Quotes about shame (850 quotes, page 9)

“In those days I had seen little further than the old school of political economists into the possibilities of fundamental improvement in social arrangements. Private property, as now understood, and inheritance, appeared to me, as to them, the dernier mot of legislation: and I looked no further than to mitigating the inequalities consequent on these institutions, by getting rid of primogeniture and entails. The notion that it was possible to go further than this in removing the injustice -- for injustice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy or not -- involved in the fact that some are born to riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reckoned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal education, leading to voluntary restraint on population, the portion of the poor might be made more tolerable. In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We were now much less democrats than I had been, because so long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass: but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action, with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour. We had not the presumption to suppose that we could already foresee, by what precise form of institutions these objects could most effectually be attained, or at how near or how distant a period they would become practicable. We saw clearly that to render any such social transformation either possible or desirable, an equivalent change of character must take place both in the uncultivated herd who now compose the labouring masses, and in the immense majority of their employers. Both these classes must learn by practice to labour and combine for generous, or at all events for public and social purposes, and not, as hitherto, solely for narrowly interested ones. But the capacity to do this has always existed in mankind, and is not, nor is ever likely to be, extinct. Education, habit, and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a common man dig or weave for his country, as readily as fight for his country. True enough, it is only by slow degrees, and a system of culture prolonged through successive generations, that men in general can be brought up to this point. But the hindrance is not in the essential constitution of human nature. Interest in the common good is at present so weak a motive in the generality not because it can never be otherwise, but because the mind is not accustomed to dwell on it as it dwells from morning till night on things which tend only to personal advantage. When called into activity, as only self-interest now is, by the daily course of life, and spurred from behind by the love of distinction and the fear of shame, it is capable of producing, even in common men, the most strenuous exertions as well as the most heroic sacrifices. The deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society, is so deeply rooted, only because the whole course of existing institutions tends to foster it; modern institutions in some respects more than ancient, since the occasions on which the individual is called on to do anything for the public without receiving its pay, are far less frequent in modern life, than the smaller commonwealths of antiquity.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/230/mode/1up pp. 230-233

Fight , Love , Fear , Problem

“If we as people allow ourselves to be caught up in either PRIDE or SHAME, we severely limit the scope of what we are capable of doing and what we are capable of of becoming in this life.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Life , People

“Never be ashamed of how you feel. If you feel shame because of how you feel, it means you have been judged by others and told that your feelings were wrong or bad. But the reality is you wouldn't be feeling them if there wasn't a very valid reason to be feeling them. Your feelings are valid. If you feel an emotion, there is a good reason that you are feeling that emotion. Don't let anyone tell you how you should or shouldn't feel.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

book The Anatomy of Loneliness

Bad luck , Reality , Feeling

“The cross is not random suffering, but necessary suffering. The cross is not suffering that stems from natural existence; it is the suffering that comes from being Christian. … A Christianity that no longer took discipleship seriously remade the gospel into only the solace of cheap grace. Moreover, it drew no line between natural and Christian existence. Such a Christianity had to understand the cross as one's daily misfortune, as the predicament and anxiety of our daily life. Here it has been forgotten that the cross also means being rejected, that the cross includes the shame of suffering. Being shunned, despised, and deserted by people, as in the psalmists unending lament, is an essential feature of the suffering of the cross, which cannot be comprehended by a Christianity that is unable to differentiate between a citizen's ordinary existence and a Christian existence. The cross is suffering with Christ.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 86

Understanding , People , Suffering , Nature

“I'm headed out to Denver
to see if I can't find that lovin' Colorado girl of mine
The promise in her smile shames the mountains tall
She can bring the sun to shining.
She can tell the rain to fall”

Townes Van Zandt (1944–1997) singer-songwriter

Colorado Girl

Sun , Smile , Mountain , Girl

“The promise in Her smile, shames the mountains tall. She can bring the sun to shine, tell the rain to fall.”

Townes Van Zandt (1944–1997) singer-songwriter

Colorado girl

Feeling , Smile , World , Sun

“Let us not fall into the vulgar error, which is to curse and to dishonour the age in which we live. However deep the shame of the present, whatever blows we receive from the fluctuation of events, whatever the apparent desertion or the momentary lethargy of mental vigour, none of us... will repudiate the magnificent epoch in which we live, the virile age of mankind.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Error , Age

“There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem
And the holy places defiled;
Peter the Hermit, scourging with words.
And among his hearers were a few good men,
Many who were evil,
And most who were neither,
Like all men in all places.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Evil , Men

“Jesus bluntly calls the evil person evil. If I am assailed, I am not to condone or justify aggression. Patient endurance of evil does not mean a recognition of its rights. That is sheer sentimentality, and Jesus will have nothing to do with it. The shameful assault, the deed of violence and the act of exploitation are still evil. … The very fact that the evil which assaults him is unjustifiable makes it imperative that he should not resist it, but play it out and overcome it by patiently enduring the evil person. Suffering willingly endured is stronger than evil, it spells death to evil.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 142

Making love , Personality , Suffering , Death

“Then it is that the height of unhappiness is reached, when men are not only attracted, but even pleased, by shameful things, and when there is no longer any room for a cure, now that those things which once were vices have become habits.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXXIX: On Noble Aspirations

Men

“Shame on you, cowards to come here, five thousand of you, to slaughter a half-dozen white men. And you come here for what reason? You have been killing their cattle right along, day after day, and not one of them has said anything to you about the loss - and then when you shoot one of your own people, you come here to kill a white man for it ... You are not brave to come here to kill a half-dozen white men!”

Eagle Woman (1820–1888) American peace activist (born 1820, near Big Bend of the Missouri River [in what is now South Dakota], U.S.…

Speech to the same crowd of 5,000, as recounted by a different source, quoted in [Gray, John S., 1986, The Story of Mrs. Picotte-Galpin, a Sioux Heroine: Eagle Woman Becomes a Trader and Counsels for Peace, 1868-1888, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4518988, Montana: The Magazine of Western History, 36, 3, 2–21, 0026-9891]

Loss , People , Men

“Ra ra Rasputin
Lover of the Russian queen
There was a cat that really was gone
Ra ra Rasputin
Russia's greatest love machine
It was a shame how he carried on”

Boney M.

Boney M., in their 1978 song "Rasputin"

Cats , Love , Making love , Lovers

“Perhaps the concept of shame applies to only women but not men. Maybe because she was a ‘prostitute’ she was able to write crude depictions of sex without shame. In that case, it surely must not suit the supposed learned men to depict conjugal pleasures in the same way?”

Bangalore Nagarathnamma (1878–1952) Indian singer

as a sarcastic retort to criticism of the original work and her 1910 edition containing sexual/erotic passages, believed to being unsuitable for women

Firstpost Article - An early 20th century tale of censorship - 22 Mar 2020 https://www.firstpost.com/living/an-early-20th-century-tale-of-censorship-how-bangalore-nagarathnamma-fought-social-norms-to-revive-the-legacy-of-muddupalani-8132331.html Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20200415202057/https://www.firstpost.com/living/an-early-20th-century-tale-of-censorship-how-bangalore-nagarathnamma-fought-social-norms-to-revive-the-legacy-of-muddupalani-8132331.html

the wording of the quote is different in the sources provided(probably due to translation), but the tonality and meaning are similar.
About Radhika Santawanam (Appeasing Radhika)

Learning , Pleasure , Sex , Way

“Anyone who believes that @realDonaldTrump is a racist doesn't know #Trump at all. Shame on the protesting rabbis with #AIPAC”

Michael Cohen (lawyer) (1966) American attorney

Tweet (17 March 2016) https://twitter.com/michaelcohen212/status/710667346088730624

“What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose? And a lot of people are saying that when … and are taking it, if you’re a doctor, a nurse, a first responder, a medical person going into hospitals, they say taking it before the fact is good, but what do you have to lose? They say, take it, I’m not looking at it one way or the other, but we want to get out of this. If it does work, it would be a shame if we didn’t do it early. But we have some very good signs. So that’s hydroxy chloroquine and as azithromycin, and again, you have to go through your medical people get the approval. But I’ve seen things that I sort of like, so what do I know? I’m not a doctor, I’m not a doctor, but I have common sense.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Coronavirus Task Force Briefing, April 5. Transcript https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-task-force-briefing-transcript-april-5 at Rev.
2020s, 2020, April

Sense , Personality , Way , People

“There must be no deserters (from the 2019-nCoV-infected containment), or they will be nailed to the pillar of historical shame forever.”

Sun Chunlan (1950) Politburo member of the Communist Party of China

Sun Chunlan (2019) cited in " Increasingly extreme measures taken in Wuhan https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/increasingly-extreme-measures-taken-in-wuhan" on The Straits Times, 8 February 2020.

“I think a lot of my work is about un-shaming things or de-shaming things.”

Alethea Arnaquq-Baril (1978) director

Artist Talk with Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, Cinema Politica - 13 Jul 2016, at 3 Min 06 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8l9GI9coH4

Thinking

““Transgender” is a fashionable mental disorder being presented to kids as a legitimate medical condition. Shameful.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

twitter.com (29 October 2015) https://twitter.com/patcondell/status/659665407536705536
2015

Fashion

“And blessed is he man who stands
Before his God in pain
And on his back a cross of woe
His wounds a gaping shame.
For this man is a son of God
And hallowed be thy name.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Trilogy, pt. 3 "Torture at H Block"
Poetry, Miscellaneous poems

God , Pain

“There is no compulsion for man to accept the truth. But it is certainly a shame upon the human intellect when man is not even interested in finding out as to what is the truth! Islam teaches that Go.”

Maurice Bucaille (1920–1998) French physician and author

Truth

“By a miracle the 19th amendment has been ratified, we women now have a weapon of defense ... it will be a shame to us if we do not use it … we shall give our enemies a stick with which to break our head, Hold meetings, every time you meet a woman talk to her about going to the polls and vote!”

Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) African Americans' rights activist

Source: p.310

Time , Women

“Great shame it is to deem of high degree
Thyself, or over others rackon thee.
Strive to be like the pupil of thine eye—
To see all else, but not thyself to see.”

Khwaja Abdullah Ansari (1006–1089) Persian writer

A Literary History of Persian, Vol. 2, p. 270
Poetry

“[Nature] only keeps us alive by a complicated system of the most shameful illusions, falsifying beyond rectification life, death, and after-death. Having made us take part in this poor puzzling game of life, she has taken care that all the rules shall be unfavourable to us: the cards are marked, the dice are loaded, we are always swindled. Thus years of hard work; and self-denial are frequently lost by a slip or chance, but seldom or never saved by a chance. Our health may be ruined by a pin-prick, but never doubled by an accident. We fall seriously ill in a moment, and take weeks or months to recover; lose a limb by some sudden mishap, but never by a good hap regain it. We cannot reach even a low degree of wisdom or knowledge without long hard study, while to be ignorant and foolish is the easiest and most natural thing in the world for us. Our sorrows are real and enduring; our joys deceptive and transient; our prizes of victory are not to be compared with our forfeits of defeat.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part II, p. 62
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Chance , Study , Game , Victory

“If all women were like as the one we have lost,
Then women would be preferred to men.
For the feminine gender is no shame for the sun,
Nor is the masculine gender an honor for the crescent moon”

Al-Mutanabbi (915–965) Arabic poet from the Abbasid era

Sun , Women , Men

“There should be no shame in admitting to a mistake; after all, we really are only admitting that we are now wiser than we once were.”

Greg McKeown (author) book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Popular Quotes, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

“Stop this war! Shame on you Hobbits! Shame on you! This is a fictitious war! This Lord was not elected by the popular”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

a computer-generated Oliphaunt steps on Moore, crushing him
In a humorous sendup of Moore's previous acceptance speech for Best Documentary Feature at the 2003 Oscars. Moore himself delivered the lines in the opening act of the 2004 Oscars, while standing in front of a greenscreen which had the Battle of the Pelennor Fields scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King playing on it; a battle which was, itself, literally fictitious. (23 March 2004)
2004

War

“Dust to dust by the broken dreams of the humanity,
you ain't got a lot to say, the words are sad,
now, our companion, the pains of the heart
The indifference kills with no shame or concern, killing me,
killing you, watch the end of the blessing, for the blind in the heart war has taken its tax. He has wrapped us in black wings
and one day, the sun stopped, the rain stopped falling,
the flowers didn't look high,
the sky emptied of stars
then a tear dripped from the heart and became our breath
we need a sacred tear,
before the fall.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://allpoetry.com/alexis_karpouzos

Star , Flowers , Indifference , Tear

“What is the use of having a new generation without inspiration? It's such a shame that we learn more from the dead than from the living.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Dead , Learning

“The warrior for the True, the Right,
Fights in Love's name;
The love that lures thee from that fight
Lures thee to shame:
That love which lifts the heart, yet leaves
The spirit free,—
That love, or none, is fit for one
Man-shaped like thee.”

Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902) Irish poet and critic

Miscellaneous Poems, Song; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 484.

Heart , Fight , Love

“I am a woman and a woman of Africa. I am a daughter of Nigeria and if she is in shame, I shall stay and mourn with her in shame.”

Buchi Emecheta (1944–2017) author

Source: Buchi Emecheta speaking on being a Nigerian woman https://www.zikoko.com/life/oldies/9-thought-provoking-quotes-from-the-literary-icon-buchi-emecheta/.

Daughters

“To illude: one of the most shameful behaviors that can belong to the human being.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Illudere: uno dei comportamenti più vergognosi che possano appartenere all'essere umano.
Source: prevale.net

Behavior

“The eyes of man can perform two functions: one is "seeing" energy at large as it flows in the universe and the other is "looking at things in this world." Neither of these functions is better than the other; however to train the eyes only to look is a shameful and unnecessary loss.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from A Separate Reality (Chapter 6)

Universe , Training , World , Loss

“It’s a shame everyone is so afraid of sharks but we love our monsters.”

Julie Andersen

Source: Sean Daly Live at Shark Con-Julie Andersen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxL0X3uZIy0 (May 3, 2014)

Love

“It’s time we moved the shame from victim to perpetrator. They’re the ones that should be ashamed.”

Kiki Mordi (1991) Nkiru "Kiki" Mordi is a Nigerian investigative journalist, media personality, filmmaker,writer and entrepreneur.

Source: https://www.entrepreneurs.ng/kiki-mordi/ Kiki Mordi speaking on sex for grades.

Time

“Banish Evil from the world? Nonsense! Encourage it, foster it, sponsor it. The world owes Evil a debt beyond imagination. Think! Without greed ambition falters. Without vanity art becomes idle musing. Without cruelty benevolence lapses to passivity. Superstition has shamed man into self-reliance and, without stupidity, where would be the savor of superior understanding?”

Jack Vance book The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph

The Sub-Standard Sardines (p. 132)
Short fiction, The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (1966)

Imagination , Stupidity , World , Evil

“Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important or worth finishing; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 68

Communication , Children , Learning , Chance

“Were Women all like those whom here I name,
Woman to man I surely would prefer;
The Sun is feminine, nor deems it shame;
The Moon, though masculine, depends on her.”

Jami (1414–1492) Persian poet

Alluding to Rabia of Basra, Nafahat al-Uns, as quoted in A Literary History of Persia https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Literary_History_of_Persia/q_n1DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA299 by E. G. Browne, p. 299.

Dependency , Sun , Women

“Very often we (cosplayers) are subject to harsh criticism when we do not look similar enough to movie or anime characters, and body-shaming is very commonly experienced by many cosplayers. I got a comment saying 'I'm too fat for Jinx.'”

Rikka Blurhound Malaysian cosplayer and nutritionist

Rikka Blurhound (2022) cited in " Malaysian Cosplayer Shares Her Painful But Passionate Journey Cosplaying Over The Years https://says.com/my/lifestyle/malaysian-cosplayer-badass-transformation-from-nutritionist-to-arcane-jinx" on SAYS, 13 April 2022.

Animals

“Western culture is undergoing a process of transition from guilt-oriented, with a conscience, to shame-oriented, with a morbid fear of being found out.”

John Brunner book The Jagged Orbit

Source: The Jagged Orbit (1969), Chapter 3, “Spoolpigeon” (p. 10)

Fear

“A hopeful growing believer is a walking sermon. He preaches far more than I do, for he preaches all the week round, shaming the unconverted, sharpening the converted, showing to all what grace can do.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

"Where Art Thou?", p. 40
Startling Questions (1853)

Hope

“In general I find little girls enchanting. What a shame they grow up to be big girls and make our lives as miserable as we allow them, and oft-times more.”

Avram Davidson (1923–1993) novelist

My Boy Friend’s Name is Jello (p. 95)
Short fiction, Or All the Seas with Oysters (1962)

Time , Girl

“When our thoughts are born,
Though they be good and humble, one should mind
How they are reared, or some will go astray
And shame their mother.”

Jean Ingelow (1820–1897) British writer

"Gladys and Her Island", p. 238.
A Story of Doom (1867)

“I am endowed by shame's vast memory, more detailed and implacable than any other, a gift unique to shame.”

Annie Ernaux book Mémoire de fille

Quoted in German #MeToo, ed. Elisabeth Krimmer and Patricia Simpson (Boydell & Brewer, 2022), p. 31
A Girl's Story (2016)

Memory

“The worst thing about shame is that we imagine we are the only ones to experience it.”

Annie Ernaux book La Honte

Quoted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 184, ed. Tom Burns and ‎Jeffrey Hunter (Gale, 2004), p. 164, and in The Poetics of Childhood by Roni Natov (Routledge, 2014), p. 220
Shame (1997)

Imagination