Quotes & Sayings About Indecency

Symbolism erects a facade of respectability to hide the indecency of dreams. — Mason Cooley

If anyone had appeared in just a pair of boxer shorts or swimming trunks, the womenfolk would have had "an attack of the vapors" and the menfolk would have exploded in a rage at the indecency of it. What exactly "an attack of the vapors" was is unclear, because there is no such thing as womenfolk anymore, and there is certainly no such thing as an attack of the vapors. — Philip Ardagh

I think the man who designed this should have committed suicide. A man who can conceive a thing as beautiful as this should never allowed it to be erected. He should not want to exist. But he will let it be built, so that women will hang out diapers on his terraces, so that men will spit on his stairways and draw dirty pictures on his walls. He's given it to them and he's made it part of them, part of everything. He shouldn't have offered it for men like you to look at. For men like you to talk about. He's defiled his own work by the first word you'll utter about it. He's made himself worse than you are. You'll be committing only a mean little indecency, but he's committed a sacrilege. A man who knows what he must have known to produce this should not have been able to remain alive. — Ayn Rand

What solidarity we do find exists despite the society, against all its realities, as an unending struggle between the innate decency of man and the innate indecency of the society. Can we imagine how men would behave if this decency could find full release, if society earned the respect, even the love of the individual? — Murray Bookchin

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity - these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing. They are not ashamed. — Mark Twain

The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things - bad language and whatever - it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition. — George Carlin

The history of medicine proves that in so far as man seeks to know himself and face his whole nature, he has become free from bewildered fear, despondent shame, or arrant hypocrisy. As long as sex is dealt with in the current confusion of ignorance and sophistication, denial and indulgence, suppression and stimulation, punishment and exploitation, secrecy and display, it will be associated with a duplicity and indecency that lead neither to intellectual honesty nor human dignity. — Alfred Kinsey

Neither the state guards nor the municipal police stopped me. What they saw going by was no longer a man but the curious product of misfortune, something to which laws could not be applied. I had exceeded the bounds of indecency. — Jean Genet

One way in which all of us can help to combat the current wave of public indecency which threatens to undermine Western civilization is to concentrate upon and increase the solidarity of the family. This solidarity begins with a child at the mother's breast. — Grace Kelly

Nail up some indecency in plain sight over your door; from that time forward you will be rid of all respectable people,the most insupportable folk God has created. — Paul Gauguin

Rouvier was the Finance Minister; I knew him by sight, although I had not yet met him. He was not widely liked. Apart from the whiff of indecency that Lucien referred to, he was also rumoured to be less than straightforward in his dealings with his fellow men. To put it another way, he was devious even by the standards of politicians; a long and successful career awaited him. — Iain Pears

What I envy is not their skin but their insouciance. I envy the freedom to sin with only a little bit of consequence, to commit one selfish act and not have it mean the downfall of my entire people. Where indecency and mischief do not mean annihilation. — Kaitlyn Greenidge

When my face is flushed with blood, it becomes red and obscene. It betrays at the same time, through morbid reflexes, a bloody erection and a demanding thirst for indecency and criminal debauchery. — Georges Bataille

We must also acknowledge that the majority of the men and women of our time continue to live daily in situations of insecurity, with dire consequences. Certain pathologies are increasing, with their psychological consequences; fear and desperation grip the hearts of many people, even in the so-called rich countries; the joy of life is diminishing; indecency and violence are on the rise; poverty is becoming more and more evident. People have to struggle to live and, frequently, to live in an undignified way. — Pope Francis

Indecency in anything spoils it. And modesty in anything adorns it. — Ibn Majah

One thing is to have the protection of human rights for homosexuals and quite something else is this promotion of indecency. It would be immoral and unethical to deny the homosexuals their human rights. But it is also immoral to consider disorders as normal. None of these deviances are biological. They are acquired by fantasizing about them. — Ali Sina

We have done much in the last few years to destroy the severe limitations of Victorian delicacy, and all of us, from princesses and prime-ministers' wives downward, talk of topics that would have been considered quite gravely improper in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, some topics have, if anything, become more indelicate than they were, and this is especially true of the discussion of income, of any discussion that tends, however remotely, to inquire, Who is it at the base of everything who really pays in blood and muscle and involuntary submissions for your freedom and magnificence? This, indeed, is almost the ultimate surviving indecency. — H.G.Wells

Oh, sorry, I'm thinking about Cousin Mary. Talk about a dog. That girl was so ugly we had to put a bag over her head when we went to town so we wouldn't get arrested for public indecency. — Nick Wilgus

It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life?
Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ? — Alain De Botton

She was wearing a simple silver sheath cut within an inch of indecency, curving round her slender shoulders and then falling away to expose the smooth white skin of her back and just a hint of the soft round curve of her breasts. She had on no jewellery, only a pale wash of lipstick, and again the black halo of hair was arranged so that it looked almost wind tossed. Yet her dark tresses shone, framing her face with a soft, unearthly light. Next to the other women at the table, with their diamonds, heavy strands of pearls, and meticulously groomed faces and hair, she seemed feral and bewitching. The impact of her beauty lay in her confidence and her utter lack of self-awareness. In contrast, others appeared to be trying too hard, careful and staid. — Kathleen Tessaro

There is really nothing more unattractive than the sight of a young woman displaying a repulsive amount of arm. — Caroline Blackwood

She stood there, rooted to the spot, until he murmured, "Relax, this is all part of our cover."
His words were like ice water right in the face. He'd just kissed her as part of their cover. That brief brush over her lips and she didn't want to relax, she wanted to take all his clothes off. Peel that charcoal gray suit off him and kiss every inch of his ripped, naked body.
Instead of indulging in that insanity and getting arrested for public indecency - and tearing open old wounds - she took a small step back. Just like that, she could breathe again. — Katie Reus

Decency cannot be discussed without indecency! — George Bernard Shaw

In April war was declared with Germany. Wilson and his cabinet - a cabinet that in its lack of distinction was strangely reminiscent of the twelve apostles - let loose the carefully starved dogs of war, and the press began to whoop hysterically against the sinister morals, sinister philosophy, and sinister music produced by the Teutonic temperament. Those who fancied themselves particularly broad-minded made the exquisite distinction that it was only the German Government which aroused them to hysteria; the rest were worked up to a condition of retching indecency. Any song which contained the word "mother" and the word "kaiser" was assured of a tremendous success. At last every one had something to talk about - and almost every one fully enjoyed it, as though they had been cast for parts in a sombre and romantic play. — F Scott Fitzgerald

A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world, as a public indecency. — Miguel De Cervantes

Marriage, as practised by high society, is arranged indecency. — Nicolas Chamfort

Men have begun to observe and classify, they turn from creation to Criticism ... It is the Fashion to be a wit ... one must be able to conceal indecency with elegant diction; manners are everything, morals nothing. — James Branch Cabell

Most common people oft he market-place much prefer light literature to improving books. The problem is, that so many romances contain slanderous anecdotes about sovereigns and ministers or cast aspersions upon man's wives and daughters so that they are packed with sex and violence. Even worse are those writers of the breeze-and-moonlight school, who corrupt the young with pornography and filth. As for books of the beauty-and-talented-scholar type, a thousand are written to a single pattern and none escapes bordering on indecency. They are filled with allusions to handsome, talented young men and beautiful, refined girls in history; but in order to insert a couple of his own love poems, the author invents stereotyped heroes and heroines with the inevitable low character to make trouble between them like a clown in a play, and makes even the slave girls talk pedantic nonsense. So all these novels are full of contradictions and absurdly unnatural. — Cao Xueqin

If you have the indecency to steal my book, at least have the decency to write a review. — Grea Alexander

The Cockney has one oath, and one oath only, the most indecent in the language, which he uses on any and every occasion. Far different is the luminous and varied Western swearing, which runs to blasphemy rather than indecency. And after all, since men will swear, I think I prefer blasphemy to indecency; there is an audacity about it, an adventurousness and defiance that is better than sheer filthiness. — Jack London

The older one grows, the more one likes indecency. — Virginia Woolf

Is indecency more indecent if it is grave, or more indecent if it is gay? For my part, I belong to an old school in this matter. When a book or a play strikes me as a crime, I am not disarmed by being told that it is a serious crime. If a man has written something vile, I am not comforted by the explanation that he quite meant to do it. I know all the evils of flippancy; I do not like the man who laughs at the sight of virtue. But I prefer him to the man who weeps at the sight of virtue and complains bitterly of there being any such thing. I am not reassured, when ethics are as wild as cannibalism, by the fact that they are also as grave and sincere as suicide. — G.K. Chesterton

Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood. — William Shakespeare

But to betray her with battalion ... That is against decency, against Nature ... And for him, Christopher tietjens, to come down to the level of the men you met here! — Ford Madox Ford

Old age likes indecency. It's a sign of life. — Mason Cooley

Attacking the indecency of life in much of the Southern Hemisphere is no longer a matter of grace, of charity, of patronizing kindness. It is a matter of intense self-interest. — Anthony Lewis

Currently under FCC policy, indecency determinations hinge on two factors. First, material must describe or depict sexual or excretory organs or activities. Second, the material must be patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium. — Doug Ose

Subtle wits like to refresh themselves with a whiff of mild indecency. — Robertson Davies

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish. — Stephen Fry

She and her sister were dressed in purple, with gold buckles at their throats by way of brooches, and another gold buckle each at the end of hatpins which they wore through their grey hair in order apparently to match their brooches. Their faces, identical to the point of indecency, were quite expressionless, as though they were the preliminary lay-outs for faces and were waiting for sentience to be injected. — Mervyn Peake

It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency. — Emma Goldman

The restaurant itself is weird especially because of a big raunch mad thicklipped sloppy young Fillipino woman sitting alone at the end of the restaurant gobbling up her food obscenely and looking at us insolently as tho to say Fuck you, I eat the way I like splashing gravy everywhere (p. 156) — Jack Kerouac

Taking our stand on the immovable rock of Christ's character we risk nothing in saying that the wine of miracle answered to the wine of nature, and was not intoxicating. No counter proof can equal the force of that drawn from His attributes. It is an indecency and a calumny to impute to Christ conduct which requires apology. — Abraham Coles

I hope, as he assures me, he was not guilty of Indecency; but have Reason to bless God, who, by disabling me in my Faculties, enabled me to preserve my Innocence; and when all my Strength would have signified nothing, magnified himself in my Weakness. — Samuel Richardson

Decency is indecency's conspiracy of silence — George Bernard Shaw

Man's indecency to man all over the world rules out the idea of humanity as an actuality. It is a dream of young idealists. In practice a misnomer — Errol Flynn

There is no room for God's Word in our culture, where our children are without reverence for God or faith in the Bible. There is no room for our Lord's creed of purity and self-denial when the media sends forth a constant barrage of profanity and indecency and materialism. — Billy Graham