Decency Quotes - page 7
Let us turn now to the most elementary principle of just war theory, universality. Those who cannot accept this principle should have the decency to keep silent about matters of right and wrong, or just war. If we can rise to this level, some obvious questions arise: for example, have Cuba and Nicaragua been entitled to set off bombs in Washington, New York, and Miami in self-defense against ongoing terrorist attack? Particularly so when the perpetrators are well known and act with complete impunity, sometimes in brazen defiance of the highest international authorities, so that the cases are far clearer than Afghanistan? If not, why not?
Noam Chomsky
He knows that law is the adhesive force in the cement of society, creating order out of chaos and coherence in place of anarchy. He knows that for one man to defy a law or court order he does not like is to invite others to defy those which they do not like, leading to a breakdown of all justice and all order. He knows, too, that every fellowman is entitled to be regarded with decency and treated with dignity. Any educated citizen who seeks to subvert the law, to suppress freedom, or to subject other human beings to acts that are less than human, degrades his heritage, ignores his learning, and betrays his obligation.
John F. Kennedy
Don't join the book burners. Don't think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
![You're no angel. You're Fallen. You just haven't had the decency to lose your wings. [Reaver]. (Larissa Ione)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/92/larissa-ione-angel-decency-881792.webp)
This is pure ends-justify-the-means logic. And the means are pushing falsehood. The notion here seems to be that Trump is helping America avoid perdition, and thus must be given leeway to lie; if we didn't allow him to lie, the left would continue to do so, and then they'd win and drive us straight into Hell. But that suggests that truth no longer has the capacity to drive voters or Americans. If that's true, republicanism is finished as a principle – if we can only lie to voters to get them to vote for us, that undermines the decency of republicanism altogether.
Ben Shapiro
Look at the men themselves who lead in this cause. Is there one among them with whom you would trust yourself in the dark? Can you have, I will not say, any confidence in their opinions and principles, but any doubt of the wickedness of their intentions? Look at them, at their characters, at their conduct. What is there more base, and more detestable, more at variance with all tact and decency, as well as all morality, truth, and honour? A cause so supported cannot be a good cause. They may use Burdett as an instrument for a time, and you also if you place yourself in their trammels, but depend upon it, if a convulsion follows their attempt to work upon the minds of the people, inflamed as they now are by distress, for which your reform will afford a very inadequate remedy, I shall not precede you many months on the scaffold, which you will have assisted in preparing for us both.
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey
We may also observe, that, upon these occasions, the female Nimrods dispensed with the method of riding best suited to the modesty of the sex, and sat astride on the saddle like the men; but this indecorous custom, I trust, was never general, nor of long continuance, even with the heroines who were most delighted with these masculine exercises. An author of the seventeenth century speaks of another fashion, adopted by the fair huntresses of the town of Bury in Suffolk. "The Bury ladies," says he, "that used hawking and hunting, were once in a great vaine of wearing breeches," which it seems gave rise to many severe and ludicrous sarcasms. The only argument in favour of this habit, was decency in case of an accident. But in a manner more consistent with the delicacy of the sex, that is, by refraining from those dangerous recreations.
Joseph Strutt
These [RAF] airmen were my fellow countrymen, and I was proud to be of their race. I knew the essential decency which was the bedrock of their character, their humour, stubbornness, and self-reliance. I knew that if called upon they could adapt themselves to any kind of life, in the desert, in the jungle, in mountains or on the sea, and that in many respects no race in the world was their equal. But the things that interested them bored me. They belonged to an age of machines; they were fascinated by cars and aeroplanes, and found their relaxation in the cinema and the wireless. I knew that I stood apart from them and would never find contentment among them, whereas I could find it among the Bedu, although I should never be one of them.
Wilfred Thesiger
