Patrick Campbell Quotes

You don't spit on people, especially people's corners.

What is often said in private may not be said in public.

The world prefers decorum to honesty.

People have no concept of boundaries.

Let's all commit ourselves to the basic civility of minding our own business. Failing that, let's go back to a time when we were nasty and judgmental, but only behind one another's backs.

Good manners, to those one does not love, are no more a breach of truth, than "your humble servant," at the bottom of a challengeis; they are universally agreed upon, and understand to be things of course. They are necessary guards of the decency and peace of society.

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

I do not believe the president’s sex life is any of our business. After 30 years of political reporting I have been unable to establish a link between marital fidelity and high performance in public office. It really doesn’t matter who they screw in private as long as they don’t screw the public.

One of the damnable unhappy conditions of life is sometimes Government has to make people be civil.

No outward doors of a man's house can in general be broken open to execute any civil process; though in criminal cases the public safety supersedes the private.

... the silly, mean, and cowardly lies that every day are found in the columns of certain newspapers, which violate every instinct of American manliness, and in ghoulish glee desecrate every sacred relation of private life.

A people who are revolted by an execution, but not shocked at an assassination--require that the public authorities should be armed with much sterner powers of repression than elsewhere, since the first indispensable requisites of civilized life have nothing else to rest on.

The progress made in refinement of manners and morals seems to have gone on simultaneously with the improvement in arts, manufactures and commerce. It moved slowly at first, but has been constantly increasing in velocity…. we are a much better people than we were then, better instructed, more sincere and kind-hearted, less gross and brutal, and have fewer of the concomitant vices of a less civilized state.

Equality is the measure of all things, and bad behavior is less bad if everyone indulges in it.

Can public men have private lives?

Young girls have been infected by television programs and have become sex addicts…. Young women should not laugh in public.

The American sense of decorum is falling apart.

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 are necessary taboos and essential decencies in every morally healthy society.

Secrecy is hardly new on Planet Girl: as many an eye-rolling boy will tell you, girls excel at eluding the prying questions of grown ups. And who can blame them? From an early age, young women learn that to be a 'good girl,' they must be nice, avoid conflict, and make friends with everyone.

People don't always behave the same way on different programmes. If you go to church you don't behave the same way you do at a party in the middle of the night.

American life is based on a reassurance that we like one another but won't violate one another's privacies. This makes it a land of small talk.

I don't want to show my emotions in public.

People in England have a lot of respect. It is relaxed here.

I'd need a good reason to drop my pants