Dennis Altman Quotes

It's when you treat people like freaks that you become one yourself.

There's this idea that if you take your clothes off, somehow you must have loose morals.

It is the public scandal that offends; to sin in secret is no sin at all.

There are, in every society, rules of conduct, and practices of life, which the progress of events has gradually marked out, and general observance hallowed. Of these, some are founded on the principles of morality and religion, some on caprice, some on prejudice. The breaking of any of them is always esteemed a crime against society.

People know your tragedies and they treat you like you’re not human. Like you’re a three-headed goat. A monster from some other planet. They keep reminding you of your pain. You see how they look at me? They’re stuck on that person I used to be. They can’t see that old life as just a moment in time that I’ve moved on from. It was a horrible life.

It's not a good idea to define the boundaries of normality by tearing apart people who are outside of it.

What most needs explanation is not why some people are criminals, but why most people are not.

Only criminals and adulterers should have to hide who they are.

Liberalism has become a moral vaccine that immunizes people against stigmatization.

Reality is: Should people steal in this world? Yes. How do I know they should? They all do.

If I asked people to live as I live, they would kill me.

I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.

What you think in your own mind to be good, or what people of the world think is good, is not necessarily good.

In our well-policed society we recognize that an illness is serious from the fact that we don't dare speak of it directly.

Crime is a left- handed form of human endeavor.

Perhaps this is why lunatics have a harder time dating, not because they are off the wall but because it is hard to find soemone who is willing to date so many people in one person.

If one wanted to stigmaitise, that's how one would do it - lots and lots of people saying "we're severing our ties".

To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice!

We're the victims of a disease called social prejudice, my child. These dear ladies of the law and order league are scouring out the dregs of the town. C'mon be a glorified wreck like me.

Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not the patience to practice it.

If you're a member of a despised group, look out! They'll find a drug and associate you with its use. There are a lot of people in the gay community using methamphetamine and paying taxes and going to work and doing well.

I notice that when people have no sense of responsibility, you call them either criminals or geniuses.

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

A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws.