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Quotes About Obscenity

Al primer vislumbre del amanecer el combate murió, como si fuera obsceno o espectral.
~ Jorge Luís Borges
Obscenity is a function of culture - a function in the mathematical sense, I mean, its value changing with that of the variables on which it depends.
~ A.P.
I know who Cristiano Ronaldo is and he's a gorgeous looking guy. It would be an obscenity for him even to look at me as anything else but a mother figure while of course it is perfectly OK for me to look at him as a man.
~ Lady Colin Campbell
'Forever Amber,' written by Kathleen Winsor in 1944, was banned in Boston at the time of its publication as obscene and offensive. This alone would have been enough to excite my interest, but in 1956, it was sitting inoffensively on the shelves of the small country library on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii, where my family spent its summers.
~ Susanna Moore
For what,' I asked, 'is wrong with a steady-state economy?' Their response could almost be described as one of shock-horror, as if I had uttered an obscenity. One of them – my friend, Sydney Epton – said, 'Jim, you must understand that without growth there would be utter chaos; the whole system of modern economics is dependent on growth.' Taken literally, sustainable development simply means growth.
~ James E. Lovelock
And I think there's something about conservatives frankly - and the Left, when it comes to their channels of persuasion, are unpersuasive. They are, most of them are hate-filled, obscenity-clogged rants of anger and hatred.
~ Karl Rove
Before, I'd photograph anything. I didn't think there was anything more or less obscene about any part of the body.
~ Jock Sturges
One day in Auschwitz, a group of Jews put God on trial. They charged him with betrayal and cruelty. Like Job, they found no consolation in the usual answers to the problems of evil and suffering in the midst of this current obscenity. They could find no excuse for God, no extenuating circumstances, so they found him guilty and, presumably, worthy of death. The Rabbi pronounced the verdict. Then he looked up and said that the trial was over, it was time for the evening prayer.
~ Karen Armstrong
It begins and ends with money. It's absurd in this day and age when we need so much money for education, health, for people, that a $100 million dollars can be spent on a film. It's obscene
~ Kathleen Turner
There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.
~ Renata Adler
The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in, becoming narcissistic.
~ Rod Serling
All ideas having even the slightest redeeming social importance—unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of opinion—have the full protection of the guaranties…. But implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance.
~ William J. Brennan (Jr.)
Since obscenity is the truth of our passion today, it is the only stuff of art - or almost the only stuff.
~ David Herbert Lawrence
The wish to hear such baseness is degrading.
~ Dante Alighieri, Inferno
The definition of obscenity on the newsstands should be extended to many hunting magazines.
~ Wayne Pacelle
I once had a story editor ask me not to use the word 'placenta.' I wanted to say: 'Now tell me again how you got here?' Oh, right, an angel of God placed you into the bill of the stork.
~ Jill McCorkle
Sex and obscenity are not synonymous. Obscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest.
~ William J. Brennan, Jr.
The worst thing about Farrington's poem is that it presents the vast obscenity that was the Great War as a jolly adventure—but in fact any war story, no matter how unsparing or how true, warns against war only if its audience wants to be warned.
~ Kathleen Rooney
I had woven a tapestry of obscenity that as far as I know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.
~ Jean Shepherd
It showed a kind of obscenity you see only in nature, an obscenity so extreme that it dissolves imperceptibly into beauty.
~ Richard Preston
Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated out of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing—with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for second and third place.
~ Robert A. Heinlein
He never once repeated himself and he never used either profanity or obscenity. (I learned later that he saved those for very special occasions, which this wasn't.) But he described our shortcomings, physical, mental, moral, and genetic, in great and insulting detail. But somehow I was not insulted; I became greatly interested in studying his command of language. I wished that we had had him on our debate team.
~ Robert A. Heinlein
women should be obscene but not heard.
~ Robert A. Heinlein
The most important truths always appear first as blasphemies or obscenities. That's why every great innovator is persecuted. And the sacraments look obscene, too, to an outsider. The eucharist is just sublimated cannibalism, to the unawakened. When the Pope kisses the feet of the laity, he looks like an old toe-queen to some people. The rites of Pan look like a suburban orgy.
~ Robert Anton Wilson