Marquis de Sade Quotes

It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.

To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.

All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome.

I think it shows that if you have one group of people doing it, you'll get another group of people doing it.

The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.

Everybody wants to be like everybody else.

When all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so.

… a sewer with all the depravity of the human race.

Hypocrisy is a fearful evil, and every thing which has a tendency to produce it should be avoided.

What is the cause of the great overflow of Vice in this age

What is seen being done by the many soon obtains the force of custom; while the affairs of men have scarcely ever been so well regulated that the better things pleased the majority. Therefore, the private vices of the many have often caused public error, or rather a general agreement on vices, which these good men now want to make law…

Everywhere we are surrounded by dogs and sorcerers and whores and the Godless and all who love lies and commit them.

The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances... [Slavery]

Fashions in sin change.

How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy money changers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top?

No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and to be corrupted.

Fashion was the only law, pleasure the only pursuit, and the splendour of dress and furniture was the only distinction of the citizens of Antioch. The arts of luxury were honoured; the serious and manly virtues were the subject of ridicule; and the contempt for female modesty and reverent age announced the universal corruption of the capital of the East.

What were once vices are the fashion of the day.

We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express; and another one - the one we use - which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy, until habit makes us comfortable in it, and the custom of defending it presently makes us love it, adore it, and forget how pitifully we came by it. Look at it in politics.

The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

Young people want to look like peas in a pod, and there is no use trying to make them different.

The so-called new morality is too often the old immorality condoned.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, was above corruption so long as human beings were involved.

I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.