Quotes and Sayings about Innocence
"Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice."
- Lyman Abbott
(Related: Life, Virtue, Innocence, March, Temptation, Vice)
"America fell in love with the innocence of a kid who just was honest, saying, I did the best I could, and I had no formal training."
- Paula Abdul
(Related: Love, America, Innocence, Saying, Training)
"Once you start asking questions, innocence is gone."
- Mary Astor
(Related: Innocence, Questions)
"There is no aphrodisiac like innocence."
- Jean Baudrillard
(Related: Innocence)
"Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence."
- Jean Baudrillard
(Related: Innocence, Language, Pleasure)
"In an age robbed of religious symbols, going to the shops replaces going to the church. We have a free choice, but at a price. We can win experience, but never achieve innocence. Marx knew that the epic activities of the modern world involve not lance and sword but dry goods."
- Stephen Bayley
(Related: Age, Experience, Church, Choice, Innocence, Religious, Shops, World)
"Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom, innocence with understanding, and lack of purpose with self-actualization."
- Bo Bennett
(Related: Age, Power, Wisdom, Achievement, Growth, Purpose, Innocence, Personal growth, Self, Understanding, Youth)
"Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them."
- Louise Bogan
(Related: Heart, Feeling, Innocence, Violence)
"Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted."
- Anita Brookner
(Related: Attention, Innocence, State, Writing)
"Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness."
- William C. Bryant
(Related: Virtue, Innocence, Remorse)
"Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes."
- Samuel Butler
(Related: Innocence, Justice)
"Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being."
- Albert Camus
(Related: Act, Being, Innocence, Nostalgia, Rebellion)
"Anxiety is the beginning of conscience, which is the parent of the soul but is not compatible with innocence."
- Angela Carter
(Related: Soul, Anxiety, Beginning, Conscience, Innocence)
"Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men."
- Giorgio de Chirico
(Related: Art, Men, Butterflies, Innocence, Moments)
"If U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned."
- Ward Churchill
(Related: Death, Policy, Destruction, Foreign policy, Innocence, Results)
"Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Greed, Innocence, Lust)
"Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Thought, Exploitation, Innocence, Possibilities)
"Innocence: I am only stepping on your face because it lies in my path."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Lies)
"I don't know how to defend myself: surprised innocence cannot imagine being under suspicion."
- Pierre Corneille
(Related: Being, Innocence, Suspicion)
"But when you're writing a script - for me anyway - you have to sort of create an enforced innocence. You have to divest yourself of worrying about a lot of stuff like what movies are hot, what movies are not hot, what the budget of this movie might be."
- David Cronenberg
(Related: Movies, Innocence, Writing)
"Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one's innocence with the loss of one's prejudices."
- Denis Diderot
(Related: Company, Innocence, Loss)
"The decision of such judges as Claudius and his Senate is worth very little in the question of a man's innocence or guilt; but the sentence was that Seneca should be banished to the island of Corsica."
- Frederic William Farrar
(Related: Decision, Guilt, Innocence, Judges, Man, Question, Senate, Worth)
"I would certainly say that films like Time Code and the Loss of Sexual Innocence were far more rewarding to me in terms of being able to move forward as a filmmaker."
- Mike Figgis
(Related: Time, Being, Innocence, Loss)
"Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue."
- Anatole France
(Related: Virtue, Fortune, Innocence)
"People are entitled to the presumption of innocence."
- Barney Frank
(Related: People, Innocence)
"American movies and music deliver themes of freedom, innocence, and power that appeal to others - partly because America itself was put together out of a multiplicity of national traditions."
- Todd Gitlin
(Related: Movies, Music, Power, America, American, Freedom, Innocence, Multiplicity, Traditions)
"Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb."
- Nadine Gordimer
(Related: Power, Innocence)
"The writer cannot abandon himself simply to inspiration, and feign innocence vis a vis language, because language is never innocent."
- Juan Goytisolo
(Related: Inspiration, Innocence, Language, Writer)
"Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm."
- Graham Greene
(Related: Dumb, Harm, Innocence, Meaning, World)
"Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm."
- Graham Greene
(Related: Dumb, Harm, Innocence, Meaning, Protection, World)
"I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier."
- Mark Haddon
(Related: Thought, Books, Children, Innocence, Writing)
"Ignorance is not innocence but sin."
- Robert Browning Hamilton
(Related: Ignorance, Innocence, Sin)
"It's the first villain that I've played in a movie that has absolutely no vulnerability and no innocence, nothing whatsoever that is likeable about her other than she's so bad."
- Daryl Hannah
(Related: First, Innocence, Nothing, Vulnerability)
"All things truly wicked start from innocence."
- Ernest Hemingway
(Related: Innocence)
"In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning."
- A. E. Housman
(Related: American, Cunning, Innocence)
"The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable."
- Irving Howe
(Related: Knowledge, Innocence)
"Do you know anything that in all its innocence is more humiliating than the funny pages of a Sunday newspaper in America?"
- Johan Huizinga
(Related: Funny, America, Innocence)
"When you become a parent, or a teacher, you turn into a manager of this whole system. You become the person controlling the bubble of innocence around a child, regulating it."
- Kazuo Ishiguro
(Related: Manager, Innocence)
"Jesse Jackson, when I met him, he had an innocence about him which is still very much a part of him today."
- Jackie Jackson
(Related: Innocence, Today)
"The pain comes from knowing that we have never been safe, and therefore will never be safe again. It comes from knowing we can never be so ignorant again. It comes from knowing we can never be children again. Losing innocence. Remembering heaven. That was the essence of hell."
- John Jakes
(Related: Children, Heaven, Hell, Innocence, Losing, Pain, Will)
"Being part of the natural world reminds me that innocence isn't ever lost completely; we just need to maintain our goodness to regain it."
- Jewel
(Related: Being, Goodness, Innocence, World)
"Innocence is always unsuspicious."
- Joseph Joubert
(Related: Innocence)
"What innocence, may I ask, is being played here when it is known that this virtuous damsel has already got a dozen illegitimate children?"
- Nikita Khrushchev
(Related: Being, Children, Innocence, May)
"I had no idea that he was going to write that, but I've always believed that insecurity was what would keep you always in your innocence, no matter what the business did."
- Sally Kirkland
(Related: Business, Idea, Innocence, Insecurity)
"It may part of a one way evolution... or it may be we are currently on the downside of an innocence cycle where one day, with an up cycle, sweet will be entertaining again."
- Christopher Knight
(Related: Day, Evolution, Innocence, May, Will)
"The only thing I was trying to portray was serenity. Also, innocence, vulnerability and elegance."
- Sylvia Kristel
(Related: Elegance, Innocence, Serenity, Trying, Vulnerability)
"Individualism is rather like innocence; there must be something unconscious about it."
- Louis Kronenberger
(Related: Individualism, Innocence, Unconscious)
"Maimonides taught that it is better that 10 criminals go free than let one innocent man be executed. The Innocence Project represents that point of view."
- Norman Lamm
(Related: Innocence, Man, Project)
"Unlike any other business in the United States, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence."
- Lewis H. Lapham
(Related: Business, Sports, Illusion, Innocence, states, United)
"Being at the centre of a film is a burden one takes on with innocence the first time. Thereafter, you take it on with trepidation."
- Daniel Day Lewis
(Related: Time, Being, Burden, Film, First, Innocence)
"I might have some character traits that some might see as innocence or naive. That's because I discovered peace and happiness in my soul. And with this knowledge, I also see the beauty of human life."
- Tobey Maguire
(Related: Beauty, Happiness, Life, Peace, Soul, Knowledge, Character, Innocence)
"It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't."
- Mignon McLaughlin
(Related: Ignorance, Innocence)
"Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?"
- Arthur Miller
(Related: Action, Absence, Choice, Paradise, Innocence)
"There have always been poets who performed. Blake sang his Songs of Innocence and Experience to parties of friends."
- Adrian Mitchell
(Related: Experience, Friends, Innocence, Poets, Songs)
"The more decadent a culture gets, the more they have a need for what they don't have at all, which is innocence, so you end up with kiddie porn and a perverse obsession with youth."
- Joni Mitchell
(Related: Culture, End, Innocence, Obsession, Youth)
"I didn't do what they said I did. I may have done enough so that I don't know if I can prove my innocence."
- Dick Morris
(Related: Innocence, May)
"There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
(Related: Admiration, Day, Innocence)
"The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence."
- Flannery O'Connor
(Related: Innocence)
"To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery."
- Ouida
(Related: Innocence, Vice)
"The United States government can indict you on something, and now you've got to prove your innocence. And that's not the Constitution of the United States."
- Leonard Peltier
(Related: Government, Constitution, Innocence, Now, states, United)
"All we can do is keep going up against then as long as Ray is alive because when he dies it will not be possible to establish the truth of his innocence in a court of law."
- William Pepper
(Related: Truth, Court, Innocence, Law, Will)
"Where I live, nobody who's fourteen is having sex and doing major drugs. And I think if you see it in the movies, you may be influenced by it. I think it's so important to preserve your innocence."
- Natalie Portman
(Related: Movies, Sex, Drugs, Innocence, May)
"Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular."
- Maximilien Robespierre
(Related: Idea, Atheism, Being, Crime, Innocence, Popular)
"Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime."
- Maximilien Robespierre
(Related: Crime, Innocence)
"Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Guilt, Innocence, Protection)
"Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(Related: Blushes, Innocence, Nothing)
"It doesn't bother me that Seven has such an overtly sexual presence, because she has no concept of what effect that physical package would have on some male member of the crew. That's what's fun, her innocence."
- Jeri Ryan
(Related: Effect, Fun, Innocence)
"The Architect is just one of a series of works which examine the confrontation of innocence and experience, illustrating the complex ethics of power that exist between reader and writer, critic and artist, the human and the divine."
- John Scott
(Related: Power, Experience, Artist, Ethics, Innocence, Writer)
"Innocence could be considered a discrete state of mind."
- John Shirley
(Related: Innocence, Mind, State)
"I think that freshness and that innocence is something that is missing from a lot of female singers. I'm certainly not denying that I'm young, but I'm not fluff."
- Jessica Simpson
(Related: Innocence)
"Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence."
- Adam Smith
(Related: Nature, Defense, Innocence, Justice, Resentment, Security)
"Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt."
- Susan Sontag
(Related: Guilt, Innocence, Logic, Victims)
"Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and defends."
- Bishop Robert South
(Related: Innocence)
"I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost."
- Bruce Springsteen
(Related: Music, Being, Innocence, Loss)
"Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities."
- Madame de Stael
(Related: Power, Genius, Candor, Innocence)
"Whether we knew many who died on September 11 or personally knew none, we all lost something on that day. Innocence. Security. A trust that our homeland would always be safe."
- Bob Taft
(Related: Trust, Day, Innocence, Security)
"I think innocence is something that adults project upon children that's not really there."
- Donna Tartt
(Related: Children, Innocence, Project)
"I think it's hard to write about children and to have an idea of innocence."
- Donna Tartt
(Related: Idea, Children, Innocence)
"Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors."
- Henry David Thoreau
(Related: Innocence, Neighbors)
"A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love, a resting place for innocence on earth, a link between angels and men."
- Martin Farquhar Tupper
(Related: Men, Peace, Love, Angels, Earth, Innocence, Pleasure)
"The essential self is innocent, and when it tastes its own innocence knows that it lives for ever."
- John Updike
(Related: Innocence, Self)
"The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed."
- Nathaniel Parker Willis
(Related: Caution, Guilt, Innocence, Risk)
"Art saved me; it got me through my depression and self-loathing, back to a place of innocence."
- Jeanette Winterson
(Related: Art, Depression, Innocence, Self)