Insulting People Quotes & Sayings

The point is that newspapers are not there for spreading news but for covering it up. X happens, you have to report it, but it causes embarrassment for too many people, so in the same edition you add some shock headlines - mother kills four children, savings at risk of going up in smoke, letter from Garibaldi insulting his lieutenant Nino Bixio discovered, etc. - so news drowns in a great sea of information. — Umberto Eco

I found it hugely insulting that people believed I'd go so far out of my way - living with Playmates, vacationing with actresses, showing up at nightclubs - to act out a lifestyle that would amount to a charade. If I was gay, I'd be gay all the way. — Mike Piazza

The problem with every judgment of sexual behavior is that it is made by people who aren't being stimulated as they are making the judgment. A jury that sees a woman in a sterile courtroom, asks her what she wanted, and then assumes that anything else she did was the responsibility of the man is insulting not only the woman but the power of sex. — Warren Farrell

If you're asking if I would be foolish enough, or insulting enough, to write about people in my life that I respect and sell it to the masses as a "break-up song," I can't imagine doing that to people I love. — Jack White

We have freedom to demonstrate in Germany, but there is no place for incitement and insulting people who come to us from other countries. — Angela Merkel

Regarding fiction, our concern shouldn't be the author's origin (and of course I am forgetting the sales people right here), because that is actually merely a simplified, almost insulting judgment of the book by its cover - or rather by the name and origin of its author - an act of discrimination if we want to say it in a more provoking way, but at the least an act of ignorance and false empathy. — Sasa Stanisic

I seldom get self-righteous, and even when I am being impolite (almost always on purpose - there's an art to insulting people, too), I tend to try to not be too serious about it. And most of the time it means that I can take criticism constructively, and sometimes just change my opinion on the fly and laugh at myself over having turned on a dime. — Linus Torvalds

Tipping confounds me because it is not a reward but a travel tax, one of the many, one of the more insulting. No one is spared. It does not matter that you are paying thousands to stay in the presidential suite in the best hotel: the uniformed man seeing you to the elevator, inquiring about your trip, giving you a weather report, and carrying your bags to the suite expects money for this unasked-for attention. Out front, the doorman, gasconading in gold braid, wants a tip for snatching open a cab door, the bartender wants a proportion of your bill, so does the waiter, and chambermaids sometimes leave unambiguous messages, with an accompanying envelope, demanding cash. It is bad enough that people expect something extra for just doing their jobs; it is an even more dismal thought that every smile has a price. — Paul Theroux

How dare you compare Hitler to this president or any president? How dare you equate what he did with what Obama is doing? Do you have any idea how insulting that is? Do you know anything about history? Do you have any idea what Hitler did? He killed six million of my people, which is six million more than Obama has killed. You're a fucking idiot. You're a fucking moron. You're the fucking problem with this country. — Michael Ian Black

There have been man-on-the-street interviews for years, but insulting people is not that funny to me. — Billy Eichner

The media are desperately afraid of being accused of bias. And that's partly because there's a whole machine out there, an organized attempt to accuse them of bias whenever they say anything that the Right doesn't like. So rather than really try to report things objectively, they settle for being even-handed, which is not the same thing. One of my lines in a column - in which a number of people thought I was insulting them personally - was that if Bush said the Earth was flat, the mainstream media would have stories with the headline: 'Shape of Earth - Views Differ.' Then they'd quote some Democrats saying that it was round. — Paul Krugman

All people who have reached the point of becoming nations tend to despise foreigners, but there is not much doubt that the English-speaking races are the worst offenders. One can see this from the fact that as soon as they become fully aware of any foreign race they invent an insulting nickname for it. — George Orwell

to Vaneigem and the Situationists who by shrewd use of collage and juxtaposition exposed both the poverty and richness of slogans, and the thinly veiled hypocrisy of a "spectacular" society which by not respecting words abuses people, and by insulting the intelligence creates a state of political cretinisation in which the many and various forms of authoritarian control dominate. — Alexis Lykiard

Will Trump, who has scant impulse control and who's willing to say the most insulting, provocative things that people wouldn't say at a dinner party much less a global forum, get into a tweet battle with a madman and start a world war? Will Hillary ever seem on the level? Or will she always be surrounded by a cordon of creepy henchmen and Clinton Inc. sycophants, shrouded in a miasma of money grabs and conveniently disappearing records and emails? Both — Maureen Dowd

It's insulting when outsiders come in and tell a traumatized people what it will take for them to heal ... People who have lived through a terrible conflict may be hungry and desperate, but they are not stupid. They often have very good ideas about how peace can evolve, and they need to be asked. That includes women. Most especially women. — Leymah Gbowee

Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are. Some people are slow to take offense, which may make you misjudge the thickness of their skin, and fail to worry about insulting them. But should you offend their honor and their pride, they will overwhelm you with a violence that seems sudden and extreme given their slowness to anger. If you want to turn people down, it is best to do so politely and respectfully, even if you feel their request is impudent or their offer ridiculous. — Robert Greene

Whether it's a professional, academic keeping people out by using certain mystifying language, or technologists presenting their work as incredibly complicated, no one can understand it (especially not "moms," who are always invoked as the ultimate know-nothings, which is incredibly insulting to a whole lot of people). — Astra Taylor

I'm trying to make records where people don't feel cheated. Nashville has been guilty of insulting the Country Music audience for years and years. — Steve Earle

Usually what everyone knows is insulting and sort of ableist, because the people who know everything always seem to think of themselves as being perfectly normal. — Mira Grant

What's insulting to the American people, the Senate, to this whole process is that the Republicans, with all other nominees, have said Democrats are being obstructionist for wanting to see documents, for wanting to see a paper trail, for wanting to get questions answered in the judiciary committee hearings, and now all of a sudden, the Republicans want those things for this. — Rachel Maddow

Look, nothing personal, guys, but you look like the top half of an S and M wedding cake. Cops don't like people who look sort of . . ." I wasn't sure how to say it without being insulting. Cops were meat-and-potatoes people. They weren't impressed by the exotic. They'd seen it all and cleaned up the mess. Most of the exotic that they saw were bad guys. After a while, policemen seem to think anything exotic is a bad guy; just saves time. If I walked into the police station with Tweedle-punk and Tweedle-slut, it was going to raise the cop's antennae. — Laurell K. Hamilton

But all that's hugely unlikely
with the exception of mosquito bites and sunburn. And yet even experienced travelers are still afraid.
"What everyone forgets
even me
is the people who actually live here. In places like Central America, I mean. Southeast Asia. India. Africa. Millions, even billions, of people, who live out their whole lives in these places
the places so many people like us fear. Think about it: they ride chicken buses to work every day. Their clothes are always damp. Their whole lives, they never escape the dust and the heat. But they deal with all these discomforts. They have to.
"So why can't travelers? If we've got the means to get here, we owe it to the country we're visiting not to treat it like an amusement park, sanitized for our comfort. It's insulting to the people who live here. People just trying to have the best lives they can, with the hands they've been dealt. — Kirsten Hubbard

It was rude, insulting and frequently infuriating, but it made such a refreshing change from the awful politeness of most people. — Iain M. Banks

Around 1977 I became very ... negative, I began to do things unconsciously that I didn't understand, and they were very sabotagistic and I didn't know what I was doing. I was pissing everybody off, I was breaking my bridges. I was hostile to people, I was doing performances and insulting people there - I was doing whatever I could to destroy whatever world I had created ten years before, without knowing, really, why — Charlemagne Palestine

I don't worry too much about people hating or insulting me. I'm a sinful man, and I've made a lot of mistakes. People have reason to hate me. — Phil Robertson

The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world — Stendhal

The English are the people of consummate cant. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I had a feeling she probably made friends with people pretty easily, and that could be a good thing for me too, since I'd always been a little on the reserved side. She probably had offended a lot of people too, but maybe they all just overlooked it, as i was finding it surprisingly easy to do. She seemed genuinely oblivious to the fact that anything she said could be potentially insulting, and for some reason that made it kind of forgivable. — Jessi Kirby

People don't mind insulting the tall. We're supposed to be fine with being awkward and skinny. I'm very easy to psychoanalyse. I was a gangly, awkward teenager who could make people laugh and thought that was a way to be socially more comfortable. — Stephen Merchant

Now shame is the only direct attack on conceit, the defensive image of oneself. Conceit is the common denominator of the Organization man, the hipster, and the juvenile delinquent-this is why I have been lumping them together. The conceited image of the self is usually not quite conscious, but it is instantly woundable; and people protect it with a conformity to their peers (oneself is superior). But the conceited groups differ in their methods of confirming and enhancing conceit: the juvenile delinquent by surly and mischievous destructiveness of the insulting privileged outgroup; the hipster by making fools of them with token performances; the Organization Man by status and salary. To his inner idol, they sacrifice the ingenuous exhibition and self-expression that could make them great, effective, or loved in the world; but that can also be shamed if it is mistaken, out of place, or disproportionate. — Paul Goodman

Lampard is a specialist in insulting people very badly. — Jens Lehmann

I don't go in for being sorry for people. For one thing it's insulting. One is only sorry for people if they are sorry for themselves. Self-pity is the biggest stumbling block in our world today.

~Jessop — Agatha Christie

John's was not a glum, negative, insulting attack on society but a sharp-witted, entertaining, cock-a-snook approach that encouraged young people to express themselves as individuals and to reject the stifling rigidity of a lot of the older social traditions. Thanks to John, to give one example, regional dialects were no longer looked upon as a hindrance. He made no attempt to tone down his Liverpool accent (indeed, he exaggerated it) and this encouraged others to follow suit. Previously, without cut-glass Oxford English, it was impossible for anyone to make progress in the media. John changed all that, and a great deal more as well. (Desmond Morris) — Yoko Ono

Think of mental energy as broadcasting on a certain wavelength," he tried to explain. "People with powers of the mind can tap into that wavelength ... "
"That's all fine and good," I nodded, "but evidently my transmitter is broken. Or much more likely ... I never had one in the first place."
"Ah, yes," he nodded unenthusiastically, "and your nose is mounted upside-down."
"Excuse me?" My forehead creased.
"I do wish you would quit contradicting me," he let out a tired sigh. "It's insulting ... and highly annoying. — M.A. George

I really bristle when I get called to events and people introduce me as one of the top black anchors in the country. You know, that's very insulting. I'm striving to be one of the best anchors in the country. Handcuff me like that. What you're saying is, 'You're black. You should only expect to rise to the level of the best at being black.' — Lester Holt

How insulting is it to suggest the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? — Jessica Valenti

I think ethnic and regional labels are insulting to writers and really put restrictions on them. People don't think your work is quite as universal. — James Welch

The message coming out of Washington, especially from our leftist politicians and the news media, is that we solve our budget problems by raising taxes on the rich. If Americans were more informed, such a message would be insulting to our intelligence. There are not enough rich people to satisfy Congress' appetite. — Walter E. Williams

We often see films with a cast of excellent characters...except one, who's dreadful. We wonder why until we realize that the writer hates this character. He's trivializing and insulting this role at every opportunity. And I'll never understand this. How can a writer hate his own character? It's his baby. How can he hate what he gave life? Embrace all your creations, especially the bad people. They deserve love like everyone else. — Robert McKee

The English people on the whole are surely the nicest people in the world, and everybody makes everything so easy for everyone else, that there is almost nothing to resist at all. — D.H. Lawrence

Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. — Oscar Wilde

This may sound insulting to some of my cult studies friends, but there's a lot of cult studies people who ignore, shall we say, the wider canvas - because they simply don't know about its existence or they don't know how it operates. — Peter York

The problem with holistic management is it's so profoundly simple, but it's not easy. And it's profoundly simple. You're almost insulting people's intelligence to explain it twice, just about making better decisions of where you want to go in your life, bringing in environmental, social, economic issues simultaneously. — Allan Savory

I think breeds of dogs and breeds of men are quite a bit alike. If you think it's insulting that I compare people with animals, well, if you knew how I love animals, you would understand that coming from me, this is a compliment. — Zsa Zsa Gabor

One of the most frustrating words in the human language, as far as I could tell, was love.
So much meaning attached to this one little word. People bandied it about freely, using it to
describe their attachments to possessions, pets, vacation destinations, and favorite foods. In the
same breath they then applied this word to the person they considered most important in their
lives. Wasn't that insulting? Shouldn't there be some other term to describe deeper emotion? — Alexandra Adornetto

Jesse Jackson also said he thought Barack Obama was talking down to black people by lecturing them on things like fatherhood and being a responsible husband. Jesse thought it was insulting, not only to him, but to his former mistress and their love child. — Jay Leno

Why was "nigger" bleeped out? I mean, "nigger" is a word that exists. People use it. It is part of America. It has caused a lot of pain to people and I think it is insulting to bleep it out ... it's like being in denial. If it was used like that, then it should be represented like that. Hiding it doesn't make it go away. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Work-life balance. This is another touchstone of supposedly "enlightened" management practices that can be insulting to smart, dedicated employees. The phrase itself is part of the problem: For many people, work is an important part of life, not something to be separated. The best cultures invite and enable people to be overworked in a good way, with too many interesting things to do both at work and at home. — Eric Schmidt

People always want to compare their dogs to having kids. That's insulting. First of all, nobody has a dog because they were too drunk to pull out. — Greg Giraldo

Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, 'We're remembering'. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them. — Ray Bradbury

And really, how insulting is it that to suggest that the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? I'm betting some of those women would like to do great things of their own. — Jessica Valenti

It was clear that Eleanor had been to bed with a large and random collection of people, but when I suggested she go to bed with me, she said, 'I don't think we should, just at the moment, do you?' As a man I found this pretty fucking insulting. — Hanif Kureishi

We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the ris-
ing generation. I am an oldster myself and might be
expected to take the oldsters' side, but in fact I have
been far more impressed by the bad manners of par-
ents to children than by those of children to parents.
Who has not been the embarrassed guest at family
meals where the father or mother treated their
grown-up offspring with an incivility which, offered
to any other young people, would simply have termi-
nated the acquaintance? Dogmatic assertions on mat-
ters which the children understand and their elders
don't, ruthless interruptions, flat contradictions,
ridicule of things the young take seriously some-
times of their religion insulting references to their
friends, all provide an easy answer to the question
"Why are they always out? Why do they like every
house better than their home?" Who does not prefer
civility to barbarism? — C.S. Lewis

After all, in both languages we were dealing in large measure not with English and French, but with Scots and Irish, Bretons and Normans ... There could be no more eloquent illustration of the colonial mind-set than a bunch of Celts and Vikings in a distant northern territory insulting each other as les Anglais and the French as if they were the descendants of the people who had subjected and ruined them. — John Ralston Saul

The dominant theories of elite art and criticism in the 20th century grew out of a militant denial of human nature. One legacy is ugly, baffling, and insulting art. The other is pretentious and unintelligible scholarship. And they're surprised that people are staying away in droves? — Steven Pinker

The people who start howling the minute Charlie Hebdo publishes a drawing of a self-styled Islamic terrorist toe a particular line. They suggest that by caricaturing an Islamic terrorist, the cartoonist is really symbolizing all Muslims. So long as the terrorist is identifiable as a Muslim, the cartoonist must be mocking all Islam. If you draw a jihadist doing what jihadists do, you are dragging the billions of faithful through the mud. If you draw Muhammad denouncing the extremists among his followers, you're insulting all Muslims. The terrorist must be stripped of any element that could identify him as a Muslim, while it is quite simply forbidden to represent Muhammad at all. If portraying an Islamist terrorist as grotesque is Islamophobic, that's the same as saying that all Muslims are terrorists or sympathetic to terrorists. — Charb

Dostoyevsky's indignation at Afanasy Fet's innocent lyrics, "Whispers, timid breath, the nightingales trilled," is well known. This is simply disgraceful, wrote Dostoyevsky indignantly, and he speculated what an insulting impression such empty verses would have made if they'd been given to someone to read during the Lisbon earthquake! Some people protested: Yes, of course, Dostoyevsky is right, but we aren't having an earthquake, and we aren't in Lisbon, and after all, are we not allowed to love, to listen to nightingales, to admire the beauty of a beloved woman? But Dostoyevsky's argument held sway for a long time. It did so because of the way Russians perceive Russian life: as a constant, unending Lisbon earthquake. — Tatyana Tolstaya

It is not good to demonstrate your luxury and your wealth: to rub it in the faces of others is insulting. So you should be modest; try not to insult people by showing that you can do what they cannot. — Vladimir Potanin

It must be stressed that there is nothing insulting about looking at people as animals. We are animals, after all. Homo sapiens is a species of primate, a biological phenomenon dominated by biological rules, like any other species. Human nature is no more than one particular kind of animal nature. Agreed, the human species is an extraordinary animal; but all other species are also extraordinary animals, each in their own way, and the scientific man-watcher can bring many fresh insights to the study of human affairs if he can retain this basic attitude of evolutionary humility. — Desmond Morris

I've found that people feel very free to say insulting things, not about me personally, but about the things I believe. It's sad, because I really could care less where people are coming from, politically, religiously. — Patricia Heaton

If you're insulting people on the internet, you must be ugly on the inside. — Phil Lester

'Honesty' in social life is often used as a cover for rudeness. But there is quite a difference between being candid in what you're talking about, and people voicing their insulting opinions under the name of honesty. — Judith Martin

And everyone knows I'm a mad scientist. It's amazing what everyone knows, isn't it? Usually what everyone knows is insulting and sort of ableist, because the people who know everything always seem to think of themselves as being perfectly normal. But that's neither here nor there. — Mira Grant

I've always found that one of the biggest benefits of being a girl is that most people refuse to take you seriously. While boys must be constantly monitored and are always the first suspects when anything goes wrong, everyone expects girls to do what they're told. It may seem a little insulting at first, but low expectations can be a blessing in disuise. If you're smart, you can use people's foolishness to your own advantage. It's amazing what you can get away with when no one bothers watching. — Kirsten Miller

So that's your sister?" asks Dee in a quiet voice.
"Yeah."
"The one you risked your life for?"
"Yeah."
The twins nod politely in that automatic way that people do when they don't want to say something insulting.
"Your family any better?" I ask.
Dee and Dum look at each other, assessing.
"Nah," says Dee.
"Not really," says Dum at the same time. — Susan Ee

Reth reached out and took my fingers in his own, his touch light but comforting. "I've found that sacrifice is called that for a reason. We have all lost much of what we were or could have been because of the mistakes of my people. We'll yet lose some things to set it right. But when you join eternity, you will not feel the sting of this life with such intensity."
"You mean I wouldn't feel at all?"
"I feel, my love. Simply not in the same way you do. And thank heavens for that, because you are quite an embarrassment at times. Your inconsistent and flailing passions will no longer be a concern."
Leave it to Reth to go from comforting me to insulting me in the course of one short conversation. — Kiersten White

The fourth estate came together in an unprecedented professional consensus. They chose insulting the other side over trying to understand what motivated them. They transformed opinion writing into a vehicle for high moral boasting. What could possibly have gone wrong with such an approach? [...] Put this question in slightly more general terms and you are confronting the single great mystery of 2016. The American white-collar class just spent the year rallying around a super-competent professional (who really wasn't all that competent) and either insulting or silencing everyone who didn't accept their assessment. And then they lost. Maybe it's time to consider whether there's something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away. — Thomas Frank

Another lesson to file away about Scotland: insulting other people in a childish manner was the national pastime. — Molly Ringle

There's a lot of other [than Donald Trump] people that say things you may call insulting, but no one seems to care about that. — Joe Arpaio

Organizations like the UN do a lot of good, but there are certain basic realities they never seem to grasp ... Maybe the most important truth that eludes these organizations is that it's insulting when outsiders come in and tell a traumatized people what it will take for them to heal.
You cannot go to another country and make a plan for it. The cultural context is so different from what you know that you will not understand much of what you see. I would never come to the US and claim to understand what's going on, even in the African American culture. People who have lived through a terrible conflict may be hungry and desperate, but they are not stupid. They often have very good ideas about how peace can evolve, and they need to be asked.
That includes women. Most especially women ...
To outsiders like the UN, these soldiers were a problem to be managed. But they were our children. — Leymah Gbowee

The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices — Paul Valery

Mimbrates are the bravest people in the world
probably because they don't have brains enough to be afraid of anything. Garion's friend Mandorallen is totally convinced that he's invincible."
"He is," Ce'Nedra said in automatic defense of her knight. "I saw him kill a lion once with his bare hands."
" ... I heard him suggest to Barak and Hettar once that the three of them attack an entire Tolnedran legion."
"Perhaps he was joking."
"Mimbrate knights don't know how to joke," Silk told him.
"I will not sit here and listen to you people insult my knight," Ce'Nedra said hotly.
"We'renot insulting hi, Ce'Nedra," Silk told her. "We're describing him. He's so noble he makes my hair hurt."
"Nobility is an alien concept to a Drasnian, I suppose," she noted.
"Not alien, Ce'Nedra. Incomprehensible. — David Eddings

People - whether you like to hear what people have got to say, not you have got to listen to them, and turning your back on people I found very insulting. If you're going to really make peace, you have got to confront each other and look each other in the eye, and that's what's happen - I'm always remember Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with Yasser Arafat and the reluctance in - Yasser Arafat put his hand down and the reluctance of Yitzhak Rabin, but then he had that second and then he just shook the hand. — Warren Mundine

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

Smiling always seems to annoy people more than actually insulting them. Or maybe I just have an annoying smile. — Jim Butcher

Uh-huh. I think she was flattered. It'll help fill her bucket." "Huh?" "You know - the bucket ... " "What are you talking about?" "Well, the elementary school teachers talk about the bucket a lot. Everyone has one. When people say nice things to you, do nice things, make you feel better about yourself, they're filling your bucket. When people are mean or insulting or hurtful in any way, they're emptying your bucket and you don't want to go around with an empty bucket. It makes you sad and cranky. And you don't want to be emptying other peoples' buckets - that also makes you unhappy. The best way is to fill all the buckets you can and keep yours nice and full by looking for positive people and experiences." She smiled. Troy leaned his elbow on the bar and rested his head in his hand. "What do I have to do to get a job with you?" "Master's degree in counseling." She took a sip. "Easy peasy. You'd be great. — Robyn Carr

I'd like to incite people to break the framework, to be disobedient in school, to stick their tongues out, to keep insulting authority. — John Lennon

When people are insulting you, there is nothing so good for them as not to say a word - just to look at them and THINK. Miss Minchin turns pale with rage when I do it, Miss Amelia looks frightened, and so do the girls. When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in - that's stronger. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies. I scarcely ever do. Perhaps Emily is more like me — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Do you always introduce yourself by insulting people? — Jeri Smith-Ready

Humans are amazing ritual animals, and it must be understood that the Tzutujil, nor any other real intact people, do not 'practice' rituals. Just as a bear must turn over stumps searching for beetles, real humans can only live life spiritually. Birth itself was a ritual: there was not a ritual for birth, or a ritual for death, or a ritual for marriage, for death was a ritual, life a ritual, cooking a ritual, and eating were all rituals with ceremonial guidelines, all of which fed life. Sleeping was a ritual, lovemaking was a ritual, sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing food were rituals, even sweeping, insulting, fighting were rituals, everything human was a ritual, and to all Tzutujil, ritual was plant-oriented and based on feeding some big Holy ongoing vine-like, tree-like, proceedance that fed us it's fruit. — Martin Prechtel

The devil take these people and their language! They take a dozen monosyllabic words in their jaws, chew them, crunch them and spit them out again, and call that speaking. Fortunately they are by nature fairly silent, and although they gaze at us open-mouthed, they spare us long conversations. — Heinrich Heine

Hold onto one thought: You're not important. You're not anything. Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddam steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. — Ray Bradbury

Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [ ... ] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness - in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture. — George Eliot

Anyone could be in the orchestra, or sports team, or arts club at my school. It was precisely the kind of inclusivity that now meets with a sort of scorn and derision as a prizes-for-all culture that generates only mediocrity. There's something so insulting about the idea that including lots of people means mediocrity. — Elizabeth Price

When you use God as an excuse to hate people and you use God as an excuse to cut people down, first of all, I think it's insulting to God. — Sophia Bush

The American nation in the sixth ward is a fine people; they love the eagle - on the back of a dollar. — Finley Peter Dunne

People think I'm controversial for the answers I give to silly questions in interviews, but if somebody asks me what I think about Live 8 or Robbie Williams or Madonna, I'm not thinking about insulting those people; I say what I genuinely feel is in my heart. My conscience is clean, d'you know what I mean? Y'know, I'm true to myself - fuck everybody else. — Noel Gallagher

We must remember that the people of all the States are entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the several States. We should bear this in mind, and act in such a way as to say nothing insulting or irritating. I would inculcate this idea, so that we may not, like Pharisees, set ourselves up to be better than other people. — Abraham Lincoln

We talk about a free press. These people hide, they make a lot of money off the media. They hide behind the slogans of free press, and then they can come out with crap like that. It's just garbage. It's insulting to the readers. — Robert Scheer

We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products. Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spiritual and emotional feelings. It might taste good or clever, but in the long run, it's not going to do anything for you. — Bob Dylan

Fetching objects for people who are too lazy to fetch them for themselves is never a pleasant task, particularly when the people are insulting you. — Lemony Snicket

The killer simply picked any one of the men in gray suits and followed them from office building to cash machine, from lunchtime restaurant back to office building. Those gray suits were not happy, yet showed their unhappiness only during moments of weakness. Punching the buttons of a cash machine that refused to work. Yelling at a taxi that had come too close. Insulting the homeless people who begged for spare change. But the killer also saw the more subtle signs of unhappiness. A slight limp in uncomfortable shoes. Eyes closed, head thrown back while waiting for the traffic signal. The slight hesitation before opening a door. The men in gray suits wanted to escape, but their hatred and anger trapped them. — Sherman Alexie

Youth Liberation has argued for some time that young people should have the right to have sex as well as not to have it, and with whom they choose. The statutory structure of the sex laws has been identified as oppressive and insulting to young people. A range of sexual activities are legally defined as molestation, regardless of the quality of the relationship or the amount of consent involved. — Gayle Rubin

I never look at my watch if I'm talking with someone. I think that's such an insulting gesture! It suggests you're trying to gauge whether you think what they're saying is worth your time. Rushing is no way to bring out what's best in people, and I'm always looking for the best. That's what's ultimately behind my determination to take my time. — Frances Hesselbein

You're supposed to be a spirit of intellect. I don't understand why you're obsessed with sex."
Bob's voice got defensive. "It's an academic interest, Harry."
"Oh yeah? Well maybe I don't think it's fair to let your academia go peeping in other people's houses."
"Wait a minute. My academia doesn't just peep -"
I held up a hand. "Save it. I don't want to hear it."
He grunted. "You're trivializing what getting out for a bit means to me, Harry. You're insulting my masculinity."
"Bob," I said, "you're a skull . You don't have any masculinity to insult."
"Oh yeah?" Bob challenged me. "Pot kettle black, Harry! Have you gotten a date yet? Huh? Most men have something better to do in the middle of the night than play with their chemistry sets. — Jim Butcher

Too many people - some of them judges - seem to think that freedom of speech means freedom from consequences for what you have said. If you believe that, try insulting your boss when you go to work tomorrow. Better yet, try insulting your spouse before going to bed tonight. — Thomas Sowell

If there is one thing I despise, it is the perverse affectation of rich people who go around dressing as if they were poor, in second-hand clothes, ill-fitting gray wool bonnets, socks full of holes, and flowered shirts under threadbare sweaters. Not only is it ugly, it is also insulting: nothing is more despicable than a rich man's scorn for a poor man's longing. — Muriel Barbery