: It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you love to get stoned watching, or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever. — Kevin Smith

Remember that in life you ought to behave as at a banquet. Suppose that something is carried round and is opposite to you. Stretch out your hand and take a portion with decency. Suppose that it passes by you. Do not detain it. Suppose that it is not yet come to you. Do not send your desire forward to it, but wait till it is opposite to you. — Epictetus

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

I always wanted to be an outrage to public decency and a threat to women. And this is one of the few occupations where you're not only allowed that, but you're encouraged. — David Lee Roth

Don't be afraid to go to your library and read every book as long as any document does not offend your own ideas of decency. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried - who tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out. — Paul Newman

When we create hope and opportunity in the lives of others, we allow love, decency and promise to triumph over cowardice and hate. — Kirsten Gillibrand

Life and study have persuaded me of the openness of history. There is no inevitability in history. Thinking about what might have happened, what could have happened, is a necessary element in trying to understand what did happen. And if, as I believe, individual acts of decency and courage make a difference, then they need to be recorded and remembered. — Fritz Stern

She was his beacon to what others called decency, not because she told him how to act but because she made him want to try. — Thea Harrison

The deeper he got into his medical career, the more Burry felt constrained by his problems with other people in the flesh. He briefly tried to hide in pathology, where the people had the decency to be dead, but that didn't work. — Michael Lewis

- How dare you, I repeat, In disregard of all decency, call me a goose?
- I spit on your head, Ivan Ivanovich! What are you screaming so for? — Nikolai Gogol

He acted every part of an orator, and I could observe many periods of threatenings, and others of promises, pity, and kindness. I answered in a few words, but in the most submissive manner, lifting up my left hand, and both my eyes to the sun, as calling him for a witness; and being almost famished with hunger, having not eaten a morsel for some hours before I left the ship, I found the demands of nature so strong upon me, that I could not forbear showing my impatience (perhaps against the strict rules of decency) by putting my finger frequently to my mouth, to signify that I wanted food. The hurgo — Jonathan Swift

That so unlikely an outcome should accrue to a man possessed of such limited talent and so many flaws, and one lacking in a sense of ethics and decency was one of the bitter ironies of history. — William Thomas Green Morton

Decency renders all things tolerable. — Joseph Marie, Baron De Gerando

Calvino remembered he had no food in the house and would have to go shopping on Sukhumvit Road. Then he planned to crawl into his bed and sleep, the kind of deep sleep without dreams or hopes, a sleep without regrets, without knowing or thinking how things got the way they are or how occasional fragments of decency escaped the forces of gravity. — Christopher G. Moore

Everyone's too busy having a good time to care about anyone else."
"This sucks," Alex said sullenly. "If someone murders you and you get revived and come back to wreak vengeance on your killers, they could at least have the decency to notice you. — Meg Cabot

At least, the sun had the decency to stay the hell away from us. — Jandy Nelson

I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence
providing they have the facts, providing they have the information. — Studs Terkel