Public Disgrace Quotes

Scandals are like dandelion seeds--they are arrow-headed, and stick where they fall, and bring forth and multiply fourfold.

The merchants of old Cairo are honest in their dealings, and if one of them is caught cheating a customer, he is mounted on a camel with a bell in his hand and paraded about the city, ringing the bell and crying out, 'I have committed a misdemeanor and am suffering reproach. Whosoever tells a lie is rewarded with public disgrace.' The grocers, druggists, and peddlers furnish sacks for everything they sell, whether glass, pottery, or papers; therefore, there is no need for shoppers to take their own bags with them

Criticism of the sexual rectitude of politicians first surfaced as a regular part of American public life in the acrimonious milieu of the 1780s and 1790s. During those transitional decades ... older notions of deference and reticence began to recede. In their place emerged a fierce brand of political combat that regarded personal morality as a legitimate field of battle.

It is a public scandal that gives offence, and it is no sin to sin in secret.

I don't want to be remembered as the guy who had a fight in the street.

Richard Nixon will always go down as a failure because of one stupid, moral - and that goes back to that last chapter, on principles.

Every one who repeats it adds something to the scandal. [The rolling snow-ball.]

A good, finished scandal, fully armed and equipped, such as circulates in the world, is rarely the production of a single individual, or even of a single coterie. It sees the light in one; is rocked and nurtured in another; is petted, developed, and attains its growth in a third; and receives its finishing touches only after passing through a multitude of hands. It is a child that can count a host of fathers--all ready to disown it.

Nobody would want their lowest moment to be filmed for the world to see.

PILLORY, n. A mechanical device for inflicting personal distinction - prototype of the modern newspaper conducted by persons of austere virtues and blameless lives.

As soon as the people fix one Shame of the World, another turns up.

Public humiliation is a commodity and shame is an industry.

I don't believe in public humiliation. It went out with the stocks.

Patricia Nixon gave up a career to become a political wife. She rose to the pinnacle of glory and then fell to disgrace because of deeds over which she had neither control nor knowledge.

Maybe the Clinton chapter is over now. They've brought enough disgrace to America, the presidency, and the state department. They corrupted the Justice Department.

If hours did not hang heavy, what would become of scandal?

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

In the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.

Your mother embarrasses you in front of maybe a couple hundred people. My mother embarrasses me in front of millions.

When you have your staff taking the Fifth Amendment, taking the Fifth so they're not prosecuted, when you have the man that set up the illegal server taking the Fifth, I think it's disgraceful. And believe me, this country thinks it's - really thinks it's disgraceful, also.

Notoriety is cheap. It's just easier to get noticed by doing something bad.

Flaws would not only bring death but, far worse, humiliation.

Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feeling of moral superiority while asking nothing in return.

To converse with Scandal is to play at Losing Loadum, you must lose a good name to him, before you can win it for yourself.