In a world that often rewards the loudest voice in the room, decent quotes are a quiet reminder of what actually matters. I put this collection together because I believe decency — real, everyday, hold-the-door-for-a-stranger decency — is one of the most underrated strengths a person can have.
Being decent isn’t about being perfect. It’s about the small choices: listening instead of interrupting, keeping your word when it’s inconvenient, treating the cashier with the same respect you’d give a CEO. Those tiny moments add up to a character you’re proud of.
I’ve updated this page with fresh new lines from my own observations, alongside timeless thoughts on kindness and character. Whether you need a gentle reminder for yourself or something meaningful to share, I hope these decent quotes inspire a little more goodness in your corner of the world.
A decent bridge can make the worst rubbish special.
A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets.
A good interpreter can take a piece of bad music and make it sound pretty decent, while a bad interpreter can take good music and make it sound cheap. I can tell that some people have a bad taste, and unlike on the piano, they smear around a lot, that is bad taste.
A lot of reality TV is repellent, but that doesn’t diminish the qualities of some of the people who take part. There are decent people in there who have no alternatives.
A person may be totally unimaginative and have the social vision of a mole, and we still call him a decent man …
A prostitute is a decent worker like the rest of us, only she can’t fake what she is doing.
A Tory government with a decent mandate seems the only hope of tackling the fiscal catastrophe responsibly.
A zoo is not an ideal place for an animal – of course the best place for a chimp is the wilds of Tanzania – but a good zoo is a decent, acceptable place. Animals are far more flexible than we realize. IF they weren’t, they wouldn’t have survived. But my opinion about zoos came after research. Initially I had the opinion that most people have, that they are jails.
About half the practice of a decent lawyer is telling would-be clients that they are damned fools and should shut up.
After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.
All decent parents want to do what’s best for their children. The Chinese just have a totally different idea of how to do that.
All decent people live beyond their incomes; those who aren’t respectable live beyond other people’s; a few gifted individuals manage to do both.
All global ambitions are based on a definition of productivity and the good life so alienated from common human reality that I am convinced it is wrong and that most people would agree with me if they could perceive an alternative. We might be able to see that if we regained a hold on a philosophy that locates meaning where meaning is genuinely to be found – in families, in friends, in the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy, in all the free and inexpensive things out of which real families, real friends, and real communities are built – then we would be so self-sufficient we would not even need the material “sufficiency” which our global “experts” are so insistent we be concerned about.
All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.
All it took was for a lot of seemingly decent people to put the wrong person in power, and then pay for their innocent choice.
All’s the government should do is keep the taxes and regulations at a manageable rate, keep a decent standing army and get out of the way.
Americans of good-will, the nice decent church people, the well-meaning liberals, the good hearted souls who themselves wouldn’t lynch anyone, must begin to realize that they have to be more than passively good-hearted, more than church goingly Christian, and much more than word-of-mouth in the liberalism.
An awful lot of fantasy, and even some great fantasy, falls into the mistake of assuming that a good man will be a good king, that all that is necessary is to be a decent human being and when you’re king everything will go swimmingly.
And all babies were God’s blessing, even those who said bugger quite a lot, and whose presence meant that half the potential wage earners in our family couldn’t actually go and get a decent job.
And how rare is it to find someone who shares your tastes? The one real fight they’d ever had was over David Foster Wallace. It was around the time of Wallace’s suicide. A.J. had found the reverent tone of the eulogies to be insufferable. The man had written a decent (if indulgent and overlong) novel, a few modestly insightful essays, and not much else. “Infinite Jest is a masterpiece,” Harvey had said. “Infinite Jest is an endurance contest. You manage to get through it and you have no choice but to say you like it. Otherwise, you have to deal with the fact that you just wasted weeks of your life,” A.J. had countered. “Style, no substance, my friend.” Harvey’s face had reddened as he leaned over the desk. “You say that about any writer who was born in the same decade as you!
And the only thing to do with a sin is to confess, do penance and then, after some kind of decent interval, ask for forgiveness.
And what is needed to prevent them from joining gangs was ample recreation for boys as well as girls, jobs and internships for training and money, and assistance to allow their families to live in decent homes.
Anna, you do have decent fashion sense. But I’ve seen your outfits, and you don’t have anything to wear on a date. Jeans, capris, geeky tee shirts, and more jeans.
Any decent person who knows what warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart.
Any musician who says he is playing better either on tea, the needle, or when he is juiced, is a plain, straight liar. When I get too much to drink, I can’t even finger well, let alone play decent ideas … You can miss the most important years of your life, the years of possible creation.
Apparently, if you live until 75, you’ll have spent 25 years in bed, so it makes sense to have a decent mattress.
Are you basically a pretty good, pretty decent person? Says who? Says you? Says your ‘rents? Says your sibs?
Are you decent?” Tick-Tick called through the door.
As a personal matter I don’t give a damn where mosques, churches, temples or other religious shrines and symbols are built as long as they don’t tear down decent saloons in the process.
As every one of us knows, there are some festivals and games in which everything goes right, and every element lifts up, animates, and exalts every other, just as there are theatrical and musical performances which without any clearly discernible cause seem to ascend miraculously to glorious climaxes and intensely felt experiences, whereas others, just as well prepared, remain no more than decent tries.
As for the Republicans
Aside from a handful of guys boxing is missing the good trainers, that’s why our sport is so in the air now because we don’t have people who have the capability to not only train fighters but also train and create decent respectable citizens of the world.
Ask yourself something. Have you ever thought about why guys want you gone the next day? It’s not because they’ve got things to do, though I’m sure there are a few assholes who think like that, either because they repeated the folly so often they learned to bury the guilt or because they didn’t have a conscience to begin with but, truthfully, it’s because they can’t stand to look at the reason they feel a hole in their chest. They don’t like reminders of who helped put that sick feeling in the pits of their stomachs. As long as they had a decent mama, the guilt is always substantial. Always. If they say differently, they’re liars. – Spencer Blackwell, GREED
At some point in your life you have to engage with the fact that you are part of a society. Yeah the individual is the most important facet in society but unless every individual is the recipient of free health care, free education decent affordable housing and a proper pension then only the rich and powerful will be individuals and the rest of us will be exploited by them.
Back home in South Carolina, you have a lot of little soul food restaurants you can run to and get some quick, decent food.
Be careful not to be the first to put your hands in the dish. What you cannot hold in your hands you must put on your plate. Also it is a great breach of etiquette when your fingers are dirty and greasy, to bring them to your mouth in order to lick them, or to clean them on your jacket. It would be more decent to use the tablecloth.
Be kind, be decent, be generous, be tolerant, compassionate, and understanding. Be fast to praise, slow to judge. Remember, we’re all human, and don’t cast the first stone.
Be proud to be a decent American rather than a wanker whipping up fear.
Being a decent human being will require effort and energy …
But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country-but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.
But we realize precisely that if there is no legal right here, there’s a human right, a natural one; the right of common sense and the voice of conscience, and even though this right of ours is not written down in any rotten human code of law, a decent and honest man, a right-thinking man, that’s to say, is obliged to remain a decent and honest man even on those points that aren’t written down in the law books.
Calm self-confidence is as far from conceit as the desire to earn a decent living is remote from greed.
Cam laughed. “You know, my grandmother always said no woman with a decent vocabulary would resort to profanity.”
Can we really believe that we are living a good life, an ethically decent life if we don’t do anything serious to help reduce poverty around the world and help save the lives of children or adults who are likely to die if we don’t increase the amount of aid we are giving.
Category IV spending tends also to corrupt the people involved. All such programs put some people in a position to decide what is good for other people. The effect is to instill in the one group a feeling of almost God-like power; in the other, a feeling of childlike dependence. The capacity of the beneficiaries for independence, for making their own decisions, atrophies through disuse. In addition to the waste of money, in addition to the failure to achieve the intended objectives, the end result is to rot the moral fabric that holds a decent society together.
Certainly, poverty and economic decline have a lot to do with the so-called rage of Islam. You’ve got all these young men in countries which are economically in bad shape. The idea that they might be able to make a good living and get married and have a family, a decent life, seems very remote to a lot of people in a lot of the world.
Common man does not speculate about the great problems. With regard to them he relies upon other people’s authority, he behaves as every decent fellow must behave,’ he is like a sheep in the herd. It is precisely this intellectual inertia that characterizes a man as a common man. Yet the common man does choose. He chooses to adopt traditional patterns or patterns adopted by other people because he is convinced that this procedure is best fitted to achieve his own welfare. And he is ready to change his ideology and consequently his mode of action whenever he becomes convinced that this would better serve his own interests.
Conservatism is not the problem. Conservatism is the founding of this country, essentially. Conservatism isn’t even really an ideology. Conservatism is just what is right, proper, decent, and moral. That’s all it is.
Creating a decent pop song is a challenge – and occasionally, once in every decade – it’s kind of fun to do that.
Criminals are the most decent and least offensive people among us.
Curious,” it said. “What you call your decent self doesn’t dare look me in the eye! What a mistake people make who say that the man who won’t look you in the eye is not to be trusted! As if mere brazenness were a sign of honesty; really, the theory of decency is the most amusing thing in the world.
Des Grieux was like all Frenchmen, that is, cheerful and amiable when it was necessary and profitable, and insufferably dull when the necessity to be cheerful and amiable ceased. A Frenchman is rarely amiable by nature; he is always amiable as if on command, out of calculation. If, for instance, he sees the necessity of being fantastic, original, out of the ordinary, then his fantasy, being most stupid and unnatural, assembles itself out of a priori accepted and long-trivialized forms. The natural Frenchman consists of a most philistine, petty, ordinary positiveness
Don’t let anything make you believe that there are not as many decent men in the world as women, and they’re just as decent. Life isn’t worth living unless you know that – and it’s true.
Dwarves are not heroes, but a calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don’t expect too much.
Embrace opportunities with limited downside, unlimited upside. The best deals are those where your risk of loss is predictable and fixed if things go wrong, while your potential gains are enormous if things go right. Take such deals whenever you can get them if the odds of success are halfway decent.
Even though it’s a shortened format of the game, Twenty20 allows people with different skills to play in a team and play their specific roles. Obviously there’s not too much time to waste balls, but if you look at guys who play well in the top six, they have a fairly decent amount of good cricketing ability.
Every decent con man knows that the simplest truth is more powerful than even the most elaborate lie.
Every decent man in America ought to swoon with joy for the opportunity to crush with his heel the woolly head of this black lizard, to keep him from scuttling on his belly farther over the earth and spitting forth his venom of death!
Every man has been brought up with the idea that decent women don’t pop in and out of bed; he has always been told by his mother that “nice girls don’t.” He finds, of course, when he gets older that this may be untrue-but only in a certain section of society.
Everybody aspires to an affordable home, a secure job, better living standards, reliable healthcare and a decent pension. My generation took those things for granted, and so should future generations.
Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don’t understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn’t like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It’s the kind of a life a decent man leads, it’s something to live for and to die for.
Everyone should know
Everything was blamed on Castro. Mudslides in California. The fact that you can’t buy a decent tomato anymore. Was there an exceptionally high pollen count in Massapequa, Long Island, one day? It was Castro, exporting sneezes.
Favouring employment versus the financial markets is a decent policy; certainly not beneficial for the currency or the gilt market, but beneficial for the people.
Few nations do more than the United States to assist their least fortunate citizens-to make certain that no child, no elderly or handicapped citizen, no family in any circumstances in any State, is left without the essential needs for a decent and healthy existence. In too few nations, I might add, are the people aware of the progressive strides this country has taken in demonstrating the humanitarian side of freedom. Our record is a proud one-and it sharply refutes those who accuse us of thinking only in the materialistic terms of cash registers and calculating machines.
Finding a writer who can write decent kids’ dialog and finding kids that can act realistically and not ‘cute’ is an effort.
For a moment, all I could think of was my cousin Peter. He was twice my age-and married. By the rules of decent, he would be the one to inherit the Rothford title if I died without children. Whenever he was in town, he’d stop by and ask how I was feeling
For that reason the simple test of the slogan ‘Consume Less’ as a basis for social action on the environment would be to tell it to the blacks in the ghetto. The message will not be very well received for there are many people in this country who consume less than is needed to sustain a decent life.
Gina and Susie were cool, though. No hint of the beer they said they were going to score. They played good girls to my parents. Not that they weren’t good girls. That’s exactly what they were: good girls who wanted to pretend they were bad girls but who never would be bad girls because they were too decent.
God’s Grace is greater than all our sins. Repentance is one of the Christian’s highest privileges. A repentant Christian focuses on God’s mercy and God’s grace. Any moment in our lives when we bask in God’s mercy and grace is our highest moment. Higher than when we feel smug in our decent performance and cannot think of anything we need to confess … That is potentially a glorious moment. For we could at that moment accept God’s abundant Mercy and Grace and go forth with nothing to boast of except Christ Himself, or else we struggle with our shame, focusing on that as well as our track record. We fail because we have shifted our attention from Grace and Mercy. One who draws on God’s Mercy and Grace is quick to repent, but also slow to sin.
God, now she knew what decent men felt like, the disquiet before taking someone for their first time.
Good and decent people must be protected and persuaded by gentle means, but the rabble must be led by terror.
Half the evil in this world occurs while decent people stand by and do nothing wrong. It’s not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed.
Has it ever struck you that trout bite best on the Sabbath? God’s critters tempting decent men.
He did not arrive at this conclusion by the decent process of quiet, logical deduction, nor yet by the blinding flash of glorious intuition, but by the shoddy, untidy process halfway between the two by which one usually gets to know things.
He eyed in the far corner of the room the carton of books they’d schlepped across the pond(ocean) They were both fearful of being stuck without a decent book, and who knew they would find everything from Virgil to Synge on the shelves of a fishing lodge?
He had come to us only three years earlier, but had already won general sympathy, mainly because he “knew how to bring society together.” His house was never without guests, and it seemed he would have been unable to live without them. He had to have guests to dinner every day, even if only two, even if only one, but without guests he would not sit down to eat. He gave formal dinners, too, under all sorts of pretexts, sometimes even the most unexpected. The food he served, though not refined, was abundant, the cabbage pies were excellent, and the wines made up in quantity for what they lacked in quality. In the front room stood a billiard table, surrounded by quite decent furnishings; that is, there were even paintings of English racehorses in black frames on the walls, which, as everyone knows, constitute a necessary adornment of any billiard room in a bachelor’s house.
He was very much a man of moods, possibly owing to what is styled the artistic temperment. I have never seen, myself, why the possession of artistic ability should be supposed to excuse a man from a decent exercise of self-control.
Helping others is a question of being genuine and projecting that genuineness to others. This way of being doesn’t have to have a title or a name particularly. It is just being ultimately decent.
Her chances of a decent marriage were about to be dashed-and all because of a ferret.
Her great resentment was that she had had no education. When she was seventeen, she had announced that she was going to university-whereupon everyone had laughed at her. It turned out that you had to come from a good school, and pass examinations, before they would let you in. Maud had never been to school, and even though she could discuss politics with the great men of the land, a succession of governesses and tutors had completely failed to equip her to pass any sort of exam. She had cried and raged for days, and even now thinking about it could still put her in a foul mood. This was what made her a suffragette: she knew girls would never get a decent education until women had the vote.
Here, child, said Mae hastily Hide your eyes. Boys? Are you decent? What’d you put on to swim in? I got Winnie Foster in the house?
Hip-hop saved my life, man. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been even decent at. I don’t know how to do anything else.
His mom always said that trust was something you earned. And it wasn’t something you gave easy. Too often, it was a tool your enemies used to hurt you with. ‘Give them nothing, baby. Not until you have no choice. The world is harsh and it is cold. People can be good and decent, but most of them are only out for themselves and they’ll hurt anyone they can’.
I always had a decent sense of outrage.
I am Emir Dynamite!” he shouted, swaying on top of the tall camelback. “If within two days we don’t get any decent food, I’ll incite the tribes to revolt! I swear! I will appoint myself the Prophet’s representative and declare holy war, jihad. On Denmark, for example. Why did the Danes torment their Prince Hamlet? Considering the current political situation, a casus beli like this would satisfy even the League of Nations. No, seriously, I’ll buy a million worth of rifles from the British
I am not a hero. I just did what any decent person would have done.
I am not a man in decent shape.
I am not engaged to Christianity by decent forms, or saving ordinances; it is not usage, it is not what I do not understand, that binds me to it
I believe that people are fundamentally are decent. And, yes, you will have people that sometimes will misbehave.
I came then to a conviction that has never left me: that there is too much for me to attend to in this mortal life without overspeculation on the immortal, that it is not necessary to my peace of mind or to my effort to be a decent and useful person, to have a definite assurance about the affairs of the next world.
I can claim copyright only in myself, and occasionally in those who are either dead or have written about the same events, or who have a decent expectation of anonymity, or who are such appalling public shits that they have forfeited their right to bitch.
I can’t imagine a decent maze that would be caught dead without a minotaur. It’s not done! You don’t go out of your house without any clothes on, and a minotaur doesn’t go into the world without a labyrinth to keep him warm.
I couldn’t make sense of things. But then I began the process of civilising myself and trying to become a decent human being. I’m still working on it.
I dare say there may be some men and women in the Armed Forces who are so decent that they would say: Give the Iraqi people money, we do not want to be paid back. That is the strength of our country.
I didn’t look up and say, Oh, man, if I learn how to play a guitar I could make not much money, but I’d make a decent living like Eric Clapton or somebody. There wasn’t nothing like that out there.
I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.
I don’t care what anyone says. You have to wake up and say to yourself, ‘I accept that I have diabetes, and I’m not going to let it run my entire life.’ It’s a fine line, a Catch-22, a balancing act. I work to enjoy my life like a regular human being and at the same time keep my blood sugar levels as decent as possible.
I grew up, as reported, in a large family of Catholics without even a decent ration of tentativeness among the lot of us about our religious faith.
I had nowhere to look but into his beautifil freen eyes. “I make a halfway decent friend if you give me the chance.” ( … ) Kota was on his back, his elbow against his forehead. His mouth was open and he was breathing slowly. With his glasses off, he looked completely adorable. I stayed awake as long as I could to watch him.
I have been in Wall Street all of my life. I love it. It has been good to me. I know many wonderful, decent, honorable, ethical, hard-working people that were in Wall Street with me.
I have done no passably decent job in this world which did not at first seem to me useless – absurdly useless, useless to the point of nausea. My secret demon is called:;: What’s the use?
I have known Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla for a long time. He is a good man. He is a decent man.
I have seen that the American Dream is a reality – and I would love to feel the British Dream is also a reality. To enable that, we have to bring back some common sense and encourage family values, a proper sense of justice and make people believe they have a decent chance to build a business or career for themselves. I see this moment as a fantastic opportunity to restore this, because I believe Britain Has Talent.
I have solid decent people around me, and I believe that is all it is, because you will get destroyed if you have people bringing you down.
I just try to stay half way decent looking. Boxing’s a rough sport and you get hit a lot.
I know at least what I am,’ he simply went on; ‘the other side of the medal’s clear enough. I’ve not been edifying
I know Diplo knows a lot about underground music culture – he was one of the people to put me onto music like that when I used to listen to the Mad Decent Mixes. It was like, ‘Oh, he knows what I want.’
I know that I am an excellent live performer. I know that I have spent my life paying attention to my art form, developing my art form, worrying about my show and what it is I’m bringing to people, making sure that I give them a fine trade. They get a two-hour show, sometimes a three-hour show, for a decent price.
I learned that in these disasters, all we can do is tell our In Case of Emergencies that their grief is real, and if it lasts forever, then we will grieve with them forever.
I like a decent funeral, and God knows in my family we’ve seen enough of them. Looking through family photographs now is like watching an episode of ‘Dad’s Army.’
I mean … if you’re raised as a decent human being, killing somebody is against every moral thing you’ve ever been taught. And so, generally, in combat it’s ‘krauts,’ the ‘gooks,’ the ‘yanks’ – whatever you want to do to try and make it so that it’s not a human being.
I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of an entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that has seams tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears, and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies. But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks. The drinks, people.
I never duck out of a fight; I don’t care what the hell the odds are, and I’m rough at times, but I try to be a decent guy all the time. That’s the way I’ve always lived.
I only have to do three things to look halfway decent. Curl my eyelashes, fill in my eyebrows and put some lipstick on.
I read it, too,” Komatsu said after a short pause. “Right after you called me. The writing is incredibly bad. It’s ungrammatical, and in some places you have no idea what she’s trying to say. She should go back to school and learn how to write a decent sentence before she starts writing fiction.” “But you did read it to the end, didn’t you?” Komatsu smiled. It was the kind of smile he might have found way in the back of a normally unopened drawer. “You’re right, I did read it all the way through-much to my own surprise. I never read these new writer prize submissions from beginning to end. I even reread some parts of this one. Let’s just say the planets were in perfect alignment. I’ll grant it that much.” “Which means it has something, don’t you think?
I shall strive not to be guilty of adding any fuel to the flames of hatred and passion which, if continued to be fed, promise to burn up whatever is left by the war of decent human feeling in Europe.
I started writing this feature comedy in New York – a Chris Farley vehicle. The script was decent. When I got to LA, I met some new friends in film school and had them read my script and give me notes.
I stood up, and my pants ripped completely across the seam. It was inevitable, but for once in my life, my timing had been decent.
I think I’m a decent-looking guy. Sometimes I can look great, and other times I look horrifying.
I think Ron Paul’s views are totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American.
I think that as long as you have one decent parent … maybe you should consider cutting the poison out of your life.
I think the American people, at their core, are a decent people. I think that we still have prejudice in our midst but I think that the vast majority of Americans are willing to judge people on the basis of, you know, their ideas and their character. And in the case of the presidency, I think what is most important is whether the American people think that you understand their hopes and dreams and struggles and whether they think that you can actually help them achieve those hopes and dreams.
I think the President himself is a remarkably intelligent, decent, ethical man. I think he did very well, but I think the job builds up over expectations which all candidates contribute to including this President that simply cannot be fulfilled.
I think the team that successfully puts together an economic and social policy framework for global full employment in decent working conditions based on local development, that would command the support of all stakeholders and all international organizations concerned, should be awarded the [Nobel] prize. I am sure they would get it not just for economics, but also for peace in the world.
I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.
I took a bite of cookie and chewed. “Hmmm,” I said, trying not to spit crumbs. “Clear vanilla notes, too-sweet chocolate chips, distinct flavor of brown sugar. A decent cookie, not spectacular. Still, a good-hearted cookie, not pretentious.” I turned to Fang. “What say you?”
I want a society that provides decent jobs for those who can work and decent security for those can’t.
I want to find a nice decent job as a helicopter pilot.
I was a coward and a slave. I say this without the slightest embarrassment. Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave.
I would not have put it this way in those days, but because I was born a woman, I could never become an adult. I would always be a minor, my decisions made for me. I would always be
I would sooner be robbed by a fan than a company. The fan may be broke and have but one choice. There is no excuse for the way the “songwriter” is robbed by everyone from the record company to the broadcaster, by the pure bottom line, greed. If it continues, sadly, in time, the music will suffer. It takes many many years to learn how to write a song properly. Songwriters will be forced to hit the road in order to make a decent living and, in my opinion, these two careers are related but not compatible.
I’m a big fan of London in the summertime. English people are dependent on weather to change our attitudes, and, provided it’s a decent summer, everyone’s spirits are uplifted and the whole place is in bloom. It’s a magical transformation. London in the summer, going to see bands play outside, watching football.
I’m a decent cook; I’m a decent chef. None of my friends would ever have hired me at any point in my career. Period.
I’m a decent-looking guy, but I’ve never walked into a room and got a girl because of how I looked. Look, I’m never excluded because of my looks. I just don’t stand out.
I’m a pretty decent tap dancer. I enjoy all types of dancing, actually.
I’m for the poor man – all poor men, black and white, they all gotta have a chance. They gotta have a home, a job, and a decent education for their children. ‘Every man a king’ – that’s my slogan.
I’ve got a tidy chin and a decent punch. And, for people who think they can fight and are champions, I’ll make it extremely hard.
I’ve had the pretty good fortune of working with some decent guys and gals.
I’ve met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation.
I’ve never felt a strong urge to rush into Hollywood, so I bided my time and waited till I had a decent body of work to show people, the icing on the cake being ‘Salmon Fishing’ and ‘Parade’s End.’
If a guy as good and decent with as much grace as Chuck Heston can stand up for an issue that I think is very important … then I certainly could stand up and I plan on remaining a life member for life.
If I were founding a university I would begin with a smoking room; next a dormitory; and then a decent reading room and a library. After that, if I still had more money that I couldn’t use, I would hire a professor and get some text books.
If only Mexico paid their workers a decent wage.
If the goal is to get the best artists, actors, and filmmakers in the world to create the best movies, Hollywood does a decent job. And I think no one would disagree with me that it also makes a ton of bad movies and employs a bunch of hacks.
If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the Lord God will always help us. In the long run He never leaves decent folk in the lurch. Often He may test them, He may send trials upon them, but in the long run He always lets His sun shine upon them once more and at the end He gives them His blessing.
If you are really bored with life, just meet a decent magician and have a close up magic show, he will restore inspiration in your life.
If you ever want to be a decent player, you have to be able to use both feet without stopping to think about it.
If you get a certain amount of notoriety for doing something, and you can stick to that type of project for the rest of your life and make a decent living, I think you still have a responsibility to stretch. Flexibility is what keeps you alive.
If you offer people a decent service, if you give them you know Internet access, if their phones are not cut off on the trains, you know if you have plugs where they can plug in their computers, and if you have a smiling, cheerful staff; and if you can travel really quickly, then you can make a success out of the rail business.
If you want to propose marriage to your girlfriend and you live in England and she is in Sicily, do the decent thing and walk down there. Travelling by car or aeroplane wouldn’t be right at such a moment.
If you’re decent to others, then you’re decent to yourself.
If you’re going to write an anthem for an old man who’s up at political bat for the last time, give him a decent song. Send him off with something that creates some chills or something.
If you’re not ready to be in a relationship, going out with someone much younger than you is probably a great idea, because you both can have a decent experience and hopefully nobody will end up feeling cheated when it ends.
If you’re writing anything decent, it’s in you, it’s your spirit coming out. If it’s not an expression of how a person genuinely feels, then it’s not a good song done with any conviction.
If you’ve been working since you were a teenager and working at a reasonably decent level, then you don’t expect that you’re going to be firmly in your 40s and start moving up in the world, if you like.
In India, it’s a matter of fact that a girl child is seen as a liability. Probably the only expectation is that you grow up to a presentable young woman who can get a decent spouse.
In the bottom right-hand corner was a decent-sized color photo of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Trudeau posing with their new acquisition. Brianna, ever photogenic, as she damned well be, emanated glamour. Carl looked rich, thin, and young, he thought, and Imelda was as baffling in print as she was in person. Was she really a work of art? Or was she just a hodgepodge of bronze and cement thrown together by some confused soul working hard to appear tortured?
In the British embassy in Afghanistan in 2008, an embassy of 350 people, there were only three people who could speak Dari, the main language of Afghanistan, at a decent level. And there was not a single Pashto speaker.
In the sixties, during the Vietnam war, when anarchists and pacifists and socialists, Democrats and Republicans, decent-hearted Americans, all recoiled with horror at the bloodbath, we came together.
In theory, multiculturalism is something we should all celebrate; unfortunately, in practice, multiculturalism means multi-morality … The only antidote to such nihilistic thinking is ethical monotheism, the belief in one universal code of ethics. Differing cultures glorify humanity, but differing moralities destroy it. We must teach what Professor Viktor Frankl concluded after surviving Auschwitz: There are only two races of human beings, the decent and the indecent. That is how the world is divided: not between rich and poor, men and women, North and South, black and white, the powerful and the powerless, or any other nonmoral division that too many contemporary liberals have been advocating.
Income inequality has no necessary connection with poverty, the lack of material resources for a decent life, such as adequate food, shelter, and clothing. A society with great income inequality may have no poor people, and a society with no income inequality may have nothing but poor people.
Indeed, there is nothing more vexing, for instance, than to be rich, of respectable family, of decent appearance, of rather good education, not stupid, even kind, and at the same time to have no talent, no particularity, no oddity even, not a single idea of one’s own, to be decidedly like everybody else.
Iraq may still have a decent outcome … but even if it becomes Switzerland, we overpaid for it.
It [Obama’s Nobel peace prize] would be like giving someone an Oscar in the hope that it would encourage them to make a decent motion picture.
It is a law of nature that every decent man on earth is bound to be a coward and a slave
It is critical that low-income consumers have access to alternative products and services such as rent-to-own. It gives working-class families opportunities to obtain decent household items without incurring the burden of debt.
It is important that our relationship with farm animals is reciprocal. We owe animals a decent life and a painless death. I have observed that the people who are completely out of touch with nature are the most afraid of death …
It is important what you eat now, what you do now. If we were interested in a sustainable planet where other generations have a right to a decent future, we would not live like this.
It is not history. But I am beginning to wonder strongly what is the nature of history. Is it only memory in decent sentences, and if so, how reliable is it? I would suggest, not very. And that therefore most truth and fact offered by these syntactical means is treacherous and unreliable. And yet I recognise that we live our lives, and even keep our sanity, by the lights of this treachery and this unreliability, just as we build our love of country on these paper worlds of misapprehension and untruth. Perhaps this is our nature, and perhaps unaccountably it is part of our glory as a creature, that we can build our best and most permanent buildings on foundations of utter dust.
It is sometimes easier to head an institute for the study of child guidance than it is to turn one brat into a decent human being.
It must be frustrating for decent parents to watch their children fall under the influence of radical educators, and sometimes make foolish decisions based on the predominant cultures in their schools. But no one should be surprised it happens-far too many educators are moral relativists who reject the notion of absolute right or wrong.
It used to be enough just to make a fairly decent product and market it. Not anymore. In the ’90s, you’ve got to have a Corporate Soul.
It was a silver cow. But when I say ‘cow’, don’t go running away with the idea of some decent, self-respecting cudster such as you may observe loading grass into itself in the nearest meadow. This was a sinister, leering, Underworld sort of animal, the kind that would spit out of the side of its mouth for twopence.
It’s hard to be decent in a money world. We want to shut down all repetitious jobs, automate it, free people.
It’s instructive to consider the more spectacular and well-known falls from grace of leaders in the public eye … In the main, the issues behind these falls could be grouped under a lack of competence, a lack of support or loyalty from those they sought to lead, and a lack of failure of integrity. Of all these the last is the most egregious, the most fatal. We so much want our leaders to be unfailingly decent that an obvious or perceived flaw in integrity can be the toxin which kills them off.
It’s Nathaniel Hawthorne Month in English. Poor Nathaniel. Does he know what they’ve done to him? We’re reading The Scarlet Letter one sentence at a time, tearing it up and chewing on its bones.
It’s not like it’s hard to be decent and respectful and well-behaved. I do wait in line, and I do take the subway, and I do do my own grocery shopping, and I do take the kids to school.
Judge Roberts is a brilliant lawyer, a brilliant judge. He is a very careful judge, a thoughtful judge. I would agree with what the President said earlier. He is a decent man. I think everybody who knows him likes him.
Julia Roberts was really rather lovely. I had to interview her on Pebble Mill At One years ago. You learn not to be starstruck if you’re trying to get a decent interview out of someone. If you fall apart it’s counter productive.
Just because someone’s pretty, doesn’t mean she’s decent.
Kadin raised an eyebrow and gave Rob a knowing look. Then he tapped Gregory on the shoulder and said, “It’s not that bad. It could be worse.”
Let’s face it, the Internet was designed for the PC. The Internet is not designed for the iPhone. That’s why they’ve got 75,000 applications – they’re all trying to make the Internet look decent on the iPhone.
Let’s get something clear up front. I’m not Harry Dresden. Harry’s a wizard. A genuine, honest-to-goodness wizard. He’s Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket. He’ll spit in the eye of gods and demons alike if he thinks it needs to be done, and to hell with the consequences
Like the character I played in ‘Jekyll’, we all have different masks we put on for different occasions. As much as we all want to lead decent lives, we’re also attracted by the idea that something dark may lurk within us.
Listen,” I began, “this is an established,traditional form that-“
Live the principles and the values. Almost nobody in America is living them. Learn the truth. Live the life of our founders. Be a decent, righteous, forthright honest man or woman.
Love, if you love me, lie next to me. Be for me, like rain, the getting out of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi- lust of intentional indifference. Be wet with a decent happiness.
Man is an extraordinarily fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant. It is only by tradition and organisation that anything decent can be got out of him.
Manual labor to my father was not only good and decent for it’s own sake but, as he was given to saying, it straightened out one’s thoughts.
Marrying the first person who offers you a decent position in society. Love can wait.
My darling father gave me some decent getaway sticks – my legs are OK.
My dream was to play in good films, no matter in what country. I always waited for a decent script, and nothing has changed. I’m just sure that nothing in life is random, and I believe in the fate which guides you. Probably my starring in ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’ is good proof of that.
Nature is not something to be fought, conquered and changed according to any human whims. To some extent, of course, it has to be used. But what man should seek in regard to nature is not a complete domination but a modus vivendi – that is, a manner of living together, a coming to terms with something that was here before our time and will be here after it. The important corollary of this doctrine, it seems to me, is that man is not the lord of creation, with an omnipotent will, but a part of creation, with limitations, who ought to observe a decent humility in the face of the inscrutable.
No decent man ought to read Shakespeare’s sonnets because it was like listening at keyholes.
No matter how flawed someone else may be, that doesn’t give us the right to be less than we are, does it? We are decent people and we repay our debts.
No work, as long as it is decent, can ever disgrace anybody.
Not long ago it was easy to tell who the bad guys were. They carried Kalashnikovs. Now it is much more complicated, but one thing is sure – any man who covers his face and packs a gun is a legitimate target for any decent citizen.
Nothing is gained except by sacrifice … Do not degrade it to the level of the brutes … Make yourselves decent men! … Be chaste and pure! … There is no other way. Did Christ find any other way?
Of course I am, Gran,” I said quietly. I blew out a breath and leaned my elbows on my knees. “I will admit that the withdrawals suck, though.”
Of course, there’s no reason that Paris should have decent Mexican food. It’s a silly expectation – there’s a Mexican population in Paris, but they’re not exactly traveling there from across the border. Paris also doesn’t do Peruvian all that well, either.
Of lies, false modesty is the most decent.
Often you will find the opposite situation. The author seems to have interesting ideas, but he is not able to illustrate them with decent examples. If a grandmaster is commenting on one of his own games, then there is usually not any problem: his general thoughts are closely tied up with what is happening on the board. But as soon as he starts writing an article or book on a different theme the difficulties begin, as he may not have suitable material to hand.
On a small square, wood is being cut for the city school. Cords of healthy, crisp timber are piled high and melt slowly, one log after another, under the saws and axes of workmen. Ah, timber, trustworthy, honest, true matter of reality, bright and completely decent, the embodiment of the decency and prose of life! However deep you look into its core, you cannot find anything that is not apparent on its evenly smiling surface, shining with that warm, assured glow of its fibrous pulp woven in a likeness of the human body. In each fresh section of a cut log a new face og the human body. In each fresh section of a cut log a new face appears, always smiling and golden. Oh, the strange complexion of timber, warm eithout exaltation, completely sound, fragrant, and pleasant!
Once again, the Republicans in the Senate have rejected an increase in the minimum wage. They support tax breaks for multi-millionaires, but they oppose helping the working poor to earn a decent income.
One may have a right to be unconventional and even eccentric, so long as one is fully competent and a decent person; but one’s ideal as a professor should be to conduct oneself as an admirable human being: just, kind, tolerant, competent, committed, and good-humored.
One should never marry a man who doesn’t own a decent set of scissors. That would be my advice. It leads to bad things.
Our government works should be treated fairly and appropriately; they should have a decent retirement, but not a gold-plated system where they can retire multimillionaires in their 50s.
Our old pilgrims believed stories in which the West was a promise, a place where decent people could escape the wreckage of failed lives and start over. Come along, the dream whispers, and you can have another chance. We still listen to promises in the wind. This time, we think, we’ll get it right.
Our society is monstrously disjunctive, at once so efficient in war and so inefficient in caring for the welfare of its members. It is frightening to see people rooting in garbage pails on streets, living in cardboard crates under bridges, while their government wages war. Even when there is an emergency in a household, decent parents do not forget to feed the children.
Our task is not to fight old battles, but to show that there is a third way, a way of marrying together an open competitive society and successful economy with a just and decent society.
People of very different opinions
People say to me, ‘Do you dye your hair?’ and I say, ‘Well, does f**king Siouxsie Sioux? Does Bowie?’. Of course I’m going to have a decent haircut. It’s one of the first things I learnt to do – get a few songs together and get your hairstyle right.
Perjury is often bold and open. It is truth that is shamefaced – as, indeed, in many cases is no more than decent.
PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity.
Political correctness is a concept invented by hard-rightwing forces to defend their right to be racist, to treat women in a degrading way and to be truly vile about gay people. They invent this idea of people who are politically correct, with a rigid, monstrous attitude to life so they can attack. But we have all had to learn to modify our language. That’s all part of being a decent human being.
President Ford was a devoted, decent man of impeccable integrity who put service to his country before his own self interest. He helped heal our nation during a time of crisis, provided steady leadership and restored people’s faith in the presidency and in government.
Rahul Gandhi is very idealistic and a very decent human being. He has real concerns for the downtrodden.
Ransom knew he’d regret the words he was about to speak. Because they were the decent thing to do, and if there was one thing he’d learned in his life, it was that every time he did the decent thing, he paid for it later.
Real Texans don’t want any woman to die of cancer because she can’t get decent health care or medical advice. Real Texans don’t want any woman to lose control of her life because she can’t get birth control.
Regardless of the official theology held on paper, moralistic preaching (the bane of conservatives and liberals alike) assumes that we are not really helpless sinners who need to be rescued but decent folks who need good examples, exhortations, and instructions.
Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives
Ruby Bates, one of the young white girls, was a remarkable person. She told me she had been driven into prostitution when she was thirteen. She had been working in a textile mill for a pittance. When she asked for a raise, the boss told her to make it up by going with the workers. She told me there was nothing else she could do … Ruby Bates was a remarkable woman. Underneath it all-the poverty, the degradation-she was decent, pure. Here was an illiterate white girl, all of whose training had been clouded by the myths of white supremacy, who, in the struggle for the lives of these nine innocent boys, had come to see the role she was being forced to play. As a murderer. She turned against her oppressors … I shall never forget her.
See this page of paper? It’s blank,” Scull said. “That, sir, is the most frightening battlefield in the world: the blank page. I mean to fill this paper with decent sentences, sir-this page and hundreds like it. Let me tell you, Colonel, it’s harder than fighting Lee. Why, it’s harder than fighting Napoleon. It requires unremitting attention,
Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States.
She did not understand why women complicated their lives with corsets and petticoats, so she sewed herself a coarse cassock that she simply put over her and without further difficulties resolved the problem of dress, without taking away the feeling of being naked, which according to her lights was the only decent way to be when at home.
She even tried the one which every romantic nerve in her body insisted should work, which consisted of theatrically giving up, sitting down, and letting her glance fall naturally on a patch of earth which, if she had been in any decent narrative, should have contained the book.
She looks at herself in the mirror. The idea is to look sexy again. And for whom exactly? Yourself, of course. Yes, well, that’s all wonderfully self-affirming and very strong-minded as any decent woman should be these days, but let’s just face facts here and say that when a woman – no, when a person is thinking about feeling sexy, it is always with the idea of someone else in mind.
She made you decent, and in return you made her so happy
Show me a man who longs to live a day beyond his time who turns his back on a decent length of life, I’ll show the world a man who clings to folly.
Shut up, Willy. Mister, you gonna buy anything? Pa says we can’t shut down for the day until we get thirty dollars’ worth of custom.” “I’ll buy a pumpkin. If you can give me some decent directions.” She gave a theatrical sigh. “One pumpkin. A buck-fifty. Big whoop.
So long as atrocities remain remote, abstract, they will be tolerated, even by decent people.
Socialism is not about big concepts and heavy theory. Socialism is about decent shelter for those who are homeless. It is about water for those who have no safe drinking water. It is about health care, it is about a life of dignity for the old. It is about overcoming the huge divide between urban and rural areas. It is about a decent education for all our people. Socialism is about rolling back the tyranny of the market. As long as the economy is dominated by an unelected, privileged few, the case for socialism will exist.
Sometimes the challenge of beating the jet lag and getting a decent sleep can be as hard to solve as finding the right setup for the car!
Sometimes, political campaigns make decent people act and talk like perfect buffoons.
Somewhere deep down there’s a decent man in me, he just can’t be found.
Sophia: Go with it?
Start doing the things you think should be done, and start being what you think society should become. Do you believe in free speech? Then speak freely. Do you love the truth? Then tell it. Do you believe in an open society? Then act in the open. Do you believe in a decent and humane society? Then behave decently and humanely.
Stoneville seems like a decent enough chap.”
That morning, while Mom had fought with Grandpa, Aunt Sel had asked me to bring her a glass of wine-it was nine in the morning-and when I’d delivered it she’d handed me a ten dollar bill and said, I dislike children, but I do appreciate decent service.
The average beast of prey is a decent creature who merely kills for the sake of food or in a fight against an enemy. It is only man who calls killing “sport” and kills for the pleasure of killing; not for food, not for self-defense, but just to satisfy some primitive instinct, once necessary and now perverted.
The bravest and most noble are not those who take up arms, but those who are decent despite everything; who improve what it is in their power to improve, but do not imagine themselves to be saviours. In their humble struggle is true heroism.
The civil rights situation is like a pregnancy. It will get worse, I believe, before it gets better. What the usual pregnancy comes to is a decent baby. That is what we all hope will be the end product of this stress. It is customary, at the end of a pregnancy, to have for your pains a decent baby.
The criminal law is no use to decent people.
The decent thing to do is to get rid of some of this money.
The decent, strong person had to do decent, strong things like love unlovable people and keep peace even when it wasn’t easy.
The destiny of world civilization depends upon providing a decent standard of living for all mankind.
The door cracked open. “Decent?” Rafe asked.
The experiment shows that individuals feel relieved of responsibility when they know that others have heard the same request for help. Did the results surprise you? Very probably. Most of us think of ourselves as decent people who would rush to help in such a situation, and we expect other decent people to do the same. The point of the experiment, of course, was to show that this expectation is wrong. Even normal, decent people do not rush to help when they expect others to take on the unpleasantness of dealing
The funny thing is, about the time I let go of any aspiration toward worldly success, that’s about the time I started writing decent work.
The great majority of people in England and America are modest, decent and pure-minded and the amount of virgins in the world today is stupendous.
The great thing about vinyl is that if you wanted to get a decent-sounding cut, you could really only have 20 minutes max on each side.
The hotel shop only had two decent books, and I’d written both of them
The husband just nods back at her with an indescribably harmonious smile. The very sort of smile that makes decent folk want to slap Buddhist monks in the face, Ove thinks to himself.
The late Victorian Era brought in part-time education. Not everybody went to school, but they were supposed to have a decent level of schooling; they went part-time after 12.
The memory of that day in the dump made him a little sentimental for his father – they had had some good times together, and Buddy had made a decent meal in the end. Really, what else could you ask from a parent?
The more subtle thing is more speculative. The world is well past its long-term carrying capacity for human beings living a European, much less an American, lifestyle predicated on planned obsolescence. International economic growth is largely a matter of accelerated movement of materials from mines and forests to the dump. Instead of saving and buying decent furniture we can pass on to our children, we charge our credit cards for shaped heaps of sawdust and glue that fall apart in less than three or four years.
The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn’t precisely one of the things that engages you, often at first without your noticing it. A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would be almost physically hurtful. This is how philosophy evolved in the symposium, before philosophy was written down. And poetry began with the voice as its only player and the ear as its only recorder.
The part of me that actually cares about being a decent person promptly punched my inner researcher in the jaw and stuffed her in a closet at the back of my head, to be retrieved later.
The peace we seek, founded upon decent trust and cooperation among nations, can be fortified not by weapons of war but by wheat and cotton, by milk and wool, by meat and timber, and by rice. These are words that translate into every language.
The person I liked the best was Gerald R. Ford. He was the most decent man in politics I ever had any relationships with.
The principle of acting in good faith is at the heart of decent work.
The problem the world faces today is that only one-third of the world’s population lives in decent circumstances, while half the population of the world lives on one or two dollars a day. And even as we have this poverty and backwardness, we are facing a global environmental crisis. We need developmental models that will take into account the specific and unique position of each country and at the same time will address the environmental crisis.
The prosecution makes all the important decisions: what’s charged, how much is charged, whether you can get a decent offer. Every defendant becomes an informant today.
The real solution is to improve the incomes of the poor and provide their children with decent education.
The rest of the family hated Orlando. It was full of ass-backward transplants, bad food, and doo-doo basketball players. It was everything that sucked about the South with none of the benefits. People drove ride-on lawn mowers through their neighborhoods wearing Home Depot hats, but you couldn’t find any decent barbecue within five counties. No Southern hospitality, just hot asphalt and suburban phoniness. All the ignorance, none of the sense.
The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon ‘Hell and Damnation’-upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer.
The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to every labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country. There is not at present enough for all to have a decent share. What would then be the consequence?
The ultimate source is probably the tendency in some of us, part of our psychological inheritance from our far-distant ancestors, the tendency to look for extreme solutions, absolute truths, abstract answers. All fanatics and fundamentalists share this tendency, which is so alien and unpleasing to the rest of us. The theory says they must do such-and-such, so they do it, never mind the human consequences, never mind the social cost, never mind the terrible damage to the fabric of everything decent and humane.
The world is full of Guses
The world is not full of betrayers, it is full of people with decent motives and a full desire to do right by those who know them and love them. This is a little-known truth, but I think it is a truth nonetheless. Empirically, from all the years of my work, I would attest to that. I know it is a miraculous conclusion, but there it is. We like to make strangers of everyone. We are not wolves, but lambs astonished in the margins of the fields by sunlight and summer.
There are only two races, the decent and the indecent.
There is no contradiction here. People live and suffer and endure in the real world of existing society, and any decent person should favor employing what means are available to safeguard and benefit them, even if a long-term goal is to displace these devices and construct preferable alternatives. In
There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant. And that is the force of human freedom.
There was no way to abandon guilt, no decent way to disown it. All the tangles and knots of bitterness and desperation and fear had to be pitied. No, better, grace had to fall over them.
There’s room in the world for one historical folk-rock singer to make a decent living, and I happen to be it.
These women of mine are decent, simple human beings who have no other concern than that of their physical condition … it is as though one were watching through a keyhole.
They have the same relationship that all progressive middle-class women have with their cleaning ladies, although Maman really thinks she is the exception: a good old rose-colored paternalistic relationship (we offer her coffee, give her decent pay, never scold, pass on old clothes and broken furniture, and show an interest in her children, and in return she brings us roses and brown and beige crocheted bedspreads).
They were trying to save their souls- and who but a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?
This nation is daring and decent and ready for change.
This was our last night. We only had one curtain call, Bree. And I thought they were going to give us a standing ovation, but no-o-o-. Do you know why half the audience stood up?”
This was what I came to found. The conquest of loneliness was the missing link that was one day going to make a decent novelist out of me. If you are out here and cannot close off the loves and hates of all that back there in the real world the memories will overtake you and swamp you and wilt your tenacity. Tenacity stamina … close off to everything and everyone but your writing. That s the bloody price. I don t know maybe it’s some kind of ultimate selfishness. Maybe it’s part of the killer instinct. Unless you can stash away and bury thoughts of your greatest love you cannot sustain the kind of concentration that breaks most men trying to write a book over a three or four year period.
Throughout history in the theater and film people do like sarcastic characters, and they do like curmudgeons – if they’re amusing, they do like them despite the fact that they’re vitriolic, particularly if they’re for the right thing. If you can see that the person is a decent person and is for the right thing, and is not just a nasty person with base motives, but someone who is a decent human but expresses himself.
To isolate the revolutionary ideologues and their killers we must gain the trust of the majority of Muslims, this can only happen if they are treated as equal citizens, not just in theory, and have access to decent education and jobs.
To many an upright poor person, it seems needless to invent a god who will wash the feet of beggars and exalt those who do not care to labor. What is this but a denial of thrift and a sickly obsession with the victim? The so-called common people are quite able to penetrate this ruse (“The good lord must indeed love the poor, since he made so many of them”). Many decent people are made uneasy by the constant injunction to give alms and to dwell among those who have lost their self-respect. They can also see the hook sticking out of the bait: abandon this useless life, leave your family, and follow the prophet who says that the world is soon to pass away. Such an injunction coupled with an implicit or explicit “or else” is repulsive to many conservatives who believe in self-reliance and personal integrity, and who distrust “charity,” just as it was repulsive to the early socialists who did not think that poverty was an ideal or romantic or ennobled state.
To recap: it is possible to put decent information into a Government Machine, have ordinary, good people running the thing, and a reasonable system in place, and still get utter idiocy out of the dispenser?”
To say grace, knowing that people on this globe are starving, indicates a highly selfish acquiescence in the arrogantly supposed favoritism of the almighty. A really decent god-believer, far from giving thanks for the food and good health and fortune enjoyed by himself and his family and close friends, would surely curse God for his neglect of the hungry, the sick and the tormented, throughout the world.
To the extent that the parents who send their children to these [Catholic] schools are parents like my own, who actually have faith in the church. Faith that it will provide their children with safety, a decent education and values about life and others. This is an institution that stands for all good in the world.
To turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork should not, surely, be seen as any triumph for any government, save one that boasts of its repressiveness.
Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
Together, we can make ourselves a nation that spends more on books than on bombs, more on hospitals than the terrible tools of war, more on decent houses than military aircraft.
Trade unions have been an essential force for social change, without which a semblance of a decent and humane society is impossible under capitalism.
Transcendence gets you beyond ego. If you go beyond ego, you see all of this in a more decent perspective and you can start to put all the pieces together. We haven’t done that yet. Not as a civilization.
True philosophy is that which renders us to ourselves, and all others who surround us, better, and at the same time more content, more patient, more calm and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment.
Twenty thousand thieves landed at Hastings. These founders of the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious dragoons, sons of greedy and ferocious pirates … Such, however, is the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent and dignified men now existing, boast their descent from these filthy thieves, who showed a far juster conviction of their own merits, by assuming for their types the swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, and snake, which they severally resembled.
Uncle Tarmac says vehicles always resemble their owners, and likes advising my female cousins to judge whether boyfriends will make decent husbands or not by observing how they treat or mistreat their cars.
Under the decent veil of print one can indulge one’s egoism to the full.
Unless children have strong education and strong families and strong communities and decent housing, it’s not enough to go sit in at a lunch counter.
Up to a point go for quantity rather than quality. Most people would rather have two glasses of ordinary decent port than one of a rare vintage.
We are making the fundamental changes. It was like the decent housing target. We said by 2010, we’d have taken a million houses and refurbished them into decent housing.
We assume that we can have an exploitive, ruthlessly competitive, profit-for-profit’s-sake economy, and yet remain a decent and a democratic nation, as we still apparently wish to think ourselves. This simply means that our highest principles and standards have no practical force or influence and are reduced merely to talk.
We don’t always choose the best solution but we carry on regardless, trying to remain upright and decent in order to do honor not to the walls or the doors or the windows but to the empty space inside, the space where we worship and venerate what is dearest and most important to us.
We don’t want to hurt anybody, kill anybody, build any prisons, or build police. We want to make it unnecessary for people to steal – so they’ll have access to medical care, health care, decent housing, all people, all over the world. As long as you don’t share your resources, you are going to have trouble
We made certain that there were decent transitional arrangements to get us to where we wanted to go. The same principle will have to apply here or we won’t get there.
We owe them [animals] a decent life and a decent death, and their lives should be as low-stress as possible. That’s my job. I wish animals could have more than just a low-stress life and a quick, painless death. I wish animals could have a good life, too, with something useful to do. People were animals, too, once, and when we turned into human beings we gave something up. Being close to animals brings some of it back.
We sometimes drive ourselves crazy with how our books will be “seen,” when in fact we already know what they’re about, and where our obsessions are. If we can spin those obsessions into fiction, then there’s a decent chance they will be “fiction-worthy,” as you call it. The idea of the “sweep of ideas” is a complicated one.
We want to make it clear that Indiana’s open for business. We want to make it clear that Hoosier hospitality is not a slogan, it’s our way of life. It’s the reason why people come here from around the world and they come back again and again. Because Hoosiers are the kindest, most generous, most decent people in the world.
We’re Americans! Do you know what that means? It means our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world.
We’ve got blue light, we’ve got all this light flooding our bedrooms and things blinking, and you can’t get a decent night’s sleep.
Welcome,” said the magus. “Would you like some dried beef, some dried beef, or some dried beef for lunch?” “Oh, I’ll take stuffed pigeons in sauce, thank you, and some decent wine to drink. None of that cheap stuff, please.” The magus handed me an almost empty paper package of dried beef and half of a loaf of bread. “Enjoy your meal,” he said.
Well, marriage is a very important part of our culture and our society. If we want to have a hopeful and decent society, we ought to aim for the ideal.
What does a decent chap talk about with the greatest possible pleasure?
What sucked was that her room was on the fourth floor of a four-story house because she hated walking past every other room on her way in and out. She was like a latter-day Rapunzel except her hair was only a few inches below her shoulders, slightly fried, not all that blond, and furthermore, who the hell was ever going to climb up to give her a hand? The guy in the wheelchair from school?
What they, in their innocence, cannot comprehend is that a properly constituted, healthy, decent man never writes, acts, or composes.
When I came it was in the face of everything decent, white sperm dripping down over the heads and souls of my dead parents. If I had been born a woman I would certainly have been a prostitute. Since I had been born a man, I craved women constantly, the lower the better. And yet women-good women-frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price. Either way I was lost. A strong man would give up both. I wasn’t strong. So I continued to struggle with women, with the idea of women.
When I lay my head on the pillow at night I can say I was a decent person today. That’s when I feel beautiful.
When I write, I make decent money doing it, but I don’t wake up dreaming about writing.
When I’m doing shows I don’t need much from a city. All I’m looking for is a good meal and a decent spot to have a couple drinks.
When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.
When you come from the working class and you do well enough whereby you can provide a little bit better for your family, get a decent roof over their head and send them to a good school, that’s considered a good thing.
When you grow up in middle America you are inculcated from the earliest age with the belief – no, the understanding – that America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth because God likes us best. It has the most perfect form of government, the most exciting sporting events, the tastiest food and amplest portions, the largest cars, the cheapest gasoline, the most abundant natural resources, the most productive farms, the most devastating nuclear arsenal and the friendliest, most decent and most patriotic folks on Earth. Countries just don’t come any better. So why anyone would want to live anywhere else is practically incomprehensible. In a foreigner it is puzzling; in a native it is seditious. I used to feel this way myself.
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.
When you’re facing down multiple attackers, you always want to make the first move. It lets them know that you’re ready to fight and that you’re crazy enough to get the party started. One rule of thumb in fighting is that crazy can often overcome skill and numbers, because, while a trained fighter might actually enjoy going up against another trained fighter, no one really wants to wrestle with crazy. Crazy doesn’t know when it’s winning. And crazy doesn’t know when to stop. If you can’t pull off crazy, if, for instance, you’re handcuffed in a small van with six armed assailants, stupid is a decent substitute for crazy.
Where there’s a labyrinth, there’s a minotaur, and vice versa! I can’t imagine a decent maze that would be caught dead without a minotaur.
While I wouldn’t object to work at a restaurant or a different place that sells decent-or-better food, I think that I can learn much more by becoming a coder.
While the rich reap most of the benefits of technological development, the poor bear an unequal burden of dealing with the consequences of the resulting increased pollution. The poor continue to live in greatest proximity to the sources of pollution, the infrastructure and machinery of industry. They work in the most polluted and physically dangerous workplaces. And these same individuals, living and working closest to the sources of environmental catastrophe, are also the ones most lacking decent health care.
With The Reader, I’d just be shattered at the end of every day really. I wouldn’t really want to talk. We kept saying, because we were in Berlin: “If we get back at a decent hour, let’s go and have a glass of wine.” We’d always think it would be a great idea, but then get to the end of the day and then go [acts drowsy and blabs]. It was very difficult for everybody.
Ye are a scoundrel, a black-hearted robber and a rogue,’ Stubble said cheerily to the grumbling captain. It was his usual way of haggling, and he’d beaten down the riverman to a decent price for conveying himself and Anvar to Lankarn.
You and I have been physically given two hands and two legs and half-decent brains. Some people have not been born like that for a reason. The karma is working from another lifetime.
You can be a decent critic if you know about food, but to be a really good one, you need to know about life.
You can fool some of the people some of the time
You can’t criticize people for wanting to have a decent life or wanting to live decently.
You can’t have a decent food culture without a decent coffee culture: the two things grow up together.
You don’t have to fight to be brave. Millions of good, fine, decent folks show more bravery than heavyweight champs just by getting out of bed every morning, going out to do a good day’s work and living the best life they know how against the law of odds.
You have absolutely no regard but yourself and your damned kicks. All you think about is what’s hanging between your legs and how much money or fun you can get out of people and then you just throw them aside. Not only that but you’re silly about it. It never occurs to you that life is serious and that there are people trying to make something decent out of it instead of just goofing all the time.
You have to remember that there are reasons to live, and that at least a few people are decent, and that the world is worthwhile some of the time, okay?”
You never expected that God himself would, by his representatives, actually come close to unclean people and touch them. The Holy One is not human. The triune God is not human. Don’t limit God’s character by your expectations of what a decent human king might do. You expect God to reject; he accepts. You expect him to turn away; he turns toward.
You only have to start a job of work to realize how few decent, honest folk there are about.
You raise them half-decent, and they grow up and leave. They move to Miami or California
You want to go to a show tonight? There’s this band called Crucifictorious from Texas, and they’re supposed to be decent.
You’re in a strange mood,’ said Damen. ‘Stranger than usual.’
You’re thoughtful, Barbara, but you’re not open. You’re passionate, but you’re hard. You’re a good, decent, funny, wonderful woman, and I love you, but you’re a pain in the ass.
You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists
Young people in particular need real options to find a decent job and to lift their lives. I’m not sure the new Islamist governments will be the best to promote prosperity and growth.
Fresh Decent Quotes
“Being decent costs nothing and means everything.” — Unknown
“A decent person does the right thing when nobody’s watching — especially then.” — Unknown
“Politeness is free, but its value is priceless.” — Unknown
“Decency is choosing kindness when rudeness would be easier.” — Unknown
“You can be honest without being cruel; that’s what decency is for.” — Unknown
“A decent heart doesn’t need an audience to do good.” — Unknown
“Manners are the quiet language of respect.” — Unknown
“Being a decent human is the simplest legacy you can leave.” — Unknown
“Treat people the way you’d want to be treated — it’s not complicated.” — Unknown
“Decency means keeping your word, even when it’s inconvenient.” — Unknown
“The measure of a person is how they treat those who can do nothing for them.” — Unknown
“A kind word costs you a second and can change someone’s whole day.” — Unknown
“Decent people don’t gossip; they build.” — Unknown
“Integrity is doing right; decency is doing right gently.” — Unknown
“You don’t need to be important to be decent. You just need to care.” — Unknown
“Good manners never go out of style, no matter what the trends say.” — Unknown
“A decent person apologizes when they’re wrong — quickly and sincerely.” — Unknown
“Respect is earned by the decent and demanded by the rest.” — Unknown
“Small courtesies are the glue that holds a community together.” — Unknown
“Being decent is a daily decision, not a one-time achievement.” — Unknown
“Kindness is the one currency that never loses value.” — Unknown
“A decent person listens more than they speak.” — Unknown
“You can’t buy class, but you can practice decency — it looks the same.” — Unknown
“Hold the door, say thank you, mean it. That’s the whole formula.” — Unknown
“Decency is strength under control.” — Unknown
“The world has enough critics; be someone decent instead.” — Unknown
“A fair person stands out in a crowd of the self-serving.” — Unknown
“True decency doesn’t keep score.” — Unknown
“Speak to everyone with the same respect you’d give a friend.” — Unknown
“A decent person returns the shopping cart. It’s the little things.” — Unknown
“Character is what you do; decency is how you do it.” — Unknown
“Don’t mistake softness for weakness — the decent are often the bravest.” — Unknown
“Being decent to people who are rude to you is a quiet kind of victory.” — Unknown
“Generosity without expectation is decency at its finest.” — Unknown
“A decent life is built from a thousand small, kind choices.” — Unknown
“Patience with strangers is one of the purest forms of decency.” — Unknown
“You can disagree with someone and still treat them decently.” — Unknown
“Decency means cleaning up your own mess — literally and otherwise.” — Unknown
“The decent don’t need credit for being decent.” — Unknown
“A gentle tone can carry the hardest truths.” — Unknown
“Be the person your dog thinks you are — that’s decency.” — Unknown
“Fairness isn’t always loud, but it’s always noticed.” — Unknown
“Decent people lift others without stepping on anyone.” — Unknown
“Kindness is contagious; start the outbreak.” — Unknown
“A decent person doesn’t laugh at someone else’s misfortune.” — Unknown
“Respect other people’s time like it’s your own.” — Unknown
“Being decent means your actions match your words.” — Unknown
“Honesty delivered with kindness is decency’s signature move.” — Unknown
“The decent leave every place a little better than they found it.” — Unknown
“A warm greeting can be the brightest part of someone’s day.” — Unknown
“Decency is remembering that everyone is fighting something unseen.” — Unknown
“Choose decency, even when nobody thanks you for it.” — Unknown
“Politeness opens doors that talent alone cannot.” — Unknown
“A decent person never uses someone’s trust against them.” — Unknown
“Compassion is decency with its sleeves rolled up.” — Unknown
“Stand up for others the way you’d want someone to stand up for you.” — Unknown
“Decency is the foundation every great relationship is built on.” — Unknown
“Be decent first; be impressive second.” — Unknown
“The world changes one decent act at a time — start with yours.” — Unknown
“True class is quiet, kind, and decent — no announcement needed.” — Unknown
Frequently Asked Questions About Decent Quotes
What does it mean to be a decent person?
A decent person treats others with fairness, kindness, and respect — especially when no one is watching. It’s about consistency: your actions match your words in small moments, not just big ones.
What are some good decent quotes about character?
The best ones focus on small, everyday actions — keeping promises, listening well, showing patience. They remind us that character is built in ordinary moments, not dramatic ones. Try: “Being decent is a daily decision, not a one-time achievement.”
How can decent quotes inspire better behavior?
They act as gentle mirrors. Reading about decency prompts self-reflection: am I living this? Many people share them as personal commitments, not just pretty words.
What is the difference between being nice and being decent?
Niceness is often about being liked; decency is about doing right. A decent person will tell you an uncomfortable truth kindly, while a merely nice person might avoid it altogether.
Why are decent quotes popular on social media?
People are hungry for sincerity. In feeds full of noise, a simple quote about kindness and integrity stands out — it’s shareable, relatable, and quietly aspirational.
Can I use decent quotes for speeches or toasts?
Absolutely. Lines about decency and character work beautifully in graduation speeches, wedding toasts, and eulogies — anywhere you want to honor someone’s quiet goodness.
Decency might not make headlines, but it makes lives better — yours and everyone you touch. I hope these decent quotes reminded you that the small, kind choices matter more than we think.
Bookmark this page for the days when the world feels a little rough around the edges. And if a line here made you think of someone who embodies it, share it with them — decent people deserve to be told they’re appreciated.
Want more words with heart? Visit our kindness quotes for daily kindness and our integrity quotes for quotes about living with integrity.