taboos

Considering her literary beginnings as a black woman writer who came out of the block breaking taboos, is it any surprise that thirty years and twenty-two books later, Walker, one of the most censored writers in the U.S., still gets people upset?

Alice Walker: On Finding Your Bliss Interview by Evelyn C. White 2010

There are, after all, certain taboos in recent French historiography as well: treatment of their opponents in Algiers, for instance, or the treatment of North Africans in France; the ruthless massacre of peaceful demonstrators in Paris; and other suchlike interesting events.

Completely mad Helen 2006

People skirting around old issues and taboos is EXACTLY what makes them taboos in the first place.

EXTRALIFE – By Scott Johnson - On the subject of offending… 2006

Now that she's married, Rosie O'Donnell gets therapy: Today she chats at the 92nd Street Y with psychoanalyst and Today show contributor Dr. Gail Saltz about creativity and motivation in the performing arts (note to Ms. Saltz: best keep away from any mention of "taboos" - see: Taboo, recent flop of).

Eight Day Week 2004

It is the job of the Right to defend and maintain taboos, of the Left to challenge them to ensure they are still doing the work they were originally created to do; of the Left to argue for open-mindedness, of the Right to seek to close off lines of thought that their experience has taught them to be counterproductive; of the Left to defend the (relatively) powerless, of the Right to justify the prerogatives ofpower.

The Volokh Conspiracy » But Isn’t It a Bit Hard to Predict With a 7-Year-Old? 2010

If you've ever wondered how name taboos refusing to say the name, or a word used in the name, of a deceased person work in practice, read the illuminating post by Claire of Angargoon on the subject.

languagehat.com: NAME TABOOS. 2004

We find unmistakable evidence of the existence of those strict rules of conduct called taboos, which fetter the mind and body of primitive man, which probably arise from an ineffective desire to put himself in right relations with forces he does not understand, and which have their value as a social discipline.

The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus W. Warde Fowler 1884

She was glad of the diversion, for she liked Bertram immensely, and she could not help noticing how hopelessly he had been floundering all that afternoon right into the very midst of what he himself would have called their taboos and joss-business.

The British Barbarians Grant Allen 1873

Certain traits are universal -- i.e., not exclusive to any one culture, such as taboos against stealing, killing, lying, etc.

Harlan Ellison on God 2009

I think he likes to touch upon "taboos" more than the rest of us.

The 'Riffs Interview: 'CYANIDE & HAPPINESS's' Dave McElfatrick tackles visas, viscera & American humor Michael Cavna 2010