Indignity Quotes

One thing I've learned, in the face of all kinds of indignities, domestic workers take so much pride in their work and love the children they care for.

It's not the cost (although that pinches), or the time (though that grinds). After a while, it's the sheer galling indignity of being asked to prove, pay, and prove all over again that you're a worthy parent. Any true parent will tell you that that is impossible to prove in advance.

We now undertake that we cannot rest while millions of our people suffer the pain and indignity of poverty in all its forms.

I strongly believe that we can create a poverty-free world, if we want to.... In that kind of world, [the] only place you can see poverty is in the museum. When school children will be on a tour of the poverty museum, they will be horrified to see the misery and indignity of human beings. They will blame their forefathers for tolerating this inhuman condition to continue in a massive way.

I can't minimize the terror factor. As you get older you get more and more frightened because the terrible indignities of old age become closer to you.

They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions. (v)

The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced... It’s one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala. It’s another thing for my son to be mistaken for a robber and to be handcuffed or, worse, if he happens to be walking down the street and is dressed the way teenagers dress.

The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse.

My kids hear me behind my door, giggling like an idiot, and they roll their eyes at the blatant indignity of it all.

I can spare a dime, brother, but in these morally inflationary times, a dime goes a lot farther if it's demanding work rather than adding to the indignity of relief.

The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities.

By indignities men come to dignities.

There has been enough suffering in our country, there has been enough of children whose dreams die before they have a chance to grow and there has been enough of our elders who, having served their nation, are forced into indignity in their old age.

To live in poverty is to live with constant uncertainty, to accept galling indignities, and to expect harassment by the police, welfare officials and employers, as well as by others who are poor and desperate.

Your grandparents did not endure the indignities of a steerage journey to Ellis Island so that you could stand outside a discothèque and beg a wallpaper designer to take you in with him.

Of the many things we have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted.

Empathising with the younger children on whom the same confidence trick was being imposed, I embarked on a crusade around the neighbourhood, telling all the kids that there was no Santa Claus. This reached the ears of the father of a neighbouring family, who reproved me for spoiling it for the little ones. Spoiling it! I could not understand what he meant. To my mind, they were being made fools of, and I was only saving them from this indignity.

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.

Our Saviour would love at no less rate than death; and from the supereminent height of glory, stooped and debased Himself to the sufferance of the extremest of indignities, and sunk himself to the bottom of abjectness, to exalt our condition to the contrary extreme.

To lese-majeste and contempt of court, we must add the crime of lese-million, that fearful indignity we visit on the rich when we expose the impotence of gold.

I did get upset once, when we were hiking between pitches 15 and 16. Two women and a dog were trying to find their way down through the maze of trails below the First Summit and they asked us: 'Are you on the trail?' I let my indignity show: 'NO, we're on a CLIMB!'

There are real indignities and real problems when all facets of life are controlled –when to get up, to eat, to shower-and chemicals are put inside our bodies against our will.

To travel only a few blocks in his own homeland, an elderly grandfather waits to beg for the whim of a teenage soldier. More than an emergency is required to get to a hospital; less than a crime earns a trip to jail. Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story The lucky ones have a permit to leave their squalor to work in the cities, but luck runs out when security closes all checkpoints, paralyzing an entire people. The indignities, dependence and anger are all too familiar.

With patience and calm, persistence and stoicism, good handwriting and careful labeling, they would meet persecution, indignity, and hardship head-on.

These small indignities and minor cruelties take a toll. They add to the burden of stress and fatigue that is already present in the workplace and they have real consequences on the every day lives of workers.

There is a touch of divinity even in brutes, and a special halo about a horse, that should forever exempt him from indignities.

Up with life. Stamp out all small and large indignities. Leave everyone alone to make it without pressure. Down with hurting. Lower the standard of living. Do without plastics. Smash the servo-mechanisms. Stop grabbing. Snuff the breeze and hug the kids. Love all love. Hate all hate.

We must act together, as a united people... For the birth of a new world. Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

I take comfort that aging happens to everybody. It's part of life. Aging offers great lessons in dignity, since the indignity wins in the end. Yes, it bothers me when I have lines or puffiness or droops. But it connects me with the human race. Like weather bringing people together, aging brings people together.

What is the natural reaction when told you have a hopeless mental illness? That diagnosis does you in; that, and the humiliation of being there. I mean, the indignity you're subjected to. My God.

We understand it still that there is no easy road to freedom. We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success. We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world. Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. Let freedom reign.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

I wouldn't go out of my way to experience the indignity of middle-age just because it might be good meat for a story.

Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history, mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

How hard a thing is life to the lowly and yet how human and real is it? And all this life and love and strife and failure, - is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day? The answer lies in each of us. For somewhere in your past ... somewhere some 100 years ago?there rose from the smoldering ashes of slavery?a proud and humble family who suffered and struggled with life. A family who found the strength to endure all the indignities of life in America, and that family had the hope for a taste of her bounties in the future.

We think of a feminist as someone a woman becomes in reaction to personal indignities and social injustices. But the truth is, such inequities only awaken her to the feminist she has always fundamentally been - that is, a person who understands that her first responsibility is to her own humanity. That's why, for my money, the first known use of the word 'feminist' is still the best, appearing in an 1895 book review: a woman who 'has in her the capacity of fighting her way back to independence.

Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.

When you are insulted by someone or humiliated, guard against angry thoughts, lest they arouse a feeling of irritation, and so cut you off from love and place you in the realm of hatred. You should know that you have been greatly benefited when you have suffered deeply because of some insult or indignity; for by means of the indignity self-esteem has been driven out of you.

Anger can offer a sense of indignity to replace a sense of shame, and offer a voice-raised above others-which can finally be heard. Those voices are most effective when they are raised in unison, when they have mercy as well as anger behind them, and when, instead of roaring at the anger of old pain, they sing about the glorious possibilities of a future where anger has a smaller house than hope.

I think it's always wrong of writers to make too much of the pains of their labors, because most people have much worse jobs and suffer such indignities and hardships.

Yet who can say how our souls have been stamped by witnessing such a cruel drama? All souls are hostages to their human envelopes, but souls must decay and suffer at such indignity, don't you agree?

Most trouble is unnecessary. Between the indignity of being born and the agony of dying enough bad things must of necessity happen to people. But we can't be satisfied with that. We have to go to work and see how much additional trouble we can create. Misunderstanding, turmoil, effort put on all the wrong things, and then more misunderstanding.

Writing about the indignities of old age: the daunting stairway to the restaurant restroom, the benefits of a wheelchair in airports and its disadvantages at cocktail parties, giving the user what he described as a child's-eye view of the party and a crotch-level view of the guests. Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous.

The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories.

Whoever debases others is debasing himself.

If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes. If he succeeds he will continue to grow in spite of all indignities.

I was growing tired of all the fussing and prevaricating, of the stolen hours and the secret rendez-vous; of the small indignities and broad discomfort that are part and parcel of adultery.

I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.

What you accomplish in life is limited only by your imagination and the fear of reprisal. Life is too fleeting and unrewarding to have to live with the added anus of indignity. The denial of one's inevitable demise is what causes most of the astringent blandness in the world. When your existence ends most certainly in death, there is no such thing as 'going too far'. There are no 'lines' you should fear to cross except the finish line. Playing it safe is the most dangerous thing you could do.