Decent Human Quotes

#1. There have to be moments when you glimpse something decent, something life-affirming even in the most twisted character. That's where the real art lies. See, I always suspect characters who are painted as lovely, decent human beings. I would always question where the darkness lies.

Martin McDonagh

#2. If he is a half-decent human being, he will find himself the object of crushes. If he is a cocky bastard, even more so.

Piper Kerman

#3. Just recently I worked with Van Morrison and I came to realize that money can't make a decent human being out of you.

Jim Sullivan

#4. An awful lot of fantasy, and even some great fantasy, falls into the mistake of assuming that a good man will be a good king, that all that is necessary is to be a decent human being and when you're king everything will go swimmingly.

George R R Martin

#5. I don't think any of us know how we would react until we were put in a situation where we have to do something bad or do something good. I think I'd like to believe I'd act like a decent human being, but I'm realistic to know I don't know.

Philip Kerr

#6. You can be a rich scumbag just as easily as a poor scumbag, or you can be a decent human being either way. Money's got nothing to do with it. It's nice to have, but it's not what makes you who you are.

Tana French

#7. Well, on a personal level, I would never want to take on a character who didn't have some redeemable qualities. Even the worst of people, such as Michael Scott in The Office [Carell's character in the US version of the Ricky Gervais sitcom], have some decent human qualities that you can latch onto.

Steve Carell

#8. If you're worried about pervs breaking into the house, it's not going to make a difference whether I'm in this outfit or in baggy jeans and a sweatshirt. Either they're decent human beings or they're not. Their actions are on them.

Susan Ee

#9. Everyone should know
there's no such thing as a decent human being. It's just an illusion. And when it's gone, it's really gone.

Courtney Summers

#10. So there's much more to life than one's intelligence score. To be a decent human being. To have some character.

Edward Zigler

#11. I don't think any decent human being enjoys recruiting.

Al McGuire

#12. Teddy found himself thinking what a decent human being his father had been, the best of all the family really. The grief caught him unawares.

Kate Atkinson

#13. If you give anybody the chance, they can always make a decent human being out of themselves. It's the people that don't have a chance, that we look down at like they're monsters or they're animals or that they want something different than the rest of us.

Ice Cube

#14. We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.

John Fowles

#15. We would screw up our children. It was inevitable. Julie had taught me that you never get the child you want or expect. You get the child you get and you try your best to make sure they turn out to be a decent human being. That was all that mattered. An

Ilona Andrews

#16. Rahul Gandhi is very idealistic and a very decent human being. He has real concerns for the downtrodden.

N. R. Narayana Murthy

#17. There is no law that says a man who earned a hundred million dollars in his first half-dozen years on the job has to be a decent human being, but Mike Eisner is that and more.

Joseph Barbera

#18. Yes, men are pigs. Except your brother, of course. He's actually a decent human being. Almost a woman.
-Jillian's mother

Gena Showalter

#19. I shall strive not to be guilty of adding any fuel to the flames of hatred and passion which, if continued to be fed, promise to burn up whatever is left by the war of decent human feeling in Europe.

Eamon De Valera

#20. I really don't care with whom you sleep. I just care what kind of a decent human being you are.

Betty White

#21. The measure of a decent human being is how he or she treats the defenseless.

Bill O'Reilly

#22. I think it's extremely difficult consistently being a decent human being.

Susanne Bier

#23. It is in your own power to maintain the beauty of your soul, or to be a decent human being.

Marcus Aurelius

#24. Stand up for your principles, but be a decent human being while you're doing it.

Rick Santorum

#25. Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe that a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven.

Richard Dawkins

#26. I do not need the written code of a spiritual belief to act like a decent human being.

Jim Butcher

#27. It is perhaps one's own fault, to see oneself drifting, rotting, in dishonour and horrible futility, and all the while knowing that somewhere within one there is the possibility of a decent human being.

George Orwell

#28. Americans should know that Iranians are just as decent, human and rational as other human beings. Sadly, the mainstream media in the U.S. regularly fails to recognize and reflect this.

Mohammad Marandi

#29. He decided he'd rather die as a fundamentally decent human being than live as the sort of asshole who'd tear out someone's liver to get into an escape pod.

John Scalzi

#30. When the true criminals are running around free, the only honorable place for a decent human being is in prisons.

Henry David Thoreau

#31. A decent human being is ashamed at being somebody's boss!

Arno Hintjens

#32. I think the challenge is, in fashion everybody wants to get rich and famous and it's easy to get rich and famous by being a bad person. But the challenge is to achieve your goals-whatever they are-while staying a decent human being. That's where it came from.

Katharine Hamnett

#33. Our only reliable source of strength is the goodness of our hearts. Our only foundation for coming to terms with the suffering of the times is our innate need to be decent human beings.

Sakyong Mipham

#34. I love the bicycle. I always have. I can think of no sincere, decent human being, male or female, young or old, saintly or sinful, who can resist the bicycle.

William, Saroyan

#35. There are parents who are really angry that I decided to portray people who have come into the country illegally as decent human beings.

Paolo Bacigalupi

#36. I think people can be very nice and charming without being decent human beings.

Claire Hennessy

#37. It is sometimes easier to head an institute for the study of child guidance than it is to turn one brat into a decent human being.

Joseph Wood Krutch

#38. I know writers like to think of themselves as bohemians,' he said, 'but that doesn't mean they can't behave like decent human beings.

Gert Loveday

#39. I couldn't make sense of things. But then I began the process of civilising myself and trying to become a decent human being. I'm still working on it.

Jimmy Nail

#40. If someone mistakes your kindness for weakness, that's their fault - not yours. And it's OK to be a decent human being in this life.

Jeremy Piven

#41. One must think like a hero merely to behave like a decent human being.

May Sarton

#42. In life, you have to keep certain parts of yourself in check because you want to be a decent human being. But one of the guilty pleasures of acting is that sometimes you get to let a little something out that you don't in life because it's not right.

Paul Dano

#43. I'm more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help.

Hannah Arendt

#44. It 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 Kramer

#45. Being a decent human being will require effort and energy ...

David Nicholls

#46. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

May Sarton

#47. I get tested for HIV twice a year ... One has to be socially aware. It's part of being a decent human to be tested for STDs. It's just disgusting behaviour when people don't. It's so irresponsible.

Scarlett Johansson

#48. I'm actually a pretty decent human being, and when I'm home I'm straight as an arrow.

Kid Rock

#49. How is it that you can go from decent human being to complete jackass in zero-point-two seconds? Did they teach you that in The Eye?"
He stopped, and his eyes glided over my lips.
"Actually, I'm just trying to see if I can make you mad enough to kiss me again.

Rachel Hawkins

#50. I mean ... if you're raised as a decent human being, killing somebody is against every moral thing you've ever been taught. And so, generally, in combat it's 'krauts,' the 'gooks,' the 'yanks' - whatever you want to do to try and make it so that it's not a human being.

Karl Marlantes

#51. A fundamental element of human nature is the need for creative work, for creative inquiry, for free creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive institutions. A decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realized.

Noam Chomsky

#52. If being a decent soul is being maternal, then fine. I'll call it human.

Mary Beard

#53. As long as the decent people refuse to believe that morality must manifest itself in every sphere of human activity, including the political, they will not meet the challenge of Marxism.

Fulton J. Sheen

#54. The adjective 'decent' and the noun 'government' have seldom come together in the human history!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#55. How I wish everyone had decent work! It is essential for human dignity.

Pope Francis

#56. A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull and obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful.

Christopher Hitchens

#57. Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.

Orson Scott Card

#58. Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society. For building stable peace we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives.

Muhammad Yunus

#59. These women of mine are decent, simple human beings who have no other concern than that of their physical condition ... it is as though one were watching through a keyhole.

Edgar Degas

#60. After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.

Dan Simmons

#61. Each of us as poets, as decent suffering human beings, has to find a way to run our lives that is compassionate toward one another and toward our environment.

Sam Hamill

#62. When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.

Abraham Maslow

#63. For human beings. We almost went extinct fighting one another before. Now our numbers are even fewer. Our conditions more tenuous. Is this really what we want to do? Kill ourselves off completely? In the hopes that - what? Some decent species will inherit the smoking remains of the earth?" "I

Suzanne Collins

#64. Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.

Anthony Bourdain

#65. A decent person does not alienate children from a parent, no matter how angry they are at the parent for the divorce. It's unfair to the children, and it's unfair to the other human being

Dennis Prager

#66. Adam knew it was childish, but he rationalized it in this way: carelessly harming other people was a decent stand-in for baseline human interaction.

Warren Ellis

#67. When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.

Joseph Heller

#68. We all live inside bodies that will deteriorate. But when you look at human beings, they're capable of very decent things: love, loyalty. When time is running out, they don't care about possessions or status. They want to put things right if they've done wrong.

Kazuo Ishiguro

#69. Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.
[ Live 8 Concert, Mary Fitzgerald Square, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2 July 2005]

Nelson Mandela

#70. Don't try to be spiritual. That is only a word in the dictionary. Make it your goal to become a normally functioning individual. Let these principles shape you according to your real nature of a simple, decent, honest, unafraid human being.

Vernon Howard

#71. These are not ordinary human beings. They are criminals. As a matter of fact, they are criminals, both by nature and by training. By nature, because they are not decent. They are criminals.

Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

#72. The poor prey on one another because their lives offer no hope and communicate the tragic message to these human beings that they have no possibility to attain a decent standard of living.

Thabo Mbeki

#73. Human trafficking is a human tragedy. It's an outrage against any decent people.

Mark Shields

#74. it is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.

Matthew Desmond

#75. You've no idea how wonderful toilet paper is until it's taken away from you by an unfeeling universe. I think it's the defining characteristic of human civilization, the ability to manufacture something decent to wipe your ass on.

Peter F. Hamilton

#76. Be kind, be decent, be generous, be tolerant, compassionate, and understanding. Be fast to praise, slow to judge. Remember, we're all human, and don't cast the first stone.

Allen Drury

#77. It is the imagination that argues for the Divine Spark within human beings. It is literally a decent of the World's Soul into all of us.

Terence McKenna

#78. Wrap thyself in the decent veil that the arts or the graces weave for thee, O human nature! It is only the statue of marble whose nakedness the eye can behold without shame and offence!

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

#79. The model of the human habitat dictated by zoning is a formless, soul-less, centerless, demoralizing mess. It bankrupts families and townships. It disables whole classes of decent, normal citizens. It ruins the air we breathe. It corrupts and deadens our spirit.

James Howard Kunstler

#80. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.

Anthony Bourdain

#81. Europe and Africa share proximity and history, ideas and ideals, trade and technology. You are tied together by the ebb and flow of people. Migration presents policy challenges - but also represents an opportunity to enhance human development, promote decent work, and strengthen collaboration.

Ban Ki-moon

#82. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant. And that is the force of human freedom.

George W. Bush

#83. The 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 Castellaneta

#84. Be respected as being new, and probably a decent change or a help for the human race or whatever, instead of keep carrying the same old burdens around with you.

Jimi Hendrix

#85. But I also think when we embark on intimate relationships, we make a basic human promise to be decent, to hold a flattering mirror up to each other, to be respectful as we explore each other.

Lena Dunham

#86. It is impossible to make peace with the Roman Catholic Church. It is one of the permanent enemies of all that is decent in human spirit.

Harold J. Laski

#87. One may have a right to be unconventional and even eccentric, so long as one is fully competent and a decent person; but one's ideal as a professor should be to conduct oneself as an admirable human being: just, kind, tolerant, competent, committed, and good-humored.

Robert Audi

#88. Monstrous behavior is the order of the day. I'll tell you when to be shocked. When something human and decent happens!

Lucille Kallen

#89. Works of art always spring from those who have faced the danger, gone to the very end of an experience, to the point beyond which no human being can go. The further one dares to go, the more decent, the more personal, the more unique a life becomes.

Rainer Maria Rilke

#90. A struggle for existence is not a decent living. A man or woman or child may die of starvation in a city teeming with plenty. Only human life is concerned.

Susette La Flesche

#91. Any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being evil.

Dan Simmons

#92. Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings throughout many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs, total liberty of the powerful, the gifted, is not compatible with the rights to a decent existence of the weak and the less gifted.

Isaiah Berlin

#93. The killing of his kid brother had drained Josiah Hedges of everything that is good and decent in the human spirit. He was now a killer of the worse kind. A man alone.

George G. Gilman