Every base occupation makes one sharp in its practice, and…

O fools, awake! The rites ye sacred hold Are but a cheat contrived by men of old Who lusted after wealth and gained their…

— Al-Maʿarri

To think is to take a cunning revenge in which we camouflage our baseness and conceal our lower instincts.

— Emile M. Cioran

Advertizing, television and film all wield mighty powers to visually seduce us, while much fine art leaves us indifferent, confused or, at worst, repulsed.…

— John Walford

When the scale of sensuality bears down that of reason, the baseness of our nature conducts us to most preposterous conclusions.

— Roger Chamberlain

There is no more evil thing in this world than race prejudice, none at all. [...] It justifies and holds together more baseness, cruelty,…

— H. G. Wells

The motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness.

— Leonardo da Vinci

How many a father have I seen, A sober man, among his boys, Whose youth was full of foolish noise.

— Alfred Lord Tennyson

It (the heart) is supposed in popular language, to be the seat sometimes, of courage, sometimes of affection, sometimes of honesty, or baseness.

— Lyndon B. Johnson

Those who profess contempt for men, and put them on a level with beasts, yet wish to be admired and believed by men, and…

— Blaise Pascal

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less…

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

I once did hold it, as our statists do, A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much How to forget that learning; but, sir,…

— William Shakespeare

No, no, there must be a limit to the baseness even of publishers.

— Dorothy L. Sayers

Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.

— Milan Kundera

There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.

— Edmond de Goncourt

The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement…

— Aristotle