Decent Men Quotes

#1. On one hand, you've got 'decent' men, and on the other you've got neanderthal misogynist bawbags - and the middle ground is what's disappearing.

Val McDermid

#2. Edward, it will take time to find a willing and acceptable match, won't it? Decent men do not hang about at crossroads just waiting for ruined women to take them home.

Victoria Dahl

#3. The increasingly cynical court thought Arthur, hypocritical, as all decent men must be if you assume decency cannot exist.

T.H. White

#4. The administration Ill bring is a group of men and women who are focused on whats best for America, honest men and women, decent men and women, women who will see service to our country as a great privilege and who will not stain the house.

George W. Bush

#5. Mordred and Agravaine thought Arthur hypocritical - as all decent men must be, if you assume that decency can't exist.

T.H. White

#6. Nothing is gained except by sacrifice ... Do not degrade it to the level of the brutes ... Make yourselves decent men! ... Be chaste and pure! ... There is no other way. Did Christ find any other way?

Swami Vivekananda

#7. One recognises that the partisan spirit makes people blind, makes them deaf to justice, pushes even decent men cruelly to persecute innocent targets. One recognises it, and yet nobody suggests getting rid of the organisations that generate such evils.

Simone Weil

#8. The world has always been betrayed by decent men with bad ideals.

Sydney J. Harris

#9. God, now she knew what decent men felt like, the disquiet before taking someone for their first time.

J.R. Ward

#10. Don't let anything make you believe that there are not as many decent men in the world as women, and they're just as decent. Life isn't worth living unless you know that - and it's true.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher

#11. We exchanged wry military grins that told each other how much we hated those fly-blown pieces of shit who tied the hands of decent men and called it politics.

Hugh Laurie

#12. Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.

P.D. James

#13. If there was some way of knowing which boys were likely to turn out to be decent men, boys that could love us back as passionately as we felt we could love them, then we could banish the likelihood of divorce and unhappiness to a statistically unlikely outcome.

Belinda Jeffrey

#14. Has it ever struck you that trout bite best on the Sabbath? God's critters tempting decent men.

James M. Barrie

#15. You'd be surprised. Look, most Republicans are decent men who simply have a view of the world that is different from ours. But there is a hard core of fucking nutcases.

Ken Follett

#16. Struggles only move forward when decent men and women step forward and say, 'enough is enough and no more.'

Kumi Naidoo

#17. The men drink a third beer, then a fourth, in preparation for the cold trip crosstown.
"I wish I could meet a decent woman."
Howard, who has learned the great secret, and who after beer, is generous: "Go to a library.

Jack Cady

#18. You weren't a decent man and you didn't do your best. We none of us were and none of us did.

C.S. Lewis

#19. Scholars have long known that fishing eventually turns men into philosophers. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to buy decent tackle on a philosopher's salary.

Patrick F. McManus

#20. If there is to be any romance in marriage woman must be given every chance to earn a decent living at other occupations. Otherwise no man can be sure that he is loved for himself alone, and that his wife did not come to the Registry Office because she had no luck at the Labour Exchange.

Rebecca West

#21. Debased men, but they all had something in common: They showed a keen regard for virtue, and tried to dress themselves in that costume. Hypocrisy, for all its bad reputation, at least showed a decent respect for goodness.

Orson Scott Card

#22. They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:
Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.

G.K. Chesterton

#23. Those vices [luxury and neglect of decent manners] are vices of men, not of the times.
[Lat., Hominum sunt ista [vitia], non temporum.

Seneca The Younger

#24. The 5th Amendment is an old friend and a good friend. one of the great landmarks in men's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.

William O. Douglas

#25. Bush's life is that a fundamentally decent man presided over a moment when politics got meaner and rougher. '88 was the year of the handler, of bringing in political consultants who played very hard and very tough'.

Evan Thomas

#26. The orgy of thieving in Iraq has more to do with the character of the people than the absence of restraining troops. And to think that good, decent, law-abiding young British and American men and women laid down their lives to liberate this thieving mob.

Robert Kilroy-Silk

#27. Surely
But I am very off from that.
From surely. From indeed. From the decent arrow
that was my clean naivete and my faith.
This morning, men deliver wounds and death.
They will deliver death and wounds tomorrow.
And I doubt all. You. Or a violet.

Gwendolyn Brooks

#28. The point of nonviolence is to build a floor, a strong new floor, beneath which we can no longer sink. A platform which stands a few feet above napalm, torture, exploitation, poison gas, A and H bombs, the works. Give man a decent place to stand.

Joan Baez

#29. We must diligently strive to make our young men decent, God-fearing, law-abiding, honor-loving, justice-doing and also fearless and strong.

Theodore Roosevelt

#30. We are turning against boys and forgetting a simple truth: that the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal, decent males is responsible for much of what is right in the world.

Christina Hoff Sommers

#31. Taint no law on earth dat kin make a man be decent if it aint in 'im.

Zora Neale Hurston

#32. Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody - except bad people.

Charlton Heston

#33. By the year 2070 we cannot say, or it would be imbecile to do so, that any man alive could understand Shakespearean experience better than Shakespeare, whereas any decent eighteen-year-old student of physics will know more physics than Newton.

C.P. Snow

#34. Judge Roberts is a brilliant lawyer, a brilliant judge. He is a very careful judge, a thoughtful judge. I would agree with what the President said earlier. He is a decent man. I think everybody who knows him likes him.

Al Gore

#35. Beware the machinery of longevity. When a man's life is over the decent thing is for him to die. The forest does not withhold itself from death. What it gives up it takes back.

Wendell Berry

#36. Charles could care less about shoes - and he suspected he wasn't alone among men in his feelings. Shoe, no shoe, he didn't care. Naked was good, though over the past couple of weeks he was beginning to think that dressed in his clothes was a decent second best.

Patricia Briggs

#37. Wherever it might be that good men like Smit go to when they die I hope very much that it has a decent library.

Christopher Leary

#38. I dare say there may be some men and women in the Armed Forces who are so decent that they would say: Give the Iraqi people money, we do not want to be paid back. That is the strength of our country.

Lindsey Graham

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

Gena Showalter

#40. Why do decent young men and women become bullies? Why do soldiers dream of being heroes but end up abusing prisoners and shooting civilians? Why do politicians become corrupt? Why do cops beat suspects senseless and break the laws they're meant to protect?

Louise Penny

#41. Live the principles and the values. Almost nobody in America is living them. Learn the truth. Live the life of our founders. Be a decent, righteous, forthright honest man or woman.

Beck

#42. It is ridiculous to take on a man's job just in order to be able to say that 'a woman has done it - yah!' The only decent reason for tackling a job is that it is your job and you want to do it.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#43. There are two races of men in this world, but only these two - the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man.

Viktor E. Frankl

#44. As the Americans slaughter millions of turkeys every year for the celebration of their deliverance, the Indians, who should be celebrated as saviors, have long been slaughtered. There was even a time when a white man was paid a very decent price for every Indian scalp he could produce.

Friedrich Durrenmatt

#45. My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Edward Kennedy

#46. Liberty requires opportunity to make a living
a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives a man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#47. Nothing disarms strong men like a genuinely innocent and decent woman.

Amish Tripathi

#48. We show wisdom by a decent conformity to social etiquette; it is excess of neatness or display that creates dandyism in men, and coquetry in women.

Robert Adam

#49. decent ladies don't cry, because tears are how wicked women make righteous men doubt their convictions.

Kit Rocha

#50. On the Vietnam War: I've lived under situations where every decent man declared war first and I've lived under situations where you don't declare war. We've been flexible enough to kill people without declaring war.

Lewis Blaine Hershey

#51. Men must be decent first and brilliant later, otherwise you're not helping people, just servicing the machine.

Claire North

#52. I would not have raised you to be a great man. There is no peace for great men. I would have had you be a decent one. I would have given you the quiet strength to grow old with the woman you love. Now all I can give you is a chance.

Pierce Brown

#53. A finely tuned spike of pain speared through his skull, signalling a detectable breach in his conditioning. He didn't want to stop his decent into chaos. What he wanted was to hurt the men who'd dared look at her.

Nalini Singh

#54. A decent moustache can intimidate a man, while a great moustache can frighten an army.

Anya Wylde

#55. I'm for the poor man - all poor men, black and white, they all gotta have a chance. They gotta have a home, a job, and a decent education for their children. 'Every man a king' - that's my slogan.

Huey Long

#56. If 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 Gandhi

#57. Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man? ... Does man have any responsibility for the preservation of a decent balance in nature, for the preservation of rare species, or even for the indefinite continuance of his race?

Kenneth E. Boulding

#58. It was a piece of thoroughly picturesque and proper violence. I like a violent man, really, a man who's a bit of a brute in a decent straightforward way.

Iris Murdoch

#59. No professional politician is ever actually in favor of public economy. It is his implacable enemy, and he knows it. All professional politicians are dedicated wholeheartedly to waste and corruption. They are the enemies of every decent man.

H.L. Mencken

#60. Not long ago it was easy to tell who the bad guys were. They carried Kalashnikovs. Now it is much more complicated, but one thing is sure - any man who covers his face and packs a gun is a legitimate target for any decent citizen.

Jeff Cooper

#61. There's no self-expression or joy in these joints
no springboard to self-discovery, or adventure, like any decent night out involving men, women, alcohol, and taking your clothes off. Why do many people have a gut reaction to strip clubs? Because inside them, no one is having fun.

Caitlin Moran

#62. For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his cotemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them.

Thomas Paine

#63. All men think they're great kissers. Just like you think you're the only decent driver on the road."
"Maybe, but I am. Amazing kisser. Dangerously amazing. Your panties would, like, disintegrate, I'm such an awesome kisser.

Meg Maguire

#64. The people who keep asking if they can't lead a decent life without Christ, don't know what life is about; if they did they would know that 'a decent life' is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for.

C.S. Lewis

#65. You're going to think I'm being corny, but this is how I really feel: I hope my family and my friends will be able to say that I was an honest, kind and fairly decent man.

John Wayne

#66. He disapproved, he didn't believe in girls drinking, he was full of the conventions of a generation older than himself. Of course one drank oneself, one fornicated, but one didn't lie with a friend's sister, and 'decent' girls were never squiffy.

Graham Greene

#67. At the party, Rob Partridge said to me, "You gave hope to other balding men." My new epitaph: "Co-wrote a couple of decent songs and went bald shamelessly.

Brian Eno

#68. I didn't look up and say, Oh, man, if I learn how to play a guitar I could make not much money, but I'd make a decent living like Eric Clapton or somebody. There wasn't nothing like that out there.

Buddy Guy

#69. He thought of men like Hitler, Stalin, and Napoleon. All it took was a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power and then fall under their spell.

Hugh Howey

#70. I would have found you earlier, before whatever happened that filled you with this rage. I would not have raised you to be a great man. There is no peace for great men. I would have had you be a decent one. I would have given you the quiet strength to grow old with the woman you love.

Pierce Brown

#71. There will be many fine and wonderful men and women of all races and creeds-and of no religious creeds at all-who will lead decent and useful lives.

Neal A. Maxwell

#72. 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

#73. The only men who can turn my blood stream into a condition resembling heavy surf are good-looking heels with characters as intricately unpleasant as the sewers of Paris. With decent and honorable gents, I come all over Platonic. Was ever a woman so perverse and wrongheaded?

Margaret Halsey

#74. In public affairs men are often better pleased that the truth, though known to everybody, should be wrapped up under a decent cover than if it were exposed in open daylight to the eyes of all the world.

David Hume

#75. I'm a decent man who exports flowers.

Pablo Escobar

#76. it just seems like men aren't interested in knowing women. Even the decent ones. Everything is lonely after the excitement.

C.E. Morgan

#77. The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble; but every decent man is concerned if an innocent person is condemned.

Jean De La Bruyere

#78. President Karzai is an incredibly kind and decent man. I had the pleasure of meeting him, and he genuinely cares for his people. But I think he had too much of a tendency to want to rule by listening to all voices at all times.

Khaled Hosseini

#79. I think it's a worthy undertaking
to provide a decent apartment for a man who earns fifteen dollars a week. But not at the expense of other men. Not if it raises the taxes, raises all the other rents and makes the man who earns forty live in a rat hole.

Ayn Rand

#80. A person may be totally unimaginative and have the social vision of a mole, and we still call him a decent man ...

Margaret Halsey

#81. President Eisenhower was a fine general and a good, decent man, but if he had fought World War II the way he fought for civil rights, we would all be speaking German now.

Roy Wilkins

#82. Are you like all other men after all? The poor should have no justice, just as they have no food, no decent shelter, no regular livelihood? Is that how your saviour Jesus treated the poor?

Jeanette Winterson

#83. It has become too easy to see that the luckless men of the past lived by mistakes, even absurd beliefs, so we may well fail in a decent respect for them, and forget that historians of the future will point out that we too lived by myths.

Herbert J. Muller

#84. If only men came made to order. It's so hard to find a decent fellow.

Adriana Trigiani