Degradation Quotes

1. "The people who abandon Jihad fall a victim to humility and degradation."
Author: Abu Bakr

2. "There is no limit of degradation to which power cannot bring anyone even with the loftiest principles. We would hope that being unprepared for power, they would be ineffective. Their task is not "seize power" (those who use this term show that they seek personal power for themselves) but to abolish the bases for power. Power to all means power to nobody in particular."
Author: Albert Meltzer

3. "Man cannot degrade woman without himself falling into degradation; he cannot elevate her without at the same time elevating himself."
Author: Alexander Walker

4. "I ask the political economists and the moralists if they have ever calculated the number of individuals who must be condemned to misery, overwork, demoralisation, degradation, rank ignorance, overwhelming misfortune and utter penury in order to produce one rich man."
Author: Almeida Garrett

5. "I believe we need to attract a new generation of the best and brightest to public service and I believe that government can be a source of inspiration, not degradation."
Author: Andrew Cuomo

6. "Judging by my degradation in the last 24 hours, I'll be surprised if I make it to Tuesday."
Author: Aron Ralston

7. "Humility exalteth man to the heaven of glory and power, whilst pride abaseth him to the depths of wretchedness and degradation."
Author: Bahá'u'lláh

8. "Drunkenness - that fierce rage for the slow, sure poison, that oversteps every other consideration; that casts aside wife, children, friends, happiness, and station; and hurries its victims madly on to degradation and death."
Author: Charles Dickens

9. "We do not need them. They would hinder rather than help our praise. Sing unto him. This is the sweetest and best music. No instrument like the human voice. What a degradation to supplant the intelligent song of the whole congregation by the theatrical prettiness of a quartet, bellows, and pipes! We might as well pray by machinery as praise by it."
Author: Charles H. Spurgeon

10. "I hold another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling, for it extends hope to all; it makes eternity a rest - a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last; with this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low. I live in calm, looking to the end."
Author: Charlotte Brontë

11. "Poor health was not just the result of random acts, bad luck, bad behavior or unfortunate genetics. Deliberate public policy decision about housing, education, parks and streets were the key drivers of racial differences in mortality. Crime kept people off the streets and limited their ability to exercise. The lack of grocery stores limited dietary choices. The lack of primary care doctors and specialists in these communities made chronic disease care more difficult. The degradation and loss of hospital services in these communities affected hospital-based outcomes. … The chronic underfunding of critical health services at Cook County Hospital and other safety-net providers contributed to these poor outcomes as well. The deleterious impact of social structures such as urban poverty and racism on health has been called 'structural violence."
Author: David A. Ansell

12. "It's only through the degradation of the soul that you can know who you really are; when all else is stripped away, leaving you bare." Somehow, his black eyes darkened, the venom in his words more deadly than a viper's bite. "Let me degrade you, Katherine."
Author: Dianna Hardy

13. "Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation to man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations: as long as you have not shown it to be "uneconomic" you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper."
Author: E.F. Schumacher

14. "Woman's degradation is in mans idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man."
Author: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

15. "That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation."
Author: Elizabeth Cady Stanton

16. "For a long time—always, in fact—I have known that life here on earth is not what I needed and that I wasn't able to deal with it; for this reason and for this reason alone, I have acquired a touch of spiritual pride, so that my existence seems to me the degradation and the erosion of a psalm."
Author: Emil Cioran

17. "Do Self Evaluation, not Modernization....Do Self Preservation, not Adulteration....Do Self Compilation, not Segmentation....Do Self Exploration, not Exploitation....Do Self upgradation, not degradation....Do Self Demonstration, not Migration...."
Author: Fawad

18. "When I do leap into the pit, I go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in that degrading attitude, and pride myself upon it. And in the very depths of that degradation I begin a hymn of praise. Let me be accursed. Let me be vile and base, only let me kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is shrouded. Though I may be following the devil, I am Thy son, O Lord, and I love Thee, and I feel the joy without which the world cannot stand."
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

19. "...if it had to be shame, then let it be shame; if it had to be disgrace, then let it be disgrace; if it had to be degradation, then let it be degradation--the worse the better!"
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

20. "This pleasure comes precisely from the sharpest awareness of your own degradation; from the knowledge that you have gone to the utmost limit; that it is despicable, yet cannot be otherwise; that you no longer have any way out; that you will never become a different man."
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

21. "But of course that is because I do not respect myself. Can a man of perception respect himself at all? Come, can a man who attempts to find enjoyment in the very feeling of his own degradation possibly have a spark of respect for himself?"
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

22. "We are the hands and eyes and ears, the sensitive probing feelers through which the emergent, intelligent universe comes to know its own form and purpose. We bring the thunderbolt of meaning and significance to unconscious matter, blank paper, the night sky. We are already divine magicians, already supergods. Why shouldn't we use all our brilliance to leap in as many single bounds as it takes to a world beyond ours, threatened by overpopulation, mass species extinction, environmental degradation, hunger, and exploitation? Superman and his pals would figure a way out of any stupid cul-de-sac we could find ourselves in - and we made Superman, after all. All it takes is that one magic word."
Author: Grant Morrison

23. "For the record, I am sticking with my claim that the simultaneous degradation of air quality, water quality, water supply, food safety, soil quality, and other environment-related variables is the main challenge to China's continued development."
Author: James Fallows

24. "I cant take it like this much longer, Milt," Karen said muffledly into the big CKC shirt with its male smell, allowing herself the luxury of letting the bars all the way down for once, enjoying for just this moment the eternal degradation of being a woman."I cant take it much longer," she whimpered, tasting it, the eternally caught and held hard in the grasp of some man, the forever humiliated heavy weight it was impossible to squirm out from under, the forever helpless except for the mercy of him who always takes what he wants without any, and that all women learn instinctively not to expect [...] That was all they wanted. That was all any of them wanted. You give them the greatest thing you possess, the most intimate secret, and they --- just take it. Well, let them have it. Let them all have some of it. Let them root and rut and rowel, as if it was no more important than that why were they all so anxious to keep it away from each other?"
Author: James Jones

25. "Land degradation did not start with chemical agriculture. But chemical agriculture offered new tools for annihilation."
Author: Joel Salatin

26. "Every woman whether rich or poor, married or single, has a circle of influence within which, according to her character, she is exerting a certain amount of power for good or harm. Every woman, by her virtue or her vice, by her folly or her wisdom, by her levity or her dignity, is adding something to our national elevation or degradation. A community is not likely to be overthrown where woman fulfills her mission, for by the power of her noble heart over the hearts of others, she will raise that community from its ruins and restore it again to prosperity and joy."
Author: John Angell James

27. "As a southerner born after the epic events of the civil rights movement, I've always wondered how on earth people of good will could have conceivably lived with Jim Crow - with the daily degradations, the lynchings in plain sight, and, as the movement gathered force, with the fire hoses and the police dogs and the billy clubs."
Author: Jon Meacham

28. "There is no fact, no detail of our life too sordid for God's intervention. God has seen murder. God has seen rape. God has seen drug addiction's and alcoholism's utter degradation. God is available to us no matter what our circumstances. God can find us in a crack house. God can find us crumpled in a doorway or cowering on a park bench. We need only reach out to discover that God reaches back. We are led a step at a time even when we feel we are alone. Sometimes God talks to us through people. Sometimes God reaches us through circumstances or coincidence. God has a million ways to reach out to us, and when we are open to it, we begin to sense the touch of God coming to us from all directions."
Author: Julia Cameron

29. "Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet."
Author: Lewis Mumford

30. "Denial of climate change and degradation of environment for the purpose of economic prosperity is humiliation and slavery of the nature."
Author: M.F. Moonzajer

31. "All my life I've read that the life of the mind is preeminent, and that it can transcend all bodily degradation. But that's just not my experience. When your body has to deal all day with shit and string beans, your mind does too."
Author: Marilyn French

32. "The gravel road widened into a large turnaround where three similar looking and designed brothels sat waiting for customers. They were called Sheila's Front Porch, Tawny's High Five Ranch and Miss Delilah's House of Holies."Nice," Rachel said as we surveyed the scene. "why are these places always named after women -- as if women actually own them?""You got me. I guess Mister Dave's House of Holies wouldn't go over so well with the guys."Rachel smiled."You're right. I guess it's a shrewd move. Name a place of female degradation and slavery after a female and it doesn't sound so bad, does it? It's packaging."
Author: Michael Connelly

33. "As she uttered the words of the prayer, she glanced up at him as if he were God Himself. He watched her with growing pleasure. In front of him was kneeling the directress, being humiliated by a subordinate; in front of him a naked revolutionary was being humiliated by prayer; in front of him a praying lady was being humiliated by her nakedness.This threefold image of degradation intoxicated him and something unexpected suddenly happened: his body revoked its passive resistance. Edward was excited!As the directress said, 'And lead us not into temptation,' he quickly threw off all his clothes. When she said, 'Amen,' he violently lifted her off the floor and dragged her onto the couch."
Author: Milan Kundera

34. "Prison is a second-by-second assault on the soul, a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressive steel and brick umbrella that transforms seconds into hours and hours into days."
Author: Mumia Abu Jamal

35. "Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?"
Author: Patrick Henry

36. "With the plundered people transferring their energies into relaxed and receptive thoughts, degradation and lust for power produced art."
Author: Peter Weiss

37. "Both capitalism and Marxism promised to point out the path for the creation of just structures, and they declared that these, once established, would function by themselves; they declared that not only would they have no need of any prior individual morality, but that they would promote a communal morality. And this ideological promise has been proved false. The facts have clearly demonstrated it. The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful oppression of souls. And we can also see the same thing happening in the West, where the distance between rich and poor is growing constantly, and giving rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness."
Author: Pope Benedict XVI

38. "It saddens me to see the reality-television shows that are getting so much fanfare that are a celebration of stupidity and the degradation of women. And those women are consistently wearing too short, too tight dresses. I hope the trend of aging gracefully returns."
Author: Prabal Gurung

39. "And we need to maintain our foothold in the fight against terrorism and terrorist groups and respond to any degradation of Iraqi security or stability."
Author: Rick Larsen

40. "Now let me get something straight: you are not in my debt. You can't be. Impossible - because I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it. So please don't invent a debt that does not exist, or before you know it you will be trying to feel gratitude - and that is the treacherous first step downward to complete moral degradation."
Author: Robert A. Heinlein

41. "As in any person's life, there have been difficult moments: I have a son with Down's syndrome; through my photography, I have witnessed all manner of human degradation. But there have also been very happy moments."
Author: Sebastiao Salgado

42. "So many times I've photographed stories that show the degradation of the planet. I had one idea to go and photograph the factories that were polluting, and to see all the deposits of garbage. But, in the end, I thought the only way to give us an incentive, to bring hope, is to show the pictures of the pristine planet - to see the innocence."
Author: Sebastiao Salgado

43. "Pardon me, dear human self, capable of the most heinous degradation, capable of soaring."
Author: Sena Jeter Naslund

44. "A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves."
Author: Simone Weil

45. "This cult of the standard of living....is a disorder of spiritual perception of almost pathological nature, a misjudgment of the true scale of vital values, a degradation of man not tolerable for long....If we stake everything on this one card and forget what really matters, freedom above all, we sacrifice more to the idol than is right, so that, if once the material standard of living should recede by an inch or fail to rise at the rate the cult demands, we remain politically and morally disarmed and baffled."
Author: Testy McTesterson

46. "Most of my married friends now have children, the rewards of which appear to be exclusively intangible and, like the mysteries of some gnostic sect, incommunicable to outsiders. In fact it seems from the outside as if these people have joined a dubious cult: they claim to be much happier and more fulfilled than ever before, even though they live in conditions of appalling filth and degradation, deprived of the most basic freedoms and dignity, and owe unquestioning obedience to a capricious and demented master."
Author: Tim Kreider

47. "So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use. HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862. [Translation by Isabel F. Hapgood]"
Author: Victor Hugo

48. "Environmental degradation, overpopulation, refugees, narcotics, terrorism, world crime movements, and organized crime are worldwide problems that don't stop at a nation's borders."
Author: Warren Christopher

49. "So long as the system of competition in the production and exchange of the means of life goes on, the degradation of the arts will go on; and if that system is to last for ever, then art is doomed, and will surely die; that is to say, civilization will die."
Author: William Morris

50. "For Kierkegaard, for Heidegger, for Sartre, the more profound the awareness, the more authentic the existence. They measure honesty and the essence of experience by the degree of awareness. But is our humanity really built on awareness? Doesn't awareness--that forced, extreme awareness--arise among us, not from us, as something created by effort, the mutual perfecting of ourselves in it, the confirming of something that one philosopher forces onto another? Isn't man, therefore, in his private reality, something childish and always beneath his own awareness? And doesn't he feel awareness to be, at the same time, something alien, imposed and unimportant? If this is how it is, this furtive childhood, this concealed degradation are ready to explode your systems sooner or later."
Author: Witold Gombrowicz

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