#Dignity Quotes

“. . . nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it; he died As one that had been studied in his death To throw away the dearest thing he owed, As 'twere a careless trifle.”

“Let none presume To wear an undeserved dignity.”

“Base is the slave that pays.”

“Why, this hath not a finger's dignity.”

“Every chair should be a throne and hold a king.”

“I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action.”

“Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.”

“It is noticed, that the consideration of the great periods and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind, and an indifferenceto death.”

“it so often happens that, when men are convinced that they have to die, a desire to bear themselves well and to leave life's stage with dignity conquers all other sensations.”

“Some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone.”

“We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.”

“I know of no case where a man added to his dignity by standing on it.”

“It is held that valor is the chiefest virtue, and most dignifies the haver.”

“All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride.”

“Relationships based on obligation lack dignity.”

“If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights.”

“A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.”

“I will go down with my colours flying.”

“I don't want them to kill no hog . . . . I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet.”

“An industrious farmer occupies a more dignified place in the scale of beings...than a lazy lounger...too proud to work, and drawing out a miserable existence by eating on that surplus of other men's labor.”

“Monsieur' to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea; ignominy thirsts for respect.”

“If we must suffer, let us suffer nobly.”

“I don't have to talk about whether or not I got raped in jail.”

“Guarding your heart and protecting your dignity are a little bit more important than clarifying the emotions of someone who's only texting you back three words. I've learned that from trying to figure out people who don't deserve to be figured out. When someone seems mysterious, we like to romanticize that he's "deep" or "complicated." But a lot of the time, things are exactly as they seem....”

“Slavery is an institution for converting men into monkeys.”

“One insult pocketed soon produces another.”

“Socialists ignore the side of man that is the spirit. They can provide you shelter, fill your belly with bacon and beans, treat you when you're ill, all the things guaranteed to a prisoner or a slave. They don't understand that we also dream.”

“Politeness [is] a sign of dignity, not subservience.”

“Those who die, merely suffering the woes of life like cats and dogs, are they men?”

“I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as 'the masses.'”

“There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; alwayswe are invited to work.”

“Have your own doctor, who answers to you. If you don't, when the time comes that you get mixed up with hospitals, they'll treat you like a fool. ... You're bound to lose your health at some point, but you don't have to lose your dignity, too.”

“Work and family are at the center of our lives, the foundation of our dignity as a free people.”

“To be acknowledged for who and what I am, no more, no less. Not for acclaim, not for approval, but, the simple truth of that recognition. This has been the elemental drive of my existence, and it must be achieved, if I am to live or die with dignity.”

“What's wrong with death sir? What are we so mortally afraid of? Why can't we treat death with a certain amount of humanity and dignity, and decency, and God forbid, maybe even humor. Death is not the enemy gentlemen. If we're going to fight a disease, let's fight one of the most terrible diseases of all, indifference.”

“Human dignity begins to assert itself only at the point where man is distinguishable from the beast by pity for it.”

“I would risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of the whole race.”

“It is beneath human dignity to lose one's individuality and become a mere cog in the machine.”

“It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one's belly, in order to be able to save one's head.”

“Dignity of human nature requires that we must face the storms of life.”

“It does not require money to be neat, clean and dignified.”

“I regard it as a duty which I owed, not just to my people, but also to my profession, to the practice of law, and to the justice for all mankind, to cry out against this discrimination which is essentially unjust and opposed to the whole basis of the attitude towards justice which is part of the tradition of legal training in this country. I believed that in taking up a stand against this injustice I was upholding the dignity of what should be an honorable profession.”

“I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate. Even as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonoring them.”

“It was a life, she eventually concluded, that had been lived in the middle ground, where contentment and love were found in the smallest details of people's lives. It was a life of dignity and honor, not without sorrows yet fulfilling in a way that few experiences ever were.”

“Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life . . .”

“A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat. Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, "Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.”

“He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lives a great street-sweeper who did his job well'”

“Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”

“Non-co-operation is an attempt to awaken the masses to a sense of their dignity and power.”

“There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth going to jail for. I would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self respect.”