Personal Dignity Quotes

Wherever on this planet ideals of personal freedom and dignity apply, there you will find the cultural inheritance of England. ~ Karel Capek

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Sex divorced from love is the thief of personal dignity. ~ Caitlin Thomas

So what we're talking about here is human rights. The right to live like a human. The right to live, period. And what we're facing in Africa is an unprecedented threat to human dignity and equality. ~ Bono

after doing a good deed, assured me that all the credit belonged to me and that those many people who nowadays taught and preached that the individual good deed was of no significance were wrong. I was also very anxious to talk for a while. '"Whoever attacks individual 'charity'," I began, "attacks the nature of man and despises his personal dignity. But the organization of 'public charity' and the question of personal freedom are two different questions and are not mutually exclusive. Individual kindness will always remain, because it is a need of the personality, a living need for the direct influence of one personality on another. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength. ~ Cesar Chavez

Insecurity cuts deeper and extends more widely than bare unemployment. Fear of loss of work, dread of the oncoming of old age, create anxiety and eat into self-respect in a way that impairs personal dignity. ~ John Dewey

Whelks are strange and comforting.
They have no notion of community life and they breed very quietly.
But they have a strong sense of personal dignity.
Even lying face down in a tray of vinegar there is something noble about a whelk.
Which cannot be said for everybody. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge. ~ John Charles Polanyi

They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure. ~ Herman Melville

The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure anybody has, is his personal dignity. ~ Jackie Robinson

Have a culminative look at just one snippet from Ipolit's famous "Necessary Explanation" in The Idiot:

"Anyone who attacks individual charity," I began, "attacks human nature and casts contempt on personal dignity. But the organization of 'public charity' and the problem of individual freedom are two distinct questions, and not mutually exclusive. Individual kindness will always remain, because it is an individual impulse, the living impulse of one personality to exert a direct influence upon another....How can you tell, Bahmutov, what significance such an association of one personality with another may have on the destiny of those associated?"

Can you imagine any of our own major novelists allowing a character to say stuff like this (not, mind you, just as hypocritical bombast so that some ironic hero can stick a pin in it, but as part of a ten-page monologue by somebody trying to decide whether to commit suicide)? The reason you can't is the reason he wouldn't: such a novelist would be, by our lights, pretentious and overwrought and silly. The straight presentation of such a speech in a Serious Novel today would provoke not outrage or invective, but worse-one raised eyebrow and a very cool smile. Maybe, if the novelist was really major, a dry bit of mockery in The New Yorker. The novelist would be (and this is our own age's truest vision of hell) laughed out of town. ~ David Foster Wallace

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

Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence. ~ Ayn Rand

The enemies of living life; outdated little liberals, afraid of their own independence; lackeys of thought, enemies of the person and freedom, decrepit preachers of carrion and rot! What do they have: gray heads, the golden mean, the most abject and philistine giftlessness, envious equality, equality without personal dignity, equality as understood by a lackey or a Frenchman of the year ninety-three ... And scoundrells, above all, scoundrels, scoundrels everywhere! ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

When it comes to human dignity, we cannot make compromises. ~ Angela Merkel

Society reaps what it sows in the way it nurtures its children, because stress sculpts the brain to exhibit several antisocial behaviors. Stress can set off a ripple of hormonal changes that permanently wire a child's brain to cope with a malevolent world. Through this chain of events, violence and abuse pass from generation to generation as well as from one society to the next. Many world leaders who have been disciplined through anger and cruelty go in to treat their own people abominably, or to bully other nations. As long as we continue to discipline children like this, we will continue to have terrible wars on both the family and the world stage. One very powerful study illustrates the point. Researchers tracked down Germans who, in World War II, risked their own lives by hiding a Jewish person in their house. When interviewed, the researchers found one common feature of all these people. They had all been socialized in ways that respected their personal dignity. ~ Margot Sunderland

Saying that, he was suddenly himself again, despite his lunatic hair and eyes: a man whose personal dignity went so deep as to be nearly invisible ...
It was more than diginity. Integrity? Wholeness? Like a block of wood not carved.
The infinite possibility, the unlimited and unqualified wholeness of being of the uncommitted, the nonacting, the uncarved: the being who, being nothing but himself, is everything. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Your personal dignity was always more important to you than mere emotion, wasn't it? ~ Rachel Caine

What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, high-mindeness, personal dignity, even the sense of honor, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognized, is that of obedience. ~ John Stuart Mill

Whoever infringes upon individual 'charity' infringes upon man's nature and scorns his personal dignity ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Anyone who attacks individual charity, attacks human nature and casts contempt on personal dignity. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I was always the kid who could draw. I had this talent, and it was the one thing that gave me some kind of dignity in the midst of my personal environment. ~ Thomas Kincade

Personal dignity is to be measured with the yardstick of one's conscience, not with that of other people's judgement. ~ Fausto Cercignani

The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish. ~ Frederic Bastiat

Life is not a matter of place, things or comfort; rather, it concerns the basic human rights of family, country, justice and human dignity. ~ Imelda Marcos

When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine, and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal; she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly true to an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the highest places was foul in both - she was all these things in an age when crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era and make ~ Mark Twain

Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. ~ Ayn Rand

The right to resign is one of the cherished privileges of a free man; the willingness to resign, when principle and the public interest are served, is always present in the public-spirited and the self-respecting. They look upon resigning, not as a cowardice and quitting and a personal disaster, but as the ultimate guarantee of their useful influence and of their personal dignity. - Walter Lippmann ~ David Pietrusza

Was she acting entirely consciously? No: women are always sincere, even in the midst of their most shocking duplicities, because it is always some natural emotion which dominates them. Perhaps, having given this young man such a hold on her, by having openly demonstrated her affection for him, Delphine was merely responding to a sense of personal dignity, which led her either to revoke any concessions she might have made or, at least, to enjoy suspending them. Even at the very moment when passion seizes her, it is perfectly natural for a Parisian woman to delay her final fall, as a way of testing the heart of the man into whose hands she is about to deliver herself and her future! ~ Honore De Balzac

Somewhere along the way, I think I realised that taking yourself seriously is the worst thing that you can do in life, so once I let that go, I've just let it all go. I have no standard of personal dignity. ~ Casey Wilson

Each of us, face to face with other men, is clothed with some sort of dignity, but we know only too well all the unspeakable things that go on in the heart. ~ Luigi Pirandello

If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America - even those designated as 'unlawful enemy combatants.' If you make this exception the whole Constitution crumbles. ~ Alberto J. Mora

The attempt made in recent decades by secularist thinkers to disengage the moral principles of western civilization from their scripturally based religious context, in the assurance that they could live a life of their own as "humanistic" ethics, has resulted in our "cut flower culture." Cut flowers retain their original beauty and fragrance, but only so long as they retain the vitality that they have drawn from their now-severed roots; after that is exhausted, they wither and die. So with freedom, brotherhood, justice, and personal dignity - the values that form the moral foundation of our civilization. Without the life-giving power of the faith out of which they have sprung, they possess neither meaning nor vitality. ~ Will Herberg

For love to flourish there has to be trust. Promises don't matter as much as
personal choice. ~ Ann Aguirre

Self-development is a way of Life. Our Self-Development never ends. We are never too young or too old for personal growth.
We have an amazing potential to reach our highest potential, to have truly inspiring careers and loving relationships.
Unfortunately, often we walk through our lives asleep, we let our habits rule us, and find it difficult to change our beliefs. Recognizing the power of our Mind and the power of our Soul, learning the art of Concentration and Love, we are learning to Live with the Flow, not against it.
It is in our nature to learn and grow. For happiness we need to learn to Love, we need to learn to Concentrate and we should keep the flow and energy of inspiration within our lives. ~ Natasa Nuit Pantovic

Everyone needs a warm personal enemy or two to keep him free from rust in the movable parts of his mind. ~ Gene Fowler

Before our eyes we have the results of ideologies such as Marxism, Nazism and fascism, and also of myths like racial superiority, nationalism and ethnic exclusivism. No less pernicious, though not always as obvious, are the effects of materialistic consumerism, in which the exaltation of the individual and the selfish satisfaction of personal aspirations become the ultimate goal of life. In this outlook, the negative effects on others are considered completely irrelevant. ~ Pope John Paul II

As actors we give so much of ourselves away so I like to keep my personal life to myself. ~ Teresa Palmer

Enriched by a singular event that is larger than life, I no longer have the luxury of being ordinary. To stand on the lunar surface and look back at our Earth creates such a personal sense of awe that even Alan Shepard wept at the view. Trying to exist within the paradox of being in this world after visiting another may be why some Moon voyagers tend to be reclusive. I ~ Eugene Cernan

Music is so personal. ~ Lisa Schroeder

If I am unhappy, I can write "damn it" in my personal diary, but I can't do that on a microblog so I might as well not start one. ~ Fan Bingbing

We feel more emotion ... before an amateur photograph linked to our own life history than before the work of a Great Photographer, because his domain partakes of art, and the intent of the souvenir-object remains at the lower level of personal history. ~ Chris Marker

I have 30 years of experience working with Leos Carax, so all the films of Leos Carax are unusual or unique. I look at them as a journey: a journey which is very personal to Leos. ~ Denis Lavant

There is a significant moral difference between a person who commits a violent crime and a person who tries to cross a border illegally in order to put food on the family table. Such migrants may violate our laws against illicit entry, but if that's all they do they are trespassers, not criminals. They deserve to have their dignity respected. ~ Madeleine K. Albright

The person who has a highly evolved will they think, they build an image and they focus on that image."


― Bob Proctor ~ Bob Proctor

Nothing so lowers a lover in a virile maiden's estimation, than for him to be 'whipped' in a personal encounter with a rival. ~ Arthur Desmond

In spiritual direction, however, there has to be an ongoing awareness that anything can happen; that the Holy Spirit is already affecting the person; and that one must participate in this work through careful discernment and support. here again, it is necessary to walk the fierce path of free will and dependence. We must always claim the freedom we have been given; to do otherwise would devalue our humanity. But at the same time, we will increasingly recognize the extreme inadequacy of personal will and knowledge in figuring out what life is or how we should live it. As we grow in wisdom, we also grow in the realization of our utter dependence upon the Lord in all things. it seems to me, then, that in its purest human form spiritual direction is a journey towards more freely and deeply choosing to surrender to God. ~ Gerald G. May

We have access to all knowledge and wisdom of the Universe/God through our connection to the collective consciousness. Once you fully embrace Oneness with the Universe/God, you will look inward through your personal consciousness to the collective consciousness for all answers. ~ Russell Anthony Gibbs

Observe this fact: in the history of mankind, every ruler who has lacked personal greatness has been forced to compensate for the deficiency by setting up the executioner at his right hand like a guardian angel ~ Alfred De Vigny

The distinctive conditions that generated Western excellence are set to continue deteriorating so long as selection does not favor heroes, geniuses, and saints, but rather "Last Men" whose quest for personal happiness likely cannot sustain a civilization in the long run. ~ Michael A Woodley Of Menie

Gard the doors of your temple, do not let anyone pollute it with there mess. ~ Patricio Telman Chincocolo

The problem - at least in the United States - is not that people can't find jobs. The problem is that they're no longer finding jobs that provide them with dignity and decent social status. ~ Kenneth Rogoff

When Lauren returned from lunch there were two dozen breathtakingly gorgeous red roses in a vase on her desk. She removed the card from its envelope and stared at it in blank amazement. On it was written "Thank you, sweetheart," followed by the initial J.
When Lauren looked up,Nick was standing in the doorway,his shoulder casually propped against the frame. But there was nothing casual about the rigid set of his jaw or the freezing look in his gray eyes. "From a secret admirer?" he asked sarcastically.
It was the first personal comment he had addressed to her in four days. "Not a secret admirer exactly," she hedged.
"Who is he?"
Lauren tensed. He seemed so angry she didn't think it would be wise to mention Jim's name. "I'm not absolutely certain."
"You aren't absolutely certain?" he bit out. "How many men with the inital J are you seeing? How many of them think you're worth more than a hundred dollars in roses as a way of saying thank you?"
"A hundred dollars?" Lauren repeated, so appalled at the expense that she completely overlooked the fact that Nick had obviously opened the envelope and read the card.
"You must be getting better at it," he mocked crudely.
Inwardly Lauren flinched, but she lifted her chin. "I have much better teachers now!"
With an icy glance that raked her from head to toe,Nick turned on his heel and strode back into his office. For the rest of the day he left her completely alone. ~ Judith McNaught

Don't bury personal obsessions. Capitalize on them. ``The connection between personal obsession and the work you do is the most important thing.'

-- Be yourself. ``Singularity is what you need.'

-- Avoid self-censorship: ``We are very self-critical in a way that can be very destructive. In our culture there are voices in our head which have taught us to say, `Oh, I wouldn't do that if I were you.' Don't ever think about anybody peering over your shoulder.'

-- Don't be afraid to show off, even if you think, ``I'm very close to making a complete fool of myself.'

-- Don't be afraid to entertain. ``I want to entertain. I don't want to lose people. I feel responsible as I write to give people the best time I can.'

-- ``Love your failures' instead of beating yourself up over them.

-- ``Learn to love the process' of writing.

-- Just do it. Barker likes something director Stanley Kubrick said: ``If you want to make a film, pick up a camera. ~ Clive Barker

To this day, I remain awestruck by the fact that human beings are capable of this type of metamorphosis. We don't have to stay stuck displaying the same personality traits over the course of our lifetime but are free to transform into higher expressions of ourselves. Today I can honestly say that I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that human beings are capable of making radical and lasting change. After a decade of coaching individuals and leading groups, I have discovered that if I don't buy into people's perceptions of who they are and what they are capable of, I can bypass their public personas and see who they are in their highest expression. With a little effort, I can see their magnificence and their potential no matter what they look like or what condition their emotional, spiritual, or financial world is in. I can see through their acts, their personas, their fears and insecurities. I can see who they are apart from the baggage they carry around. The undeniable fact is that underneath all of our public personas, we already are that which we desire to be. Our only job is to see past our own limitations so that we can return to that which we already are. ~ Debbie Ford

The point of art is not to give you what you already feel comfortable with; that's reporting, not art, that TV, not art, that's magaziney art, not art. Art gives you so personal an interpretation that it compels you to say, This here is more real than what I know is really out there. ~ Andre Aciman

Higher education isn't just a personal investment. It's a public good that pays off in a more competitive workforce and better-informed and engaged citizens. Every year, we spend nearly $100 billion on corporate welfare, and more than $500 billion on defense spending. Surely ensuring the next generation can compete in the global economy is at least as important as subsidies for big business and military adventures around the globe. In fact, I think we can and must go further - not just making public higher education tuition-free, but reinventing education in America as we know it. ~ Robert Reich

What's emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can't be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who're solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning 'square' rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

I feel like everything I make is personal to me. ~ Spike Jonze

The use of method as the criterion of science abolishes theoretical relevance. As a consequence, all propositions concerning facts will be promoted to the dignity of science, regardless of their relevance, as long as they result from a correct use of method. Since the ocean of facts is infinite, a prodigious expansion of science in the sociological sense becomes possible, giving employment to scientistic technicians and leading to the fantastic accumulation of irrelevant knowledge through huge "research projects" whose most interesting features is the quantifiable expense that has gone into their production. ~ Eric Voegelin

The capacity for imaginative reflex, for moral risk in any human being is not limitless; on the contrary, it can be rapidly absorbed by fictions, and thus the cry in the poem may come to sound louder, more urgent, more real than the cry in the street outside. The death in the novel may move us more potently than the death in the next room. Thus there may be a covert, betraying link between the cultivation of aesthetic response and the potential of personal inhumanity. ~ George Steiner

My brother, who's ten years younger than me, worked with me in the studio when he was very young. He's a guitar player and does programming as well. To have the working and personal relationship coincide has been very natural. ~ Atticus Ross

Just as the Savior stepped forward to fulfill His divine responsibilites, we have the challenge and responsibilty to do likewise. If you are wondering if you make a difference to the Lord, imagine the effect when you make such commitments as the following:
"Father, if you need a woman to rear children in righteousness, Here and I, send me."
"If you need a woman to make a house a home filled with love, Here and I, send me."
if you need a woman who will shun vulgarity and dress modestly and speak with dignity and show the world how joyous it is to keep the commandments, Here am I, send me."
"If you need a woman who can resist the alluring temptations of the world by keeping her eyes fixed on eternity, Here am I, send me."
Between now and the day the Lord comes again, he needs women in every family, in every ward, in every community, in every nation who will step forward in righteousness and say by their words and thier actions, "Here am I, send me."
My question is, Will you be one of those women?
~ M. Russell Ballard

Women are interchangeable as sex objects; women are slightly less disposable as mothers. The only dignity and value women get is as mothers: it is a compromised dignity and a low value, but it is all that is offered to women as women. Having children is the best thing women can do to get respect and be assured a place. The fact that having children does not get women respect or a place is almost beside the point: poor women don't get respect and live in dung heaps; black women don't get respect and are jailed in decimated ghettos; just plain pregnant women don't get respect and the place they have is a dangerous one - pregnancy is now considered a cause of battery (stress on the male, don't you know): in perhaps 25 percent of families in which battery occurs, it is a pregnant woman who has been battered. In fact, having children may mean both increased violence and increased dependence; it may significantly worsen the economic circumstances of a woman or a family; it may hurt a woman's health or jeopardize her in a host of other ways; but having children is the one social contribution credited to women - it is the bedrock of women's social worth. Despite all the happy smiling public mommies, the private mommies have grim private recognitions. One perception is particularly chilling: without the children, I am not worth much. The recognition is actually more dramatic than that, much more chilling: without the children, I am not. ~ Andrea Dworkin

My personal opinion ... is that pocket watches will almost completely disappear and that wrist watches will replace them definitively! I am not mistaken in this opinion and you will see that I am right. ~ Hans Wilsdorf

Poetry, from describing external events objectively, is becoming subjectified into a poetry of personal conscious expression. ~ Julian Jaynes

The door of conciliation and compromise is finally closed by our adversaries, and it remains only to us to meet the conflict with the dignity and firmness of men worthy of freedom. ~ Robert Toombs