Degrade Me Quotes & Sayings

Yet living and dying, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty, and so forth are equally the lot of good men and bad. Things like these neither elevate nor degrade; and therefore they are no more good than they are evil. — Marcus Aurelius

The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow. — W. H. Auden

The function of our Government is to insure to all its citizens, now and hereafter, their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If we of this generation destroy the resources from which our children would otherwise derive their livelihood, we reduce the capacity of our land to support a population, and so either degrade the standard of living or deprive the coming generations of their fight to life on this continent. — Theodore Roosevelt

There will be little drudgery in this better ordered world. Natural power harnessed in machines will be the general drudge. What drudgery is inevitable will be done as a service and duty for a few years or months out of each life; it will not consume nor degrade the whole life of anyone. — H.G.Wells

I am not living my life to impress anyone, not of a big head to degrade anyone, not of negative thoughts to influence anyone. But a positive mind to inspire the people that surrounds me and the world. — Henry Johnson Jr

Hollywood is a showman's paradise. But showmen make nothing; they exploit what someone else has made. The publisher and the play producer are showmen too; but they exploit what is already made. The showmen of Hollywood control the making - and thereby degrade it. For the basic art of motion pictures is the screenplay; it is fundamental, without it there is nothing. Everything derives from the screenplay, and most of that which derives is an applied skill which, however adept, is artistically not in the same class with the creation of a screenplay. — Raymond Chandler

For human beings to destroy the biological diversity of God's creation; for human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for human beings to contaminate the earth's waters, its land, its air, and its life -- these are sins. — Patriarch Bartholomew

Genius, when employed in works whose tendency it is to demoralize and to degrade us, should be contemplated with abhorrence rather than with admiration; such a monument of its power, may indeed be stamped with immortality, but like the Coliseum at Rome, we deplore its magnificence because we detest the purposes for which it was designed. — Charles Caleb Colton

No waiting the beyond, no peering toward it,
but longing to degrade not even death;
we shall learn earthliness, and serve its ends,
to feel its hands about us like a friend's. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Degrade first the Arts if you'd Mankind Degrade. Hire Idiots to Paint with cold light & hot shade: Give high Price for the worst, leave the best in disgrace, And with Labours of Ignorance fill every place. — William Blake

It's not that I refuse to look at the world around me, but that I refuse to pretend it's anymore important than everything else, you know what I mean? The moments from the past or from the future, the unreal scenes from tales, dreams, the projects we push aside each day that exist in the doubt we stop having in order to live--they're all worlds as true as this one, and I neither abandon or degrade them. So, I suppose that if I live in so many spaces at once, being absent from this one from time to time should be excusable, don't you think? — Gustavo Faveron Patriau

Do not degrade me in the military uniform I wear for it represents the love I have for my country, and the sacrifices myself and millions of other American soldiers make everyday to protect the freedom we enjoy by living in the United States of America. — Larry David

I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now so he shall never know how I love him and that not because he's handsome Nelly but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of his and mine are the same and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning or frost from fire. — Emily Bronte

No one can degrade us except ourselves. — Booker T. Washington

Tshe suffering of adversity does not degrade you but exalts you. Human tribulation teaches you; it does not destroy you. The more we are afflicted in this world, the greater is our assurance for the next. The more we sorrow in the present, ..the greater will be our joy in the future. — Isidore Of Seville

I will permit no man to narrow & degrade my sould by making me hate him. — Booker T. Washington

Poverty cannot deprive us of many consolations. It cannot rob us of the affection we have for each other, or degrade us in our own opinion, of in that of any person, whose opinion we ought to value. — Ann Radcliffe

I mean, if you degrade someone, you isolate them, you control them, you call them names, you demean them. That's a horrible existence for people. — Phil McGraw

Let me counsel you to remember that a lady, whether so called form birth or only from fortune, should never degrade herself by being put on a level with writers, and such sort of people. — Fanny Burney

And she looked upon the mirror that was given as a gift. She hated everything about it, from the circular size of it, to the color, and the wooden frame that held it in place. But mostly, she hated looking at herself. Especially into this one that had a scratch on its glass surface, which would reflect back to her face. And as she looked, it would cut her as the words her father would often say, in telling her she was ugly. — Anthony Liccione

Many otherwise decent men and women could find no other solution. They are willing to degrade themselves to their basest levels to prevent the traditional laborer from rising in status or, to put it bluntly, from "winning," even though what he wins has been rightfully his from the moment he was born into the human race. I — John Howard Griffin

Education in the United States is a passion and a paradox. Millions want it, and commend it, and are busy about it. At the same time they degrade it by trying to get it free of charge and free of work. — Jacques Barzun

One pets what one degrades; and one has to support what one has enfeebled — Phyllis Bottome

Sometimes it is our mistakes that make us the best among men in the world. if we listen to the voices of the world, they speak not to degrade us but to encourage us to overcome that which we have been ultimately blessed with ... for what more could we lose if we never choose to overcome anything? I tell you that you are dead if you are foolish enough to not try. — Danish Sayanee

Our health care approaches squander billions on extravagant treatment regimes that end up accomplishing little, as a society we refuse to adopt the small, even tiny adjustments that could easily reduce the clawing uncertainties that now degrade millions. — Robert Martensen

Stay with me...opponents of gay marriage claim that granting equal legal rights to gay couples would degrade the sanctity of a sacred familial institution. What they don't seem to notice is that Who Wants to Marry A Multi-Millionaire?, Married By America and the Bachelor have been degrading the notion of marriage on prime time for an entire decade... — Jennifer L. Pozner

Scientific and technological "solutions" which poison the environment or degrade the social structure and man himself are of no benefit, no matter how brilliantly conceived or how great their superficial attraction. — E.F. Schumacher

I Dream I am from a clash of Color, From an idea of love, modeled for others' perception. I see me as I am, but am hidden from others' views. I am who I am, but a living contradiction to my peers. I see life as a blessing, a gift granted to me. Why should my tint describe me? Why should my culture degrade me? Why should the ignorance of another conjure my presence? Too many times I've been disappointed by the looks, By the sneers and misconceptions of the people who don't get me, Who don't understand why it hurts. I dream of a place of glory and freedom, Of losing the weight of oppression on my back. I dream of the enlightenment of people, Of the opening of their eyes. I dream for acceptance, And for the blessing of feeling special just once. One moment of glory . . . for the true virtue in my life. For the glimmer of freedom, and a rise in real pride. — Glenn E. Singleton

Degrade him from what position? As a happy, hard-working, goods-consuming citizen he's perfect. Of course, if you choose some other standard than ours, then perhaps you might say he was degraded. But you've got to stick to one set of postulates. You can't play Electro-magnetic Golf according to rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. — Aldous Huxley

It's only through the degradation of the soul that you can know who you really are; when all else is stripped away, leaving you bare." Somehow, his black eyes darkened, the venom in his words more deadly than a viper's bite. "Let me degrade you, Katherine. — Dianna Hardy

[I]t's impossible to evade the fact that Endless War will inevitably degrade the citizenry of the country that engages in it. A country which venerates its military above all other institutions, which demands that its soldiers be spoken of only with religious-like worship, and which continuously indoctrinates its population to believe that endless violence against numerous countries is necessary and just - all by instilling intense fear of the minorities who are the target of that endless violence - will be a country filled with citizens convinced of the virtues and nobility of aggression. — Glenn Greenwald

Family members have a personal stake in honoring and mourning their dead and objecting to unwarranted public exploitation that, by intruding upon their own grief, tends to degrade the rites and respect they seek to accord to the deceased person who was once their own. — Anthony Kennedy

The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities ... A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions
one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true. — Oscar Wilde

Words Are The Ones Used To Degrade And Demean Another Human Being — Karlyle Tomms

People try to get out of themselves and to escape from the man. This is folly; instead of transforming themselves into angels, they turn into beast; instead of lifting, they degrade themselves. These transcendental humors frighten me, like lofty and inaccessible heights. — Michel De Montaigne

Random mutations much more easily debilitate genes than improve them, and that this is true even of the helpful mutations. Let me emphasize, our experience with malaria's effects on humans (arguably our most highly studied genetic system) shows that most helpful mutations degrade genes. What's more, as a group the mutations are incoherent, meaning that they are not adding up to some new system. They are just small changes - mostly degradative - in pre-existing, unrelated genes. The take-home lesson is that this is certainly not the kind of process we would expect to build the astonishingly elegant machinery of the cell. If random mutation plus selective pressure substantially trashes the human genome, why should we think that it would be a constructive force in the long term? There is no reason to think so. — Michael J. Behe

She drew back from the spectacle of my humiliation and of her triumph. The sudden silence that had fallen upon me seemed to frighten her. "I spared you, at the time," she said. "I would have spared you now, if you had not forced me to speak." She moved away as if to leave the room-- and hesitated before she got to the door. "Why did you come here to humiliate yourself?" she asked. "Why did you come here to humiliate me?" She went on a few steps, and paused once more. "For God's sake, say something!" she exclaimed, passionately. "If you have any mercy left, don't let me degrade myself in this way! Say something--and drive me out of the room! — Wilkie Collins

They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is within me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me ... — Frederick Douglass

If someone does me injury I must desire that this injury shall not degrade me. I must desire this out of love for him who inflicts it, in order that he may not really have done evil. — Simone Weil

The soul that is within me no man can degrade. — Frederick Douglass

It is easier to understand if you think of it in terms of music. Sometimes a man enjoys a symphony. Elsetimes he finds a jig more suited to his taste.
The same holds true for lovemaking. One type is suited to the deep cushions of a twilight forest glade. Another comes quite naturally tangled in the sheets of narrow beds upstairs in inns. Each woman is like an instrument, waiting to be learned, loved, and finely played, to have at last her own true music made.
Some might take offense at this way of seeing things, not understanding how a trouper views his music. They might think I degrade women. They might consider me callous, or boorish, or crude.
But those people do not understand love, or music, or me. — Patrick Rothfuss

If you take a perfectly well-adjusted normal person of any age from anywhere in the country and stick them in L.A., within about a week I do believe that a lot of their values and morals will start to degrade. — Chris Eigeman

Inspiration is incompatible with selfish desire. Whoever wants something for himself sets truth aside. Such aims can only degrade work. — Antonin Sertillanges

Other anatomical changes associated with long-duration space flight are definitely negative: the immune system weakens, the heart shrinks because it doesn't have to strain against gravity, eyesight tends to degrade, sometimes markedly (no one's exactly sure why yet). The spine lengthens as the little sacs of fluid between the vertebrae expand, and bone mass decreases as the body sheds calcium. Without gravity, we don't need muscle and bone mass to support our own weight, which is what makes life in space so much fun but also so inherently bad for the human body, long-term. — Chris Hadfield

What right have you to take the word wealth, which originally meant 'well-being,' and degrade and narrow it by confining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by money. — John Ruskin

Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual world ... in spirits which the very bullfrogs in our meadows would blackball. Their evil genius is seeing how low it can degrade them. The hooting of owls, the croaking of frogs, is celestial wisdom in comparison. — Henry David Thoreau

It is one thing to kill someone. It is another to degrade and humiliate, to strip away a person's dignity like stripping away flesh. One made a man a murderer. The other made him a monster. — Amy Harmon

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. — Booker T. Washington

A man engrossed in sensual pleasures may form a mistaken out look
upon life and
think that he enjoys life more than others do. But soon he realizes his
mistake as not long
after this he is reduced to a mere slave to his blind passions,
He is doomed to a perpetual
life of deprivation and restlessness, for animal desires once run ra
mpant are never
satisfied: they are rather sharpened all the more and degrade ma
n to lower levels of
animalism where all his efforts are focused on one object: how to
derive the maximum
possible sensual pleasure in life? — Mohammad Qutub

As the many male victims of rape in the regime's disgusting jails can testify, this state-run pathology of sexual repression and sexual sadism is not content to degrade women only. — Christopher Hitchens

Today, we are tabling a motion seeking the support of the House for the government's decision to renew our military mission against ISIL for up to an additional 12 months. Our objectives remain the same: we intend to continue to degrade the capabilities of ISIL, that is, to degrade its ability to engage in military movements of scale, to operate bases in the open, to expand its presence in the region, and to propagate attacks outside the region. — Stephen Harper

We're not locked in to these conditions that degrade the environment, and jeopardize the future of our children. — Dennis Kucinich

We are naturally moral beings, but our environments can enhance - or, sadly, degrade - this innate moral sense. — Paul Bloom

There are two ways to become famous. Degrade yourself or have talent. The first way is easier. — Gary Janetti

The grand design of nature perceived broadly in four dimensions, including the forces that move the universe and created man, with special focus on evolution in our own biosphere, is something intrinsically good that it is right to preserve and enhance, and wrong to destroy and degrade. — Roger Wolcott Sperry

I find it difficult to accept that it is the will of God that humanity should degrade, deface, desolate, and ultimately perhaps destroy His Creation on Earth. Yet this is the course on which we are embarked. — Russell E. Train

Monster. And yet ... For her friends, for her family, she would gladly be a monster. For Rowan, for Dorian, for Nehemia, she would debase and degrade and ruin herself. — Sarah J. Maas

We degrade Providence too much by attributing our ideas to it out of annoyance at being unable to understand it. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It is not true that sex degrades women ... if it is any good. — Steve Coogan

To introduce unconverted persons to the church, is to weaken and degrade it; and therefore an apparent gain may be a real loss. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Of the two, I prefer those who render vice lovable to those who degrade virtue. — Joseph Joubert

You degrade us and then ask why we are degraded. You shut our mouths and ask why we don't speak. You close your colleges and seminaries against us and then ask why we don't know. — Frederick Douglass

When there are so many people willing to degrade women so horrifically just for having the nerve to express an opinion, it doesn't take long for us to regress into silence. — Clementine Ford

We ought to be listening to see who the world-system wants to devalue and degrade, most often first with words, so that we can know for whom we should be speaking and standing. — Russell D. Moore

There is only one way to degrade mankind permanently and that is to destroy language. — Northrop Frye

That God is the sum of all created things. Nature and God are one, so that whoever touches a leaf or a stone touches God. That is of course to degrade the glory of the incorruptible Deity and, in an effort to make all things divine, banish all divinity from the world entirely. — A.W. Tozer