Selected dignity quotes

1. I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?

2. The dying, the cripple, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved they are Jesus in disguise.

3. The travesty of slavery wasn't physical abuse. It was the moral abuse of looking at a human being as if they are an animal.

4. The question isn't whether you have a good master or a bad master. It's to be your own master. That is the dignity of humanity.

5. A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.

6. The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.

7. I would recommend all men in choosing a profession to avoid any that may require an apology at every turn; either an apology or else a somewhat violent assertion of right.

8. Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.

9. You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.

10. It is as great a spite to be praised in the wrong place, and by a wrong person, as can be done to a noble nature.

11. I would say that the surest measure of a man's or a woman's maturity is the harmony, style, joy, and dignity he creates in his marriage, and the pleasure and inspiration he provides for his spouse.

12. No man can be a genius in slapshoes and a flat hat.

13. Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

14. I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

15. Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

16. Virtue alone has majesty in death.

17. Though the Negroes are fed, clothed, and housed, and though the Irish peasant is starved, naked, and roofless, the bare name of freemen-the lordship over his own person, the power to choose and will-are blessings beyond food, raiment, or shelter; possessing which, the want of every comfort of life is yet more tolerable than their fullest enjoyment without them.

18. This country is heaven, in the spiritual sense of the word. And I say, we prefer to die in heaven than survive in hell.

19. We must at last put a stop to having people move into their quarters like chickens and rabbits into their coops.

20. All dignified people in the world, whether Arabs or Muslims or others with dignity, are very proud of the speech made by president Bashar al-Assad a few days ago here in Damascus. For me he is the last Arab ruler, and Syria is the last Arab country. It is the fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs, and that's why I'm proud to be here.

21. It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.

22. Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

23. Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

24. I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond.

25. Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity.

26. Without liberty I have nothing left to use except my body.

27. Listen, when you take my liberty away, you've taken away more-something more precious than life. I mean, what good is a life without liberty? Huh? None.

28. The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.

29. I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

30. I may sink, but I'll be damned if I strike!

31. Oppression is more easily endured than insult.

32. As you can see, I'm in good health. I have no message; just tell them, please, that I went to my death quietly and in good health.

33. The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody. Thank you for using me, even though I didn't want to be used by anybody.

34. You can't imagine the joy I feel when I hear that something I've said or done or written has helped others to regain their sense of dignity, to motivate them to develop their unique potential, to encourage them to reach out to others in love.

35. Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.

36. God wants man to fulfill his commands as a human being and with the quality peculiar to human beings.

37. To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.

38. A slave's soul has no worth, my brothers; it lacks strength to tread on this great earth with gallantry and freedom. I pity the poor slaves, they're nought but airy mist, a light breeze scatters them, a fragrance knocks them down; it's only just they crawl on the earth on hands and knees. Today I'll write a hymn to God and pray for this great grace.

39. The high-spirited man may indeed die, but he will not stoop to meanness. Fire, though it may be quenched, will not become cool.

40. Stand us against a wall and shoot us, well and good, you are victors. But why should I be brought before a Tribunal like a c-c-c-... I can't even get the word [criminal] out!

41. Don't let that chip on your shoulder be your only reason for walking erect.

42. The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority.

43. They that govern the most make the least noise.

44. Yo quiero salir del mundo por la puerta natural: en un carro de hojas verdes a morir me han de llevar. No me pongan en lo oscuro a morir como un traidor: yo soy bueno, y como bueno morire de cara al sol.

45. La patria es ara, no pedestal.

46. Once I reveled in a destiny like no other joy I'd known: when the warden - reading my death sentence - wept.

47. We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spirit of political association, while refusing to contribute to the political state that we profit from. We must say no once more. Man is not free to watch impassively the enslavement and dishonor of men, nor their struggles for liberty and honor.

48. There are men who live contented through they live without decorum. Others suffer as if in agony when they see around them people living without decorum. There must be a certain amount of decorum in the world, just as there must be a certain amount of light. When there are many men without decorum, there are always others who themselves possess the decorum of many men. These are the ones who rebel with terrible strength against those who rob nations of their liberty, which is to rob men of their decorum. Embodied in those men are thousands of men, a whole people, human dignity.

49. To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity. It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing.

50. Vale mas morir de pie que vivir arrodillado. or Es mejor morir a pie que vivir arrodillado.

51. Right now I think censorship is necessary; the things they're doing and saying in films right now just shouldn't be allowed. There's no dignity anymore, and I think that's very important.

52. I hate race discrimination most intensely and in all its manifestations. I have fought it all during my life; I fight it now, and will do so until the end of my days. Even although I now happen to be tried by one whose opinion I hold in high esteem, I detest most violently the set-up that surrounds me here. It makes me feel that I am a black man in a white man's court. This should not be.

53. We succeeded to take our last steps to freedom in conditions of relative peace. We commit ourselves to the construction of a complete, just and lasting peace. We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people. We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.

54. Any man that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.

55. It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.

56. Blizzard was of the fine old school of butlers. His appearance suggested that for fifteen years he had not let a day pass without its pint of port. He radiated port and pop-eyed dignity. He had splay feet and three chins, and when he walked his curving waistcoat preceded him like the advance guard of some royal procession.

57. Men would rather be starving and free than fed in bonds.

58. Mental illness is not funny.

59. The noble art of losing face may some day save the human race and turn into eternal merit what weaker minds would call disgrace.

60. 'I feel there is honour and dignity in being sent to prison because the law says, even though I know I did what I had to do then.'

61. Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.

62. My wife Ticky is an anarchist-individualist... When she was in the Navy during the early 'forties she showed up one morning in proper uniform but with her red hair held down by a simple navy-blue band - a hair ribbon. It was neat (Ticky is always neat) and it suited the rest of her outfit esthetically, but it was undeniably a hair ribbon and her division officer had fits. 'If you can show me,' Ticky answered with simple diginity, 'where it says one word in the Navy Uniform Regulations on the subject of hair ribbons, I'll take it off. Otherwise not.' See what I mean? She doesn't have the right attitude.

63. Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires.

64. It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.

65. No memory of having starred Atones for later disregard, Or keeps the end from being hard. Better to go down dignified With boughten friendship at your side Than none at all. Provide, provide!

66. The rights of all are equal: justice, poised and balanced in eternal calm, will shake from the golden scales in which are weighed the acts of men, the very dust of prejudice and caste: No race, no color, no previous condition, can change the rights of men.

67. I had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar like a king, than be a king and spend my money like a beggar! If it has got to go, let it go!

68. No man in the hour of death ever regretted having been honest. No man when the shadows of the last day were gathering about the pillow of death, ever regretted that he had given to his fellow-man his honest thought. No man, in the presence of eternity, ever wished that he had been a hypocrite. No man ever then regretted that he did not throw away his reason. It certainly cannot be necessary to throw away your reason to save your soul, because after that, your soul is not worth saving. The soul has a right to defend itself. My brain is my castle; and when I waive the right to defend it, I become an intellectual serf and slave.

69. If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior, if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny his own self in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses, namely, the sense of humiliation.

70. The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin - and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.

71. People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.

72. We tend to suffer from the illusion that we are capable of dying for a belief or theory. What Hagakure is insisting is that even in merciless death, a futile death that knows neither flower nor fruit has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile.

73. They (Thucydides and Xenophon) maintained the dignity of history.

74. A person's a person, no matter how small.

75. We shall Strike. We shall pursue the revolution we have proposed. We are sons of the Mexican Revolution, a revolution of the poor seeking, bread and justice. Our revolution will not be armed, but we want the existing social order to dissolve, we want a new social order. We are poor, we are humble, and our only choices is to Strike in those ranchers where we are not treated with the respect we deserve as working men, where our rights as free and sovereign men are not recognized. We do not want the paternalism of the rancher; we do not want the contractor; we do not want charity at the price of our dignity. We want to be equal with all the working men in the nation; we want just wage, better working conditions, a decent future for our children. To those who oppose us, be they ranchers, police, politicians, or speculators, we say that we are going to continue fighting until we die, or we win. 'We shall overcome.

76. We are tired of words, of betrayals, of indifference... the years are gone when the farm worker said nothing and did nothing to help himself... Now we have new faith. Through our strong will, our movement is changing these conditions... We shall be heard.

77. Our separate struggles are really one. A struggle for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity. ... You and your valiant fellow workers have demonstrated your commitment to righting grievous wrongs forced upon exploited people. We are together with you in spirit and determination that our dreams for a better tomorrow will be realized. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr., in a