Quotes & Sayings About Contempt

I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois's learning and Baldwin's love and Langston's humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art's redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels. — Barack Obama

I frowned, gaping at the blond in disbelief. "You're the grim reaper?"
Tod glanced at me for the first time, his frown practically etched into place. "You were
expecting someone older? Taller? Maybe kind of gaunt and skeletal?"Contempt dripped from his words like acid. — Rachel Vincent

He actually cared. It was an odd friendship- awkward, grown slowly from beginnings of mutual contempt- but it was real nonetheless. — Anne Perry

The philosophy which affects to teach us a contempt of money does not run very deep; for, indeed, it ought to be still more clear to the philosopher than it is to ordinary men, that there are few things in the world of greater importance. — Henry Taylor

If any man despises me, that is his problem. My only concern is not doing or saying anything deserving of contempt. — Marcus Aurelius

I have a proud character that cannot bear contempt. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A government that spoke of military glory as an aim would betray ignorance of, or contempt for, the spirit of nations and the age. It would be an error by a thousand years. Even if it should initially succeed, it would be interesting to see who in the end would win this odd wager, our own century or the offending government. — Benjamin Constant

I had dropped one form and not taken on the other, and was become like Mohammed's coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do. — T.E. Lawrence

The court finds everyone to be in contempt (including himself:;, and orders everyone sentenced to five years hard labor. (Working on Perl, of course. — Larry Wall

I must give myself permission not to like myself. It's ok. Plenty of other people don't like me either. And I have much higher standards. — Quentin R. Bufogle

The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity. — Samuel Johnson

It must not be thought, however, that in pagan Ireland Fairyland was altogether conceived as a Hades or place of the dead. We have already seen that in some of its types and aspects it was inherently nothing of the sort; as when, for example, it came to be confused with the Land of the Gods. In all likelihood these separate paradises and deadlands of a nature so various were the result of the stratified beliefs of successive races dwelling in the same region. A conquering race would scarcely credit that its heroes would, after death, betake themselves to the deadland of the beaten and enslaved aborigines. The gods of vanquished races might be conceived as presiding over spheres of the dead for which their victors would have nothing but contempt, and which, because of that very contempt, might come to be conceived as hells or places of a debased and grovelling kind, pestiferous regions which only the spirits of despised "natives" or the undesirable might inhabit. — Lewis Spence

Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it. — Mark Twain

He was one of the great intellectuals of the 1940s who completed
their higher studies in the West and returned to their country to
apply what they had learned there - lock, stock, and barrel - within
Egyptian academia. For people like them, "progress" and "the West"
were virtually synonymous, with all that that entailed by way of positive
and negative behavior. They all had the same reverence for the
great Western values - democracy, freedom, justice, hard work, and
equality. At the same time, they had the same ignorance of the nation's
heritage and contempt for its customs and traditions, which they considered
shackles pulling us toward Backwardness from which it was
our duty to free ourselves so that the Renaissance could be achieved. — Alaa Al Aswany

In politics, they have ran with the hare and hunted with the hound. In criticism, they have, knowingly and unblushingly, given false characters, both for good and for evil; sticking at no art of misrepresentation, to clear out of the field of literature all who stood in the way of the interests of their own clique. They have never allowed their own profound ignorance of anything (Greek for instance) to throw even an air of hesitation into their oracular decision on the matter. They set an example of profligate contempt for truth, of which the success was in proportion to the effrontery; and when their prosperity had filled the market with competitors, they cried out against their own reflected sin, as if they had never committed it, or were entitled to a monopoly of it. The latter, I rather think, was what they wanted. Mr. — Thomas Love Peacock

Altitude reduces all things to their relative proportions, and to the truth. Cares, remorse, disgust become strangers: How easily indifference, contempt, forgetfulness drop away ... and forgiveness descends. — Julian Barnes

Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must actually be a sea to take in a polluted stream without becoming impure. Behold, I teach you the superman: he is the this sea, in him can your great contempt go under. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The Shubert grandparents. No comfort there. He in uniform, she in a ball gown, displaying absurd self-satisfaction. They had got what they wanted, Sophia supposed, and had only contempt for those not so conniving or so lucky. — Alice Munro

Contempt for an assailant is best shown by bravery in action. — Thucydides

I believe we're going to find that respect and affection are essential to all relationships working and contempt destroys them. — John M. Gottman

Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at the time, that he may wonder at them; so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed ages that fled. — Charles Mackay

But you're so easy to sneak up on." He crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall. "You should be honored that I bother, since there's no challenge to it."
"Right," I said dryly.
Tybalt has never made a secret of his contempt for changelings in general and me in particular. Not even the years I spent missing could change that. If anything, it made things worse, because when I came back, I promptly removed myself from all the places he was accustomed to finding me. Hating me suddenly took effort - an effort he's proved annoying glad to make. On the other hand, it's actually been something of a relief, because it is something I can count on. Dawn comes, the moon rises and Tybalt hates me. — Seanan McGuire

Truly, there are no justified ways to how a mule tramples the earth, but who would be burdened to hear such an obscurity? We do not gaze upon stars to appertain affection towards them, rather to sooth our contempt fallacy of an ill-placed apprehension of them. Who concern themselves with anything if not genuine in their convictions? Delusions? I am flattered no less. — Phil Volatile

It has been the political career of this man to begin with hypocrisy, proceed with arrogance, and finish with contempt — Thomas Paine

Of all afflictions, the worst is self-contempt. — Berthold Auerbach

The more cruel the wrong that men commit against an individual or a people, the deeper their hatred and contempt for their victim. Conceit and false pride on the part of a nation prevent the rise of remorse for its crime. — Albert Einstein

A doctrine which advocates indifference to wealth and to the comforts of life, and a contempt for suffering and death [the Stoics'] is quite unintelligible to the vast majority of men, since that majority has never known wealth or the comforts of life; and to despise suffering would mean to despise life itself, since the whole existence of man is made up of the sensations of hunger, cold, injury, loss, and a Hamlet-like dread of death. — Anton Chekhov

With ever greater frequency they annihilate themselves, for success breeds contempt for those very qualities that purchased it. — Steven Erikson

They campaigned on contempt for the body they sought to join. — Rick Perlstein

Take the particular trick of false names. It seems to us particularly odious. We think when we show our contempt for those who use this subterfuge that we are giving them no more than they deserve. It is a meanness which we associate with criminals and vagabonds; a piece of crawling and sneaking ... Men whose race is universally known, will unblushingly adopt a false name as a mask, and after a year or two pretend to treat it as an insult if their original and true name be used in its place. — Hilaire Belloc

I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State. — Sophocles

Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment - with which your eyes are now almost overflowing - with which your heart is heaving - with which your hand is trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion. I accept it, Jane; let the daughter have free advent - my arms wait to receive her. — Charlotte Bronte

If it were a rainy day, a drunken vigil, a fit of the spleen, a course of physic, sleepy Sunday, an ill run at dice, a long tailor's bill, a beggar's purse, a factious head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, and a just contempt for learning - but for these ... the number of authors and of writing would dwindle away to a degree most woeful to behold. — Jonathan Swift

If you take the contempt some Americans have for yuppies and multiply it by 10 you might come close to understanding their attitude towards the City, as they call it - London, the people of the south. — Martin Cruz Smith

The haughty princess of Austria, who became, as queen of England, the head of fashion, looked with harsh eyes on his defects, and with contempt on the affection her royal husband entertained for him. — Mary Shelley

That's how, on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate-factory roof in 1950 ending up sitting in a row at ten o'clock on a spring morning, drinking Black Label beer supplied by the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank Prison. That beer was piss-warm, but it was still the best I ever had in my life. We sat and drank it and felt the sun on our shoulders, and not even the expression of half-amusement, half-contempt on Hadley's face - as if he was watching apes drink beer instead of men - could spoil it. It lasted twenty minutes, that beer-break, and for those twenty minutes we felt like free men. We could have been drinking beer and tarring the roof of one of our own houses. — Stephen King

To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. — Oscar Wilde

Muslims shared many of the deep-seated characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon elite-an intuitive resentment of culture, an amicable contempt for women, a proclivity for riding about on horses, a pleasure in discipline, and a covert homophilia. — James Cameron

Saint Paul lives in the Christian imagination as the chief sponsor of Christian contempt for Jews, the avatar of law versus grace, flesh versus spirit, works versus faith, Moses versus Jesus, the Old Covenant versus the New. This brutal dichotomizing was attributed to Paul most influentially by Martin Luther, who used a perceived Jewish legalism, materialism, and obsession with externals as stand-ins for the decadence of his nemesis, the pope. "Because the Papists, like the Jews," he wrote, "insist that anyone wishing to be saved must observe their ceremonies, they will perish like the Jews."39 After Luther, both Protestants and Catholics read Paul as the preeminent tribune of Jewish corruption - a misreading that had terrible consequences, especially in Luther's Germany, where the Volk were defined in ontological opposition to Juden. Paul's — James Carroll

Omissions are sins, and must come into judgment, and particularly the contempt and neglect of the seals of the covenant; — Matthew Henry

If we hope to stem the mass destruction that inevitably attends our economic system (and to alter the sense of entitlement - the sense of contempt, the hatred - on which it is based), fundamental historical, social, economic, and technological forces need to be pondered, understood, and redirected. Behavior won't change much without a fundamental change in consciousness. The question becomes: How do we change consciousness? — Derrick Jensen

Gobbledygook may indicate a failure to think clearly, a contempt for one's clients, or more probably a mixture of both. A system that can't or won't communicate is not a safe basis for a democracy. — Michael Shanks

Women are an enslaved population - the crop we harvest is children, the fields we work are houses. Women are forced into committing sexual acts with men that violate integrity because the universal religion - contempt for women - has as its first commandment that women exist purely as sexual fodder for men. — Andrea Dworkin

If the life of natural things, millions of years old, does not seem sacred to us, then what can be sacred? Human vanity alone? Contempt for the natural world is contempt for life. The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature. Anything becomes permissible. We return once more to the nightmare cultures of Hitler, Stalin, King Philip II, Montezuma, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Herod, the Pharaohs; Christ sacrificed himself in vain. — Edward Abbey

When the strong healthy boy, howling at the indignity of the birth process, was put to her breast, she felt a wild tenderness for him, The other baby, Francis, in the crib next her bed, began to whimper. Katie had a flash of contempt for the weak child she had borne a year ago, when she compared her to this new handsome son. She was quickly ashamed of hr contempt. She knew it wasn't the little girl's fault. "I must watch myself carefully," she thought. "I am going to love this boy more than the girl but I mustn't ever let her know. It is wrong to love one child more than the other but this is something that I cannot help. — Betty Smith

California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the initiative process. Throw in term limits - no elected official now serves in California government long enough to fully understand it - and you have a recipe for generating maximum contempt for elected officials. Politicians are elected to get things done and are prevented by the system from doing it, leading the people to grow even more disgusted with them. "The vicious cycle of contempt," as Mark Paul calls it. California state government was designed mainly to maximize the likelihood that voters will continue to despise the people they elect. — Michael Lewis

Thus it is that we may patiently pass through this life with its misery, hunger, cold, contempt, reproaches, and other troubles - content with this one thing: that our King [Jesus] will never leave us destitute, but will provide for our needs until, our warfare ended, we are called to triumph. — John Calvin

Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled. — Eric Hoffer

The pollution they produce, market, sell, and show to billions around the world is at its core contemptuous of the country that gave them better lives than nearly 100 percent of everybody who's ever lived. And they pass that contempt along for everyone to see. — John Ratzenberger

No man can fall into contempt but those who deserve it. — Samuel Johnson

I couldn't be sufficiently interested in human beings to be a writer if I had contempt for human beings. — Nadine Gordimer

Man is more sensitive to the contempt of others than to self-contempt. — Friedrich Nietzsche

We are less hurt by the contempt of fools than by the lukewarm approval of men of intelligence. — Luc De Clapiers

We teach them to take their patriotism at second-hand; to shout with the largest crowd without examining into the right or wrong of the matter
exactly as boys under monarchies are taught and have always been taught. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and out of place
the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else's keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan. — Mark Twain

the proof of an achieved self-esteem is your soul's shudder of contempt and rebellion against the role of a sacrificial animal, against the vile impertinence of any creed that proposes to immolate the irreplaceable value which is your consciousness and the incomparable glory which is your existence — Ayn Rand

I think there is a contempt for the human dignity of people who were enslaved. You couldn't see them as fully human and so you didn't respect their desire to be connected to a family and a place. That was the only way you could tolerate and make sense of lynching and the terror that lynching represented. — Bryan Stevenson

The serenity of truth and the peace of death can be only secured through a largeness of contempt embracing all the profitable servitudes of life. He — Joseph Conrad

One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to. — Toni Morrison

Though many intellectuals, following in the footsteps of Saints Augustine and Jerome, hold business people in contempt for their selfishness and greed, in fact a free market puts a premium on empathy. — Steven Pinker

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of
blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute
contempt for the concept of international law. — Harold Pinter

I shared with Fleur the mysterious self-contempt of the survivor. There were times we hated who we were, and who we had to become, in order not to follow those we loved into the next world. We grew hard. We became impenetrable, sparing of our pity. Sorrows that leveled other people were small to us. We made no move to avoid pain. Sometimes we even welcomed it--we were clumsy with knives, fire, boiling water, steel traps. Pain took our minds off the greater pain that was the mistake that we still existed. — Louise Erdrich

Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun. — Nicolaus Copernicus

Politicians - power itself - are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power. — Jean Baudrillard

Again I insist upon the point. The whole of the sexual revolution has been a colossal failure, and has wrought untold human misery. The move for same-sex pseudogamy is inextricable from that revolution; it is grafted upon it and cannot survive or even appear to make sense without it. We cannot have a good nation unless we are a good people. We cannot be a good people when we throw contempt upon manhood and womanhood and the virtue that honors their beauty and their being for one another; it is like asking for clean sleaze, or cold love. — Anthony M. Esolen

Contempt for one's own comrades, for the troops of the enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for one's own person, are what war demands of everyone. Far better is it for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness. — William James

pity very often - not always - comes with an unspoken and sometimes unrecognized element of contempt. — Dean Koontz

The love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties. — Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

Death is the lot of us all, and the only way that the human race has ever conquered death is by treating it with contempt. By living every golden minute as if one had all Eternity. — Robert A. Heinlein

It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century; it is by shutting the doors ofall the drawing-rooms in her face. — Stendhal

If the choice is given to us of liberty or security, we must scorn the latter with the proper contempt of free man and the sound judgment of wise men who know that liberty and security are not incompatible in the lives of honest men. — James Farley

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else. — William Hazlitt

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt? — Khalil Gibran

Our contempt for any particular poem must be perfect, be total, because only a ruthless reading that allows us to measure the gap between the actual and the virtual will enable to to experience, if not a genuine poem - no such thing - a place for the genuine, whatever that might mean. — Ben Lerner

Nabokov, who I loved more than any other writer when I was young, had such contempt for dialogue. When I was younger, I never wrote a word of dialogue because of him. I thought it was a childish part of a novel. — Zadie Smith

You can see right away,' the old man said, 'that he hates us but hides his hatred under a layer of sycophancy. They all hate us. How could they not? If I were them I'd hate us too. In fact, I'd hate us even without being them. Take it from me, Rachel, if you just look at us you can see that we deserve nothing but hatred and contempt. And maybe a bit of pity. But that pity cannot come from the Arabs. They themselves need all the pity in the world. — Amos Oz

The copyright industry has managed to kill civil liberties for their own children, ushering in a dystopian surveillance machine, merely to avoid taking responsibility for their own business failures. I lack words to quantify my contempt for these utter parasites. — Rick Falkvinge

By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem. — Robert Greene

Osama bin Laden's writings and actions constitute a direct negation of human liberty, and vent an undisguised hatred and contempt for life itself. — Christopher Hitchens

hubris syndrome. This syndrome is characterized by recklessness, an inattention to detail, overwhelming self-confidence and contempt for others; all of which, he observes, "can result in disastrous leadership and cause damage on a large scale." The syndrome, he continues, "is a disorder of the possession of power, particularly power which has been associated with overwhelming success, held for a period of years and with minimal constraint on the leader. — John M. Coates

One may call the world a myth , in which bodies and things are visible, but souls and minds hidden. Besides, to wish to teach the whole truth about the Gods to all produces contempt in the foolish, because they cannot understand, and lack of zeal in the good, whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the contempt of the foolish, and compels the good to practice philosophy. — Sallust

In his contradictions he was as much an enigma as the country itself: a religious devotee out of spite at the soullessness of men who thought of nothing but dogs and sheep, a scientific breeder of sheep because of his contempt for sheep, the Icelandic pastor of a thousand years' folk-stories, his presence alone was a comfortable reassurance that all was as it should be. — Halldor Laxness

Stephen nodded a farewell to her as he and Philip started off in the donkey cart to transport supplies to those in greatest distress. As reprisals against the followers of the Way grew in intensity, there were more and more who needed such help. Many had lost their jobs because shop owners feared Temple reprisal if a follower was found in their employ. Looks of contempt were cast on them when they were recognized in the streets - or even curses, spitting, or handfuls of dust. It was clear their increasing numbers had the whole city on edge. — Janette Oke

What's on your shirt?" she asked suddenly. "Darth Vader," I answered briskly. For someone who held me in such obvious contempt, she asked a lot of questions. "So you're a Trekkie." This was a statement rather than a question. I cringed. "Not exactly." "I think Star Trek is silly." "Not — James Ramos

Compassion is contempt with a human face. — John McCarthy

She was nothing more than a mere good-tempered, civil and obliging Young Woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her
she was only an Object of Contempt — Jane Austen

Crosses, contempt, sorrows and afflictions are the real treasures of the lovers of Jesus Christ crucified — Margaret Mary Alacoque

Familiarity breeds contempt, for others at first, but then inwardly, contempt towards ourselves. — Oli Anderson

All men carry murder in their hearts, yet even so, the poisoner is beneath contempt. — George R R Martin

For this we must believe: that the mind is never seriously aroused to desire and ponder the life to come unless it be previously imbued with contempt for the present life. Indeed, there is no middle ground between these two: either the world must become worthless to us or hold us bound by intemperate love of it. — John Calvin

If you would have a boy to despise his mother, let her keep him at home, and spend her life in petting him up, and slaving to indulge his follies and caprices. — Anne Bronte

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity. — Samuel Johnson

The love of freedom, so often invigorated and disgraced by private ambition, was reduced, among the licentious Franks, to the contempt of order, and the desire of impunity. — Edward Gibbon

The arts, the arts, the arts - I don't know why it took me so long to realize how important they are. As a young man, I actually held them in supreme contempt. Now, whenever I think about them, I want to fall on my knees and weep. — Kurt Vonnegut

His name was Anderson and he had little gift for communication. Like most technicians, he had a
terror and a contempt for speculation. The inductive leap was not for him. He dug a step and pulled himself up one single step, the way a man climbs the last shoulder of a mountain. He had great contempt, born of fear, for the Hamiltons, for they all half believed they had wings - and they got some bad falls that way.
Anderson never fell, never slipped back, never flew. His steps moved slowly, slowly upward, and in the end, it is said, he found what he wanted - color film. He married Una, perhaps, because she had little humor, and this reassured him. Una wrote bleak letters without joy but also without self-pity. She was well and she hoped her family was well. — John Steinbeck

An Englishman fears contempt more than death. — Oliver Goldsmith

MAJESTY, n. The state and title of a king. Regarded with a just contempt by the Most Eminent Grand Masters, Grand Chancellors, Great Incohonees and Imperial Potentates of the ancient and honorable orders of republican America. — Ambrose Bierce

Otherwise you fall into contempt of your neighbor, if you judge his evil will towards you, instead of My will acting in him. — Catherine Of Siena

The one consistent policy running through this [Clinton] administration is the love it has lavished on Marxists
food aid for North Korea, diplomatic recognition of the Hanoi regime, chronic kowtowing to Beijing and now doing Castro's dirty work. How can the Clinton gang
which carried the Viet Cong flag during anti-war demonstrations and decorated their dorm rooms with pictures of Che Guevara
not feel contempt for people who insist, with every fiber of their being, that communism is mankind's mortal enemy? — Don Feder

For real food our people had traveled off reservation twenty miles or more to put our money in the pockets of store clerks who watched us with suspicion and took our money with contempt. — Louise Erdrich

I believe in the understanding of difficult situations, difficult music, or any kind of difficulties, through familiarity. Familiarity, in this case, does not breed contempt, but breeds understanding. — Daniel Barenboim, Edward W. Said