Pedestal Quotes & Sayings

Pride comes from not knowing yourself and the world. The older you grow, and the more you see, the less reason you will find for being proud. Ignorance and inexperience are the pedestal of pride; once the pedestal is removed - pride will soon come down. — J.C. Ryle

Tell me how he's kind and compassionate, about how he takes care of you and puts you first. Tell me about the height of the pedestal he's placed you on, and that you worry about falling off ... that he thinks too highly of you. That you're just a girl, but this man thinks you're more stunning than a star hung in the heavens. — H.M. Ward

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos — Stephen Jay Gould

I'm not the kind of guy who wants to be on a pedestal. — Billy Joel

It's amazing how lonely you can feel and like nobody understands ... The moment you are vulnerable, someone always reaches out ... .They go through the same things. I want them to feel comfortable knowing that I have flaws as wells. I want them to know those flaws. I'm afraid of the pedestal ... I want to be a peer to my fans — Rihanna

The problem nowadays is that children have become too much the center of attention. Their parents, their families, everybody around them feels a need to put them on a pedestal. So much effort is invested in boosting their self-esteem that they are made to feel special in and of themselves, without having done anything. — Rafael Nadal

His message was to follow the Course, don't put it on a pedestal, and don't deify it or make it a holy text. — Carol Howe

If you picture other people as superior to yourself, you will realize that
mental image. Putting a preacher, a saint, a prophet, an expert or anybody up on a pedestal in your personal view, fundamentally accomplishes nothing but the effect of putting you in a pit. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it. Don't think for a minute that your friends will telephone you every evening, as they ought to, in order to find out if this doesn't happen to be the evening when you are deciding to commit suicide, or simply whether you don't need company, whether you are not in the mood to go out. No, don't worry, they'll ring up the evening you are not alone, when life is beautiful. As for suicide, they would be more likely to push you to it, by virtue of what you owe to yourself, according to them. May heaven protect us, cher Monsieur, from being set upon a pedestal by our friends! — Albert Camus

Liberalism, the dominant ideology of our time, has been dangerously distorted by the impact of economism. It is that impact which has knocked the citizen off his pedestal and replaced him with the consumer. — Larry Siedentop

I don't want to be put on a pedestal. I don't want to be anything other than what we are. I want to just be a woman. — Charlize Theron

The favorites of fortune or of fame topple from their pedestals before our eyes without diverting us from ambition. — Luc De Clapiers

Never place someone so high on a pedestal that if they should fall ... you get crushed. — Mark W. Boyer

Dreamt I stood in a china shop so crowded from floor to far-off ceiling with shelves of porcelain antiques, etc. that moving a muscle would cause several to fall and smash to bits. Exactly what happened but instead of a crashing noise, an august chord rang out, half cello, half celeste, D major (?), held for four beats. My wrist knocked a Ming vase affair off its pedestal-E flat. Whole string section, glorious, transcendant, angels wept. Deliberately now, smashed a figurine of an ox for the next note, then a milkmaid, then Saturday's Child-orgy of shrapnel filled the air, divine harmonies my head. — David Mitchell

The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results. — James C. Collins

A man who builds his own pedestal had better use strong cement. — Anna Quindlen

When a Girl's on a pedestal, there's nothing some people would like better than to shove her off it, just to know what kind of noise she'd make when she shattered. — Katherine Howe

Disrespect also can take the form of idealizing you and putting you on a pedestal as a perfect woman or goddess, perhaps treating you like a piece of fine china. The man who worships you in this way is not seeing you; he is seeing his fantasy, and when you fail to live up to that image he may turn nasty. So there may not be much difference between the man who talks down to you and the one who elevates you; both are displaying a failure to respect you as a real human being and bode ill. — Lundy Bancroft

While the new Legionnaire man eliminated his enemies in the name of God, with a cross in his hand, the new Communist man eliminated God altogether and stood on His pedestal. They were both equally thirsty for blood. — Teodor Flonta

I can look back at it now as definitely like an initiation into adulthood. Almost overnight in the NFL, I was put on a pedestal and I was supposed to be this icon or this image of what a professional athlete was supposed to be. I felt like I just got stuck trying to be someone else and I forgot who I actually was. — Ricky Williams

Lesson learned: Don't ever put a guy up on a pedestal. It's too easy for him to tip over and fall off. — Kate Madison

Here she comes, running, out of prison and off the pedestal: chains off, crown off, halo off, just a live woman. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Can we really put Ben (hereby representing all men) on such a pedestal? Having tamed those beasts set aside for him, is it not like Ben to seek out that which has historically (regardless of how brief a history) been set aside for women? Woolf criticizes the masculine in her work with the repetition of the phrases uttered by that inconsiderate individual who makes the claim that women cannot paint or write. Is Ben not committing the same crime as that unfortunate character?
In stating "[b]etter like this, bitch," Ben employs a word that I would consider to be demasculinizing, rather than feminine. In using the word bitch, he seizes this scholarly investigation and, if you will, pisses on it, claiming it as his own. His statement is an outright challenge. This is a book I stole from women, and I urinated on it. You'd better appreciate my conquest or I will also urinate on you. — Caris O'Malley

If I were anyone else ... your opera singer ... the woman across the hall ... would you have apologized?"
He looked confused. "No ... but you are neither of those women. You deserve better."
"Better," she repeated, frustrated. "That's just my point! You and the rest of society believe that it's better for me to be set upon a pedestal of primness and propriety - which might have been fine if a decade on that pedestal hadn't simply landed me on the shelf. Perhaps unmarried young women like our sisters should be there. But what of me?" Her voice dropped as she looked down at the cards in her hands. "I'm never going to get a chance to experience life from up there. All that is up there is dust and unwanted apologies. The same cage as hers" - she indicated the woman outside - "merely a different gilt. — Sarah MacLean

We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room. — Bella Abzug

If we can take young people who excel at the highest levels, put them on the same kind of pedestal as the all-state basketball player and the all-state football player, and begin to get the same kind of recognition, it will have a profound effect, and we are finding that it does. — Ben Carson

I've always at least tried to be self-deprecating when I say anything about myself. As long as you set the bar low, it will keep people from putting you on a pedestal, so they can't knock you off. — Megan Fox

I wasn't in the mood to play break-the-snake, but in front of me was a stand with a model of the ship, like a YOU ARE HERE display. I ripped the model off the pedestal and hurled it at the first dracaena. The boat smacked her in the face and she went down with the ship. — Rick Riordan

What's the difference between venerating women for being fuckable and putting them on a purity pedestal? In both cases, women's worth is contingent upon their ability to please men and to shape their sexual identities around what men want. — Jessica Valenti

True closeness respects each other's space.
You can never get any measuring instrument to compare and set on a pedestal how one truly cares for you in any kind of relationship.
There is a big difference between closeness and dependency,
compassionate, honest, generous, humble heart than
prejudiced, jealous, insecure heart.
Each one should respect the growth of a relationship as we all evolve in a world interconnected with many hearts, minds and souls. — Angelica Hopes

The French and their food. They put each meal on a pedestal. — Giada De Laurentiis

Some say I loved her to the point of madness, bordering on obsession. She said I put her on a pedestal that her real self couldn't attain. Perhaps they're all right. Perhaps I am mad. And if that's the case, to be frank, I don't give a damn. What I know is that she sets me on fire, and if you were to perform an intradermal test on me, you'd know when she was in it because you'd see the trails of blaze she left behind. Because that's what I feel at the mere thought of her, and I'd rather live my life in flames than be numb without her." He paused, and I let out a breath, but then he said one last thing. "Come back to me, my little Road Runner, my world is cold and boring without you. — Claire Contreras

Many have lived on a pedestal who will never have a statue when dead. — Pierre-Jean De Beranger

Shoes are just a pedestal. What interests me is the power of the woman who wears them. — Christian Louboutin

I like to summarize what I regard as the pedestal-smashing messages of Darwin's revolution in the following statement, which might be chanted several times a day, like a Hare Krishna mantra, to encourage penetration into the soul: Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress, but rather a fortuitous cosmic afterthought, a tiny little twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life, which, if replanted from seed, would almost surely not grow this twig again, or perhaps any twig with any property that we would care to call consciousness. — Stephen Jay Gould

When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting. — Oscar Wilde

It was an experience that was exceptional. People frequently ask what it was like and it truly was inspiring. Sometimes during his lifetime, people would try and put him on a pedestal and that's not where he wanted to be, but he was really a great individual. — John Sexton

I think that every boxer should understand he's on the pedestal for a short span. It's best that you use boxing and don't let boxing use you. Use boxing to sell, because people are selling you through your boxing career, so you have to learn to sell yourself, and you'll never starve. — George Foreman

We are not the same India that the world saw in the 1970s and '80s. Hence, we have a responsibility to live up to the pedestal on which we have been put. — N. R. Narayana Murthy

... deceitful!" she decided with a little bounce of fury that briefly ballooned the silk of her trousers. "There! You deceitful ... "
"Gillia ... "
" ... misleading, dishonest, insincere ... "
"Those are all the same words, Gill - "
"Ooh! Liar!"
She'd managed to get her hands on a small pillow. He ducked just as it whizzed past him. In justice, however, it did strike the mosaic vase behind him on an engraved mahogany pedestal, and it tipped and spun on its base before landing in a shattered heap on the bare floor.
"Now, look what you've done!" she accused tearfully and bolted from the room. — V.S. Carnes

When you're growing up, your dad is your superhero. Once you've let yourself fall that in love with someone, once you put him on such a high pedestal and he lets you down, you never want to experience that pain again. — Jay-Z

Directing takes a good chunk of your life out. It's a very hard thing. As an actor, you go in for a couple of months and do your job, and then you move onto another one. As a director, it's with you for quite some time and you're responsible for the entire thing, whether the results are good or bad, or whether people throw darts at you or put you on a pedestal. — Billy Bob Thornton

The idea of celebrity has always been very strange to me because it's taking the focus away from the music and attaching it to a person. When we put someone on a pedestal or idolize them, we're giving our own power away. — Marketa Irglova

Leandred is insanely useful - never tell him I said that. he made enough for all of us, and helped imbue them with the spells. We included some of your magic, too. You know Leandred has a ton of it, right?" She frowned at me, but it wasn't nearly as frowny as it used to be when aimed at Constantine.
"You're going soft." I smiled.
"No, I just agree with Axer Dare - Leandred's motives are transparent at this point. Leandred would burn the world for you."
"It's not like that," I said automatically.
"No. It's way worse," she said frankly. "You are like the sole family gold nugget and the crystal on the pedestal and all the frankincense in the factory. He'd never touch you. And the world will burn if someone intent on harm does. — Anne Zoelle

You have that boy on such a high pedestal. It's far too slippery up there for one so unprincipled as a solitary fae. It's not as if I haven't tried to drag him down. I looked inside his soul. Hoped to find his weaknesses. Only to discover that even those could be considered strengths under the right circumstances. — A.G. Howard

When you let people put you up on a pedestal, you step one step in any direction, and you're going to go down. — James Dobson

Men put me on a pedestal, then never come to visit. — Sharon Stone

Today they're praising you sky high, place you on a pedestal and tomorrow they don't want to know you. — Mark McGrath

If people don't know their pastor, it's easy to put the pastor on a pedestal and depersonalize him or her. It's also easy for pastors, who don't know their congregations, simply to classify congregants as saved or unsaved, involved or not involved, tithers or non-tithers. — Eugene H. Peterson

Pedestals aren't safe ... one wrong move and a nasty tumble is sure to follow. Humility is a great grounding tool. — Sanjo Jendayi

I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces. — Etienne De La Boetie

I think ... I'm perceived as an everyperson. There is no pedestal. I'm no different from anybody else. — Sarah McLachlan

Ian's sense of right and wrong overwhelms me.
Not a single other person ... I know
possesses such an unshakable sense of morality.
Its more than unbelievable. It's frightening.
To offer without strings something all men crave,
and be rejected by him is incomprehensible.
Think I'll have to kick Kaeleigh's ass.
Does she have any idea what it means ... to be
so treasured? He has built a pedestal for her so tall
that she is afraid to be lifted atop it, because to fall
would mean certain death. But oh, she would rise
far, far beyond fear. — Ellen Hopkins

I beg your pardon for questioning your judgement," she said. "It is nothing to me, after all, if it proves faulty. I am not the one responsible for the Marquess of Atherton's heir and sole offspring. I am not the one who will be toppled from my pedestal if the world learns I have not only permitted but encouraged my nephew to associate with the most shocking persons. I am not the one who-"
"I wish you were the one who had heard of the rule Silence is Golden," he said. — Loretta Chase

Man toils, and strives, and wastes his little life to claim
At last the transient glory of a splendid name, And have, perchance, in marble mockery a bust, Poised on a pedestal, above his sleeping dust. — Andrew Jackson Downing

Today they are teaching the subject of art as a frill in school, partly due to intellectual preciousness that has crept into art departments with the making of the History of Art. Intellectualising places art on a pedestal only for the few, causing New Zealanders to revert to the invented snobbery that tends to ignore anything arty as exotic, unattainable, not wholesome. — Theresa Sjoquist

No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness. — Honore De Balzac

I did a couple of movies in Brazil, and the actors were incredibly congenial and hung out together a lot. Even the biggest stars would do radio commercials - they're not put on a pedestal like they are in the United States. — Alan Arkin

It's still a mystery to me, but even though my mother was like an older sister to me, I kind of put her up on a pedestal. — Steven Spielberg

The temptation in any approaching crisis or conflict is, because people haven't got a clue what lies ahead, they're always searching into the past for some sort of pattern ... to galvanise the nation or their supporters and put themselves on a pedestal to sound Churchillian or Rooseveltian. — Antony Beevor

The man puts you on a fucking pedestal. And you do the same to him. It's about time you knocked each other off, because now you're on the ground where you should be. And that's the foundation you need to build on, not some lofty idea that you can't be happy if you aren't perfect. — Jessica Hawkins

Having advanced to the limit of boldness, child, you have stumbled against the lofty pedestal of Justice. — Sophocles

The pedestal upon which women have been placed has all too often, upon closer inspection, been revealed as a cage. — Irin Carmon

I always cast people with a sense of humor because people that are super serious don't understand when I ask them to eat a booger it's not necessarily about that. It's about something more. It's about inviting a little bit of absurdity into the process and humanity into the process. Making sure that no matter who we are and what sort of pedestal or glamorous lighting we're under, we're all eating boogers man. — David Gordon Green

I think celebrities are kind of put up on a pedestal and we don't really know much about them. I feel like my fans know every part of me because I've shown them. — Shane Dawson

There is a progression of understanding vis-a-vis pro football that varies drastically with the factor of distance
physical, emotional, intellectual and every other way. Which is exactly the way it should be, in the eyes of the amazingly small number of people who own and control the game, because it is this finely managed distance factor that accounts for the high-profit mystique that blew the sacred institution of baseball off its 'national pastime' pedestal in less than fifteen years. — Hunter S. Thompson

He who is continually changing his point of view sees more, and more clearly, than one who, statue-like, forever stands upon the same pedestal; however lofty and well-placed that pedestal may be. — Arthur Helps

I'm real, and that what you see is what you get with me. I want people to know that I'm just Julianne. I'm not somebody that needs to be put up on a pedestal. — Julianne Hough

If people use Chrome, we make less money on our service and that's fine by us because that is fair competition. I wouldn't put Google on a pedestal for competition, but they aren't telling users not to use OpenDNS. — David Ulevitch

I am not a politician going around bragging about family values or putting myself on some ridiculous virtuous pedestal. I write comedy. And I am an actor. I am not going to solve the nation's problems. I don't actually spend my life in the way the tabloids like to think I do. I actually spend 95 percent of it writing comedy. Sober. Well, nearly sober anyway. — Steve Coogan

Sigmund Freud often remarked that great revolutions in the history of science have but one common, and ironic, feature: they knock human arrogance off one pedestal after another of our previous conviction about our own self-importance. — Stephen Jay Gould

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal. — Woody Allen

Suzy smiled and the whole class laughed at me, but when she spoke, I heard a new sound, not the song of an angel, but the words of a woman on a pedestal, coming down. — Taylor Mali

When, oh when will justice and reason prevail, and Woman descend from the pedestal on which Man has placed her (in order to prevent her from doing anything except standing perfectly still) and take her rightful place beside him? — Elizabeth Peters

Every word he wrote would be strong with that sweet purity and simplicity that was his gift alone, placing him higher than any living poet, secure on his pedestal apart from the world, like a great silent god above the little dwarfs of men tossed hither and thither in the stream of life. From the crystal clearness of his brain the images became words, and the words became magic, and the whole was transcendent of beauty, one thread touching another, alike in their perfection and their certitude of immortality. Thus it seemed to me he was not a living figure of flesh and blood, but a monument to the national pride of his country, his England, and now and then he would bow gravely from his pedestal and scatter to the people a small quantity of his thought, which they would grub for on their poor rough ground, then clasp to their hungry hearts as treasure. — Daphne Du Maurier

Rather a thousand times the county jail than to lie under this marble figure with wings and this granite pedestal bearing the words "pro patria." What do they mean anyway? — Edgar Lee Masters

Benedict, but they say he doesn't set himself up on a pedestal. — Ken Follett

Once I found a sticky-note that said someone was placed on a "petal stool". If you ask me, that sounds a lot better than a pedestal. If I had to choose something to be placed on, I would choose the petal stool. — Shane Hinton

I really prefer to be kind of anonymous. Because when people know your whole history, they have a tendency to relate to you differently and maybe put you up on a pedestal. I want people to just be normal with me. I just want to live my life. — Assata Shakur

The pedestal is immobilizing and subtly insulting whether or not some women yet realize it. We must move up from the pedestal. — Wilma Scott Heide

My friends, don't idolize hardship. What you idolize is what your heart will look for and what your heart looks for is what you will have. And don't capitalize on misfortune, because you will always seek out to have capital! Throw away that pride! Don't put sorrow on a pedestal! If you ask me if I would rather have had my sorrows or not, I will tell you that no, I would rather have not had any of them! In the blink of an eye, I would rid myself of them! I have no pride. I don't rely on hardships and sorrows to mold me into someone. I don't allow myself to be dictated. When hardship and sorrow come knocking, saying "We are responsible for who you are today, let us in!" I'm going to say, in a split second, "No you're not! Go away, I don't owe you anything! — C. JoyBell C.

I've always said that the experience of meeting an artist that you are in awe of and that you hope to create with one day is usually disappointing because you put them up on a pedestal, and then you're like, 'Wow, that's not a nice person.' — Sandra Bullock

Yoga teachers must be willing to step down from this imagined pedestal and utter the words "I don't know" on a regular basis. — Gudjon Bergmann

When people put you on the pedestal, don't come off it acting like you're humble. Because if they put you up there, that shows how high they can see. Stay there and pull them up, and they'll grow faster. — Victor L. Wooten

In the light from the rising moon, a miniature statue shimmered on a pedestal: a statue of a dragon, carved from an enormous emerald. He nearly tripped over his own feet in his haste to reach it. He stretched out his hands. His mouth went dry. A dazzling light flooded the room as a door swung open. Toad froze. His stomach dropped through the floor. His arms were still raised, inches from the statue, but his eyes were transfixed upon the giant figure standing in the doorway. — M.L. LeGette

I
believe you should place a woman on a pedestal: high enough so you can look up
her dress. — Steve Martin

We put authors on such a pedestal, and it's a moment that humanizes the whole thing, and lends an absurdity to what otherwise is a "please sit with your hands on your lap" kind of event. — Mac Barnett

Of the thousands who have paid homage to virtue, barely one has thought to inspect the pedestal on which it stands. — Frances Wright

Inside you is a thing worth putting on a pedestal
worth putting out there for all the world to see. That piece of rock might been knocked around, roughed up a bit, considered scrap, and thrown on the trash pile ... but that's only because they don't know what's on the inside. They can't see like Michaelangelo. 'Cause if they could, they'd know that there's something in there that's just waiting to jump out. Like there is inside you. I'm sorry for the hammer and chisel. I wish life didn't work that way. Just remember ... the velvet cloth ain't far behind. — Charles Martin

When the Chinese suspect someone of being a potential troublemaker, they always resort to one of two methods: they crush him, or they hoist him on a pedestal. — Lu Xun

She found a small picture made entirely of feathers and was trying to decide whether it depicted a monkey climbing up the back of a man - or possibly a person climbing a flight of stairs or perhaps a cow next to a tree, when she saw a chess piece, sitting by itself on a small pedestal.
It was the white queen, carved from ivory. She stood with a regal frown, her body shadowed by the enormous crown that bloomed on her head. The crown was a hollow sphere, exquisitely carved with open work, and when Jemma peered inside she saw inside another sphere, also open, and inside that, yet another. — Eloisa James

The harder you fall, the heavier your heart; the heavier your heart, the stronger you climb; the stronger you climb, the higher your pedestal. — Criss Jami

That's the tragedy of fairy tales. The whole world puts them on a pedestal. People want their lives to be magical, but what people don't understand is that happiness is sacrificed. There is so much more to the story than what is written. The Cinderella you think she's so unfortunate with her mean sisters and stepmom. You think she deserves a happy ending with a prince, but the twenty-page journey is all you see. You learn little about who she is. What if Cinderella's just a good actress who has everyone fooled, when really, she sucks. She more than sucks. — Angela Parkhurst

When greatness descends from its lofty pedestal, it assumes human dimensions. — Louise Colet

If you put me on a pedestal, I will fall off because I can never achieve the perfection of your expectations. — D.S. Mixell

As a general rule, when something gets elevated to apple-pie status in the hierarchy of American values, you have to suspect that its actual monetary value is skidding toward zero. Take motherhood: nobody ever thought of putting it on a moral pedestal until some brash feminists pointed out, about a century ago, that the pay is lousy and the career ladder nonexistent. Same thing with work: would we be so reverent about the 'work ethic' if it wasn't for the fact that the average working stiff's hourly pay is shrinking, year by year ... — Barbara Ehrenreich

Women are not ladies. The term connotates females who are simultaneously put on a pedestal and patronized. — Cynthia Heimel

O.K., if the desire to knock America off its pedestal, to redistribute American income to other countries, to shrink America's footprint in the world, makes you anti-American, then Obama is in fact anti-American. — Dinesh D'Souza

Celebrate me for who I am, dislike me for what I ain't ( ... ) put me up on a pedestal or drag me down in the dirt ( ... ) this is who I am, you can like ir or not, you can love me or leave me cuz I'm never gonna stop — Madonna Ciccone

In your dread of dictators you established a state of society in which every ward boss is a dictator, every financier a dictator, every private employer a dictator, all with the livelihood of the workers at their mercy, and no public responsibility. And to symbolize this state of things, this defeat of all government, you have set up in New York Harbour a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete this monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of Hell 'All hope abandon, ye who enter here. — George Bernard Shaw