Inferiors Quotes & Sayings

A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so. — Aristotle.

When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The smartest people in Washington are the political reporters. They write about their inferiors. — Joseph Heller

If you want to know what a mans like,see how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.'-Sirius black. — J.K. Rowling

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards. — Bertrand Russell

Nobody is more inferior than those who insist on being equal. — Friedrich Nietzsche

She approached them all without a trace of sentimentality or condescension. The older Docklanders were accustomed to meeting middle-class do-gooders, who deigned to act graciously to inferiors. The Cockneys despised these people, used them for what they could get, and made fun of them behind their backs, but Sister Evangelina had no patronising airs and graces. — Jennifer Worth

If thou hast no inferiors, have patience awhile, and thou shalt have no superiors. The grave requires no marshal. — Francis Quarles

Everything without God is pathetically inferior to God without everything. — Sam Storms

Vietnamese must be made to feel that they are racial inferiors with no right to national identity. — Wilfred Burchett

the ancient saying that force outdoes inferiors while gentility outdoes superiors. — Liezi

There are special reasons, too, why I should handle this story. Oscar Wilde was a friend of mine for many years: I could not help prizing him to the very end: he was always to me a charming, soul-animating influence. He was dreadfully punished by men utterly his inferiors: ruined, outlawed, persecuted till Death itself came as a deliverance. — Frank Harris

People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt ... They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear — Ayn Rand

The problem, as Eric saw it, was natural selection. He had alluded to the concept on his Web site; here he explained - relentlessly. Natural selection had failed. Man had intervened. Medicines, vaccines, and special ed programs had conspired to keep the rejects in the human herd. So Eric was surrounded by inferiors - who would not shut their freaking mouths! How could he tolerate all the miserable chatter? — Dave Cullen

When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you. — Irving Layton

It is a common law of nature, which no time will ever change, that superiors shall rule their inferiors. — Dionysius Of Halicarnassus

Geniuses are justifiably contemptuous of the opinions of their inferiors. — Jubal

People often expect irrational things from their inferiors. — Brandon Sanderson

Because, sir, teaching young gentlemen has a dismal effect upon the soul.It exemplifies the badness of established, artificial authority. The pedagogue has almost absolute authority over pupils: he often beats them and insensibly he loses the sense of respect due to them as fellow human beings.He does them harm, but the harm they do him is far greater. He may easily become the all-knowing tyrant, always right, always virtuous; in any event he perpetually associates with his inferiors, the king of his company; and in a surprising short time alas this brands him with the mark of Cain. Have you ever known a schoolmaster fit to associate with grown men? — Patrick O'Brian

Too many people grow up. That's the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They forget. They don't remember what it's like to be 12 years old. They patronize, they treat children as inferiors. Well I won't do that. — Walt Disney

It is a hard thing for intellectuals to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. — Victor Davis Hanson

And it is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best. — Thucydides

Three-quarters of the mental ingenuity and the mendacious boasting squandered ever since the world began by people who are only cheapened thereby, have been aimed at inferiors. — Marcel Proust

Sir, in carrying on your government, why should you use killing at all? Let your evinced desires be for what is good, and the people will be good. The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend, when the wind blows across it. — Confucius

I met many Christians leaving the Middle East, hoping to come to Australia feeling they would leave behind a society where they were inferiors in their native lands and they are disturbed about the rise of more separate radical Islam in Australia, not necessarily the main stream but there is a voice. — Mark Durie

Resigned that those surrounding him had no idea who he was, and invariably kind to his social and intellectual inferiors, he sometimes felt doubly hurt that those who ought to have understood him really had less respect for him than his most casual acquaintances. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Being a nation means standing up to your equals, whereas being an empire only means kicking your inferiors. — G.K. Chesterton

We can all perceive the difference between ourselves and our inferiors, but when it comes to a question of the difference between us and our superiors we fail to appreciate merits of which we have no proper conceptions. — James F. Cooper

History was not simply a catalogue of the dead and buried and benighted, but rather a vast new world to be pioneered; ...if you approached the past generously, so to speak - its people as humans, not facts, as modern in their time as we were in ours, who thought and felt as we do, the dead would live again, our equals, not our old-fashioned, hopelessly unenlightened, and backward inferiors. Humanity, to be fully known, had to be seen as changeless as well as ever changing. — Tony Hendra

The great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgement that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. (p.272) — Victor Davis Hanson

Thus our arrogance grows as we seek to exalt ourselves above others, as if we were different from them. Truly, there's no one who does not flippantly and boldly disregard and despise others as inferiors. Yes, — John Calvin

There are very many characteristics which go into making a model civil servant. Prominent among them are probity, industry, good sense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, many deference to superior officers, and many consideration for inferiors. — Chester A. Arthur

The rich never have a chance of being neighborly to their equals. The best they can do is feel mawkish about the sufferings of their inferiors, which they can never begin to understand, and to be patronizingly kind. — Aldous Huxley

Envy, my children, follows pride; whoever is envious is proud. See, envy comes to us from Hell; the devils having sinned through pride, sinned also through envy, envying our glory, our happiness. Why do we envy the happiness and the goods of others? Because we are proud; we should like to be the sole possessors of talents, riches, of the esteem and love of all the world! We hate our equals, because they are our equals; our inferiors, from the fear that they may equal us; our superiors, because they are above us. — John Vianney

Hatred grows into insolence when we desire to excel the rest of mankind and imagine we do not belong to the common lot; we even severely and haughtily despise others as our inferiors. — John Calvin

Already at the age of sixteen I wondered at them gloomily; I was amazed at the pettiness of their minds, the stupidity of their activities, games, and conversations. They were so lacking in understanding of the most essential things, so devoid of interest in the most important, most remarkable matters, that I involuntarily began to look upon them as my inferiors. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The Greeks adored their gods by the simple compliment of kissing their hands; and the Romans were treated as atheists if they would not perform the same act when they entered a temple. This custom, however, as a religious ceremony declined with paganism,but was continued as a salutation by inferiors to their superiors, or as a token of esteem among friends. — Benjamin Disraeli

There should be no inferiors and no superiors for true world friendship. — Carlos P. Romulo

The most insupportable of tyrannies is that of inferiors. — Napoleon Bonaparte

One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves. — Miguel De Cervantes

Rather, I have long contended that Islam is unique among the major world religions in having a developed doctrine, theology, and legal system mandating warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. There is no orthodox sect or school of Islam that teaches that Muslims must coexist peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis. I use the term "radical Islam" merely to distinguish those Muslims who are actively working to advance this subjugation from the many millions who are not, as well as to emphasize that the stealth jihad program is truly radical: it aims at nothing less than the transformation of American society and the imposition of Islamic law here, subjugating women and non-Muslims to the status of legal inferiors. — Robert Spencer

In literature as in life, to conform to anything is to knuckle under to your inferiors. — Kenneth Patchen

[On hearing that Clare Boothe Luce was invariably kind to her inferiors:] And where does she find them? — Dorothy Parker

I've never been put down by a man, unless I deserved it, and have never felt inferior, — Beryl Bainbridge

The great, the rich, the powerful, too often bestow their favours upon their inferiors in the manner they bestow their scraps upontheir dogs, so as neither to oblige man nor dogs. It is no wonder if favours, benefits, and even charities thus bestowed ungraciously, should be as coldly and faintly acknowledged. — Lord Chesterfield

We must all offer up a hymn of praise to the God ... who is 'Lord of lords' (Deut. 10:17, Ps. 136:1, I Tim. 6:15, Rev. 17:14, 19:16) ... Lordship is not simply a matter of being superior with respect to inferiors but a complete possession of all that is beautiful and good, and is furthermore a true and unshakable stability. — Pope Dionysius

All women are inferior to men. — Garry Kasparov

It is not men that most women worry about when they rise to the defense of the status quo. Their apparent endorsement of male supremacy is, rather, a pathetic striving for self-respect, self-justification, and self-pardon. After fifteen hundred years of subjection to men, Western woman finds it almost unbearable to face the fact that she has been hoodwinked and enslaved by her inferiors that the master is lesser than the slave. — Elizabeth Gould Davis

To be humble to superiors is a duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness. — Benjamin Franklin

Never let your inferiors do you a favor - it will be extremely costly. — H.L. Mencken

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the rule. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The privileged Victorians who did most to improve the lives of the poor were not ashamed of their pious intent: they were superiors seeking to help inferiors. — Michel Faber

What is the use of this fuss about morality when the issue only involves a horse? The first and most difficult teaching of civilisation concerns man's behaviour to his inferiors. Make humanity gentle or reasonable toward animals, and strife or injustice between human beings would speedily terminate. — Edward Mayhew

Treat your inferiors in the way in which you would like to be treated by your own superiors. And whenever it strikes you how much power you have over your slave, let it also strike you that your own master has just as much power over you. — Seneca.

The First Amendment, he explained, exposed tolerance as a sham, because tolerance implies one superior group of people deigning to put up with their inferiors. "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights," Washington wrote. "For, happily, the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." Of — Sarah Vowell

Teach the children that Africans are not one iota inferior to Europeans. — Nelson Mandela

Degeneracy follows every autocratic system of violence, for violence inevitably attracts moral inferiors. Time has proven that illustrious tyrants are succeeded by scoundrels. — Albert Einstein

If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals. — J.K. Rowling

We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the building we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds of happiness. — Alain De Botton

He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. It is this foulest of creatures - the double-parasite — Ayn Rand

The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity. — Aldous Huxley

The Party claimed, of course, to have liberated the proles from bondage. Before the Revolution they had been hideously oppressed by the capitalists, they had been starved and flogged, women had been forced to work in the coal mines (women still did work in the coal mines, as a matter of fact), children had been sold into the factories at the age of six. But simultaneously, true to the principles of doublethink, the Party taught that the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals, by the application of a few simple rules. In reality very little was known about the proles. It was not necessary to know much. So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left — George Orwell

How cruel the Penal Laws are which exclude me from a fair trial with men whom I look upon as so much my inferiors ... — Daniel O'Connell

Generally our confidences move downward rather than upward; in our secret affairs, we employ our inferiors much more than our bettors. — Honore De Balzac

So live with an inferior as you would wish a superior to live with you. — Seneca The Younger

Being reviewed is being condescended to by your inferiors. — John Irving

On the one side were Confucians, inspired by Mencius, who, when asked how a state should raise profits, replied, "Why must Your Majesty use the word profit? All I am concerned with are the good and the right. If Your Majesty says, 'How can I profit my state?' your officials will say, 'How can I profit my family?' and officers and common people will say, 'How can I profit myself?' Once superiors and inferiors are competing for profit, the state will be in danger. — Mark Kurlansky

Rather than seek to be squired and dated by their rivals why should it not be possible for women to find relaxation and pleasure in the company of their 'inferiors'? They would need to shed their desperate need to admire a man, and accept the gentler role of loving him. A learned woman cannot castrate a truck-driver like she can her intellectual rival, because he has no exaggerated respect for her bookish capacities. The alternative to conventional education is not stupidity, and many a clever girl needs the corrective of a humbler soul's genuine wisdom. — Germaine Greer

Like most people, I feel ambiguous guilt for my inferiors, ambiguous envy for my superiors, and mandatory low-spirits about the system itself. — Martin Amis

The characteristic of a well-bred man is, to converse with his inferiors without insolence, and with his superiors with respect and with ease. — Doug Stanhope

The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Governments are not overthrown by the poor, who have no power, but by the rich-when they are insulted by their inferiors and cannot obtain justice. — Dionysius Of Halicarnassus

One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. — Plato

Ahimsa can be practiced only towards those that are inferior to you in every way. — Mahatma Gandhi

Most of us give little thought to the importance or the meaning of a homeland. Not until we ourselves are foreigners fighting for acceptance, stripped of all ranks and titles and viewed as inferiors, do we miss that privilege. — Oksana Marafioti

In spirituality the Americans are very inferior to us. But their society is very superior to ours — Swami Vivekananda

Women are not men's equals in anything except responsibility. We are not their inferiors, either, or even their superiors. We are quite simply different races. — Phyllis McGinley

Segregation is that which is forced upon inferiors by superiors. But separation is that which is done voluntarily, by two equals- for the good of both. — Malcolm X

Those who refuse to engage in politics will be led by their inferiors — Plato

Just is not by other men of intelligence that an intelligent an is afraid of being thought a fool, so it is not by the great gentleman but by boors and 'bounders' that a man of fashion is afraid of finding his social value underrated. Three-fourths of the mental ingenuity displayed, of the social falsehoods scattered broadcast ever since the world began by people whose importance they have served only to diminish, have been aimed at inferiors. — Marcel Proust

Women need the archetypal image of a Divine Female. We need to reconnect with the inherent sacredness of woman as creator and nourisher, rather than accept a vision of ourselves as less-than-divine inferiors. — Layne Redmond

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
- Plato — Sienna Wilder

When superiors are fond of showing their humanity, inferiors try to outstrip one another in their practice of it. — Confucius

After an inferior man has been taught a doctrine of superiority he will remain as inferior as he was before his lesson. He will merely assume himself to be superior, and attempt to employ his recently-learned tactics against his own kind, whom he will then consider his inferiors. With each inferior man enjoying what he considers his unique role, the entire bunch will be reduced to a pack of strutting, foppish, self-centered monkeys gamboling about on an island of ignorance. There they will play their games under the supervision of their keeper, who was and always will be a superior man. — Anton Szandor LaVey

The same amount of pride which makes a man treat haughtily his inferiors, makes him cringe servilely; to those above him. — Jean De La Bruyere

People can only make you inferior with your consent. — Eleanor Roosevelt

There is no good in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors. — William Makepeace Thackeray

A gentleman can always be told by the way he speaks to those that he thinks are his inferiors in some respect. His equals he does not wish to offend, his superiors he does not dare to offend, and of those whom he considers his inferiors he would be all the more considerate. — Fanny Jackson Coppin

Though not a remarkably precocious child in other respects, she seemed to have very clear and correct views on almost every subject connected with her duty to God and her neighbor; was very truthful both in word and deed, very strict in her observance of the Sabbath
though the rest of the family were by no means particular in that respect
very diligent in her studies; respectful to superiors, and kind to inferiors and equals; and she was gentle, sweet-tempered, patient, and forgiving to a remarkable degree. — Martha Finley

Three-quarters of the expenditure of wit and the lies told out of vanity that have been squandered since the world began by people who in doing so merely diminish themselves have been squandered on inferiors. — Marcel Proust

Life is too short to read inferior books. — James Bryce

If a superior intimidates their inferiors, the inferiors would end up losing self confidence. — Saaif Alam

It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction. — John Adams

The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of - the last he does not concern himself about. — William Hazlitt

The idea of equality is a by-product of the sentiment of envy. Since it must always prove beyond human ower to raise the inferior mass to a superior stratum, apostles of equality must ever be inferiors seeking to reduce their betters to their level. It follows that a nation that once admits this doctrine of equality will be dragged by it to the level, moral, intelletual and political, of its most worthless class. — Rafael Sabatini

Be superior by having no inferiors. Don't force for equality, but give. For it is not up to us to decide how others treat us, rather it is up to us how we treat each other, and how we improve as individuals. — JD

Judge a man not by how he treats his equals but by how he treats his inferiors. — Charlie Chaplin

There is nothing more becoming any wise man, than to make choice of friends, for by them thou shalt be judged what thou art: let them therefore be wise and virtuous, and none of those that follow thee for gain; but make election rather of thy betters, than thy inferiors. — Walter Raleigh

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions. — Aristotle.

As long as people overlook matters, then inferiors can, without any fear, lead an easy and peaceful life. — Yamamoto Tsunetomo