Quotes About Taboos

Luckless is that country in which the symbols of procreation are held in horror!' he wrote, 'while the agents of destruction are revered!

There is no great happiness without great taboos. Even in business, to pursue one's advantage at all costs is to risk getting nowhere. Keeping within one's limits is the secret of all phenomena, of power, happiness, faith, and the key to the task of maintaining oneself as a tiny human creature within the universe.

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.

It was not by mere coincidence that sex so disturbed us for thousands of years: repressive religious dictates and social taboos grew out of aspects of our nature that cannot now just be wished away.

The best way to get cooperation among volatile, erotic primates is to regulate sexual relations—who can mate with whom, who can live with whom regularly, and so on. By setting up such customs and marriage taboos you establish families and provide sexual partners between families. In a word, the invention of sexual codes establishes harmony and cooperation in mating units, and in bands composed of such units.

On Sundays, Presbyterians were not allowed to eat hot food or read the funny papers or travel the shortest journey; parents believed in Hell and believed tiny babies could go there. Baptists were not supposed to know, up until their dying day, how to play cards or dance. And so on.

It was, he thought, his gesture against the whole pro-euthanasia movement that talked so glibly of choice without realising the fire with which one played when tinkering with fragile taboos against killing others. Yes, he thought, Mrs Bates's life did not seem to amount to much, but to her it was all she had.

Few people realize how much courage it takes in a community like ours to ignore the established taboos.

La representación de la sociedad se atomizaba en «temas», prioritariamente sexuales, el intercambio de parejas, los transexuales, el incesto, la pedofilia y el topless en las playas, a favor o en contra, ponían ante la vista de la gente hechos y conductas que en general nunca habían probado personalmente y que, los aprobaran o los rechazaran, creían extendidos por todas partes, cuando no convertidos en norma.

Only the 'king of the sacrifices' was excluded from public duties, and the flamen of Jupiter was subject to 'taboos' which in some respects isolated him from ordinary mortals; but those were exceptions that would disappear in the imperial era.

Our sins describe us, and our prohibitions describe our sins.

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.

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.

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.

Looking at depression among the poor, we can see that taboos and prejudices are blocking us from helping a population that is singularly receptive to that help.

But this is not the faith that has given us religion. It would be rather remarkable if a positive attitude in the face of uncertainty led inevitably to ludicrous convictions about the divine origin of certain books, to bizarre cultural taboos, to the abject hatred of homosexuals, and to the diminished status of women. Adopt too positive an outlook, and the next thing you know architects and engineers may start flying planes into buildings.

Life is livable because we know that wherever we go most of the people we meet will be restrained in their actions towards us by an almost instinctive network of taboos.

There are things that I won't do on the radio. I mean, the next logical question is, what won't you do. I say, well, you know, you've got to find out when you're on the air.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

What I've always loved about faeries is the way that they, unlike so many other supernatural creatures, are not human and have never been human. They have different customs and different taboos, and woe to anyone who breaks them.

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.

Human kinship systems vary enormously but not limitlessly. There are always rules prohibiting sex (and hence marriage) with certain kinds of kin.

Hicieron, entonces, lo único que podían hacer, con heroísmo, sí, pero sin violentar los mil y un tabúes y preceptos que regulaban su existencia: dejarse matar.

I also knew that, though I had never cared much what others thought of me and what I did, I would care even less in the future. And I realized that for the women's movement to succeed, many women had to be similarly free, not just from the terror of breaking taboos, but from the garden-variety fear of social disapproval as well.