Superior Complex Quotes & Sayings

Though many desperately and relentlessly cling to old, divisive ideas in the face of a future that looks complex and uncertain, no one can legitimately portray themselves as members or practitioners of the one true faith, the superior race, the best culture. No one can say, with the image of the blue and green Earth floating in their heads, that others don't count as much as "we" do, that others don't hold the same status as we do, are not as significant as us, are ultimately just not as human as us. — Romeo Dallaire

I want to take my time hurting her. I am an animal, a monster. and i love it. — Willow Madison

Leadership, pure and simple, is the assumption of responsibility for the pursuit of excellence in group life. — Philip Selznick

Apple has a complex suite of proprietary technologies, both in hardware (like superior touchscreen materials) and software (like touchscreen interfaces purpose-designed for specific materials). — Peter Thiel

We have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? — Ronald Reagan

We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration. The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not "natural." This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and has prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction. — Howard Zinn

That infinite world is a subtle world and does not reveal itself openly - yet look how wonderfully it makes its appearance here! Don't you see how the spring breeze becomes visible in the trees and grasses, the rose-beds and sweet herbs? Through the swaying of fields and flowers you witness the beauty of spring. But when you look upon the breeze itself, you see nothing. This isn't because the beauty of those rose-beds are outside the reality of the breeze, for the spring breeze contains images of swaying rose-beds and sweet herbs, but those images are subtle and invisible. Only through some medium are they revealed out of their subtlety. — Rumi

I've had a lot of practice. The Pack contains thirty-two species in seven tribes, each with their own hang-up. Jackals and coyotes pick fights with wolves, because they have an inferiority complex and think they've got something to prove.
Wolves believe themselves to be superior, marry the wrong people, and then refuse to divorce them because they cling to their 'mating for life' idiocy.
Hyenas listen to nobody, screw everything, and break out in berserk rages at some perceived slight against one of their own.
Cats randomly refuse to follow orders to prove they can.
That's my life. I've been at this for fifteen years now.
You're easy by comparison. — Ilona Andrews

Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo and it has to be guarded against. — Noam Chomsky

When it comes to things such as sugar and rice, most people believe that brown is superior to white. But when it comes to human beings, they believe that the opposite is true. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

My paper has to be very long and complex," I said. "I shall cite all the great thinkers - Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud." "What about Adolf Hitler?" "Oh, him. He's not a thinker. He's just a ranter and raver." "There may come a time," said Pepi, "when people cannot tell the difference." "Impossible," I solemnly predicted. "I have read Hitler's book Mein Kampf and also some works by his colleague Herr Alfred Rosenberg because I am a fair-minded, objective person and I believe one should always hear out all sides before making a decision, and so I can tell you from firsthand knowledge that these men are idiots. Their ideas about how the Jews have poisoned their so-called superior Aryan race and caused all of Germany's troubles are utter nonsense. No intelligent person could possibly believe them. Hitler is laughable. He will soon disappear." "Just like all your old boyfriends," Pepi said with his sly smile. — Edith Hahn Beer

Continuously feeling superior is a characteristic of immaturity. — Eraldo Banovac

Dawes observed that the complex statistical algorithm adds little or no value. One can do just as well by selecting a set of scores that have some validity for predicting the outcome and adjusting the values to make them comparable (by using standard scores or ranks). A formula that combines these predictors with equal weights is likely to be just as accurate in predicting new cases as the multiple-regression formula that was optimal in the original sample. More recent research went further: formulas that assign equal weights to all the predictors are often superior, because they are not affected by accidents of sampling. — Daniel Kahneman

Feeling inferior is complex; being superior is easy. — Robert J. Braathe

One always begins with the simple, then comes the complex, and by superior enlightenment one often reverts in the end to the simple. Such is the course of human intelligence. — Voltaire

Among [Applewhite's] other teachings was the classic cult specialty of developing disdain for anyone outside of the Heaven's Gate commune. Applewhite flattered his would-be alien flock that they were an elite elect far superior to the non-initiated humans whom he considered to be deluded zombies.[ ... ]Applewhite effectively fed his paranoid persecution complex to his followers to ensure blind loyalty to the group and himself while fostering alienation from the mundane world. This paradoxical superior/fearful attitude towards "Them" (i.e., anyone who is not one of "Us") is one of the simplest means of hooking even the most skeptical curiosity seeker into the solipsistic netherworld of a [mentally unbalanced] leader's insecure and threatened worldview. — Zeena Schreck

I had never been a dresser. My shirts were all faded and shrunken, 5 or 6 years old, threadbare. My pants the same. I hated department stores, I hated the clerks, they acted so superior, they seemed to know the secret of life, they had a confidence I didn't possess. My shoes were always broken down and old, I disliked shoe stores too. I never purchased anything until it was completely unusable, and that included automobiles. It wasn't a matter of thrift, I just couldn't bear to be a buyer needing a seller, seller being so handsome and aloof and superior. Besides, it all took time, time when you could just be laying around and drinking. — Charles Bukowski

The world is not divided into two types of being, one superior and the other merely surrounding it. Being, nature, the universe - they are all one infinitely complex and mysterious metaorganism of which we are but a part, though a unique one. — Vaclav Havel

It is common knowledge among psychologists that most of us underrate ourselves, short-change ourselves, sell ourselves short. Actually, there is no such thing as a superiority complex. People who seem to have one are actually suffering from feelings of inferiority; their "superior" self is a fiction, a coverup, to hide from themselves and others their deep-down feelings of inferiority and insecurity. — Maxwell Maltz

I admitted that I did not understand life. What I meant was that I am bewildered by human hearts and motivations, including my own. — Norman Lock

a Philosopher could not grasp the modern idea of progress ... until he was willing to abandon ancestor worship, until he analyzed away his inferiority complex toward the past, and realized that his own generation was superior to any yet known — Carl Becker

Write something the skeptics will sneer at. — Marty Rubin

The most civilized people are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy. — Antoine Rivarol

Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor. Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions, namely, - that gradations in the perfection of any organ or instinct, which we may consider, either do now exist or could have existed, each good of its kind, - that all organs and instincts are, in ever so slight a degree, variable, - and, lastly, that there is a struggle for existence leading to the preservation of each profitable deviation of structure or instinct. The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed. — Charles Darwin

Jeremy Popkin's collection of first-person narratives of the Haitian Revolution is an extremely valuable work, accessible, sound and intelligent. I only wish such a book had been available fifteen years ago when I was in the early stages of researching my series of novels. Popkin has been deft and tactful in stitching together these excerpts, and as a result, he manages to tell a complete version of the Revolution almost entirely in the words of the people who experienced it-this book engaged me deeply. — Madison Smartt Bell