Alfred North Whitehead Quotes

I consider that there are different degrees of civilization and there are many different ways of expressing it. But one is civilized or is not.

There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not always call itself by that name.

Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.

Those expressions are omitted which can not with propriety be read aloud in the family.

Morals are private. Decency is public.

Playing the good guy is tough because you know as well as I do, in real life, you have to watch your P's and Q's and conduct yourself in a respectable manner if you expect to have friends.

Decency is the least of all laws, but yet it is the law which is most strictly observed.

When people talk about political correctness, the only element of any value is good manners.

The history of the world demonstrates that man becomes what we call civilized by increasing his wants.

Where Schools are not vigorously and Honourable Encouraged, whole Colonies will sink apace; into a Degenerate and Contemptible Condition, and at last become horribly Barbarous

In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior, but if we're civilized people, we publicly criticize that, and don't belong to those groups or don't associate with those people.

There's a difference between being culturally insensitive - being insensitive towards a culture - and being insensitive.

In some ways, 'decency' is a hazy concept; we know it when we see it.

Decency cannot be discussed without indecency!

Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe.

One of the keys to our present definition of good taste is that it is better to be kind than to be 'correct.' There is no situation in which it is smart to be nasty.

It is bad enough to be bad, but to be bad in bad taste is unpardonable.

If an armed nation were a polite nation, America would be paradise. We have more than 200 million guns in private owernship here. But our manners are not getting better.

There are many faculties in man, each of which takes its turn of activity, and that faculty which is paramount in any period and exerts itself through the strongest nation, determines the civility of that age: and each age thinks its own the perfection of reason.

Good manners disappear in proportion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly observed from decade to decade by those who have an eye for public behavior, which grows visibly.

Perhaps what you call conventionality, I call decency.

There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word Good-Breeding.

Modesty and taste are questions of latitude and education; the more people know,--the more their ideas are expanded by travel, experience, and observation,--the less easily they are shocked. The narrowness and bigotry of women are the result of their circumscribed sphere of thought and action.

The great difficulty about keeping the Ten Commandments is that no man can keep them and be a gentleman.

I've got confidence that most people in America still have a decent sense of manners, propriety, morality.