Top 41 Puritanism Quotes & Sayings

I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind... At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.

I wish the English still possessed a shred of the old sense of humour which Puritanism, and dyspepsia, and newspaper reading, and tea-drinking have nearly extinguished.

One of the strongest features of Puritanism is its autobiographical tendency, its passionate self-regard.

There is a hearty Puritanism in the view of human nature which pervades the instrument of 1787. It is the work of men who believed in original sin, and were resolved to leave open for transgressors no door which they could possibly shut.

Most people divorce because one in the couple falls in love with someone else: it's a common cause of divorce. I still think that it's tinted - this is my opinion - with a veil of racism and American puritanism.

Puritanism carried the ethos of the rational organization of capital and labor. It took over from the Jewish ethic only what was adapted to this purpose.

The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.

It is a world completely rotten with wealth, power, senility, indifference, puritanism and mental hygiene, poverty and waste, technological futility and aimless violence, and yet I cannot help but feel it has about it something of the dawning of the universe. Perhaps because the entire world continues to dream of New York, even as New York dominates and exploits it.

[On swingers:] They have gone from Puritanism into promiscuity without passing through sensuality.

Puritanism was a youthful, vigorous movement.

Puritanism was an honourable mood; it was a noble fad. In other words, it was a highly creditable mistake.

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.

The United States of America are more of a concept than a historically evolved geographical conclusion, compared to European countries. I find this extremely interesting. Europe seems objectively more progressive and more civilized at a time when the U.S. is entering a regressive, oppressive, totalitarian era. You've got racial issues, the endurance of Puritanism, other seriously anachronistic religious fanaticisms, and it's all linked to conservatism. Despite all the unresolved deep-seated problems, the U.S. is still a country where it's less important where you come from than what you do.

My brothers and sister and I were brought up in an atmosphere which I would describe as 'Puritan decadence'. Puritanism names the behaviour which is condemned; Puritan decadence regards the name itself as indecent, and pretends that the object behind that name does not exist until it is named.

Nothing evokes the prurient like puritanism.

But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit - and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist - and a Catholic.

Political correctness means nothing to me. Nothing. It's the new Puritanism, darling. Preventing us from expressing ourselves.

[Warren Beatty] definitely sees 'Rules' as a comedic consequence to the American sexual puritanism that is dramatically presented in 'Splendor.'

We won't dispassionately investigate or rationally debate which drugs do what damage and whether or how much of that damage is the result of criminalization. We'd rather work ourselves into a screaming fit of puritanism and then go home and take a pill.

Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism, but February.... Spring is too far away to comfort even by anticipation, and winter long ago lost the charm of novelty. This is the very three a.m. of the calendar.

Modern society is perverse, not in spite of its puritanism or as if from a backlash provoked by its hypocrisy; it is in actual fact, and directly, perverse.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism.

They successfully combined piracy and puritanism, which aren't so unlike when you come right down to it. Both had a strong dislike for opposition and both had a roving eye for other people's property.

Madonna is the true feminist. She exposes the puritanism and suffocating ideology of American feminism, which is stuck in an adolescent whining mode. Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising control over their lives.

Once one has realized, following the great English literary visionaries William Shakespeare and Thomas Nashe, that sexual puritanism, political disciplinarianism, and abuse of the poor are the result of the refusal of true Christianity ... one is led to articulate a more incarnate, more participatory, more aesthetic, more erotic, more socialized, even a more 'Platonic' Christianity.

The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.

For all of my patients sensuality is a giving in to 'the low side of their nature.' Puritanism is powerful and distorts their life with a total anesthesia of the senses. If you atrophy one sense, you also atrophy all the others, a sensuous and physical connection with nature, with art, with food, with other human beings.

Americans have an interesting conundrum, a black and white line: You're on one side or the other of Puritanism or licentiousness. But that gray area where people abide, between their ears or on the Internet, needs to be fleshed out more in terms of permission granted.

Puritanism, in whatever expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look strong and vigorous; yet the poison works its way persistently, until the entire fabric is doomed.

The puritanism of Christianity has played havoc with the moderation that an enlightened and tolerant critical spirit would have produced. I've noticed that in whatever country, county, town, or other region there is a regulation enjoining temperance, the population seems to be entirely composed of teetotallers and drunkards. There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.

Historically the Puritans left England to escape religious persecution, and they promptly turned around and started persecuting the people they didn't agree with - the scarlet letter A, and the stocks and the dunking board came from that. That puritanism is still there.

There is more criticism of puritanism, and more distance from Christian morality, than there has been before.

Did you know that Puritanism went hand in hand with dirt, that Oliver Cromwell put a 100 per cent tax on soap and that the repeal of the soap tax was one of the most popular acts of Charles II at his Restoration?

The American obliviousness towards the suffering of Palestinians refugees plays a major part in radicalizing people. And we are fanning the flames of puritanism.

When you think about Puritanism, you must begin by getting rid of the slang term 'Puritanism' as applied to Victorian religious hypocrisy. This does not apply to seventeenth-century Puritanism.

Americans have an interesting conundrum, a black and white line: You're on one side or the other of Puritanism or licentiousness. But that gray area where people abide, between their ears or on the Internet, needs to be fleshed out more in terms of permission granted. I think a lot of women are contained within the parentheses of shoulds and role-play. It's all about entitlement and history. It's all about upper-body strength - and exacting your will.

'Memorial Day' is about 'spring break' girls-gone-wild culture which is the seedy underbelly of our American Puritanism, the inverse side of the coin. It's also about how we forcefully exported that culture and then pretended to not know what we were doing.

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.

Many of us grew up with a kind of puritanism against shopping. But shopping can be much more than how it is cast. If you are bored or you have problems, it can be a way of lifting your spirits, by doing something light and superficial. Why not?