Depravity

Depravity is an intense form of immorality, a moral perversion.

Quotes

• According to some Islamic religious zealots the new idols of the world are headed by America, the great Satan, which is the source of all the depravity in today's world.... Imam [Khomeini] said: "There is only one option… which can completely destroy this depravity. What is [the solution]? It is the unity of the Muslims." …The Muslims and the oppressed in the world should be united, in order to destroy the new idols of the world.
  • Iranian Leader's Representative for Hajj Affairs Mohammad Rayshahri: Muslims Should Unite and Destroy Idols of the World, Led by America. MEMRI (November 16, 2007)..

• Depravity always incorporates obsession.
  • Lucius Shepard, Dog-Eared Paperback of My Life (2009), in Nick Gevers and Jay Lake (eds.), Other Earths (p. 228)

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• There is not a beast of the field but may trust his nature and follow it; certain that it will lead him to the best of which he is capable. But as for us, our only invincible enemy is our nature.
  • William Arthur, p. 190.

• Human nature is said by many to be good; if so, where have social evils come from? For human nature is the only moral nature in that corrupting thing called "society." Every example set before the child of to-day is the fruit of human nature. It has been planted on every possible field — among the snows that never melt; in temperate regions, and under the line; in crowded cities, in lonely forests; in ancient seats of civilization, in new colonies; and in all these fields it has, without once failing, brought forth a crop of sins and troubles.
  • William Arthur, p. 191.

• Those that hold the doctrine of native depravity do not believe that there is a mass of corrupt matter lodged in the heart, which sends off noxious exhalations, like a dead body. But they maintain that the soul has entirely lost the image of God in which it was originally created; that there is nothing pure or good remaining in it; that in consequence of the withdrawment of those special Divine influences which were given to our first parents, the proper balance of the power is destroyed, they have lost their conformity to the law of God; and the holy dispositions, which were at first implanted in the soul, have given place to sinful dispositions, which are the source of all actual transgression.
  • H. A. Boardman, p. 190.

• The gospel proceeds on the basis of universal depravity; the gospel assimilates all varieties of human nature into one common experience of guilt and need and helplessness; and this is just what you do not like about it.
  • William Morley Punshon, p. 189.

• If we take away this foundation, that man is by nature foolish and sinful, fallen short of the glorious image of God, the Christian system falls at once; nor will it deserve as honorable an appellation as that of a cunningly devised fable.
  • John Wesley, p. 190.