Emile M. Cioran
Philosopher, Essayist
"History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable."
Degradation quotes
Degradation
80 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Khaled Mashal
Political Leader
"Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day."
Walt Whitman
Poet, Essayist
"Whoever degrades another degrades me."
Emily Bronte
Poet, Novelist
"You loved me-then what right had you to leave me? What right-answer me-for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart- you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine." ~Heathcliff"
Chris Kraus
Writer and Filmmaker
"Why do people think that we’re degraded when we’re examining positions of degradation, or examining the cycle of our own degradation?"
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Degradation quotes (page 1 of 4)
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"Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness."
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"...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside."
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"I have come to the conclusion that it's a waste of time to have too much pride in anything. Perhaps it's good to have a sense of duty, a jealous zeal to protect or improve, but pride ultimately is only that which stands vulnerable to offense and degradation."
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"It is very expensive to achieve high unreliability. It is not uncommon to increase the cost of an item by a factor of ten for each factor of ten degradation accomplished."
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"The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay."
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"Such poverty as we have today in all our great cities degrades the poor, and infects with its degradation the whole neighborhood in which they live. And whatever can degrade a neighborhood can degrade a country and a continent and finally the whole civilized world, which is only a large neighborhood."
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"The audience too should be respected by being presented with a film as they remember it, and for those who have not seen it, as it was intended to be seen. Anything less is a degradation of the film and its audience."
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"How many we know who have fled the sweetness of a tranquil life in their homes, among the friends, to seek the horror of uninhabitable deserts; who have flung themselves into humiliation, degradation, and the contempt of the world, and have enjoyed these and even sought them out."
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"All our efforts to defeat poverty and pursue sustainable development will be in vain if environmental degradation and natural resource depletion continue unabated."
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"Poverty doesn't bring unhappiness; it brings degradation."
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"New media are new archetypes, at first disguised as degradations of older media."
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"Poverty, for me, is synonymous with degradation."
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"Every kind of reward constitutes a degradation of energy."
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"For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity."
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"Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation."
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"All growth, progress, well - being, or degradation is but relative."
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"National prosperity is another name for death and degradation to millions of other races."
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"No one should dogmatize about the capacity of human nature for degradation or exaltation."
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"The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches."
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"Poverty does not produce unhappiness: It produces degradation."
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