A Quote by Whittaker Chambers

Experience had taught me that innocence seldom utters outraged shrikes. Guilt does. Innocence is a mighty shield, and the man or woman covered by it, is much more likely to answer calmly: 'My life is blameless. Look into it, if you like, for you will find nothing.' That is the tone of innocence.

Whittaker Chambers

Quote Topics

Answer Blameless Covered Does Experience Find Guilt Had He Man Innocence Life Life Is Like Likely Look Man Me Mighty More Much My Life Nothing Outraged Seldom Shield Taught Tone Will Woman

Quote Author

Whittaker Chambers
American - Writer
April 1, 1901 - July 9, 1961

Innocence seldom utters outraged shrieks. Guilt does.

Whittaker Chambers

The innocence of those who grind the faces of the poor, but refrain from pinching the bottoms of their neighbour's wives! The innocence of Ford, the innocence of Rockefeller! The nineteenth century was the Age of Innocence--that sort of innocence. With the result that we're now almost ready to say that a man is seldom more innocently employed than when making love.

Aldous Huxley

There are no moments more painful for a parent than those in which you contemplate your child's perfect innocence of some imminent pain, misfortune, or sorrow. That innocence (like every kind of innocence children have) is rooted in their trust of you, one that you will shortly be obliged to betray; whether it is fair or not, whether you can help it or not, you are always the ultimate guarantor or destroyer of that innocence.

Michael Chabon

It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, "whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection," and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.

John Adams

Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt.

Susan Sontag

Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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

I forget nothing and then, one day, there will be revenge. Innocence isn't exactly everywhere. But I will say innocence also takes you far in photography.

Karl Lagerfeld

The person who takes power will never be happy with those things they gain. They have lost their essential balance and innocence. And without innocence, nothing can further, as they say in the I Ching.

Frederick Lenz

The thing I deplore the most is, anyone who rapes anyone's innocence, in anyway. So a guy who physically rapes a woman or a child or physically hits a child. When that period of innocence is raped - that person loses something that they can never get it back. To me when innocence is raped, that is the sickest and filthiest thing.

Kelly Cutrone

It is innocence that is full and experience that is empty. It is innocence that wins and experience that loses.

Charles Peguy

The snapshot has no pretense or ambition. Innocence is the quintessence of the snapshot. I wish to distinguish between innocence and ignorance. Innocence is one of the highest forms of being and ignorance is one of the lowest.

Lisette Model

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.