Degrading Quotes

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. (Elihu Root)
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. View quote
Charlotte Gainsbourg
Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making; or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers. View quote
William Morris
All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. View quote
Oscar Wilde
The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value. View quote
Oscar Wilde
Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them. View quote
Oscar Wilde
The whole question of evolution seems less momentous than it did, because, unlike the Victorians, we do not feel that to be descended from animals is degrading to human dignity. View quote
George Orwell
What plethora of material goods can possibly atone for a waking life so humanly belittling, if not degrading, as the push-button tasks left to human performers? View quote
Lewis Mumford
People say that it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals. There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway. View quote
Jesse Owens
Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety. View quote
Daniel J. Boorstin
I would have to point out in the strongest terms the autocracy of the Liberal structure and the cowardice of its members. I have never seen in all my examination of politics so degrading a spectacle as that of all these Liberals turning their coats in unison with their Chief, when they saw the chance to take power. (Pierre Trudeau)
You think that being a girl is degrading, but secretly, you'd love to know what it's like, wouldn't you? View quote
Charlotte Gainsbourg
Science without respect for human life is degrading to us all and reflects a hollow and deceptive philosophy, a philosophy that we as a people should never condone. View quote
Nathan Deal
The photographs of Iraqi prisoners being subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment by their captors, and the reports of acts of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and other acts of maltreatment shock the conscience. View quote
Ed Markey
The message of women's liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education. View quote
Jane Rule
If anyone wonders why the airlines are not doing well it is because flying has been made such an unpleasant and degrading experience. View quote
Keith Henson
I want to be indifferent to vengeance. It's degrading. Not having a spirit of vengeance protects me, internally. View quote
Segolene Royal
Some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern. View quote
Mary Wollstonecraft
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 submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
This gift... which God gave us in order to enable us to perfect ourselves, to learn and to teach, must not be employed in doing that which is for us most degrading and perfectly disgraceful... Those who employ the faculty of thinking and speaking in the service of that sense which is no honour to us, who think more than necessary of drink and love, or even sing of these things; they employ and use the divine gift in acts of rebellion against the Giver, and in transgression of his commandments. View quote
Maimonides
I suspect that a major goal of the reform campaign is to make the work of a teacher so degrading and insulting that the dignified and the truly educated teachers will simply leave while they still retain a modicum of self-respect. (Chris Hedges)
The nation yesterday was awaiting a clear, statesmanlike call from the Chancellor of the efforts and, if necessary, the sacrifices that are needed to lift the country out of the perpetual series of crises and near crises that have dogged us ever since the war. That was what we were led to believe would happen. What did we get? We had a shambling, fumbling, largely irrelevant and, at one point, degrading speech. The Chancellor told us that the Budget was prepared under the piercing eye of Mr. Gladstone. There was one passage that was quite obviously written under a portrait of Horatio Bottomley. View quote
Harold Wilson
What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self. View quote
George Eliot
There is nothing so degrading as the constant anxiety about one's means of livelihood...Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. View quote
W. Somerset Maugham
We Great-Russian workers want, come what may, a free and independent, a democratic, republican and proud Great Russia, one that will base its neighbors on the human principle of equality, and not on the feudalist principle of privilege, which is so degrading to a great nation. View quote
Vladimir Lenin