Weekend Words: Indecent
"Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them."
Twenty years ago today, a federal panel of judges in Philadelphia blocked part of the Communications Decency Act, which was passed by Congress to regulate indecent and obscene content on the Internet.
When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them.
—Walter Kerr
Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood.
—William Shakespeare
The same costume will be Indecent 10 years before its time, Shameless 5 years before its time, Outré (daring) 1 year before its time, Smart, Dowdy 1 year after its time, Hideous 20 years after its time, Ridiculous 20 years after its time, Amusing 30 years after its time, Quaint 50 years after its time, Charming 70 years after its time, Romantic 100 years after its time, Beautiful 150 years after its time.
—James Laver
There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness… is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase the pursuit of happiness is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.
—Malcolm Muggeridge
There are those who so dislike the nude that they find something indecent in the naked truth.
—Francis H. Bradley
Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.
—Bertrand Russell
The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.
—Virginia Woolf
It is a maudlin and indecent verity that comes out through the strength of wine.
—Joseph Conrad
Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents has been always tragic, chiefly as an almost indecent excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards; but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bear the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed with him by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carrion.
—Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
