Degrading Quotes

1. "The colonialist's existence is so closely aligned with that of the colonized that he will never be able to overcome the argument which states that misfortune is good for something. With all his power he must disown the colonized while their existence is indispensable to his own. Having chosen to maintain the colonial system, he must contribute more vigor to its defense than would have been needed to dissolve it completely. Having become aware of the unjust relationship which ties him to the colonized, he must continually attempt to absolve himself. He never forgets to make a public show of his own virtues, and will argue with vehemence to appear heroic and great. At the same time his privileges arise just as much from his glory as from degrading the colonized."
Author: Albert Memmi

2. "Religion is a drug, and to take drugs is degrading,' he said. 'You must learn to look life in the face. Throw away your cowardly drugs, and see the truth, the ugly, cruel, ungodly truth, as it really is."
Author: Anna Kavan

3. "In the end, one can only die for Sibylle. To love for her, my friends say, is degrading."
Author: Annemarie Schwarzenbach

4. "What? It's ridiculous. Control your emotions. Can you imagine if criminals went around saying they fell into hatred or jealousy and that's why they killed four people or robbed the bank? We act like love is this uncontrollable thing. But when it comes to anger and all of that ugly stuff, we're expected to control it. We're supposed to handle those emotions without hurting anyone. But throw out the word ‘love' and everyone thinks all of the rules should go right out the window and who can help it if someone gets hurt? It's absurd and it's degrading, honestly, that we expect people to control themselves except for when it comes to wanting to sleep with someone."
Author: Audrey Bell

5. "To sleep around is absolutely wrong for a woman; it's degrading and it completely ruins her personality. Sooner or later it will destroy all that is feminine and beautiful and idealistic in her."
Author: Barbara Cartland

6. "It is degrading to encourage something you would never do yourself. That is why I never give advice to young people."
Author: Bauvard

7. "She begins to feel that the reality show is the university she never attended. Vicarious reality. Emotion without a value-added tax. Movement without danger. Alma finds her reality. She no longer has a reason to put herself at risk and go out into the hostile, degrading world."
Author: Carlos Fuentes

8. "I can't get myself to say what happened next. I cannot cope with even thinking about this let alone living with it.""It is so degrading and I try to forget, it hurts so much because she is my mother."- Graham talks about being sexually abused by his mother"
Author: Carolyn Ainscough

9. "It was somehow degrading, craving someone so... voraciously - another good calendar word - just because he was physically beautiful. I hadn't thought that was something women did, either."
Author: Charlaine Harris

10. "Would to God we were all Christians who profess to be Christians, and that we lived up to what we profess. Then would the Christian shine forth "clear as the sun, fair as the moon," and what besides—why, "amazing as an army withbanners"! A consistent Church is an amazing Church—an honest, upright Church would shake the world! The tramp ofgodly men is the tramp of heroes; these are the thundering legions that sweep everything before them. The men that arewhat they profess to be, hate the semblance of a lie—whatever shape it wears—and would sooner die than do that which is dishonest, or that which would be degrading to the glory of a Heaven-born race, and to the honor of Him by whose name they have been called! O Christians! You will be the world's contempt; you will be their despising, and hissing unless you live for one objective!"
Author: Charles H. Spurgeon

11. "Girls can wear jeans, cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, 'cause it's okay to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading."
Author: Charlotte Gainsbourg

12. "See, Mr. Nak'll be talking about how anger comes creeping up, hoping you're not paying attention so it can trick you into something really embarrassing or degrading, and before you know it he's got you thinking about your life, or worse, talking about it. He keeps asking what seem like harmless questions, and it almost seems safe to answer them. Next thing you know you're ready to say something you thought you'd never tell anybody."
Author: Chris Crutcher

13. "The women in porn plead to be abused. They call themselves whores and sluts. They are beaten and penetrated by groups of men. Their faces are covered with semen from dozens of masturbating men, their anuses are penetrated repeatedly by lines of partners, and they are raped. The women portrayed in the films exist to fulfill the desire of men in the most degrading and painful way possible. Nearly all porn dialogue includes lines from women such as I am a cunt, I am a bitch. I am a whore. I am a slut."
Author: Chris Hedges

14. "My husband would do anything for me ...' It's degrading. No human being ought to have such power over another.""It's a very real power, Harriet.""Then ... we won't use it. If we disagree, we'll fight it out like gentlemen. We won't stand for matrimonial blackmail."
Author: Dorothy L. Sayers

15. "Cruelty to men and to the lower animals as well, which would have passed unnoticed a century ago, now shocks the sensibilities and is regarded as wicked and degrading."
Author: Elihu Root

16. "To be a god can ultimately become boring and degrading. There'd be reason enough for the invention of free will! A god might wish to escape into sleep and be alive only in the unconscious projections of his dream-creatures."
Author: Frank Herbert

17. "It must be the top drawer," he reflected. "So she carries the keys in a pocket on the right. All in one bunch on a steel ring… . And there's one key there, three times as big as all the others, with deep notches; that can't be the key of the chest of drawers … then there must be some other chest or strong-box … that's worth knowing. Strong-boxes always have keys like that … but how degrading it all is."
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

18. "The most degrading cross has always produced the greatest glory and force, as long as the humility of the martyrdom is sincere. But do you have that humility? What you need is not a challenge but infinite humility and humiliation! You mustn't despise those who judge you, but believe in them sincerely, as in a great church; then you will triumph over them and turn them toward you by your example, and you will be united in love--ah, if only you could endure it!"
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

19. "When all are undressed, one is somehow not ashamed, but when one's the only one undressed and everybody is looking, it's degrading,' he kept repeating to himself, again and again. 'It's like a dream, I've sometimes dreamed of being in such degrading positions.' It was a misery to him to take off his socks. They were very dirty, and so were his underclothes, and now everyone could see it. And what was worse, he disliked his feet. All his life he had thought both his big toes hideous. He particularly loathed the coarse, flat, crooked nail on the right one, and now they would all see it. Feeling intolerably ashamed made him, at once and intentionally, rougher. He pulled off his shirt, himself."
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

20. "What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self."
Author: George Eliot

21. "But, of old, there was One whose suffering changed an instrument of torture, degradation and shame, into a symbol of glory, honor, and immortal life; and, where His spirit is, neither degrading stripes, nor blood, nor insults, can make the Christian's last struggle less than glorious."
Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe

22. "For if we regard space and time as properties that must, as regards their possibility, be found in things in themselves, [...] then we really cannot blame the good Bishop Berkeley for degrading bodies to mere illusion. Nay, even our own existence, which would thus be made dependent on the self-subsistent reality of a non-entity such as time, would, along with this time, be changed into mere illusion - an absurdity of which hitherto no one has been guilty."
Author: Immanuel Kant

23. "Drown those degrading thoughts."
Author: Jaachynma N.E. Agu

24. "One great help here - and I make no claim that it is the only help or even a necessary condition for forgiveness - is sincere repentance on the part of the wrongdoer. When I am wronged by another, a great part of the injury - over and above any physical harm I may suffer - is the insulting or degrading message that has been given to me by the wrongdoer: the message that I am less worthy than he is, so unworthy that he may use me merely as a means or object in service to his desires and projects. Thus failing to resent(or hastily forgiving) the wrongdoer runs the risk that I am endorsing that very immoral message for which the wrongdoer stands. If the wrongdoer sincerely repents, however, he now joins me in repundiating the degrading and insulting message - allowing me to relate to him (his new self) as an equal without fear that a failure to resent him will be read as a failure to resent what he hs done."
Author: Jeffrie G. Murphy

25. "I cannot leave this subject as though its just treatment wholly depended either on our own pledges or economic facts. The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable, - abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilized life of Europe. Some preach it in the name of Justice. In the great events of man's history, in the unwinding of the complex fates of nations Justice is not so simple. And if it were, nations are not authorized, by religion or by natural morals, to visit on the children of their enemies the misdoings of parents of rulers."
Author: John Maynard Keynes

26. "If anyone wonders why the airlines are not doing well it is because flying has been made such an unpleasant and degrading experience."
Author: Keith Henson

27. " Oberon said as we walked inside. You don't offer werewolves treats if you want to keep all your appendages. They think it's undignified and degrading to be offered a treat. I beg your pardon? No. You just made all of that up. "
Author: Kevin Hearne

28. "Fear is the original sin. Almost all of the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.It is a cold slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading."
Author: L.M. Montgomery

29. "Cloning looks like a degrading of parenthood and a perversion of the right relation between parents and children."
Author: Leon Kass

30. "If young men and young women are brought up to consider frugality contemptible, and industry degrading, it is vain to expect they will at once become prudent and useful, when the cares of life press heavily upon them."
Author: Lydia Maria Francis Child

31. "Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex."
Author: Mahatma Gandhi

32. "Dear Abby,My boyfriend won't suck my blood. I've offered, I've cajoled. I've even begged, even though begging is totally humiliating and degrading because I'm so afraid that if he doesn't, he's going to die. Oh, and did I mention he's a vampire? No, really, the undead kind.Signed,Confused in Texas.Dear Confused:What the Fuck!?"
Author: Maria Lima

33. "An environmentalist can oppose factory farming because it's reckless stewardship. A conservative can oppose factory farming because it is destructive to small farmers and to the decent ethic of husbandry those farmers live by. A religious person can oppose factory farming because it is degrading to both man and animal - an offense to God."
Author: Matthew Scully

34. "The anarchy that threatens a degrading society is not its punishment, but its remedy."
Author: Nicolás Gómez Dávila

35. "Too many leaders value their popularity, protecting it at all cost, degrading their credibility."
Author: Noel DeJesus

36. "All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people's thoughts, living by other people's standards, wearing practically what one may call other people's second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment."
Author: Oscar Wilde

37. "I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!"
Author: Oscar Wilde

38. "It makes you crazy. Waiting for someone to love you, to come to you and only you, to choose you like you've already chosen, is the most degrading, debasing, demoralising...and yet, sweet, sweet pain there is. It's as humbling aas it is humiliating. But yes, there is a sweet side."
Author: Pamela Ribon

39. "Pain is never ennobling, only degrading. And do not be afraid, sir, that there will ever be too little of it in the world to spare mankind its "purification". There will always be human groans enough to fill the sails of that argument. But I am a practical Christian. Unlike you, sir, I relieve suffering, wherever I see it. Your ladies would not object to warm baths, to mitigate labour pains? To opium? It is the same prinicple."
Author: Richard Gordon

40. "I want to be indifferent to vengeance. It's degrading. Not having a spirit of vengeance protects me, internally."
Author: Segolene Royal

41. "A garter. You're supposed to take it off and keep it as a memento. K-k-kinda like a trophyfor going far sexually with a girl. It's stupid, really. And kind of d-d-degrading if I think aboutit too m-m-much.""I know what it is," he says, amusement evident in his voice. "I just wanted to hear yourexplanation."
Author: Simone Elkeles

42. "Database Management System [Origin: Data + Latin basus "low, mean, vile, menial, degrading, ounterfeit."] A complex set of interrelational data structures allowing data to be lost in many convenient sequences while retaining a complete record of the logical relations between the missing items. -- From The Devil's DP Dictionary"
Author: Stan Kelly Bootle

43. "I think it's degrading of you, Flora,' cried Mrs Smiling at breakfast. 'Do you truly mean that you don't ever want to work at anything?'Her friend replied after some thought: 'Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as "Persuasion", but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say "Collecting material." No one can object to that. Besides, I shall be.'Mrs Smiling drank some coffee in silent disapproval.'If you ask me,' continued Flora, 'I think I have much in common with Miss Austen. She liked everything to be tidy and pleasant and comfortable around her, and so do I. You see Mary,' - and here Flora began to grow earnest and to wave one finger about - 'unless everything is tidy and pleasant and comfortable all about one, people cannot even begin to enjoy life. I cannot endure messes."
Author: Stella Gibbons

44. "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading subjugation on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it: for man is an imitative animal."
Author: Thomas Jefferson

45. "Women's liberation is one thing, but the permeation of anti-male sentiment in post-modern popular culture - from our mocking sitcom plots to degrading commercial story lines - stands testament to the ignorance of society. Fair or not, as the lead gender that never requested such a role, the historical male reputation is quite balanced. For all of their perceived wrongs, over centuries they've moved entire civilizations forward, nurtured the human quest for discovery and industry, and led humankind from inconvenient darkness to convenient modernity. Navigating the chessboard that is human existence is quite a feat, yet one rarely acknowledged in modern academia or media. And yet for those monumental achievements, I love and admire the balanced creation that is man for all his strengths and weaknesses, his gifts and his curses. I would venture to say that most wise women do."
Author: Tiffany Madison

46. "War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to "a war against" whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the "right" side and therefore will win. Right makes might."
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

47. "One day of happiness is worth more than a lifetime of sorrow .... Under ordinary circumstances, jealousy is a suspicion to the person who excites it and degrading to the person who indulges it."
Author: Victor Hugo

48. "The thing is, I can't love her, not in the real world. Because this would be degrading to me. To love someone who despises you, and she just might. You should see her eyes on me sometimes. Plus she's not even a mother anymore, she's just a planet with a face. Da at least has hands."
Author: Victor Lodato

49. "The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading" so that "he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy."
Author: Viktor E. Frankl

50. "My God died young. Theolatry i foundDegrading, and its premises, unsound.No free man needs God; but was I free?"
Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Degrading Quotes Pictures