Degrades Quotes & Sayings

Money degrades all the gods of man and converts them into commodities. — Karl Marx

My primary object is to defend and advance a principle in which I see the only possible relief from much that enthralls and degrades and distorts, turning light to darkness and good to evil, rather than to gage a philosopher or weigh a philosophy. Yet the examination I propose must lead to a decisive judgment upon both. — Henry George

Anger is like an intoxicant; it reduces man and degrades him to the level of an animal. — Sathya Sai Baba

No human being can control love, and no one is to blame either for feeling it or for losing it. What alone degrades a woman is falsehood. — George Sand

Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me. — Walt Whitman

The whip degrades; a severe father teaches his children to dissemble; their love is pretense, and their obedience a species of self-defense. Fear is the father of lies. — Robert Green Ingersoll

If a man is not peaceful and non-violent, whichever religion he belongs to, he is not a man! Violence degrades man to a low-degree creature! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

If you would rise, shun luxury, for luxury lowers and degrades. — Saint John Chrysostom

What more degrades woman today than that she so often seeks marriage as a support? Why is the holy sacrament of love, the sanctity of the family state, so often prostituted and destroyed, but because marriage is entered upon as a necessity or a convenience? And what can so place marriage on its only true basis of mutual love, mutual fitness, mutual esteem, as for woman to make herself independent of it as a mere means of subsistence? — Mary C. Ames

But very few ordeals are redemptive and I doubt if the descent into hell teaches anything new. It can only hasten processes which are already in existence, and usually this just means that it degrades. You see, in hell one lacks the energy for any good change. This indeed is the meaning of hell. — Iris Murdoch

Online petitions are built around getting as many signatures as possible. But the experience of taking them and forgetting about them degrades the importance. — Margaret D. Klein

But as the cerebellum degrades with age, so does the quality of memories. The memories are there, but they're not as good. — Bill Nye

There is no place in "our Army" for those who sexually harass or intimidate others, or whose use of alcohol or drugs degrades themselves and the soldiers around them. — Glen E. Morrell

In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished. The triumph of sin in 1865 would have stimulated and helped to civilize both sides. — H.L. Mencken

Even among the married, sexual satisfaction must not be sought in a way which disregards man's character as a person and degrades him to the animal level. — Francis Arinze

One degrades oneself sometimes in the effort not to be lonely. — John Fowles

We live in a culture that sells sex, promotes sex, and degrades sex, yet God calls His daughters to live as light in this darkness. — Marian Jordan Ellis

Keep your hands clean and pure from the infamous vice of corruption, a vice so infamous that it degrades even the other vices thatmay accompany it. Accept no present whatever; let your character in that respect be transparent and without the least speck, for as avarice is the vilest and dirtiest vice in private, corruption is so in public life. — Lord Chesterfield

Servitude degrades people to such a point that they come to like it. — Luc De Clapiers

Women, who are the prime victims of religion, and perhaps in some, stockholm syndrome effect, often form the most fervent advocates of the very thing that degrades them. I believe that in the end, it will be women who will turn this around. This should be the final stage of feminism. For a feminist to still believe in god is like a freed slave still living on the plantation. — Matthew Chapman

For God to be kept out of the classroom or out of America's public debate by nervous school administrators or overcautious politicians serves no one's interests. That restriction prevents people from drawing on this country's rich and diverse religious heritage for guidance, and it degrades the nation's moral discourse by placing a whole realm of theological reasoning out of bounds. The price of that sort of quarantine, at a time of moral dislocation, is - and has been - far too high. — Nancy Gibbs

Prostitution demoralizes men far more than women. Prostitution does not degrade the whole female sex, but only the luckless women that become its victims, and even those not to the extent generally assumed. But it degrades the character of the entire male world. — Friedrich Engels

All government, without exception, conceal from the people everything that might further their emancipation, and encourage all that degrades and demoralizes them: all manner of amusements of the senses, even physical means of stupefaction, such as tabacco and alcohol. — Leo Tolstoy

Done without love, any congress between man and woman degrades the creative intelligence that graces your humanity. — Janny Wurts

Be critical. Women have the right to say: This is surface, this falsifies reality, this degrades. — Tillie Olsen

Suppose, for instance, that the President of the United States has committed the crime of high treason; the House of Representatives impeaches him, and the Senate degrades him; he must then be tried by a jury, which alone can deprive him of his liberty or his life. — Alexis De Tocqueville

It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades. — Susan Sontag

Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion.But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began. — Emma Goldman

Music is part of us, and either ennobles or degrades our behavior. — Boethius

It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle. — Tom DeLay

My meaning is, that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades. — Charles Dickens

All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. — Oscar Wilde

But as I became more aware of same-sex relationships, I couldn't understand why they were supposed to be sinful, or why the Bible apparently condemned them. With most sins, it wasn't hard to pinpoint the damage they cause. Adultery violates a commitment to your spouse. Lust objectifies others. Gossip degrades people. But committed same-sex relationships didn't fit this pattern. Not only were they not harmful to anyone, they were characterized by positive motives and traits instead, like faithfulness, commitment, mutual love, and self-sacrifice. — Matthew Vines

Advertising degrades the people it appeals to; it deprives them of their will to choose. — Carrie Snow

Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew
not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew ... What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man
and turns them into commodities. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general. — Karl Marx

She who only finds her self-esteem
In others' admiration, begs an alms;
Depends on others for her daily food,
And is the very servant of her slaves;
Tho' oftentimes, in a fantastic hour,
O'er men she may a childish pow'r exert,
Which not ennobles but degrades her state. — Joanna Baillie

A wrong concept misleads the understanding; a wrong deed degrades the whole man, and may eventually demolish the structure of the human ego. — Muhammad Iqbal

The outsourcing of our memory to machines expands the amount of data to which we have access, but degrades our brain's own ability to remember things. — Douglas Rushkoff

If you've got the platform and the ability to make a difference, then this goes beyond 'should' and reaches the level of 'must.' You must make a difference or you squander the opportunity. Wasting the opportunity both degrades your own ability to contribute and, more urgently, takes something away from the rest of us. — Seth Godin

Liberty, when it degrades into licentiousness, begets confusion, and frequently ends in tyranny or some woeful confusion. — George Washington

The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war ... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage. — H.L. Mencken

The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client. — William S. Burroughs

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being. — Simone Weil

This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry? — Azar Nafisi

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people's thoughts, living by other people's standards, wearing practically what one may call other people's second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment. — Oscar Wilde

I'm calling for all responsible Americans to fight back and punish Pepsi for using a man who degrades women, who encourages substance abuse, and does all the things that hurt particularly the poor in our society. I'm calling for all Americans to say, hey Pepsi, I'm not drinking your stuff. You want to hang around with Ludacris (a rap singer that Pepsi planned to use for advertising), you do that, I'm not hanging around with you. Am I wrong to do that? — Bill O'Reilly

An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Common wisdom affirms against the drinking of whiskey during daylight hours, and while I can see the merits of the argument, it is not one to which I hold. True, a few fingers of liquor, or even a wide-stretched palm, degrades your ability to cope with the world's troubles, miseries and horrors; but it also makes you less concerned about them, and since the world is certain to throw more at you than you can handle regardless, I think it a more than equitable transaction. People call me the Warden.
People call me a lot of things, but the Warden is the only one you could say inside a church. — Daniel Polansky

Socialised humanity represses nature and degrades human nature; it takes life and waters it down - probably to control it - diluting existence with water that is lukewarm, sweet and murky. — Michael Leunig

Civilization degrades many in order to exalt the few. — Amos Bronson Alcott

This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

War may make a fool of man, but it by no means degrades him; on the contrary, it tends to exalt him, and its net effects are much like those of motherhood on women. — H.L. Mencken

Widowhood imposed by religion or custom is an unbearable yoke and defiles the home by secret vice and degrades religion. — Mahatma Gandhi

Nothing degrades a man do more than the allowed stoop so low as to hate someone — Martin Luther King Jr.

If Thought is capable of being classed with Electricity, or Will with chemical affinity, as a mode of motion, it seems necessary to fall at once under the second law of thermodynamics as one of the energies which most easily degrades itself, and, if not carefully guarded, returns bodily to the cheaper form called Heat. Of all possible theories, this is likely to prove the most fatal to Professors of History. — Henry Adams

Such poverty as we have today in all our great cities degrades the poor, and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in which they live. And whatever can degrade a neighborhood can degrade a country and a continent and finally the whole civilized world, which is only a large neighborhood. — George Bernard Shaw

There is nothing derogatory in any employment which ministers to the well-being of the race. It is the spirit that is carried into an employment that elevates or degrades it. — Horace Mann

Guilt once harbored in the conscious breast, intimidates the brave, degrades the great. — Samuel Johnson

The decision to give an indicative date for a return is a mistake. It degrades the process. It degrades human life. — David Trimble

I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves. — Christopher Hitchens

[The Truth Seeker is] Devoted to: science, morals, free thought, free discussions, liberalism, sexual equality, labor reform, progression, free education and whatever tends to elevate and emancipate the human race.
Opposed to: priestcraft, ecclesiasticism, dogmas, creeds, false theology, superstition, bigotry, ignorance, monopolies, aristocracies, privileged classes, tyranny, oppression, and everything that degrades or burdens mankind mentally or physically. — De Robigne Mortimer Bennett

We need to learn ... how war brutalises and degrades winners and losers alike and what happens to us when, having heedlessly waged war for no good reason, we are encouraged to inflate and demonise our enemies in order to justify that war's indefinite continuance. — Tony Judt

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

Slave power crushes freedom of speech and of opinion. Slave power degrades labor. Slave power is arrogant, is jealous and intrusive, is cruel, is despotic, not only over the slave but over the community, the state. — Elizabeth Van Lew

He that despairs degrades the Deity, and seems to intimate that He is insufficient, or not just to His word; and in vain hath read the scriptures, the world, and man. — Owen Feltham

Believing ourselves to be possessors of absolute truth degrades us: we regard every person whose way of thinking is different from ours as a monster and a threat and by so doing turn our own selves into monsters and threats to our fellows. — Octavio Paz

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest. — Henry David Thoreau

When working, my diet degrades to pizza three times a day, because I don't want to distract myself from anything. — Chuck Palahniuk

Having people like that in your service degrades such service, when they are going around the world like beggars." Such was the advice from her Majesty, Empress of the German Empire, on the subject of hiring Wolfgang Mozart. — Robert Spaethling

Tyranny brings ignorance and brutality with it. It degrades men from their just rank into the class of brutes; it damps their spirits; it suppresses art; it extinguishes every spark of noble ardor and generosity in the breasts of those who are enslaved by it; it makes naturally strong and great minds feeble and little, and triumphs over the ruins of virtue and humanity. — Jonathan Mayhew

Good is that which elevates the mind, and evil, is that which degrades the mind. Social virtue and vice are temporal entities. These things have nothing to do with a person's relationship with the Supreme. — Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar

Psychoanalysis is a technique we practice at our cost; psychoanalysis degrades our risks, our dangers, our depths; it strips us of our impurities, of all that made us curious about ourselves. — Emile M. Cioran

For me
obedience to another is the decay of self.
for though every being is similar
each being is different
and to herd our differences
under one law
degrades each self. — Charles Bukowski

Does evil come from inside ,from the dark depths of the human soul or does it come from outside ,from the objective conditions of human life?
This question divides all people into two large groups: believers and materialists. For believers all evil and good is in man. Hence denying violence because it's directed toward the outside, is a fight with an imaginary, nonexistent evil. Violence should be directed toward ourselves, inside, in the form of repentance or asceticism.
To assert that evil is outside, that a man is evil because the conditions in which he lives are bad, that changes in these conditions would bring changes in man,to insist that man is a result of outside circumstances, is from the religious point of view the most godless and the most inhuman idea which has ever appeared in the human mind. Such an opinion degrades man to a thing, to a helpless executor of outside, mechanical, unconscious forces. — Alija Izetbegovic

If all the sins of the flesh are worthy of condemnation because by them man allows himself to be dominated by that which he has of the animal nature, much more deserving of condemnation are the sins against nature by which man degrades his own animal nature ... — Thomas Aquinas

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker. — Annie Dillard

Motivating people, forcing them to your will, gives you a cynical attitude toward humanity. It degrades everything it touches. — Frank Herbert

Suffering degrades, embitters and enrages. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Wine is the source of the greatest evils among communities. It causes diseases, quarrels, seditions, idleness, aversion to labor, and family disorders ... It is a species of poison that causes madness. It does not make a man die, but it degrades him into a brute. Men may preserve their health and vigor without wine; with wine they run the risk of ruining their health and losing their morals. — Francois Fenelon

Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it. — George Sand

No genuine equality, no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any foundation save that of pecuniary independence. As a right over a man's subsistence is a power over his moral being, so a right over a woman's subsistence enslaves her will, degrades her pride and vitiates her whole moral nature. — Susan B. Anthony

Humanism is the affirmation of man as a free and responsible being. Nothing degrades man more than the proclamation of irresponsibility. Man is responsible, animals and things are not. — Alija Izetbegovic

Even healthy families need outside sources of moral guidance to keep those tensions from imploding
and this means, among other things, a public philosophy of gender equality and concern for child welfare. When instead the larger culture aggrandizes wife beaters, degrades women or nods approvingly at child slappers, the family gets a little more dangerous for everyone, and so, inevitably, does the larger world. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Every serious scientific worker is painfully conscious of this involuntary relegation to an ever-narrowing sphere of knowledge, which threatens to deprive the investigator of his broad horizon and degrades him to the level of a mechanic. — Albert Einstein

The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality
the man who lives to serve others
is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit. The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man, and he degrades the conception of love. But that is the essence of altruism — Ayn Rand

Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few. — Amos Bronson Alcott

If the society that we're talking about is a society that starts wars all over the world, degrades indigenous cultures, is misogynistic in itself, if that's the society we're talking about, then it's not a bad thing if hip-hop did degrade that society. — KRS-One

If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades it's meaning. — Bell Hooks

Men who have lived significant lives are men who never waited: not for money, security, ease, or women. Feel what you want to give most as a gift, to your woman and to the world, and do what you can to give it today. Every moment waited is a moment wasted, and each wasted moment degrades your clarity of purpose. — David Deida

When the will loves anything that is below it in dignity, it degrades itself. — Fulton J. Sheen

There are two types of laws, those that are just and those that are unjust. A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law ... Any law that uplifts the human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. — Martin Luther King Jr.

See yourself living in a new body. Hopeful = recovery. Happy = happier biochemistry. Stress degrades the bod. — Rhonda Byrne

The men who made the war were profuse in their praises of the man who kicked the P.M. out of his office and now degrades by his disloyal, dishonest and lying presence the greatest office in the State. — John Burns

The ascetic, for the greater glory of God, degrades and mortifies the flesh; Judas did the same with the spirit. He renounced honor, good, peace, the Kingdom of Heaven, as others, less heroically, renounced pleasure. — Jorge Luis Borges

If you ever do have to heed a forecast, keep in mind that its accuracy degrades rapidly as you extend it through time. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to a statue - or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and impoverishes. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Story is the mechanism by which we live, express, understand, and evolve. Story is more than just equipment for living - it's life itself. When a culture's stories are honest, authentic, and connected to the truth, the culture is strong, productive, and progressive. When a culture's stories stagnate and become derivative, deceptive, shallow, and unconnected to the energy of life, the culture erodes, degrades, and eventually perishes (although the people may not realize they're dead!). Stories are the manner by which we extract meaning out of the fibrous pulp of our everyday lives. And meaning is the spiritual oxygen that allows our soul to breathe. Without stories, life has no meaning. Without meaning, we cannot live. — Derek Rydall

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

You punk asshole. What was this? A game for you? This is my life's work you just annihilated and for what? Shits and giggles? Or was this nothing more than a fraternity prank? Please tell me that you didn't just ruin my integrity to get some kind of drinking points. This is something I've been working for since before you were born. How dare you make a mockery of me. I hope to God that one day someone degrades you like this so that you'll know, just once in your spoiled pompous life, what humiliation feels like! (Tory) — Sherrilyn Kenyon