Not A Dirty Word Quotes & Sayings

Ambition is not a dirty word. Piss on compromise. Go for the throat. — Steven Erikson

She was quite a doll. She wore a white belted raincoat, no hat, a well-cherished head of platinum hair, booties to match the raincoat, a folding plastic umbrella, a pair of blue-gray eyes that looked at me as if I had said a dirty word. I helped her off with her raincoat. She smelled very nice. She had a pair of legs - so far as I could determine - that were not painful to look at. She wore night sheer stockings. I stared at them rather intently, especially when she crossed her legs and held out a cigarette to be lighted — Raymond Chandler

Feminism is not a dirty word. It does not mean you hate men, it does not mean you hate girls that have nice legs and a tan, and it does not mean you are a bitch or a dyke. It means you believe in equality. — Kate Nash

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

Risk is not a dirty word. — Walter Wriston

And we were taught to play golf. Golf epitomizes the tame world. On a golf course nature is neutered. The grass is clean, a lawn laundry that wipes away the mud, the insect, the bramble, nettle and thistle, an Eezy-wipe lawn where nothing of life, dirty and glorious, remains. Golf turns outdoors into indoors, a prefab mat of stultified grass, processed, pesticided, herbicided, the pseudo-green of formica sterility. Here, the grass is not singing. The wind cannot blow through it. Dumb expression, greenery made stupid, it hums a bland monotone in the key of the mono-minded. No word is emptier than a golf tee. No roots, it has no known etymology, it is verbal nail polish. Worldwide, golf is an arch act of enclosure, a commons fenced and subdued for the wealthy, trampling serf and seedling. The enemy of wildness, it is a demonstration of the absolute dominion of man over wild nature. — Jay Griffiths

I hit Crash's button and we heard the phone inside start to ring.
After four, he answered. "Hey, PsyPig." His voice was husky. "I'd normally tell you not to call me at this ungodly hour, but evidently someone's running a cockfghting ring in the hall, so I wasn't actually asleep ... "
"It's me. Open up."
He was actually silent for a second. "Aren't /you/ butch?"
"Don't fuck around. I need to see Miss Mattie."
"Okay, okay, don't get your handcuffs in a twist. I can't find my pants."
I wondered if he could say the word "pants" without making something dirty out of it.
"Unless, of course, this visit is clothing-optional."
And there it was. I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn't see me since the door was still shut. — Jordan Castillo Price

Only by remembering to say 'no' will the women of 21st century regain their voice and remember their power. 'No' is the most important word in a woman's dialectic arsenal, and it is the one word that our employers, our leaders, and quite often, the men in our lives would do anything to prevent us from saying. No, we will not serve. No, we will not settle for the dirty work, the low-paid work, the unpaid work. No, we will not stay late at the office, look after the kids, sort out the shopping. We refuse to fit the enormity of our passion, our creativity, and our potential into the rigid physical prison laid down for us since we were small children. No. We refuse. We will not buy your clothes and shoes and surgical solutions. No, we will not be beautiful; we will not be good. Most of all, we refuse to be beautiful and good. — Laurie Penny

I'm a self-didact. (Not a dirty word, look it up.) I read constantly. I think. But I lack formal education. So I'm left with the feeling that I'm smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people - people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin - that they'd be bored as hell by me. — Gillian Flynn

Jaenelle tried to smile. "They won't find their way through the maze. Not this maze, anyway." Then she looked sadly at Daemon's gaunt, bruised body and gently brushed the long, dirty, tangled black hair off his forehead. "Ah, Daemon. I had gotten used to thinking of my body as a weapon that was used against me. I'd forgotten that it's also a gift. If it's not too late, I'll do better. I promise." Jaenelle placed her transparent hands on either side of Daemon's head. She closed her eyes. The Black Jewel glowed. Listening to the Hayllian guards thrashing around somewhere in the maze, Surreal sank to the ground and settled down to wait. *Daemon.* The island slowly sank into the sea of blood. He curled up in the center of the pulpy ground while the word sharks circled, waiting for him. *Daemon. — Anne Bishop

"Pop" was a dirty word for a really long time and it feels like that's not the case anymore. — Lizzy Plapinger

I doubt if there is one married person on earth who can be objective about divorce. It is always a threat, admittedly or not, and such a dire threat that it is almost a dirty word. — Nora Johnson

She called me Nerdy because I wore glasses and read books and ate yogurt on my lunch break. I'm not really a nerd: I only aspire to be one. Because of the high-school-dropout thing, I'm a self-didact. (Not a dirty word, look it up.) I read constantly. I think. But I lack formal education. So I'm left with the feeling that I'm smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people - people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin - that they'd be bored as hell by me. It's a lonely way to go through life. So I wear the name as a badge of honor. That someday I may not totally bore some really smart people. The question is: How do you find smart people? — Gillian Flynn

Should is a dirty word. No one should do anything for you.You deserve nothing more then what you earn.
Reality Boy is not angry, though. Because Reality Boy knows he deserves all kind of shit he never got — A.S. King

Please make sure everyone knows how much their messages mean to me. They have added greatly to my peace of mind. I only wish some of the writers would take a more positive approach to the menace of cancer. I've got it, sure; but I'm not afraid to use the word. Some of them act like it's a dirty word. That's the wrong attitude. We should all bring it out in the open, recognize that it exists, and fight it! Cancer is everybody's enemy. We can't 'think' an enemy out of existence by ignoring it. — Gary Cooper

On Girls I like being a mouthpiece for the issues I think young females face today. It's always shocking when people question whether it's a feminist show. How could a show about women exploring women not be? Feminism isn't a dirty word. It's not like we're a deranged group who think women should take over the planet, raise our young on our own and eliminate men from the picture. Feminism is about women having all the rights that men have. — Lena Dunham

There's nothing wrong with options. Options are everywhere. In movies, in sports. Options is not a dirty word. I need to pay my overheads, you know. I invest a lot of money developing a fighter and then I deserve to reap the rewards. — Don King

I had not laid a finger on the boy's head. I have never poked or prodded either a baby or a child, so why did I feel so dirty? Part of it was just my makeup, the deep-seated belief that I deserve a basement room, but a larger, uglier part had to do with the voices I hear on the talk radio, and my tendency, in spite of myself, to pay them heed. The man in the elevator had not thought twice about asking Michael personal questions or about laying a hand on the back of his head. Because he was neither a priest nor a homosexual, he hadn't felt the need to watch himself, worrying that every word or gesture might be misinterpreted. He could unthinkingly wander the halls with a strange boy, while for me it amounted to a political act - an insistence that I was as good as the next guy. — David Sedaris

Nothing in life is fair. Fair is a dirty word and I'll thank you not to use that language around me. — Jeff Lindsay

For Christmas when I was about four I got given 'Can the can' by Susie Quatro, so that was the first record I got. And I got Skyhooks Ego is not a Dirty Word ... I was sorta listening to the Beatles and stuff the whole time since I was about ten anyway, then I started getting into Kiss and David Bowie at the same time — Bernard Fanning

I'm thinking we ought to rethink the whole self-esteem thing. It should almost be a dirty word. I mean, look at Kayla. She has the intelligence of a tree stump, and its sense of humour. She's less about real attractiveness than she is about advertising ... She's the kind of girl who shows how hot she is because she has nothing else to offer, who doesn't realise that hotness has an expiration date. Yet, I'm still a little nervous talking to her like she's holding a lottery ticket she just might or might not decide to hand over to me. It is nuts, if you stop to think about it. I give give her this power, and it's kind of like voting some idiot into office. But hey, we're good at that, too. — Deb Caletti

I feel bad that people think that "feminism" is a dirty word. I don't understand that at all, I'm proud to be labeled a feminist. I consider myself a person who has throughout my entire life stood up for myself. It's never been my ambition to be someone who takes a backseat to anything. I'm not a male basher at all. I divide people into assholes and non-assholes, and that's genderless. I encounter sexism everyday. — Janeane Garofalo

Some people's photography is an art. Not mine. Art is a dirty word in photography. All this fine art crap is killing it already. — Helmut Newton

Unfortunately, 'climate' has become a dirty word - obviously in politics, but even to some degree in my world, in venture capital. People hesitate if they see something that's purported to be green. That's not a reason to invest for many people. — Evan Williams

Compassion is not a dirty word. Compassion is not a sign of weakness. In my view, compassion in politics and in public policy is in fact a hallmark of great strength. It is a hallmark of a society which has about it a decency which speaks for itself. — Kevin Rudd

Confrontation is not a dirty word. Sometimes it's the best kind of journalism as long you don't confront people just for the sake of a confrontation. — Don Hewitt

I think the whole thing, boy band, it's a little bit of a dirty word. They say it's not a good thing to be in a boy band. We want to change that. We want to make the boy band cool. It's not just about dancing and dressing the same. — Liam Payne

I turned on the water then returned to the door jamb. "That's not fair, you're nice and clean."
"I am?" He took a few steps toward me.
"Aren't you?"
"No," he scowled and shook his head. "I'm dirty. But you knew that."
Now, if you haven't heard an Irishman say the word "dirty" before, I will compare it with dynamite in your ovaries. They say it with like, seven Rs. — Nicole Castro

Compassion is not a dirty word.. it's time we rehabilitated compassion into the national political vocabulary of this great nation of ours. — Kevin Rudd

Cleopatra had one great advantage. She lived at a time when female sovereigns were not anomalies. And when women enjoyed rights they would not again enjoy for another 2,000 years. You could call them early feminists, if I may use a dirty word. — Stacy Schiff

There can be no living together without understanding, and understanding means compromise. Compromise is not a dirty word, it is the cornerstone of civilization, just as politics is the art of making civilization work. Men do not and cannot and hopefully will never think alike, hence each must yield a little in order to avoid war, to avoid bickering. Men and women meet together and adjust their differences, this is compromise. He who stands unyielding and immovable upon a principle is often a fool, and often bigoted, and usually left standing alone with his principle while other men adjust their differences and go on. — Louis L'Amour

this is actualy a poem

we have been called
naive
as if it were a dirty word,
whe have been called
innocent
as though with shame
our cheeks should burn
so
we visit with
the careful idols
of cynisism
to learn to sneer
and pant and walk
so as not to feel the scales
of judgement rub wrongly
but we say
some things must
remain simple
some things must remain
untouched
and pure
lest we all forget
the legacy we begot us
the health of our origins
the poetry of our fundemental selves — Jewel

You don't have to be worried, okay? You don't have to be scared." His voice is twinkling again. "I'm not flirting with you."
Embarrassment sweeps through me. Flirting. A dirty word. He thinks I think he's flirting. "I'm not - I don't think you were - I would never think that you - " The words collide in my mouth, and now I know there's no amount of darkness that can cover the rush of red to my face.
He cocks his head to the side. "Are you flirting with me, then?"
"What? No," I splutter. My mind is spinning blindly in a panic, and I realize I don't even know what flirting is. I just know about it from textbooks; I just know that it's bad. Is it possible to flirt without knowing you're flirting? Is he flirting? My left eye goes full flutter. — Lauren Oliver

Not one word about proposals, no matter how much she pushes," I told my friends. "No matter what she says or how loud she cries, don't try to throw that up as a distraction."
Gabriel's lips twitched. "I don't think it's going to be that bad. It's one woman against five supernatural creatures ... And Zeb."
"You laugh because you haven't heard my mother's thirty-minute verbal dissertation on appropriate seasonal flower choices. We're better off letting her yell at us for being dirty, premarital fornicators. — Molly Harper

It is not a dirty word, 'feminism'. I just think that women belong in the human population with the same rights as everybody else ... The problem is, 'A feminist looks like this, or is like that'. We are taught not to like ourselves as women, we are taught what we're supposed to look like what our measurements are supposed to be. I never hear what measurements men are supposed to be. Just women. — Cyndi Lauper

Escape is not a dirty word. None of us can face what's happening head-on all of the time. — Sheldon B. Kopp

With the horses, you can't let them call the shot part of the time and then you call the shot part of the time. They're not really designed to be your leader, but they can be a great partner, but you need to lead, and they need to respect you and respond with respect. Don't think of respect as a dirty word. You need to respect them as well. — Buck Brannaman

I believe ambition is not a dirty word. It's just believing in yourself and your abilities. Imagine this: What would happen if we were all brave enough to believe in our own ability? To be a little bit more ambitious? I think the world would change. — Reese Witherspoon

I bet you don't hear no a lot."
"It's a dirty word. I'm not a fan of it. — Katee Robert

the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development — Albert Einstein

The word "religion" has been hi-jacked and debased by the priests of faiths like these, until now it has become a dirty word amongst intelligent, right-thinking people in the Western world. The word "religion" springs from roots meaning piety, the Latin religio, the opposite idea to negligens, negligent, uncaring, unaware. It also springs from a root meaning to join together things that are separate, which in fact is the same meaning as the word "yoga" (compare the English word yoke, which ties oxen together, for example). So religion is a word which describes the process of becoming aware and unified, of joining together all things which are diverse; it is the union of body and spirit, self and not-self, human and god. — Rodney Orpheus

If you're an Orthodox believer, then what sustains this framework is the obligation that you follow. But if you live in a democratic, liberal world whose motto is: "Make choices and manage your choices according to what is good for you," then there is a built-in tension between that which connects and that which divides. Between the material and the intellectual or ethical. Materialism is not a dirty word, but in this tension between the individual and the material on the one hand, and the communal and the ethical on the other, we are at the end of an age in which the material and the individual are triumphing. — Kalid Gilad

Ecology is a dirty seven-letter word to many people. They are like heavy sleepers refusing to be aroused. Leave me alone! It's not time to get up yet! — Frank Herbert

Well, at least I'm not a stubborn, button-pushing, Prius-driving, chip-on-your-shoulder-holding, 'stay-at-home-mom'-is-the-eighth-dirty-word-thinking feminazi! — Julie James

A major theme for Bonhoeffer was that every Christian must be "fully human" by bringing God into his whole life, not merely into some "spiritual" realm. To be an ethereal figure who merely talked about God, but somehow refused to get his hands dirty in the real world in which God had placed him, was bad theology. Through Christ, God had shown that he meant us to be in this world and to obey him with our actions in his word. So Bonhoeffer would get his hands dirty, not because he had grown impatient, but because God was speaking to him about further steps of obedience. — Eric Metaxas

To serve means to work alongside the neediest, first of all to establish a close human relationship with them, based on solidarity. Solidarity - this word elicits fear in the developed world. They try not to say it. It is almost a dirty word for them. But it's our word! — Pope Francis

Reality is a dirty word for me, I know it isn't for most people, but I am not interested. There's too much of it about. — Ken Russell

We need to understand that Jesus is a thinker, that this is not a dirty word but an essential work, and that his other attributes do not preclude thought, but only ensure that he is certainly the greatest thinker of the human race: "the most intelligent person who ever lived on earth" — Dallas Willard

Be a man. Not any old man, not mankind, but manhood. To do this you don't need to play pro football and grow hair on your chest and seduce every third woman you meet long as she's female. All you have to do is hunt, fish (or talk sense about 'em as if you had) and go bug-eyed when the girls go by. If a sunset moves you so much you have to express yourself, do it with a grunt and a dirty word. Or you say, 'That Beethoven, he blows a cool symphony.' Never champion a real underdog unless it's a popular type, like a baseball team. Always treat other men as if you were sore at something and will wipe it off on them if they give you the slightest excuse. I mean sore, Louis, not vexed or in a snit. And stay away from women. They have an intuition that'll find you nine times out of ten. The tenth time she falls for you, and there's nothing funnier."
"I think," Loolyo said after a time, "that you hate human beings. — Theodore Sturgeon

My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word. — Erica Jong

Busy is an opportunity, not a dirty word. — Joan Z. Borysenko

Retirement is not a dirty word, I am just enjoying what I am doing. If they want me to retire, then stop asking me. Ask and I will say yes unless it is something I really don't like. — Betty White

It was practically un-American to not set goals and then do everything you could, everything, to reach them. Quitting-it was a dirty word ... — Deb Caletti