Popular quotes about Decent! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Makes a diff'rence, havin' a decent family,' he said. 'Me dad was decent. An' your mum an' dad were decent. If they'd lived, life woulda bin diff'rent, eh?' 'Yeah, I s'pose,' said Harry cautiously. Hagrid seemed to be in a very strange mood. 'Family,' said Hagrid gloomily. 'Whatever yeh say, blood's important.
J. K. RowlingI'm a decent cook; I'm a decent chef. None of my friends would ever have hired me at any point in my career. Period.
Anthony BourdainI think that one of the greatest challenges we have today is around education. One of the things that is dividing us more and more is whether you have good prospects or you don't. Do you live a neighborhood where the schools are good? If you don't, your kids may not read until the time they're in third grade. Do you at least have access to a community college that will give you job training skills so that if you don't go for four years you will at least come out with a decent job and a decent wage. Too many people don't have that opportunity.
Condoleezza RiceOne of the great problems with Americans is that - being a decent people - they assume that everyone else is equally decent.
Meir KahaneOf all the characteristics needed for both a happy and morally decent life, none surpasses gratitude. Grateful people are happier, and grateful people are more morally decent.
Dennis PragerIf the village worker is not a decent man or woman, conducting a decent home, he or she had better not aspire after the high privilege and honour of becoming a village worker.
Mahatma GandhiWhat we have to do is make sure that here in America, if you work hard, you can get ahead. If you worked hard, not only did you have a good job, but you also had decent benefits, decent health care. We've got to make sure that we're doing everything we can to expand the middle class and people who are working hard can get into the middle class.
Barack ObamaThe humor is essentially dark for a cartoon and sophisticated. But at the same time, being a cartoon gives the writers more freedom than in a normal sitcom. It always pushes the line that, despite human failings, the Simpsons are really decent people.
Dan CastellanetaI wanted to write about the time when science became modern, around the 1950s. Right after physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, science started being so politicized and used as such a political weapon. When my father, who is a scientist, tells me about those years, I get a competing portrait of people who were expected to behave normally and be decent respectable members of society and who were also allowed this freedom to think in big and expansive ways. Now, when you think about people who work in labs, they're allowed to be socially inept in a very fundamental way.
Hanya YanagiharaGermany was a parliamentary democracy with many, many humane and decent people who kept writing in their journals - I've read these journals, these memoirs - "Surely our leaders will stop this nonsense. Surely someone will take on these thugs. Surely the pendulum will swing back." Everyone was sitting at home going, "Well, they haven't come for me. This is crazy, but surely someone's going to take care of it." We all have to take care of it.
Naomi WolfI sometimes wonder how many of these lifetime achievement awards you can accept before you have to do the decent thing and die.
James TaylorTrue philosophy is that which renders us to ourselves, and all others who surround us, better, and at the same time more content, more patient, more calm and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment.
Johann Kaspar LavaterDemocracy appears to me potentially a higher form of political organization than any kind of dictatorship. But if it turns out that in America, which could afford a decent living for everyone, the comfortable majority is willing to condone the misery and abuse of a minority for an indefinite period, the exploitation by the majority becomes as repugnant as exploitation by an oligarchy, and democracy loses half its supposed superiority.
Benjamin SpockCreepy people do the things that decent people want to do, but have decided are not a great idea.
Mike BirbigliaA centerpiece for any kind of progressive social and economic program needs to be full employment with decent wages and working conditions. The reasons are starting with money. Does someone in your family have a job and, if so, how much does it pay? For the overwhelming majority of the world's population, how one answers these two questions determines, more than anything else, what one's living standard will be. But beyond just money, your job is also crucial for establishing your ability to raise a family, and your chances to participate in the life of your community.
Robert PollinSaying something is 'too bad' is easy. You say you disapprove, which makes you a nice person, and then you can go about your business and not be interested anymore. It's a lot worse than 'too bad.' It's against everything decent and natural.
Isaac AsimovI'm complicated, sentimental, lovable, honest, loyal, decent, generous, likable, and lonely. My personality is not split; it's shredded.
Jack PaarI wasn't born with any innate talent. I've never been naturally gifted at anything. I always had to work at it. The only way I knew how to succeed was to try harder than anyone else. Dogged persistence is what got me through life. But here was something I was half-decent at. Being able to run great distances was the one thing I could offer the world. Others might be faster, but I could go longer. My strongest quality is that I never give up.
Dean KarnazesEvery man has been brought up with the idea that decent women don't pop in and out of bed; he has always been told by his mother that "nice girls don't." He finds, of course, when he gets older that this may be untrue-but only in a certain section of society.
Barbara CartlandI grew up on the beaches, and I always found it kind of funny that it's considered decent if you cover three tiny spots with pieces of fabric.
Bo DerekIf you prefer illusions to realities, it is only because all decent realities have eluded you and left you in the lurch; or else your contempt for the world is mere hypocrisy and funk.
George SantayanaI went almost naked to see that my mother was kept decent and treated as a human being for the first time in all of her life.
Fannie Lou HamerPeople are hungry, and they're hurting and they're very, very worried about their children. Will their kids ever pay off their student debt? Will their kids ever get a decent-paying job? I think Democrats have got to be running a grass-roots campaign - mobilizing people and being prepared to take on the 1 percent with an agenda that speaks to the needs of ordinary workers.
Bernie SandersI work within the framework of a very concerted, purely driven Protestant Christian mindset. I had dark early circumstances. I went inward. I have a sturdy will. I have a big heart. I'm a decent guy. And I have a great gift. It's blunted me to the world in many ways.
James EllroyFreud expressed the opinion-not quite in earnest, though, it seeemed to me-that philosophy was the most decent form of sublimation of repressed sexuality, nothing more. In response I put the question, 'What then is science, particularly psychoanalytic psychology?' Whereup on he, visible a bit surprised, answered evasively: 'At least psychology has a social purpose.'
Ludwig BinswangerYes, men are pigs. Except your brother, of course. He's actually a decent human being. Almost a woman. -Jillian's mother
Gena ShowalterWritin songs is like a mystery. The most difficult thing to do is have a good idea. If you have a decent idea, the songs are the easy part. Actually having something to say is the hard part. If you get an idea for a song, then it pulls you along. There are just some ideas that you get that are really hard to edit out; it's hard to stop thinking about some bad ideas. So you just finish it and you end up putting it on a record.
Lyle LovettThe notion that somehow through a trade war or protectionism or magical thinking that we're going to return to a romanticized economic past is, in the end, going to be an illusion. And a severe disappointment to millions of decent, hard-working people.
David RemnickIt's why this election was HORRIBLE. It was either Hilary is the devil and Trump a saint. Or Trump the devil and Hilary a saint. Can't we all have a decent, civil conversation without throwing "shade?"
Michelle SingletaryPeople are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids - all while the very rich become much richer.
Bernie SandersBe a part of all that is decent and be an ambassador for the kind of world that you want to live in.
Julie AndrewsThe job is interesting, and the task is difficult, but the man [Maigret] is just a decent man doing a very ordinary job.
Rowan AtkinsonAll decent people live beyond their incomes; those who aren't respectable live beyond other people's; a few gifted individuals manage to do both.
Hector Hugh MunroI think the team that successfully puts together an economic and social policy framework for global full employment in decent working conditions based on local development, that would command the support of all stakeholders and all international organizations concerned, should be awarded the [Nobel] prize. I am sure they would get it not just for economics, but also for peace in the world.
Juan SomaviaI have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent. Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils.
Thomas PaineIt is something that most parents hope for in life: That their children will be moderately successful, polite, decent human beings. Anything on top of that is something you have no right to hope for, but we all do.
Jerry KramerLet me tell you humans something. You are not fighters. You donโt have what it takes to actually change your current living situations. You canโt even organize a decent group to combat oppression. How can beings of such low stature hope to do anything? You are not heroes. Stop pretending you are helping by playing commando and get out of the way of someone who can.
Charles LeeBetter world. Better life for everybody, every worker. Poor kids oughta be able to go anyplace their brains will take them. Not where Daddy or Mommy's pocketbooks can send them. Everybody oughta have health care, everybody oughta have some retirement security, every American. Every one. Everybody oughta have a decent good job. That's what I believe in, and that's what I fight every day to try to achieve.
Richard TrumkaI'm most proud of my kids, for one, and my family and my parents. Outside of that - what am I proud of? I don't know. I don't look back, I just go forward. I'm just proud of the fact that my parents were immigrants and we had nearly nothing, and all of the sudden, with the help of a lot of people and my parents as a model, I amounted to something. And I'm doing some very decent work.
Frank OzThat Plato's Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history.
Bertrand RussellModesty means to be free from undue familiarity, from indecency, from lewdness, pure in thought and conduct. Speaking of modest apparel, it means decent, seemly. The opposite of modesty is conceit, boldness, immodesty, brazenness, lewdness.
Elisabeth ElliotTony Blair is a decent man who genuinely thinks what he is doing is justified. But when he sees men such as George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld smirking and boasting as they announce their Shock and Awe offensive, we hope he understands why we believe we have been dragged into something we should have been fighting tooth and nail to stop.
Piers MorganOne of the greatest disasters that happened to modern civilization was for democracy to inscribe "liberty" on its banners instead of "justice." Because "liberty" was considered the ideal it was not long until some men interpreted it as meaning "freedom from justice"; then when religion and decent government attempted to bring them back to justice, organized into "freedom groups" they protested that their constitutional and natural rights were being violated.
Fulton J. SheenThere will be a quick rash of hairy American filth, but it shouldn't threaten the existence of decent, serious British filth.
John OsborneIn other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.
Sinclair Lewis