Obscenity Quotes

“The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in, becoming narcissistic.”
― Rod Serling

“If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“8 April 1891
The obscenity of nostrils and mouths; the ignominious cupidity of smiles and women encountered in the street; the shifty baseness on every side, as of hyenas and wild beasts ready to bite: tradesmen in their shops and strollers on their pavements. How long must I suffer this? I have suffered it before, as a child, when, descending by chance to the servant's quarters, I overheard in astonishment their vile gossip, tearing up my own kind with their lovely teeth.

This hostility to the entire race, this muted detestation of lynxes in human form, I must have rediscovered it later while at school. I had a repugnance and horror for all base instincts, but am I not myself instinctively violent and lewd, murderous and sensual? Am I any different, in essence, from the members of the riotous and murderous mob of a hundred years ago, who hurled the town sergeants into the Seine and cried, 'String up the aristos!' just as they shout 'Down with the army!' or 'Death to the Jews!”
― Jean Lorrain, Monsieur De Phocas

“Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies.”
― Betty Smith

“Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.
This is the obscenity of war: the intimacy of mutually shed blood, the lascivious proximity of two soldiers who, eye to eye, bayonet each other.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“The censors were so far gone as to find the following sentence obscene: 'The factory gate waited for the student workers, thrown open in longing.' What can I say? This obscenity verdict was handed down by a censor in response to my script for my 1944 film about a girls' volunteer corps, Ichiban utsukushiku (The Most Beautiful). I could not fathom what it was he found to be obscene about this sentence. Probably none of you can either. But for the mentally disturbed censor this sentence was unquestionably obscene. He explained that the word 'gate' very vividly suggested to him the vagina! For these people suffering from sexual manias, anything and everything made them feel carnal desire. Because they were obscene themselves, everything seen through their obscene eyes naturally became obscene. Nothing more or less than a case of sexual pathology.”
― Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography

“Nothing is more pleasing than to see an arrogant prick fail.”
― Abhishek Bisht

“They told me I was not to draw.”
― Mike Diana

“I know it when I see it
Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964), concurring op.”
― Justice Potter Stewart

“he writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated lo neliness, and a sense of local and global distress. The square, overpopulation, the bourgeois, the bomb and the cocktail party are variously identified as sources of the grudge. There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.”
― Renata Adler, Toward a Radical Middle: Fourteen Pieces of Reporting and Criticism

“​It is Obscene to keep Printing Newspapers in the Digital Era”
― Vineet Raj Kapoor

“Obscenity is a function of culture - a function in the mathematical sense, I mean, its value changing with that of the variables on which it depends.”
― A.P., Sabine

“It's been said before, the left censors what they deem offensive, and the right censors what they deem obscene.”
― Razorblade Kandy

“Nothing is more obscene than inertia. More blasphemous than the bloodiest oath is paralysis.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Now, if anyone in this room or the world finds those two words decadent, obscene, immoral, amoral, asexual, the words 'to come' really make you feel uncomfortable, if you think I'm rank for saying it to you, you the beholder think it's rank for listening to it, you probably can't come. And then you're of no use, because that's the purpose of life, to re-create it.”
― Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People

“I'd much prefer to speak of the modern books that I hate at first sight: the earnest case histories of minority groups, the sorrows of homosexuals, the anti-American Sovietnam sermon, the picaresque yarn larded with juvenile obscenities.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Freedom of Dress (The Sonnet)

Freedom of dress is as important,
As freedom of press, that's common sense.
If we're still stuck with squabbles on clothes,
When will we manifest character's radiance!
What does it matter, what we wear,
As long as we walk with our head held high!
Anything that strengthens our backbone,
Is worth the fight of a thousand lifetime.
Clothes perish, so does the body in them,
But a well-built character keeps on shining.
Focus on conduct across all shallow exterior,
Let burning dogs burn, you just keep dazzling.
I repeat, heed not the honks of primeval puritans.
Own your booty and trample all condemnation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“Esperanza Impossible Sonnet 18

Clothes or the lack of it, don't make,
A person obscene, only behavior does.
Who are you to judge someone's expression,
But, here there are plenty grey areas!
Problem is, when obscenity becomes expression,
Misbehavior is deemed declaration of independence.
Too many people confuse attention with admiration,
And a stunt as some wonderful achievement.
Accepting obscenity as freedom of expression,
Is like showing tolerance to intolerance.
Posing butt naked on instagram, unless you're pornstar,
Is like barging into capitol with a flag confederate.
We must find a balance between comfort and conscience.
Civilization falls apart when we can't tell the difference.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence

“The author relates that the word "OBSCENE" springs from the concept in Greek drama that certain actions would be performed outside the scene or off the stage. He clarifies that the Greeks did not shy away from shocking actions, but they knew that portraying them in the audience's view would drown out the emotional subtlety of the character development and ethical dilemmas.”
― Gene Edward Veith Jr., Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature

“I look like a hooker.”
“A slut,” I corrected. “Hookers have pastier complexions.”
“The voice of experience, I’m sure.”
― Martyn V. Halm, In Pocket

“Bundy was correct in saying that most serial murderers are addicted to hardcore pornography. FBI records validate that point. Not every person exposed to obscenity will become a killer, of course, but too many will!”
― James C. Dobson, Life on the Edge: A Young Adult's Guide to a Meaningful Future

“A heart filled with positive thoughts has no room for frivolities and obscenities.”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu, Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1

“I want to help you if you have a dirty-word problem. There are none, and I'll spell it out logically to you.

Here is a toilet. Specifically-that's all we're concerned with, specifics-if I can tell you a dirty toilet joke, we must have a dirty toilet. That's what we're all talking about, a toilet. If we take this toilet and boil it and it's clean, I can never tell you specifically a dirty toilet joke about this toilet. I can tell you a dirty toilet joke in the Milner Hotel, or something like that, but this toilet is a clean toilet now. Obscenity is a human manifestation. This toilet has no central nervous system, no level of consciousness. It is not aware; it is a dumb toilet; it cannot be obscene; it's impossible. If it could be obscene, it could be cranky, it could be a Communist toilet, a traitorous toilet. It can do none of these things. This is a dirty toilet here.

Nobody can offend you by telling a dirty toilet story. They can offend you because it's trite; you've heard it many, many times.”
― Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People

“Now, if the bedroom is dirty to you, then you are a true atheist, because if you have any of the mores, superstitions, if anyone in this audience believes that God made his body, and you body is dirty, the fault lies with the manufacturer. It's that cold, Jim, yeah.”
― Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People

“Accepting obscenity as freedom of expression,
Is like showing tolerance to intolerance.
Posing butt naked on instagram, unless you're pornstar,
Is like barging into capitol with a flag confederate.
We must find a balance between comfort and conscience.
Civilization falls apart when we can't tell the difference.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence

“Often times obscenity is but an outburst of insecurity, by empowering obscenity we empower mental imbalance.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence