Quotes & Sayings About Prudishness

Sex: In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact. — Marlene Dietrich

The grotesque prudishness and archness with which garlic is treated in [England] has led to the superstition that rubbing the bowl with it before putting the salad in gives sufficient flavor. It rather depends whether you are going to eat the bowl or the salad. — Elizabeth David

If pride is a sin ... moral pride is the greatest sin. — John Irving

Rather than the uniform concern to hide sex, rather than a general prudishness of language, what distinguishes these last three centuries is the variety, the wide dispersion of devices that were invented for speaking about it, for having it be spoken about, for inducing it to speak of itself, for listening, recording, transcribing, and redistributing what is said about it: around sex, a whole network of varying, specific, and coercive transpositions into discourse. Rather than a massive censorship, beginning with the verbal proprieties imposed by the Age of Reason, what was involved was a regulated and polymorphous incitement to discourse. — Michel Foucault

I'm not interested in the next generation, dear. I'm interested in us.' - Julia — George Orwell

When I was growing up, in our house nudity was defined as the period of time between the shower and your towel. — Amy Cohen

There's an underlying puritanicalness in America that is not that different to the prudishness of Britain - it just manifests itself in different ways. — Eve Ensler

I'm losing the appetite for strangers. Once I would have focused on the excitement, the hazard; now it's the mess, the bother. Getting your clothes off gracefully, always such an impossibility; thinking up what to say afterwards, without setting the echoes going in your head. Worse, the encounter with another set of particularities: the toenails, the ear-holes, the nosehairs. Perhaps at this age we return to the prudishness we had as children. — Margaret Atwood

Let's start with some of the reasons that the press holds its tongue and some of the things that you don't know because of this. We'll begin with squeamishness, prudishness, timidity and an overdeveloped fear of offending someone ... So much for squeamishness and prudishness. There are many other reasons that we editors fail you in this pact you and we have. Let me name a few more: Orthodoxy, conventional thinking, a misplaced pleasure at being on the inside, incompetence and laziness. — Geneva Overholser

Scott himself had taught me that in the boundless sphere of the intellect there is no prudishness, no shockability. There is only evaluation of facts, and a morality founded on truth. — Sheilah Graham

Press conference [on the movie Carrington] yielded the usual crop of daftness. I've been asked if I related personally to Carrington's tortured relationship with sex and replied that no, not really, I'd had a very pleasant time since I was fifteen. This elicited very disapproving copy from the Brits ... No wonder people think we don't have sex in England. — Emma Thompson

Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Without question, purity is beautiful. We're not talking about repression or prudishness, but about having a confident and serene sense of your dignity and worth. — Jason Evert