Been Humiliated Quotes & Sayings

The global centre of power shifted to Europe only between 1750 and 1850, when Europeans humiliated the Asian powers in a series of wars and conquered large parts of Asia. By 1900 Europeans firmly controlled the world's economy and most of its territory. In 1950 western Europe and the United States together accounted for more than half of global production, whereas China's portion had been reduced to 5 per cent.4 — Yuval Noah Harari

Tulip hated this feeling. The last time she had felt this way, she had been utterly humiliated and deeply hurt. She couldn't imagine allowing herself to be charmed by another handsome man only to be heartbroken again. But she was different now, wasn't she? Stronger, bolder, and indeed more worldly. — Serena Valentino

The decision to use torture as a terror of retribution gives an inner satisfaction to the person who practises it, even if this is difficult for him to accept openly. Having been injured and humiliated by aggression, he can now humiliate in his turn those whom he considers to be his aggressors, and rediscover his self-esteem. As an ex-soldier of the Algerian War explains, forty years after the events: 'You could feel a certain form of jubilation while being present at such extreme scenes . . . Doing to a body whatever you feel like doing to it.' Reducing the other to a state of complete impotence gives you a feeling of supreme power. This feeling is one which torture gives you more than murder does, since the latter does not last: once dead, the other becomes an inert object and no longer produces that jubilation which stems from fully triumphing over the will of another, without his ceasing to exist. — Tzvetan Todorov

We are still barely conscious of how harmful it is to treat children in a degrading manner. Treating them with respect and recognizing the consequences of their being humiliated are by no means intellectual matters; otherwise, their importance would long since have been generally recognized. — Alice Miller

I was often humiliated to see men disputing for a piece of bread, just as animals might have done. My feelings on this subject have very much altered since I have been personally exposed to the tortures of hunger. I have discovered, in fact, that a man, whatever may have been his origin, his education, and his habits, is governed, under certain circumstances, much more by his stomach than by his intelligence and his heart. — Francois Arago

It's still woman's work whether it's done in a great hall or in the kitchen," I said bitterly. "I know it well enough. It's earning no money for yourself and everything for your husband and master. It's obeying him as quickly and as well as if you were a groom of the servery. It's having to tolerate anything he chooses to do, and smile as he does it. I've served Queen Katherine in these last few years. I've seen how life has been for her. I wouldn't be a princess, not even for a princess's dowry. I wouldn't even be a queen. I have seen her shamed and humiliated and insulted, and all she could do was kneel on her prie dieu, pray for a little help, and get to her feet and smile at the woman who was triumphing over her. — Philippa Gregory

...turning someone into a bigot is the first step in turning him into a terrorist. You find someone vulnerable - someone who's lost his confidence, his income, his pride, his agency. Someone who feels humiliated by life. And then you isolate him. You fill him with fear and fury, and you see to it that he regards anybody who's different as a faceless target - a silhouette at a shooting range like Calverton - rather than a human being. But even people who've been raised on hate since birth, people whose minds have been warped and weaponized, can make a choice about who they want to be. And they can be extraordinary advocates for peace, precisely because they've seen the effects of violence, discrimination and disenfranchisement firsthand. People who have been victimized can understand more deeply than anyone how little the world needs more victims. — Zak Ebrahim

For some reason, I've been thinking more and more about my mother and the way her life failed her, humiliated her with impulses beyond her command, broke her with year after year of the same. — Mark Z. Danielewski

In the Damascus airport she had been humiliated by what she was assumed to be, and when she returned home, she felt angry because of what she could have been. — Azar Nafisi

By the way, Dallas?"
"What, Peabody?"
"That's a lovely tattoo. New?"
Eve clamped her teeth together, strode toward the door with as much dignity as she could manage. "See?" She jabbed a finger into Roarke's chest as they walked down the corridor. "I told you I'd be humiliated by that stupid rosebud."
"You've been drugged, slapped, tied up naked, and nearly killed, but a rose on your butt humiliates you?"
"All that other stuff's the job. The rosebud's personal."
Laughing, he swung his arm around her shoulders, hugging her close. "Christ, Lieutenant, I love you. — J.D. Robb

I think it's obvious if you're wanted here or not."
"Daemon," hissed Dee, her cheeks red. She turned to me, tears in her eyes. "He's not being serious."
"Are you being serious, Daemon?" Ash turned in his lap, head cocked to the side.
My heart was already pounding in my chest when his eyes met mine. His were sheltered. "Actually I was being serious." He leaned over the table, staring up at me through thick lashes. "You're not wanted here."
Dee spoke again, but I was beyond hearing. My face felt like it was on fire. People around us were starting to stare. One of the Thompson boys was smirking while the other looked as though he wanted to crawl underneath the table for me. The rest of the kids at the table were staring at their plates. One of them snickered.
I'd never been more humiliated in my life. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

According to our social pyramid, all men who feel displaced racially, culturally, and/or because of economic hardships will turn on those whom they feel they can order and humiliate, usually women, children, and animals
just as they have been ordered and humiliated by those privileged few who are in power. However, this definition does not explain why there are privileged men who behave this way toward women. — Ana Castillo

Becoming a real researcher has been the ultimate humbling experience for me. Nature is the examiner from hell; if you find new things at all, you always find them the hard way, with sweat and tears. Only then do you notice that there was a really easy way to find them. But this insight rarely arrives before you have been utterly humiliated and reduced to despair. — Joao Magueijo

He had been humiliated and treated like the white trash he was. Under the bedsheet that hides the identity of every Ku Klux Klansman is a cretinous, vicious, and childlike human being whose last holdout is his whites-only restroom. — James Lee Burke

When you are insulted by someone or humiliated, guard against angry thoughts, lest they arouse a feeling of irritation, and so cut you off from love and place you in the realm of hatred. You should know that you have been greatly benefited when you have suffered deeply because of some insult or indignity; for by means of the indignity self-esteem has been driven out of you. — Maximus The Confessor

William was deeply humiliated. I tried to comfort him; I told him that for three days he had been looking for a text in Greek and it was natural in the course of his examination for him to discard all books not in Greek. And he answered that it is certainly human to make mistakes, but there are some human beings who make more than others, and they are called fools, and he was one of them, and he wondered whether it was worth the effort to study in Paris and Oxford if one was then incapable of thinking that manuscripts are also bound in groups, a fact even novices know, except stupid ones like me, and a pair of clowns like the two of us would be a great success at fairs, and that was what we should do instead of trying to solve mysteries, especially when we were up against people far more clever than we. — Umberto Eco

In the hollow steel-lined bin, my unfortunate eruption resonated such that it would have humiliated me if my first concern had been social acceptance. My first concern, however, was survival. At the moment, I didn't have the capacity for embarrassment because terror filled me. — Dean Koontz

Christians have been beaten, whipped, starved, humiliated, mutilated, tortured, hung, burned at the stake, crucified, and fed to lions; yet two thousand years after a man called Jesus of Nazareth walked the streets of Jerusalem, 1,734 million people alive on this earth today call themselves by the ever-dividing, ever-uniting word: Christian. God is still scattering the seeds a few righteous renegades planted in a city called Antioch. Had they only known what they were starting. — Beth Moore

It has always been my view that terrorism is not spawned by the poverty of money; it is spawned by the poverty of dignity. Humiliation is the most underestimated force in international relations and in human relations. It is when people or nations are humiliated that they really lash out and engage in extreme violence. — Thomas L. Friedman

I have said that I learned a lot by teaching others. I discovered that every soul has almost the same difficulties and that there is yet a vast difference between individual souls - a difference which means that each one must be dealt with differently. There are some with whom I must make myself small and show myself willing to be humiliated by confessing my own struggles and defeats, for then they themselves easily confess their own faults and are pleased that I understand them through my own experience. To be successful with others, firmness is necessary. I must never go back on what I have said, and to humiliate myself would be regarded as weakness.

God has given me the grace of having no fear of a fight. I will do my duty at any cost. More than once I have been told: "If you want to succeed with me, severity is no use. You will get nowhere unless you are gentle." But I know that no one is a good judge in his own case. — John Beevers

There was a young man favorably endowed as an Alcibiades. He lost his way in the world. In his need he looked about for a Socrates but found none among his contemporaries. Then he requested the gods to change him into one. But now
he who had been so proud of being an Alcibiades was so humiliated and humbled by the gods' favor that, just when he received what he could be proud of, he felt inferior to all. — Soren Kierkegaard

The main reason I felt foolish and humiliated was because of - what had I called it to myself, only a few days previously? - 'the eternal hopefulness of the human heart'. And before that, 'the attraction of overcoming someone's contempt'. I don't think I normally suffer from vanity, but I'd clearly been more afflicted than I realised. — Julian Barnes

cemeteries grow larger the number of defenders shrinks
but the defense continues and will last to the end
and even if the City falls and one of us survives
he will carry the City inside him on the roads of exile
he will be the City

we look at the face of hunger the face of fire the face of death
and the worst of them all - the face of treason

and only our dreams have not been humiliated — Zbigniew Herbert

I'm laughing, I apologized, at the situation, at you, who've wanted to kill Nino forever, and at me, who if he showed up now would say to you: Yes, kill him. I'm laughing out of despair, because I've never been so offended, because I feel humiliated in a way that I don't know if you can imagine, because at this moment I'm so ill that I think I'm fainting. — Elena Ferrante

There are so many low points with stand-up. You are perpetually humiliated, so it doesn't really matter anymore. I don't have any dignity left to lose. An audience can't hurt you anymore when you've been completely dismantled. — John Oliver

More than once I have been humiliated by my resemblance to God the father; He is always longing for the love of His children and trying to get it on the cheapest and laziest terms He can invent. — Mark Twain

I'd been beaten before; I'd been humiliated; I'd been spit on and ostracized...all the things you should not have to know about when you are on the cusp of sixteen, but do because you're different. — Chris O'Guinn

I should just drive around this city and take photos of all the buildings I've been humiliated in. — Moon Unit Zappa

She eyed him but said nothing. Why did he always have to pull out the truth?
"It's not like I haven't seen you pee before. Go ahead."
"Eww, you have not!"
"Yup, you were six and you had to go and there was no one else to take you."
Oh God ... she'd been so humiliated she must have blanked it from her memory. — Dee Tenorio

Only a fool is humiliated by having been weak enough to have to overcome obstacles. — Evangeline Walton

The film [the white Ribbon] does try to use German Fascism as an example, but not specifically Fascism ... the results of German Fascism. It shows how people are prepared or indoctrinated for an ideology ... people who are already in a state of repression who have been humiliated by society and who clasp at a straw that's offered to them. And how that's then developed into a form of indoctrination. — Michael Haneke

Over coffee, he and Dramat decided that, in the interests of good working relationships, he would, despite the fact that he'd already been on suspension for close on two years, take vacational leave then meet with Ngobeni and Phiyega to clear the air. They had two weeks to reconsider their position. The meeting, a fortnight later, didn't serve to do that at all. Johan says Ngobeni launched into him. She said I had humiliated and undermined her and leaked negative stories about her to newspapers. She — Jessica Pitchford

I hold myself accountable for my contradictions. I deeply, deeply believe in the mystical laws. I know that every thought sends an eternity in motion. I mean, I know what I am capable of as a teacher; I know what I'm capable of because of my intelligence. But I also know that that's useless if - I have been humiliated so often, when I think that I can combat the terrors of life with intelligence. Because you can't. It'll bring you to your knees. — Caroline Myss

We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it. — George Eliot

Lovers reeked of each other after they had exchanged body fluids & hormones in the union of love. But men who dined on a girl's Nectar did not exchange body fluids & hormones with her. Thus, although she would not reek of them, they would reek of her. And that was the reason why everyone who had ever tasted Phyllis' Nectar had yearned for her, starting with her earliest lover of all, Saturn.
Whilst Mars pined for her, he felt that he had also been humiliated & humbled by her in public. And so, there was a secret grudge, somewhere in his bosom. It was a strange feeling of love & hate & this explosive mixture within him, always drove him to war.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

It's difficult to admit to ourselves that we suffer. We feel humiliated, like we should have been able to control our pain. If someone else is suffering, we like to tuck them away, out of sight. It's a cruel, cruel conditioning. There is no controlling the unfolding of life. — Sharon Salzberg

Though they have been subjected to disgraceful treatment, the Palestinians in East Jerusalem are fortunate in comparison with those who are less visible, and therefore can be killed, tortured, humiliated, and driven from their destroyed homes and lands virtually at will. It is, in fact, astonishing that their spirit has not been broken. — Noam Chomsky

If a group of people feels that it has been humiliated and that its honour has been trampled underfoot, it will want to express its identity and this expression of an identity will take different shapes and forms. — Abdolkarim Soroush

I like a leader who can, while pointing out a mistake, bring up the good things the other person has done. If you do that, then the person sees that you have a complete picture of him. There is nobody more dangerous than one who has been humiliated, even when you humiliate him rightly. — Nelson Mandela

Man must be ready to say: Yes, since Cain there has been injustice, but we can only set the misery right if we accept a status quo. Lands have been robbed, men slain, nations humiliated. Let us now start fresh without remembrance, rather than live forward and backward at the same time. We cannot build the future by avenging the past. Let us sit down as brothers, and accept the Peace of God. — T.H. White

I cannot count the times I've been defeated, humiliated, or physically injured immediately after saying the words, 'Hey, how hard can it be?' But that never seems to stop me from saying them again. — Martha Beck

Few approach Nick the rest of the night, I am the only one brave enough to take him his specially made tea. "Thank you", he said barely glancing up at me.
"You're welcome", I said waiting for him to look up at me but he won't. I have to force myself to say something before the doubt takes me over. " That guy was wrong, but you should have ignored her to begin with. She would have been humiliated enough by that alone. Your ego got in the way of your judgment." I said before walking away proudly. — Jennifer Loren

People accuse me of having interiorized a feeling of racial inferiority, so that I attack my own culture out of self-hatred, because I want to be white. This is a tiresome argument. Tell me, is freedom then only for white people? Is it self-love to adhere to my ancestors' traditions and mutilate my daughters? To agree to be humiliated and powerless? To watch passively as my countrymen abuse women and slaughter each other in pointless disputes? When I came to a new culture, where I saw for the first time that human relations could be different, would it have been self-love to see that as a foreign cult, which Muslims are forbidden to practice? — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Revenge writing is a female genre. Men who have been left by women or made cuckolds by rivals either lick their wounds in humiliated silence or start the Trojan Wars. Having no other power or public voice, the betrayed woman reaches for her pen. — Frances Wilson

So I wrote this novel in order to explore distant memories and buried doubts: What would have become of me if I had spent not just one year in the camps, but two or four? If I had been appointed kapo? Could I have struck a friend? Humiliated an old man? And — Elie Wiesel

Because she hated herself, she hated them all with the fury of the thwarted and humiliated love of sixteen. Only a little true tenderness had been mixed into her love. Mostly it had been compounded out of vanity and complacent confidence in her own charms. Now she had lost and, greater than her sense of loss, was the fear that she had made a public spectacle of herself. — Margaret Mitchell

I stand up for what I believe. I don't know if it's always paid off for me, because I've been ridiculed and humiliated.
— Kevin Costner