Quotes for All
The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners. An American’s hatred for a fellow American is far more virulent than any antipathy he can work up against foreigners. Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence … Read more
Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism… Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It … Read more
The idle wife ranked with the ornamentally wrought weapon and with the splendid offering to the gods as a measure of the man’s power to waste, and therefore his superiority over other men. … As is the case with any other object of art, her uselessness is her use. Emily James Smith Putnam
Superiority to Fate Is difficult to gain ‘Tis not conferred of Any But possible to earn. Emily Dickinson
Since the same human mire remains beneath, does not all civilization reduce itself to the superiority of smelling nice and living well? Emile Zola
I try–without success–to stop finding reasons for vanity in anything. When I happen to manage it nonetheless, I feel that I no longer belong to the mortal gang. I am above everything then, above the gods themselves. Perhaps that is what death is: a sensation of great, of extreme superiority. Emile M. Cioran
If one class of society is obliged, in order to live, to take any price for its services, while another can abstain from such action thanks to resources at its disposal which, however, are not necessarily due to any social superiority, the second has an unjust advantage over the first at law. In other words, … Read more
I can be free only to the extent that others are forbidden to profit from their physical, economic, or other superiority to the detriment of my liberty. Emile Durkheim
Man’s characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience superior to his own, the superiority of which he feels. Because the greater, better part of his existence transcends the body, he … Read more
Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that. Movements encourage solidarity; the moral individual is likely, all unwittingly, to do the opposite, for bearing witness is lonely: it breeds feelings of superiority and moralistic anger against those who are not doing the same. Ellen Willis