Gregory David Roberts Quotes

Partly what I'm writing about is the way taboos get toppled.

As men begin to grow civilized, they cease to be satisfied with mere taboos.

In social matters, pointless conventions are not merely the bee sting of etiquette, but the snake bite of moral order.

I am sure there is a right way and a wrong way and in today's life, there are many different rules of being politically correct.

When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself.

Society has taught us to suppress certain things and not do certain things.

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?

Are there any limitations? Are they going to allow fornication in Times Square at high noon?

Ethics is a fluid term ...It's the standards by which a civilized society lives.

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.

Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.

The permissive society has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the civilized society.

Rules about what you can and can’t say often have unintended consequences. … In everything we do, we need to make sure we’re empowering people, not simply reinforcing existing institutions and power structures.

People have made sure of that, that you can't shock anybody anymore. It's not just because of movies and TV. It's because of what's happening in the world.

Very few things are off-limits for me.

I love the fact we do break taboos.

In Bangladesh, if you put a kiss in a film, it's political.

The idea of what's acceptable and what's shocking, that's where I investigate. I mean, you can't be on 'Top Gear,' where your only argument is that it's all just a joke and anyone who takes offence is an example of political correctness gone mad, and then not accept the counterbalance to that.

I don't ever cross the line. I step right up to it. I put my toes on the line, but I don't ever cross that line. There are some barriers you just don't cross - you don't talk about religion; you don't talk about race. Those are lines I will never cross.

Country has just crossed so many lines now, that Skynyrd falls right into that category.

A code of behavior is an inevitable part of life in any community, and if we hadn't inherited ours, we should have had to invent one.

The boundary between civilization and barbarism is difficult to draw: put one ring in your nose and you are a savage, put two rings in your ears and you are civilized.

If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

By putting these sort of lines around what ideas are proper or improper, we lose things.

All that is good is not embodied in the law; and all that is evil is not proscribed by the law. A well-disciplined society needs few laws; but it needs strong mores.