Quotes About Dignity

For us democracy is a question of human dignity. And human dignity is political freedom, the right to freely express opinion and the right to be allowed to criticise and form opinions. Human dignity is the right to health, work, education and social welfare. Human dignity is the right and the practical possibility to shape the future with others. These rights, the rights of democracy, are not reserved for a select group within society, they are the rights of all the people.

We tend to suffer from the illusion that we are capable of dying for a belief or theory. What Hagakure is insisting is that even in merciless death, a futile death that knows neither flower nor fruit has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile.

If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death No death may be called futile.

There ain't anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity. Can you figure out a single thing you really please-God like to do you can do and keep your dignity? The human frame just ain't built that way.

In one sense, no act of reparation will be satisfactory for those whose lives were so under-valued both as human beings held in slavery and then as human chattel to satisfy the financial indebtedness of a Catholic institution. Nonetheless, the university must also put into place - as it is attempting to do - a program that both admits the horror and error of its past actions and directs its students, faculty, and administrations to an awareness of the dignity of all people, especially those who even today are often considered less than worthy of respect and dignity.

One should not be assigned one's identity in society by the job slot one happens to fill. If we truly believe in the dignity of labor, any task can be performed with equal pride because none can demean the basic dignity of a human being.

Her legacy was her quiet dignity and instinctive rage against injustice, ... What she determined on the spot was that her dignity would not allow her to be treated unjustly.

A remarkable feature of Islam is that it gives dignity even to the humblest illiterate peasants. It gives them a certain human dignity which one doesn't find in other societies.

Without God man has no reference point to define himself. 20th century philosophy manifests the chaos of man seeking to understand himself as a creature with dignity while having no reference point for that dignity.

The supreme belief of our society is the dignity and freedom of the individual. To the respect of that dignity, to the defense of that freedom, all effort is pledged.

It was the class and dignity which he led his life that made him part of all of us. I will forever treasure the close friendship we shared over the years.

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery.

Where boasting ends, there dignity begins.

I never defended myself. Not once. I never said, "Excuse me? What gives you the right to insult and demean me?" I let them steal my dignity.

The strike and the boycott, they have cost us much. What they have not paid us in wages, better working conditions, and new contracts, they have paid us in self-respect and human dignity.

The selfless love that we give to others, to the point of being willing to sacrifice our lives for them, is all the proof I need that human beings are not mere animals of self-interest. We carry within us a divine spark, and if we chose to recognize it, our lives have dignity, meaning, hope.

I am nothing but a miserable, crushed worm, whom no one wants, whom no one loves, a useless creature with morning sickness, and abig belly, two rotten teeth, and a bad temper, a battered sense of dignity, and a love which nobody wants and which nearly drives me insane.

Our existence as embodied beings is purely momentary; what are a hundred years in eternity? But if we shatter the chains of egotism, and melt into the ocean of humanity, we share its dignity. To feel that we are something is to set up a barrier between God and ourselves; to cease feeling that we are something, is to become one with God.

There is no reconciliation until you recognize the dignity of the other, until you see their view- you have to enter into the pain of the people. You've got to feel their need.

There is also a philosophy of less-is-more, and a little dignity that never hurt anybody. There are many qualities to admire about our father's generation.

We knew so little about eachother. We lay mostly submerged, like ice floes with our visible social selves projecting only cool and white. Here was a rare sight below the waves, of a man's privacy and turmoil, of his dignity upended by the overpowering necessity of pure fantasy, pure thought, by the irreducible human element - Mind.

The dignity we seek in dying is not to be found in our final weeks, days or moments but in the way we live and how we are seen by those people whose lives we affect.

I tell you the truth: if I lived in a country where there was no day appointed for elections, I would become a revolutionary, if not a terrorist. And that is because I love liberty too much; without liberty a man is not a man. He has no dignity.

Women's rights are an essential part of the overall human rights agenda, trained on the equal dignity and ability to live in freedom all people should enjoy.

The transformation of nature, a total fusion of science, art and technology in a sublime statement of human dignity and intelligence through the settlements we build for ourselves.

Inner freedom demands the rejection of any imposition that injures our dignity.

Practicing yoga does not eliminate life’s challenges, and neither does it provide us with a convenient trap-door to escape from life’s distractions. Instead, Yoga gives us the skills to meet life head-on with dignity and poise.

There are those who believe justice and dignity are reserved only for some people. Young men have died in police custody, and the growing heel of poverty has worn down harder on children of color...We must fight back.

One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said -- the words one didn't have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one's dignity or survival.

When who you are and what you are is not decided by any external forces, then you are in dignity.

Nothing is so essential as dignity…Time will reveal who has it and who has it not.

She must express life, death, happiness, sorrow, love and anger, but above all she must have dignity.

In our rough and rugged individualism, we think of gentleness as weakness, being soft and virtually spineless. Not so! Gentleness includes such enviable qualities as having strength under control, being calm and peaceful when surrounded by a heated atmosphere, emitting a soothing effect on those who may be angry or otherwise beside themselves, and possessing tact and gracious courtesy that causes others to retain their self-esteem and dignity. Instead of losing, the gentle gain. Instead of being ripped off and taken advantage of, they come out ahead!

Dogs are intelligent beings; they are not human beings. The life of a dog - there's no equivalency with the life of a person, and if you are putting a dog in the line of danger to save human life, and they can do the job reasonably well, I mean, seriously, what about dignity and self-respect? I feel like going out to dinner, I think I will have my cocker spaniel host the show tonight.

People who don’t know how to summarize have no dignity. Neither do people who needlessly drag on their messy lives. They who don’t know the beauty of simplification, of pruning away the unnecessary, die without ever comprehending the true meaning of life.

The dignity to be sought in death is the appreciation by others of what one has been in life,... that proceeds from a life well lived and from the acceptance of one's own death as a necessary process of nature.... It is also the recognition that the real event taking place at the end of our life is our death, not the attempts to prevent it.

The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law, to the strength of the spirit.

If you look at how great artists of the past, like Beethoven, for example dealt with art and morality, you see that there was torture and pain in their work, but there was also dignity in the way that was dealt with. So I don't buy this contemporary notion that the only way to be artistic is to be arrogant, offensive or immoral.

It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.

Peter,” Ashley asked softly, “Do you know what that was?” “Of course,” Peter said, much affronted. “A thimble.” “No,” said Ashley, staring, “That was a kiss.” “Didn’t it strike you as a little different from other thimbles you’ve had in the past?” Peter looked shifty. “Well, yes.” “Ha!” “It was my first thimble with tongue.” Peter told her with dignity.

Compassion is an act of tolerance where kindness and forgiveness reign. When we make the compassionate choice, we enhance the dignity of each individual, which is the very essence of loving them.

We do not war with races primarily as such. Tyranny is our foe. Whatever trapping or disguise it wears, whatever language it speaks, be it external or internal, we must for ever be on our guard, ever mobilized, ever vigilant, always ready to spring at its throat. In all this we march together. Not only do we march and strive shoulder to shoulder at this moment, under the fire of the enemy on the fields of war or in the air, but also in those realms of thought which are consecrated to the rights and the dignity of man.

The world knows of Rosa Parks because of a single, simple act of dignity and courage that struck a lethal blow to the foundations of legal bigotry.

Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had

If you come face to face with some really challenging situations and tragic circumstances - you are going in there with a purpose. You are not going in there as a tourist. You're not going there just to merely observe. You have a purpose, and your purpose is to tell that story, to share that story for the bigger benefit of millions of other people. Your purpose is to create that bridge so you can give that story the dignity and the focus that it deserves, and you can become a part of the amplification that needs to be there.

Memory performs the impossible for man by the strength of his divine arms; holds together past and present, beholding both, existing in both, abides in the flowing, and gives continuity and dignity to human life.