Quotes About Decency

Surely that gift—the gift of a world of human decency—is the one that all countries hunger for still.

and I want you all to remember—that you must not dream yourselves back to the times before the war, but the dream for you all, young and old, must be to create an ideal of human decency, and not a narrow-minded and prejudiced one. That is the great gift our country hungers for, something every little peasant boy can look forward to, and with pleasure feel he is a part of—something he can work and fight for.

Forget being a decent man, Terence. Go for castability. Could you even play a decent man in a movie?

It wouldn't be a bad idea if there were something to distinguish good men from bad.

No matter what happened here, what I was going to do was important. Maybe not for this town, but for men everywhere, for there must be right. Strength never made right, and it is an indecency when it is allowed to breed corruption.

You tried. You're too decent a man, Felton—they don't operate that way. They take decency for weakness, and weakness represents opportunity to them. You're a good man, but you've lived too long in an orderly civilization. It's different out here in the open.

A coisa mais deselegante do mundo é morrer

cling to the love of being alive and living a decent life. That's the love that makes you real.

silence is not weakness and decency is not pride

The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man's complexity and the strength and decency of his longings.

When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.

I saw the end of his life right there in that single moment. His pride, his decency, his secrets, his death.

Sorry," Mary said. "I had some errands to run." Pauline eyed her. It would be Pauline's way to say, No you didn't. It would be Pauline's way to refuse the decorum of the fib, to embrace the painful honesty. It would be her way to say, You just didn't feel like having lunch with me. Which would have been true, of course. And no less embarrassing, regrettable, awkward, no less vigorously denied, because it was true.

There are people who carry decency and optimism around with them, who seem to cleanse every atmosphere they settle in, and you can't tell such people things, it is too disruptive.

He believed in his own decency with all his heart. So it was with every true monster, Vic supposed.

I remember Aslan dead on the stone and the mice nibbling at the ropes that bound his corpse. I think that provided me with my foundational sense of decency. To live a decent life is to be no more than a mouse nibbling at a rope. One mouse isn't much, but if enough of us keep chewing, we may set something free that can save us from the worst. Maybe it will even save us from ourselves.

There's always a little decency in the worst places . . . and always a little secret selfishness in the best.

Whatever the children had become, whatever he had done to them, he had done to make them safe, to keep them from being run down by the world. He believed in his own decency with all his heart.

It's easy to dismiss religion as bloody, cruel, and tribal. I've done it myself. But it isn't religion that's wired that way—it's man himself. At bottom every faith is a form of instruction in common decency. Different textbooks in the same class. Don't they all teach that to do for others feels better than to do for yourself? That someone else's happiness need not mean less happiness for you?

It's easy to dismiss religion as bloody, cruel, and tribal. I've done it myself. But it isn't religion that's wired that way—it's man himself. At bottom every faith is a form of instruction in common decency. Different textbooks in the same class.

It's easy to dismiss religion as bloody, cruel, and tribal. I've done it myself. But it isn't religion that's wired that way—it's man himself. At bottom every faith is a form of instruction in common decency. Different textbooks in the same class. Don't they all teach that to do for others feels better than to do for yourself? That someone else's happiness need not mean less happiness for you? "Only

There's always a little decency in the worst places.... and always little secret selfishness in the best.

Being decent is the only thing that matters in a terrible world like this.

There was no law against being an asshole.