Quotes & Sayings About Taboos

I'm in love with my second cousin. — Bob Dylan

There was this long lovely dancer in a little club downtown, love to watch her do her stuff. — Bob Seger

I think the greatest taboos in America are faith and failure. — Michael Malone

If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good — Ezra Pound

The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes. — Freda Adler

Now writing is just working your way toward the border that the innermost secret draws around itself, and to cross that line would mean self-destruction. But writing is also an attempt to respect the borderline only for the truly innermost secret, and bit by bit to free the taboos around that core, difficult to admit as they are, from their prison of unspeakability. Not self-destruction but self-redemption. Not being afraid of unavoidable suffering. — Christa Wolf

Western teaching institutions that refuse to acknowledge today's taboos are by definition subversive. Tell the new zealots of Washington that in the making of Israel a monstrous human crime was committed and they will call you an anti-Semite. Tell them there was no Garden of Creation and they will call you a dangerous cynic. Tell them God is what man invented to compensate for his ignorance of science and they will call you a Communist. — John Le Carre

I do think most poets are in denial about what the real taboos in writing are
the real boundaries. — Katy Lederer

These are the oldest memories on earth, the time codes carried in every chromosome and gene. Every step we've taken in our evolution is a milestone inscribed with organic memories. From the enzymes controlling the carbon-dioxide cycle, to the organization of the brachial plexus and the nerve pathways of the pyramid cells of the mid-brain. Each is a record of a thousand decisions taken in a chemical crisis. Just as psychoanalysis reconstructs the original traumatic situation in order to release the repressed material, so we are now being plunged back into the archaeopsychic past, uncovering the ancient taboos and drives that have been dormant for epochs. — J.G. Ballard

Our fears and taboos are largely social conditions imposed upon us by the ruling powers in order to keep us opressed. They manipulate us with our fears. Now let us be fearless. — Kathy Change

But an absolute value is not proven by logic or metaphysical arguments; it is accepted, believed (even when not discussed), and hedged about with taboos to protect it. — Rene Girard

I'm interested in taboos for certain reasons. They can dramatise things and they're scary, and they're important to think about. I'm also wary about the fact that if you don't proceed with caution and understand what you're doing, you understand these things are realities that you're dealing with, they're real things. — Bo Burnham

The most exciting thing about women's liberation is that this century will be able to take advantage of talent and potential genius that have been wasted because of taboos. — Helen Reddy

Taboos are always going to be interesting.Our [ with Michael Dumontier] style has its range and there is room for explicitness in violence, but not at the expense of our classy, highbrow image. — Neil Farber

It is the desire for irreverence as much as anything else that brought me first to poetry. The need to make fun of authority, break taboos, celebrate the body and its functions, claim that one has seen angels in the same breath as one says that there is no god. — Charles Simic

We put boogers on our fingers, then shake your hand. — Biz Markie

The decline of violence may owe something to an expansion of empathy, but it also owes much to harder-boiled faculties like prudence, reason, fairness, self-control, norms and taboos, and conceptions of human rights. This — Steven Pinker

Can't wait to show my girls he sucked the piss out of my pussy. — Lil' Kim

He had a sadness in his eyes that Carrie recognised as regret. — Kassandra Cross

Our duties and responsibilities as human beings must be shown to be so incontrovertible that even atheists must recognize them. There are ultimate taboos. — Hans Jonas

I'm drawn to the taboos that surround the human body. I find it fascinating that we are repelled by many of the acts and processes that keep us alive. — Mary Roach

Sexuality with all its attendant yearnings and pains, jealousies and taboos, is the most disturbing impulse humans have. — John Steinbeck

She started thinking about all the euphemisms for death, all the anxious taboos that had always fascinated her. It was too bad you could never have an intelligent discussion on the subject. People were either too young or too old, or else they didn't have time. — Tove Jansson

That night he wrote in his diary, "Challenge a remaining taboo." It was that simple. He had always wanted to understand genius, and now he had the formula. Freud, living in an age that prized its own seeming rationality, had found one of the remaining taboos and dared to think beyond it: he discovered infant sexuality and the unconscious, among other things. Galileo had gone beyond the taboo "Thou shalt not question Aristotle." Every great discovery had been the breaking of a taboo. — Robert Anton Wilson

Each of you have experienced numerous transformations during your life. From the moment you took your first step you began a lifelong movement toward the new and unknown. You expanded the limits of your world. You pushed your boundaries larger, and then larger still. And not only physically, but cognitively, emotionally, morally, socially, and spiritually as well. Concerning your spiritual growth, the concepts of God that you had at age five may not be adequate for you at age twenty, and the concepts of God you had at age twenty may not be adequate again when you reach your forties and later, your elder years. Across the span of your life you may travel through a variety of views about who and what ultimate authority is or isn't, what the purpose of life is, what your values and taboos are, and the importance (or not) of ritual, myth, and symbols. — River Higginbotham

All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. — H.L. Mencken

Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent. — Pierre Trudeau

Everything teeters between pathos and bathos: here you are, violating society's most fundamental taboos and yet formaldehyde is a powerful appetite stimulant, so you also crave a burrito. — Paul Kalanithi

In Poland, some people think that I'm kind of scandalous because I'm a woman who should stay at home with her kids instead of making movies about what I want and, even worse, addressing Polish taboos like church, homosexuals and history. — Malgorzata Szumowska

He says he's a beautician and sells you nutrition, and keeps all your dead hair for making underwear. — David Bowie

Those who see what's obvious aren't necessarily brighter than others. They're just more likely to observe that the emperor is naked. Like children, they see what's actually there. Their perceptions are less clouded by belief systems, taboos, habits of thought. One responsibility of management
an important one
is to call attention to the invisible obvious, pointing it out as a child does (sometimes to the embarrassment of adults). Doing so also requires supporting employees who take that risk, too, and other risks as well. — Richard Farson

If we can hump dead animals and antelopes, there's no reason that a man and another man can't elope. — Eminem

Freedom is for the curious ones. Free is the one not influenced by taboos. Free is the one who reasons and evolves continuously, and refuses to accept anything without thinking. — Massimo Marino

The sciences are being held back by assumptions that have hardened into dogmas, maintained by powerful taboos. I believe that the sciences will be regenerated when they are set free. — Rupert Sheldrake

Eroticism differs from animal sexuality in that human sexuality is limited by taboos and the domain of eroticism is that of the transgression of these taboos. Desire in eroticism is the desire that triumphs over the taboo. It presupposes man in conflict with himself. — Georges Bataille

Some of the old laws of Israel are clearly savage taboos of a familiar type thinly disguised as commands of the Deity. — James G. Frazer

Superstitions, and especially the early cultivation of religion, with its "fear of the Lord" and of unknown mysterious agencies, are especially potent in the development of the instinct of fear. Even the early cultivation of morality and conscientiousness, with their fears of right and wrong, often causes psychoneurotic states in later life. Religious, social, and moral taboos and superstitions, associated with apprehension of threatening impending evil, based on the fear instinct, form the germs of psychopathic affections. — Boris Sidis

I never consciously set out to talk about taboos or anything like that. — Roseanne Barr

It's also about integration: owning up to the parts of yourself, however much you might not like them. In the Real there are so many taboos that people are completely fragmented. That's the joke of it. They cling rigidly to the idea that they are one unique person, while they are busy hiding parts of themselves they can't accept. — Alan McCluskey

There were a few compensations to having corporeal Aspect. Food (jam tarts were my favourites); drink (mostly wine and mead); setting things on fire; sex (although I was still extremely confused by all the taboos surrounding this - no animals, no siblings, no men, no married women, no demons - frankly, it was amazing to me that anyone had sex at all, with so many rules against it). — Joanne Harris

As men begin to grow civilized, they cease to be satisfied with mere taboos. — Bertrand Russell

She gets a hundred for her body and a nickel for her soul. — Alice Cooper

Rather than bring the full force of our creativity and rationality to bear on the problems of ethics, social cohesion, and even spiritual experience, moderates merely ask that we relax our standard of adherence to ancient superstitions and taboos, while otherwise maintaining a belief system that was passed down to us from men and women whose lives were simply ravaged by their basic ignorance about the world. — Sam Harris

When people say, 'But what is acceptable in erotica?' I sometimes answer them by saying: there are certain taboos and limits in writing about sex as a positive, enjoyable, blissful, exciting activity. There are no taboos and limits whatsoever to describing the same sexual activities if they are traumatic, horrible, full of suffering and disgust. You can describe anything. — Senta Holland

In other words, the most common problem now is not social taboos on sexual activity or guilt feeling about sex in itself, but the fact that sex for so many people is an empty, mechanical and vacuous experience. — Rollo May

Dad's going steady with a pig in the barn. — Mojo Nixon

Isn't privacy about keeping taboos in their place? — Kate Millett

At the social/political/ juridical, etc., level, the organizing principle was less to do with games and more to do with the nature of taboos - enormously powerful, often enormously arbitrary, and (crucially) regularly quietly broken, without undermining the fact of the taboo itself. That last element, I think, is sometimes underestimated in the discussions of cultural norms, where they are both asserted and breached. Both those elements are foundational.
- author interview — China Mieville

Good horror fiction deals with taboos. It must always go to the limits of what is acceptable. — Clive Barker

Fashion is as profound and critical a part of the social life of man as sex, and is made up of the same ambivalent mixture of irresistible urges and inevitable taboos. — Rene Konig

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence. — Sam Harris

Human cultures vary widely in the plants they use to gratify the desire for a change of mind, but all cultures (save the Eskimo) sanction at least one such plant and, just as invariably, strenuously forbid certain others. Along with the temptation seems to come the taboo. — Michael Pollan

They call him the Streak, he likes to turn the other cheek. He's always making the news, wearing just his tennis shoes. — Ray Stevens

There is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion. — Alan Watts

Here, by the grace of God and an inside straight, we have a personality untouched by the psychotic taboos of our tribe - and you want to turn him into a carbon copy of every fourth-rate conformist in this frightened land! Why don't you go whole hog? Get him a brief case and make him carry it wherever he goes - make him feel shame if he doesn't have it. — Robert A. Heinlein

Passages in the Bible and Quran or Hadiths endorse holy war, subjugating or exterminating unbelievers, killing blasphemers and others who violate religious taboos, stoning adulterers, ritually slaughtering animals, sexually enslaving females, and beating children. They prescribe mutilation of criminal suspects. — Anonymous

When facing the public, politicians constantly filter their ideas through a political sieve. 'How will this affect the environmentalists, labor, management?' Sometimes the sieve gets so clogged by political taboos that no new ideas pass through. — Madeleine M. Kunin

There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have. — George Carlin

The secular argument, or the liberal argument, is to as much as possible remove taboos so things do not become unmentionable; to let some air into the discussion. — Christopher Hitchens

It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith ... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization. — Sam Harris

So far has Western society departed from the ancient taboos against murder, theft, and rape that we are now faced with juvenile delinquents who have no inner check against wantonly assaulting other human beings at random 'for kicks' while we have adult delinquents capable of deliberately planning the extermination of tens of millions of human beings, in carrying out, also doubtless for kicks, a mathematical theory of games. Today our civilization is relapsing into a state far more primitive, far more irrational, than any taboo-ridden society now known-for lack of any effective taboos. If Western man could establish an inviolate taboo against random extermination, our society would enjoy a far more effective safeguard against both private violence and still impending collective nuclear horrors than the United Nations or the fallible mechanisms of Fail-Safe. — Lewis Mumford

Mental health is one of the last great taboos. — Stephen Fry

To whom does he owe ultimate re- sponsibility? Since Romanticism, we have expected the artist not to celebrate God, king, family, and established values but to break taboos, to explore his or her deepest, most socially forbidden self. — Camille Paglia

Nothing is further from the truth than the claim that the American soul is 'open-minded' and unbiased; on the contrary, it is ridden with countless taboos of which people are sometimes not even aware. — Julius Evola

In a free society, we do not imprison those who violate profound cultural taboos or burn them at the stake. But they must be identified as dangerous radicals, not fit to be counted among the priesthood. The reaction is appropriate. To raise the dread question is to open the possibility that the institutions responsible "for the indoctrination of the young" and the other propaganda institutions may be infected by the most dangerous of plagues: insight and understanding. Awareness of the facts might threaten the social order, protected by a carefully spun web of pluralist mysticism, faith in the benevolence of our pure-hearted leadership, and general superstitious belief. An — Noam Chomsky

Naming things, breaking through taboos and denial is the most dangerous, terrifying, and crucial work. This has to happen in spite of political climates or coercions, in spite of careers being won or lost, in spite of the fear of being criticized, outcast, or disliked. I believe freedom begins with naming things. Humanity is preserved by it. — Eve Ensler

We also have no taboos against freedom of expression. Although I am president, I must confront the criticism of party members in my election district once every three months. In addition, people pay close attention to what my wife does and how my children live. — Nguyen Minh Triet

No wonder that tantra is so popular today in the West: it offers the ultimate "spiritual logic of late capitalism" uniting spirituality and earthly pleasures, transcendence and material benefits, divine experience and unlimited shopping. It propagates the permanent transgression of all rules, the violation of all taboos, instant gratification as the path to enlightenment; it overcomes old-fashioned "binary" thought, the dualism of mind and body, in claiming that the body at its most material (the site of sex and lust) is the royal path to spiritual awakening. Bliss comes from "saying yes" to all bodily needs, not from denying them: spiritual perfection comes from the insight that we already are divine and perfect, not that we have to achieve this through effort and discipline. The body is not something to be cultivated or crafted into an expression of spiritual truths, rather it is immediately the "temple for expressing divinity. — Slavoj Zizek

Our culture has few taboos that can't be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place. Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing. This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that "bravely" trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force. — Ross Douthat

Performing on a stool, we've got a sight to make you drool, seven virgins and a mule, keep it cool, keep it cool. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Taboos on the human heart are more dangerous than any risk we run by using our emotions. Sensation is the life of man; it is his actual energy. To suppress it is to lose creative power! — Phyllis Bottome

Use convention to govern a state, use surprise in waging war, use disinterest to take the world. How do I know this is so? When there are many taboos in the world, the people grow poorer and poorer. When the people have many weapons, the nation grows more benighted. When the people are very crafty, weird things arise more and more. The greater the articulation of rules of law, the more brigands and outlaws there are. Therefore a wise rulers says, If I contrive nothing, the people will naturally be civilized. If I am fond of tranquility, the people will naturally be upright. If I am disinterested, the people will naturally become rich. If I want not to want, the people will naturally be innocent. — Lao-Tzu

To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law - the law of grace and love - but that one must do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism. — Thomas Merton

I want to show the event at the very moment it takes place ... My body must be anchored to the ground and seek the best point of view, without any visual taboos. But then, at the heart of the event, my effort is to disappear, I introduce a distance that borders on indifference. — Luc Delahaye

Although scholars such as Butler have debated such approaches as reinforcing problematic identity models and creating an either/or distinction, Lather is referring to the power of using the discouraged discourse as an act of transgression. Thus, embodiment and reflexivity are tools used to disrupt current language and assumptions about the value of female bodies through a voluptuous validity. The term "voluptuous" is not used as an objectification of a sexualised body, as seen through the male gaze, but rather as an ownership of the body through a somantic fullness. Characteristics associated with female, body, fluids, excess, undisciplined, and out of order aspects are purposively used as an act of rebellion against patriarchal taboos. — Jill Green

I swear, I wanna be your underwear. — Bryan Adams

I like big escapist films. It's odd because the type of comedian I am and the things I do when I'm writing and directing myself usually deal with the darker side of the human psyche and excruciating social faux pas. I often deal in taboos and the subjects I do as a stand-up are quite challenging. But my film roles have been much more fun and escapist. — Ricky Gervais

Eating is aggressive by nature, and the implements required for it could quickly become weapons; table manners are, most basically, a system of taboos designed to ensure that violence remains out of the question. — Margaret Visser

Now she is inviting you to a seminar at the university, where books are analyzed according to all Codes, Conscious and Unconscious, and in which all Taboos are eliminated, the ones imposed by the dominant Sex, Class, and Culture. — Italo Calvino

Gold will never free your father, the price, my dear, is you instead. — Bob Dylan

In common with other artists the photographer wants his finished print to convey to others his own response to his subject. In the fulfillment of this aim, his greatest asset is the directness of the process he employs. But this advantage can only be retained if he simplifies his equipment and technic to the minimum necessary, and keeps his approach from from all formula, art-dogma, rules and taboos. Only then can he be free to put his photographic sight to use in discovering and revealing the nature of the world he lives in. — Edward Weston

I'm interested in the dark side of man. I'm interested in taboos, and murder is the greatest taboo. Characters are fascinating in their extremity, not in their happiness. — Elizabeth George

I lay my head on the wheel and the horn begins honking, the whole neighborhood knows that I'm home drunk again. — George Jones

Rough boys I wanna bite and kiss you. — Pete Townshend

There are no taboos in bed, and there shouldn't be any taboos in bed. — Frank Langella

Because I'm a performer I can justify and sometimes sell the things about me that offend and shock the conventional world. I need to live life in the fast lane. I need to do things to excess. I need to go over the edge. I have an obligation to experience the things most people can't experience. The taboos. The things you're not supposed to know or do. That's part of my job. That's why I do it. I would probably do it anyway. — Elizabeth Ashley

I want to sit with my legs wide open and laugh so loud that the whole damn restaurant turns and looks at me. — Paula Cole

The trickster's function is to break taboos, create mischief, stir things up. In the end, the trickster gives people what they really want, some sort of freedom. — Tom Robbins

I'm a virgin Mr Cohen," Carrie said, "I've never been with a man before. — Kassandra Cross

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death
ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. — James Baldwin

There is a noticeable symphony being played around the world today. That symphony speaks of the independent, unorthodox, proud women. Yes, it is the International Women's Day! It is the day to celebrate the women in your life.

In my life I have never believed in a particular day to celebrate women though, but a date is necessary rather customary to remind you of their contributions in your life lest you forget it.

So here's wishing all those strong women who competed in a man's world, defeating them and breaking the taboos to earn the place which was rightfully theirs from the start but usurped in the past by manly morals and ego, a very- HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY! — Adhish Mazumder

What I find interesting is working in a society with certain taboos and fashion photography is about that kind of society. To have taboos, then to get around them that is interesting. — Helmut Newton

I don't have prejudices. I'm against taboos. But of course there are some things I'll never touch - because as a mom, there are things one doesn't want their children to be around. — Karl Lagerfeld

Stopping at her house is a neighbor boy with evil on his mind, cause he's been peeking in Angie's room at night through her window blind. — Helen Reddy

I see the beauty of Mike's attempt to devise an ideal ethic and applaud his recognition that such must start by junking the present sexual code and starting fresh. Most philosophers haven't the courage for this; they swallow the basics of the present code
monogamy, family pattern, continence, body taboos, conventional restrictions on intercourse, and so forth
then fiddle with details ... even such piffle as discussing whether the female breast is an obscene sight! (p.365) — Robert A. Heinlein

There are more and more taboos about calling something, anything, ugly. — Susan Sontag

Drama is made up of what people most fear and deny in themselves. The taboos. The secrets. The devils and the demons. The only reason they let us live, I suppose, is because somebody has to confront what those things are like and tell other people about them. — Elizabeth Ashley

If a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. — Flemming Rose

The ideal to which John Adams subscribed-that we would be a nation of laws, not of men-was quickly subverted when the churches forced upon everyone, through supposedly neutral and just laws, their innumerable taboos on sex, alcohol, gambling. We are now indeed a nation of laws, mostly bad and certainly antihuman. — Gore Vidal

If one is talking about a vile thing it is better to talk of it in coarse language; one is less likely to be seduced into excusing it. — G.K. Chesterton