Quotes and Sayings about Contempt
"One of the strengths I derive from my class background is that I am accustomed to contempt."
- Dorothy Allison
(Related: Class, Contempt)
"Between flattery and admiration there often flows a river of contempt."
- Minna Antrim
(Related: Admiration, Contempt, Flattery)
"How can a Man respect his Wife when he has a contemptible Opinion of her and her Sex?"
- Mary Astell
(Related: Sex, Wife, Man, Opinion, Respect)
"None of God's Creatures absolutely consider'd are in their own Nature Contemptible; the meanest Fly, the poorest Insect has its Use and Vertue."
- Mary Astell
(Related: Nature, God)
"Of all afflictions, the worst is self-contempt."
- Berthold Auerbach
(Related: Self)
"The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience."
- Lester Bangs
(Related: Contempt, Sin)
"Whence it is somewhat strange that any men from so mean and silly a practice should expect commendation, or that any should afford regard thereto; the which it is so far from meriting, that indeed contempt and abhorrence are due to it."
- Isaac Barrow
(Related: Men, Abhorrence, Contempt, Practice, Silly)
"Facetiousness is allowable when it is the most proper instrument of exposing things apparently base and vile to due contempt."
- Isaac Barrow
(Related: Contempt)
"The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage."
- Carl Bernstein
(Related: Truth, People, Americans, Being, Contempt, Culture, Information, Journalism, Popular, Reality, Today)
"The jury had down right contempt for punk rock grass roots ethics."
- Jello Biafra
(Related: Contempt, Ethics, Jury, Punk, Right)
"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."
- W. E. B. Du Bois
(Related: Soul, Contempt, Eyes, Pity, Self, Sense, World)
"Pride defeats its own end, by bringing the man who seeks esteem and reverence into contempt."
- Henry Bolingbroke
(Related: Contempt, End, Man, Pride)
"Terrorism is contempt for human dignity."
- Kjell Magne Bondevik
(Related: Contempt, Dignity, Terrorism)
"Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."
- Louis D. Brandeis
(Related: Government, People, Anarchy, Contempt, Example, Law, Man)
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
- Edmund Burke
(Related: Men, Sacrifice, Struggle, Will)
"Anger and hate against one we love steels our hearts, but contempt or pity leaves us silent and ashamed."
- Edgar Rice Burroghs
(Related: Anger, Love, Contempt, Hate, Pity)
"The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore."
- Samuel Butler
(Related: Man)
"I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration."
- Orson Scott Card
(Related: Motivation, Admiration, Contempt, Wonder, Writers)
"True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Humor, Love, Lie, Heart, Contempt, Laughter, Smiles)
"Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news."
- John Le Carre
(Related: Truth, Performance, News, Public, Right, Secrecy)
"Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures."
- Cesar Chavez
(Related: Contempt, Culture)
"If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust."
- Lord Chesterfield
(Related: Wife, Breeding, Contempt, Disgust, Familiarity, Intimacy, Man, Will)
"There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult."
- Lord Chesterfield
(Related: People, Injury, Insult, Nothing)
"No man who worships education has got the best out of education... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
(Related: Education, Contempt, Man)
"I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: People, Contempt)
"We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
(Related: Books, Contempt, Desire, Glory, Man, Names, Praise)
"The two most precious things this side of the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other."
- Charles Caleb Colton
(Related: Life, Grave, May, Reputation, Whisper)
"To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Contempt, Dignity, Forget)
"Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun."
- Nicolaus Copernicus
(Related: Work, Fear, Absurdity, Contempt, Novelty)
"This only grant me, that my means may lie too low for envy, for contempt too high."
- Abraham Cowley
(Related: Lie, Contempt, Envy, May)
"In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis."
- Quentin Crisp
(Related: Time, Contempt, Universe)
"'Free' is more of that 'familiarity breeds contempt' kind of thing. It's about saying 'Wait, I'm longing for something more than I have and I don't know what it is that I want, but I know I want it.' It has nothing to do with what I'm going through, personally."
- Jon Crosby
(Related: Contempt, Longing, Nothing, Saying, Want)
"Most of my adult life I had this towering contempt for America."
- Robert Crumb
(Related: Life, America, Contempt)
"I suppose that one of the reasons I wrote "In Contempt" was because of the money. After the trial I came to realize that there were things that I needed to do if I was to protect myself and my family, so there were some selfish reasons for it."
- Christopher Darden
(Related: Family, Money)
"When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man."
- Diogenes
(Related: Men, Science, Man, Nothing, Seamen)
"In politics nothing is contemptible."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Politics, Nothing)
"An appeal is when you ask one court to show it's contempt for another court."
- Finley Peter Dunne
(Related: Contempt, Court)
"Comedy is defiance. It's a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety. And it's the laughter that allows hope to creep back on the inhale."
- Will Durst
(Related: Fear, Hope, Anxiety, Comedy, Contempt, Defiance, Laughter)
"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."
- Albert Einstein
(Related: Music, Mistake, Contempt, Rank)
"Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries."
- George Eliot
"I grew up to have my father's looks, my father's speech patterns, my father's posture, my father's opinions, and my mother's contempt for my father."
- Jules Feiffer
(Related: Mother, Father, Contempt, Opinions, Speech)
"There is an insolence which none but those who themselves deserve contempt can bestow, and those only who deserve no contempt can bear."
- Henry Fielding
(Related: Contempt)
"There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman."
- Henry Fielding
(Related: Universe)
"Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Related: Art, Contempt, Man)
"Research on child abuse suggests that religious beliefs can foster, encourage, and justify the abuse of children. When contempt for sex underlies teachings, this creates a breeding ground for abuse."
- Mary Garden
(Related: Sex, Abuse, Beliefs, Breeding, Children, Contempt, Religious, Research)
"There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt."
- Charles de Gaulle
(Related: Contempt, Familiarity, Mystery)
"A rich rogue nowadays is fit company for any gentleman; and the world, my dear, hath not such a contempt for roguery as you imagine."
- John Gay
(Related: Company, Contempt, Gentleman, World)
"Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice; it whitens only the hair."
- Ira Gershwin
(Related: Age, Virtue, Contempt, Hair, Nothing, Old, Respect, Vice)
"What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?"
- Khalil Gibran
(Related: Contempt, World)
"More negatives write than call. It's a cheap shot for me to go on the air with the critical letters or E-mail I get because the reaction of the listeners is always an instantaneous expression of sympathy for me and contempt for the poor critic."
- John Hall
(Related: Sympathy, Contempt, Expression, Letters, Poor)
"Familiarity with evil breeds not contempt but acceptance."
- Roy Hattersley
(Related: Acceptance, Contempt, Evil, Familiarity)
"Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration."
- William Hazlitt
(Related: Admiration, Contempt, Familiarity, May)
"To be remembered after we are dead, is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living."
- William Hazlitt
(Related: Being, Contempt, Living, Poor)
"Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else."
- William Hazlitt
(Related: Nature, Poetry, Heart, Contempt, Language, Respect)
"Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled."
- Eric Hoffer
(Related: Self)
"The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity."
- Samuel Johnson
(Related: Complaint, Contempt, Fortune, Pity)
"In order to feel contempt, you generally need to cherish some kind of feelings."
- Ryszard Kapuscinski
(Related: Feelings, Contempt, Order)
"What looks like enjoyment is the sneer of contempt. That's not a smile."
- Jack Kevorkian
(Related: Contempt, Enjoyment, Smile)
"Rotten travesty. Yeah. Send me to jail for contempt. Try that. Go ahead."
- Jack Kevorkian
(Related: Contempt)
"You can cite me for contempt, Your Honor. I don't care."
- Jack Kevorkian
(Related: Care, Contempt, Honor)
"My philosophy is familiarity breeds contempt."
- Chaka Khan
(Related: Contempt, Familiarity, Philosophy)
"To me all men are equal: there are jackasses everywhere, and I have the same contempt for them all."
- Karl Kraus
(Related: Men, Contempt)
"I was very careful to cast guys who were very good-looking and very fit and who had a certain sense of privilege about them, because with that sense of privilege comes contempt."
- Neil LaBute
(Related: Contempt, Privilege, Sense)
"Hezbollah's contempt for human suffering is total, as it showed once again this morning when its rockets murdered two Israeli Arab children in Nazareth."
- Tom Lantos
(Related: Children, Contempt, Suffering)
"In politics, familiarity doesn't breed contempt. It breeds votes."
- Paul Lazarsfeld
(Related: Politics, Contempt, Familiarity)
"The particular article ought in my opinion to be treated with absolute contempt. It is too vile to touch."
- Emma Lazarus
(Related: Contempt, Opinion)
"I am perfectly conscious that this contempt and hatred underlies the general tone of the community towards us, and yet when I even remotely hint at the fact that we are not a favorite people I am accused of stirring up strife and setting barriers between the two sects."
- Emma Lazarus
(Related: People, Community, Contempt, Fact, Favorite, Hatred)
"I have equal contempt for both left and right radicals."
- Aleksandr Lebed
(Related: Contempt, Right)
"Contempt for the world is what allows me to continue living in it."
- Matthew Lotti
(Related: Contempt, Living, World)
"It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible."
- Arthur Machen
(Related: Thought, Succeed)
"For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible; which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against."
- Niccolo Machiavelli
(Related: Being)
"There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt."
- Niccolo Machiavelli
(Related: Religion, Contempt, Country)
"Taught to regard a part of our own Species in the most abject and contemptible Degree below us, we lose that Idea of the dignity of Man which the Hand of Nature had implanted in us, for great and useful purposes."
- George Mason
(Related: Nature, Idea, Dignity, Man)
"People are what you make them. A scornful look turns into a complete fool a man of average intelligence. A contemptuous indifference turns into an enemy a woman who, well treated, might have been an angel."
- Andre Maurois
(Related: Intelligence, People, Enemy, Fool, Indifference, Man, Woman)
"Although Salinger had long since cut me out of his life completely and made it plain that he had nothing but contempt for me, the thought of becoming the object of his wrath was more than I felt ready to take on."
- Joyce Maynard
(Related: Life, Thought, Contempt, Nothing, Wrath)
"Compassion is contempt with a human face."
- John McCarthy
(Related: Compassion, Contempt)
"I had to get rid of any idea of hell or any idea of the afterlife. That's what held me, kept me down. So now I just have nothing but contempt for the institution of the church."
- Frank McCourt
(Related: Idea, Church, Afterlife, Contempt, Hell, Nothing, Now)
"Antipathy, dissimilarity of views, hate, contempt, can accompany true love."
- Marshall McLuhan
(Related: Love, Contempt, Hate)
"The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt."
- H. L. Mencken
(Related: Contempt, Cure)
"Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings."
- Alice Duer Miller
(Related: Feelings, Contempt, Defense)
"Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose."
- Czeslaw Milosz
(Related: Truth, Lie, Contempt, Falsehood, May, Reality)
"All the stuff that I used to treat with contempt - you know, I'm an artist, man, I don't do that family stuff - has begun to seem really important."
- Rick Moody
(Related: Family, Artist, Contempt, Man)
"In becoming an American, from Europe, what one has in common with that other immigrant is contempt for me-it's nothing else but color."
- Toni Morrison
(Related: American, Contempt, Europe, Nothing)
"One of my kids was born in 1968. There were going to be political difficulties, but they were never going to have that level of hatred and contempt that my brothers and my sister and myself were exposed to."
- Toni Morrison
(Related: Sister, Brothers, Contempt, Difficulties, Hatred, Kids)
"I'm always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else's contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we're demons."
- Toni Morrison
(Related: People, Contempt, Understanding)
"Wit is the most rascally, contemptible, beggarly thing on the face of the earth."
- Arthur Murphy
(Related: Earth, Wit)
"Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
(Related: Women, Contempt, Vanity, Woman)
"God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind of person he selects to receive it."
- Austin O'Malley
(Related: God, Wealth, Contempt)
"An actress must be a woman whose emotional perceptions are true, and to make them so, she must have a fine contempt for any art or thought that betrays them for something false."
- Nance O'Neil
(Related: Art, Thought, Contempt, Perceptions, Woman)
"Although Alchemy has now fallen into contempt, and is even considered a thing of the past, the physicain should not be influenced by such judgements."
- Paracelsus
(Related: Alchemy, Contempt, Now, Past)
"Clinton's hands remain incredibly clean, don't they, and Tony Blair's smile remains as wide as ever. I view these guises with profound contempt."
- Harold Pinter
(Related: Contempt, Smile)
"It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt."
- Plutarch
(Related: God, Belief, Contempt, Opinion, Unworthy)
"What I have known with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration, and my contempt, of others."
- Joseph Priestley
(Related: Admiration, Contempt, Respect)
"The pollution they produce, market, sell, and show to billions around the world is at its core contemptuous of the country that gave them better lives than nearly 100 percent of everybody who's ever lived. And they pass that contempt along for everyone to see."
- John Ratzenberger
(Related: Contempt, Country, Pollution, World)
"In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when every act of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt."
- John Reed
(Related: Government, Time, People, Act, Contempt)
"Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Men)
"Only the contemptible fear contempt."
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Related: Fear, Contempt)
"Isn't it fitting that so many of those who have contempt for the private sector will soon find themselves back in it?"
- Mitt Romney
(Related: Contempt, Will)
"And there had to be a dagger thrust in the heart of the left to tell them that you are no longer gonna give five years for a Smith Act prosecution or one year for Contempt of Court, but we're gonna kill ya!"
- Julius Rosenberg
(Related: Heart, Act, Contempt, Court, Years)
"Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have as much as those for whom I feel contempt."
- Jean Rostand
(Related: Contempt, Respect, Will)
"There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Life, Help, Man, Myths)
"Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Happiness, People, Contempt, Disguise, Hatred, Race)
"The issue is whether the ultimate civil authority of the United States can tolerate actions in contempt of constitutional lines of authority. Any lessening of civil power over military power must inevitably lead away from democracy."
- Harold Russell
(Related: Power, Actions, Authority, Contempt, Democracy, Military, states, United)
"Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
(Related: Heart, Contempt, Hatred)
"Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
(Related: Contempt, Will)
"Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt."
- William Shakespeare
(Related: Contempt, Lady, Kissing)
"If you take the contempt some Americans have for yuppies and multiply it by 10 you might come close to understanding their attitude towards the City, as they call it - London, the people of the south."
- Martin C. Smith
(Related: People, Attitude, Americans, Contempt, London, Understanding, Yuppies)
"The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading."
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(Related: Women, Church, Teaching)
"To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt."
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(Related: Contempt, Law, Laws, Man, Will)
"I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts."
- John Steinbeck
(Related: Contempt, Dogs, Eyes)
"But we're very much an American band and that's that. I think that's part of the appeal outside of this country and it might be part of the reason people turned away from us within this country, because familiarity breeds contempt."
- Michael Stipe
(Related: People, American, Contempt, Country, Familiarity, Reason)
"What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch?"
- W. Clement Stone
"Familiarity breeds contempt."
- Publilius Syrus
(Related: Contempt, Familiarity)
"Love of glory can only create a great hero; contempt of glory creates a great man."
- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand
(Related: Love, Contempt, Glory, Man)
"Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."
- Mark Twain
(Related: Children, Contempt, Familiarity)
"Never before has a civilization reached such a degree of a contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in mortification, felt such a rage to live."
- Raoul Vaneigem
(Related: Life, Civilization, Contempt)
"Don't hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them."
- Evelyn Waugh
(Related: Son, Contempt, May, Parents)
"Radical Islamic fundamentalists harbor contempt for our democratic way of life and, given the opportunity, will stop at nothing to accomplish their goal of bringing our country to its knees."
- Paul Weyrich
(Related: Life, Opportunity, Goal, Contempt, Country, Nothing, Radical, Will)
"Democratic societies can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning."
- Armstrong Williams
(Related: Action, Abuse, Contempt, Democracy, Fanatics, Rights, Human rights, Meaning, Murder, Religious)
"A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible."
- Woodrow Wilson
(Related: Government, Opinion, states, United)
"There is small risk a general will be regarded with contempt by those he leads, if, whatever he may have to preach, he shows himself best able to perform."
- Xenophon
(Related: Contempt, May, Risk, Will)
"Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and familiarity breeds contempt. According to this my soul mate should be in Thailand."
- Jason Zebehazy
(Related: Soul, Heart, Contempt, Familiarity)