Quotes About Decent Man

#1. Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don't understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for.

Dalton Trumbo

#2. 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

#3. It is a law of nature that every decent man on earth is bound to be a coward and a slave

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#4. 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

#5. I have known Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla for a long time. He is a good man. He is a decent man.

N. R. Narayana Murthy

#6. My mother taught me what it is to have a sense of humour; my dad, who was a headmaster, everything you need to know about hard work. My dad is the most decent man you could come across.

James Nesbitt

#7. Randy Edsall is a good, strong, decent man who is working his tail off on behalf of the University of Maryland. And there are more people that want to spend their days burning things down than building it up. At least just stop rooting against him. You know, give the guy a chance.

Kevin Plank

#8. 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

#9. So you love war. I used to think you were a decent man. But I see now I was mistaken. You're a hero.

Joe Abercrombie

#10. I was a coward and a slave. I say this without the slightest embarrassment. Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#11. ...And look at Ohio State. How do you bring down a coach and penalize a whole program because a couple of kids exchanged some gear for tattoos and a decent man tried to protect them? These are kids! By definition, they make mistakes.

Emily Giffin

#12. Porter it was that fattened people in my own fami ly, and it would be a hard thing not to drink porter with every other decent man, and maybe stand fi l ling your pipe with your back to the counte r , and maybe talk of the time you were in j a i l in England

Anonymous

#13. No decent man ought to read Shakespeare's sonnets because it was like listening at keyholes.

Virginia Woolf

#14. 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

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

Margaret Halsey

#16. 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

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

Pablo Escobar

#18. No decent man would ever strike a woman or a child.

Ellen J. Barrier

#19. Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

H.L. Mencken

#20. Fame changes everything. When you're well-known, you're expected to be different. Some people assume you must have a yacht and four homes. Or that you're famous because you are 'A Decent Man'.

Michael Palin

#21. President Ford was a devoted, decent man of impeccable integrity who put service to his country before his own self interest. He helped heal our nation during a time of crisis, provided steady leadership and restored people's faith in the presidency and in government.

Mark Udall

#22. A developed and decent man cannot be vain without a boundless exactingness towards himself and without despising himself at moments to the point of hatred.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#23. 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

#24. But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?
Answer: Of himself.
Well, so I will talk about myself.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#25. The botanist was a decent man, but Khassan was in love, and thus capable of infinite hate.

Anthony Marra

#26. Every decent man in America ought to swoon with joy for the opportunity to crush with his heel the woolly head of this black lizard, to keep him from scuttling on his belly farther over the earth and spitting forth his venom of death!

Richard Wright

#27. 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

#28. When you're small, you can choose which way to grow. If you're kind and decent, you grow into a kind and decent man. The idea that if you were mean, you might stay mean forever had never occurred to him.

Nancy Farmer

#29. Sanchez has always heard he's a good cop, maybe even a decent man. The latter's more common than the former; power breeds abuse.

Elizabeth Bear

#30. A decent man would stand out like a cactus on an ice floe.

Timothy Egan

#31. Night is nature's protest against the leprosy of civilization, Gottfried. No decent man can withstand it for long. He begins to notice that he has been turned out of the silent company of the trees, the animals, the stars, and unconscious life.

Erich Maria Remarque

#32. But does a decent man make promises just to please a woman? Isn't it more honest to refuse to?"
"I don't like that sort of honesty. It's not honesty, it's lack of steadiness.

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

#33. Forget being a decent man, Terence. Go for castability. Could you even play a decent man in a movie?

Lorrie Moore

#34. 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

#35. Very well, sir. A woman's opinion, however humble she may be, is always worth listening to, if she's got any sense...If you put yourself in my hands, I shall certainly make a decent man of you.

Emile Zola

#36. A decent man who doesn't consider himself a bigot can indeed be trained to behave like a bigot if he welcomes feedback exclusively from those who consider bigotry no big deal or, indeed, an attribute to be admired.

Adam-Troy Castro

#37. In all the photos I see the boy I once knew and the man he became, a flawed but decent man whom I grew to care about in a more complicated way than I had ever cared about the boy.

Elizabeth Stone

#38. It's a sad and stupid thing to have to proclaim yourself a revolutionary just to be a decent man.

David Harris

#39. Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me, he just can't be found.

Eminem

#40. 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

#41. There are ... things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#42. Every decent man of our time is and is bound to be a coward and a slave. This is his normal condition. I am deeply convinced of that. This is how he is constituted, and this is what he is meant to be.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#43. A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#44. 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

#45. What they, in their innocence, cannot comprehend is that a properly constituted, healthy, decent man never writes, acts, or composes.

Thomas Mann

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. The fact that I ended up married to a decent man is still a source of amazement to me, thanks to 'The Women's Room.'

Catherine Jinks

#49. In Plains, I saw Jimmy Carter as he really is - a nice, decent man ... in terms of compassionate contribution to society, he certainly has proven to be our best past president.

Helen Thomas

#50. The person I liked the best was Gerald R. Ford. He was the most decent man in politics I ever had any relationships with.

Alan Greenspan

#51. I think the President himself is a remarkably intelligent, decent, ethical man. I think he did very well, but I think the job builds up over expectations which all candidates contribute to including this President that simply cannot be fulfilled.

Lloyd Cutler

#52. Amazing, really, to think of what a man could achieve with the simple ability to put pen to paper and spin a decent yarn.

Graham Moore

#53. Doubt makes a man decent.

Harry Crews

#54. I am not a man in decent shape.

David Walton

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. 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

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

Anya Wylde

#59. Katie had a grandmother who was a man-eater and a father who was a lothario. What chance did she have of being decent and honest and kind? She'd kissed two girls and one boy in the space of a few weeks, so these things were clearly genetic.

Jenny Downham

#60. 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

#61. Curious," it said. "What you call your decent self doesn't dare look me in the eye! What a mistake people make who say that the man who won't look you in the eye is not to be trusted! As if mere brazenness were a sign of honesty; really, the theory of decency is the most amusing thing in the world.

John Kendrick Bangs

#62. It was a struggle to not fall in love with a man who was determined to be decent to her when what she sought was indulgence of her wanton nature.
Her recently discovered, very frustrated wanton nature, damn him.

Grace Burrowes

#63. I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I'll never know the man, or any man of such warm intelligence.

Ian McEwan

#64. No matter how much I wanted all those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction
toward anarchy and poverty and craziness. That maddening delusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas Goat.

Hunter S. Thompson

#65. What could the old man say about all those people born with more courage than they could find a way to spend, and then there was nothing to do with it but just get by? And that was when the times were decent.

Marilynne Robinson

#66. 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

#67. Hip-hop saved my life, man. It's the only thing I've ever been even decent at. I don't know how to do anything else.

Eminem

#68. You look like a decent young man."
Leon didn't smile. "I'm not.

Caragh M. O'Brien

#69. Honour is a homicide and a bloodspiller, that gangs about making frays in the street; but Credit is a decent honest man, that sits at hame and makes the pat play.

Walter Scott

#70. 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

#71. Every decent con man knows that the simplest truth is more powerful than even the most elaborate lie.

Ally Carter

#72. 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

#73. To turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork should not, surely, be seen as any triumph for any government, save one that boasts of its repressiveness.

Anthony Burgess

#74. 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

#75. 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

#76. 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

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

Zora Neale Hurston

#78. 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

#79. 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

#80. You're a hard man, Reacher," she said. He was quiet in turn. "I think I'm a realistic man," he said. "And a decent enough guy, all told." "You may find normal people don't agree." He nodded. "A lot of you don't," he said.

Lee Child

#81. Al Gore is a good man. He is a decent, caring man. He listens to his heart and his head. He loves his family.

Dick Gephardt

#82. Women of the working class, especially wage workers, should not have more than two children at most. The average working man can support no more and and the average working woman can take care of no more in decent fashion.

Margaret Sanger

#83. I'm cheating on the man I'm cheating on my husband with, Anna thought. I grow less decent every passing day.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

#84. He'll protect me until his dying breath. He's too good. Too good for me, that's for fucking sure. I finally meet a decent, hardworking, adorable man with a chivalrous streak a mile long to boot and he ends up being my adopted brother. And a werewolf, but nobody's perfect.

Anonymous

#85. And did I not think then, What nonsense it is to suppose one man so different from another when all that life really boils down to is getting a decent cup of coffee and room to stretch out in?

Alice Munro

#86. Every 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 Cartland

#87. You seem a decent fellow," Inigo said. "I hate to kill you."
You seem a decent fellow," answered the man in black. "I hate to die.

William Goldman

#88. 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

#89. If you're going to write an anthem for an old man who's up at political bat for the last time, give him a decent song. Send him off with something that creates some chills or something.

Shawn Amos

#90. 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

#91. He was no prude, but he had those decent prejudices of which no self-respecting man can wholly rid himself, however broad-minded he may try to be.

P.G. Wodehouse

#92. Man is an extraordinarily fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant. It is only by tradition and organisation that anything decent can be got out of him.

T. E. Hulme

#93. Walter Cronkite was a personally decent and convivial man, who literally couldn't kill a fly, was kind to his children, generally helpful to juniors, authentically curious about the news, and, in his time, an energetic reporter.

Conrad Black

#94. Show me a man who longs to live a day beyond his time who turns his back on a decent length of life, I'll show the world a man who clings to folly.

Sophocles

#95. 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

#96. 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

#97. One should never marry a man who doesn't own a decent set of scissors. That would be my advice. It leads to bad things.

Gillian Flynn

#98. A decent, educated man cannot afford the luxury of vanity without being exceedingly exacting with himself and without occasionally despising himself to the point of hatred.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#99. 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

#100. 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