Degradation Quotes

“Those who are determined to be ‘offended’ will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“It doesn't matter what you do. In the end, you are going to be judged, and all the times that you're not at your most dignified are the ones that will be recalled in all their vivid, heartbreaking detail. And then of course these things will be distorted and exaggerated and replayed over and over, until eventually they turn into the essence of you: your cartoon.”
― Dan Chaon, Among the Missing

“The soul that is within me no man can degrade.”
― Frederick Douglass

“but as he plodded along a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certain fatal cliffside fall—falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“As she uttered the words of the prayer, she glanced up at him as if he were God Himself. He watched her with growing pleasure. In front of him was kneeling the directress, being humiliated by a subordinate; in front of him a naked revolutionary was being humiliated by prayer; in front of him a praying lady was being humiliated by her nakedness.

This threefold image of degradation intoxicated him and something unexpected suddenly happened: his body revoked its passive resistance. Edward was excited!

As the directress said, 'And lead us not into temptation,' he quickly threw off all his clothes. When she said, 'Amen,' he violently lifted her off the floor and dragged her onto the couch.”
― Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves

“The gravel road widened into a large turnaround where three similar looking and designed brothels sat waiting for customers. They were called Sheila's Front Porch, Tawny's High Five Ranch and Miss Delilah's House of Holies.

"Nice," Rachel said as we surveyed the scene. "why are these places always named after women -- as if women actually own them?"

"You got me. I guess Mister Dave's House of Holies wouldn't go over so well with the guys."

Rachel smiled.

"You're right. I guess it's a shrewd move. Name a place of female degradation and slavery after a female and it doesn't sound so bad, does it? It's packaging.”
― Michael Connelly, The Narrows

“It is a well-worn saying but one nonetheless true and nonetheless worthy of repetition, inasmuch as it expresses peculiarly the situation now widely prevalent, that "where there is no vision the people perish. " Mankind as a whole, or more particularly the Western element, has lost in some incomprehensible way its spiritual vision. An heretical barrier has been erected separating itself from that current of life and vitality which even now, despite willful impediment and obstacle, pulses and vibrates passionately in the blood, pervading the whole of universal form and structure. The anomalies presented today are due to this rank absurdity. Mankind is slowly accomplishing its own suicide. A self-strangulation is being effected through a suppression of all individuality, in the spiritual sense, and all that made it human. It continues to withhold the spiritual atmosphere from its lungs, so to speak. And having severed itself from the eternal and never-ceasing sources of light and life and inspiration, it has deliberately blinded itself to the fact— than which no other could compare in importance—that there is a dynamic principle both within and without from which it has accomplished a divorce. The result is inner lethargy, chaos, and the disintegration of all that formerly was held to be ideal and sacred.”
― Israel Regardie, The Tree of Life: An Illustrated Study in Magic

“From the orators were made talkers; from historians, polyhistors; from philosophers, sophists; from poets, wits.”
― Johann Georg Hamann, Writings on Philosophy and Language

“Merely by living, man becomes degraded and loses in purity what he gains in power. However clear a spring may be, when it becomes a river it cannot help being polluted by mud and slime.”
― Maurice Druon, La flor de lis y el león

“It's not that I get off on being degraded as such, she says. I just like to know that I would degrade myself for someone if they wanted me too. Does that make sense? I don't know if it does, I've been thinking about it. It's about dynamic, more than what actually happens.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Deacon began to speak of a woman who he had used; how he had turned up his nose at her because her loose and easy ways gave him the license to drop and despise her. That while the adultery preyed on him for a short while (very short), his long remorse was at having become what the Old Fathers cursed: the kind of man who set himself up to judge, rout and even destroy the needy, the defenseless, the different.”
― Toni Morrison, Paradise

“What is life without HONOR? Degradation is Worse than Death.”
― General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson

“We keep her. She will be our pet. And cum dump. Pregnant.”
“That’s right little rabbit, this is your life now. Our little whore.”
“Heirs. She will give us heirs,”
― S.J. Ransom, Psychos in Love

“She started choosing her words carefully. 'It's the way you were trying to earn money that made me mad,' she began. Then she leaned down until her face was on a level with his, still talking slowly, still picking her words thoughtfully. 'You see, colored people have been shining shoes and washing clothes and scrubbing floors for years and years. White people seem to think that's the only kind of work they're fit to do. The hard work. The dirty work. The work that pays the least.' She thought about this small dark apartment they were living in, about 116th Street which was filled to overflowing with people who lived in just such apartments as this, about the white people on the downtown streets who stared at her with open hostility in their eyes, and she started talking swiftly, forgetting to choose her words.

'I'm not going to let you begin at eight doing what white folks figure all eight-year-old colored boys ought to do. For if you're shining shoes at eight, you'll probably be doing the same thing when you're eighty. And I'm not going to have it.”
― Ann Petry, The Street

“There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virgina

“There is so much self awareness and self love can prevent.

Even if you are not yet married, you bask in joy and fulfillment.
Don't be degraded because you want to get married at all costs. That's not part of STOOPING TO CONQUER.”
― Marilyn Oma Anona

“You can call me ‘PEDO guy’. PEDO - Preventing Environmental Degradation Onslaught.”
― Steven Magee

“He had himself a certain sympathy for Morel; unfortunately, the man had not
understood that the world of today was no longer capable of concerning itself with elephants. People had other preoccupations. They were no longer interested in anything except their own skins.”
― Romain Gary, The Roots of Heaven

“You think too highly of people, Richard.” Mr. Martian gave a mournful smile. “Probably, you judge by yourself. The rulers of the so-called ‘developed countries’ are cowardly scum and fools who educate their population accordingly. Their ancestors won freedom, and they’ve flushed it down the outhouse. They won’t fight. This is degradation, which is now commonly called ‘progress.”
― Andrew Orange, The Secrets of Mars

“Subtle distinctions of pronunciation in our language are being lost and words are becoming slimy, spoken often with an idiotic smile as speakers fashionably soften nonexistent consonants. Degenerate. Like children, half-articulate, vacuous, infantile orators roll words around their mouths like hot potatoes, as though they were toothless, they shift them about, squash them, then open their mouths to eject a mash, a sticky pre-masticated porridge, which slides down their chins.”
― Daša Drndić, EEG

“I would answer the home phone and often find the person would hang up on me. It had coincided with a severe degradation of my relationship. I later discovered that my girlfriend was probably cheating on me and it was likely her new lover calling her!”
― Steven Magee

“All masters of every stripe are rubbish, all slaves of every stripe are noble and exalted; there can be no question about this...Of course, the whole thing is, once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your master's yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are just a human being, and all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings.”
― Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place

“Infantilism, the main characteristic of today's "developed societies", animalizes man by humanizing animals, enslaves man by "liberating" nature and stupefies man by intellectualizing machines. In a word, infantilism demeans man by exalting everything that is inhuman.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“Cruel? Do you mean to the hunchback?”
“I mean—Of course the man himself was quite indifferent; no doubt, it is to him just a way of getting a living, like the circus-rider’s way or the columbine’s. But the thing makes one feel unhappy. It is humiliating; it is the degradation of a human being.”
“He probably is not any more degraded than he was to start with. Most of us are degraded in one way or another.”
― E L Voynich

“Global environmental degradation is one sign of the end of capitalism.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“You know, Chavez, what Kaiser Wilhelm said after he had caused the death of millions? He said: ’Ich habe das nicht gewollt.’ I didn’t want THIS to happen. A worthy epitaph for mankind.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Me estaba dando cuenta yo, por primera vez, de que todo sigue, se hace gris, se arruina viviendo. De que no hay final en nuestra historia hasta que llega la muerte y el cuerpo se deshace…”
― Carmen Laforet, Nada

“No creía yo a mis oídos. No creía yo tampoco las extrañas visiones de mis ojos. Poco a poco las caras se iban perfilando ganchudas o aplastadas como en un capricho De Goya. Aquellos enlutados parecían celebrar un extraño aquelarre.”
― Carmen Laforet, Nada

“All acts of sex were forms of degradation. Some random recollections: East 11th Street, on the bed with Murray Groman: “Swallow this mother ’til you choke.” East 11th Street, in the bed with Gary Becker: “The trouble with you is, you’re such a shallow person.” East 11th Street, up against the wall with Peter Baumann: “The only thing that turns me on about you is pretending you’re a whore.” Second Avenue, the kitchen, Michael Wainwright: “Quite frankly, I deserve a better-looking, better-educated girlfriend.” What do you do with the Serious Young Woman (short hair, flat shoes, body slightly hunched, head drifting back and forth between the books she’s read)? You slap her, fuck her up the ass and treat her like a boy. The Serious Young Woman looked everywhere for sex but when she got it it became an exercise in disintegration. What was the motivation of these men? Was it hatred she evoked? Was it some kind of challenge, trying to make the Serious Young Woman femme?”
― Chris Kraus, I Love Dick

“The problem is that the degradation of women of all races is still thought to be normal.”
― Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions