Top 100 Quotes About Contempt
#1. No one is the object of another man's contempt, unless he is first the object of his own.
Seneca.
#2. I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State.
Sophocles
#3. Do not have your child's hair cut by a real hairdresser in a real hairdressing salon. He is, at this point, far too short to be exposed to contempt.
Fran Lebowitz
#4. Contempt is the emotion we feel for an opponent whose arguments are too formidable to refute.
Ann Coulter
#5. 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
#6. Our political system is now run by the Big People for their own interests. If they ever deign to notice the Little People, it is with disdain and contempt.
John Derbyshire
#7. To observe a profoundly stupid individual can be very enriching, and that's why we should never feel contempt for them.
Claude Chabrol
#9. The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.
Hannah Arendt
#10. Contempt for an assailant is best shown by bravery in action.
Thucydides
#11. The timid weakness of individuals, the insecurity of groups, and the delusion of superiority generated perpetual fear, suspicion, dislike, and contempt of the different, the alien, and the strange.
Will Durant
#12. 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
#14. I knew how the suits used to talk about the artists, with barely concealed contempt. So I knew what was waiting for me round the corner. Because I wasn't one of those very unusual people like Neil Diamond or Elton John, whose careers just seem to span the decades. I knew I wasn't one of them.
Nick Lowe
#15. I hid myself within myself ... and quietly wrote down all my joys, sorrows and contempt in my diary.
Anne Frank
#16. 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
#17. Crosses, contempt, sorrows and afflictions are the real treasures of the lovers of Jesus Christ crucified
Margaret Mary Alacoque
#18. For love to be replaced by resentful contempt between husband and wife, or for that matter between parent and child, or colleague and colleague, is a negation of holiness, whatever stuff one may display in books or relay from pulpits and platforms.
J.I. Packer
#20. Anyone who attacks individual charity, attacks human nature and casts contempt on personal dignity.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#21. One can show one's contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the world by making of one's life a poem of incoherence and absurdity.
Alfred Jarry
#22. We cannot fulfill that purpose [environmentalism] if we are heaping contempt on God's creation.
Joe Lieberman
#24. You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists who, when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time they pretend to make them the depositories of all power.
Edmund Burke
#25. I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Marianne Moore
#26. Some mate," Karl Framm said with contempt. "Hell, that little stern-wheeler we're chasin' don't draw nothin'. After a good rain, she could steam halfway across the city of N'Orleans without ever noticin' that she'd left the river.
George R R Martin
#27. Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies.
Andrea Dworkin
#28. I am sorry for those who have never had the experience of seeing the victory of a national liberation movement, and I feel cold contempt for those who jeer at it.
Christopher Hitchens
#29. Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such,
Hannah Arendt
#30. Man is more sensitive to the contempt of others than to self-contempt.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#31. I would like to save all books, those that are banned, those that are burned, or forgotten with contempt by the mandarins who want to tell us what is good and what is bad. Every book has a soul ... and I believe every book is worth saving from either bigotry or oblivion.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#32. When we see people as losers, we treat them with contempt. When we see them as lost, we treat them with compassion.
Bob Horner
#33. I have seen so many bands and musicians fade away, especially the ones in my early days that treated me and my bands with contempt for no other reason than that they were headlining the show, not all though, with great exceptions such as Slade and Vinegar Joe.
Bernie Marsden
#34. I hate going to L.A. and dealing with the contempt people have for television and television actors. It's unbelievable the kind of attitude people take toward what is the most exciting medium we've got right now.
Michael Moriarty
#35. the proof of an achieved self-esteem is your soul's shudder of contempt and rebellion against the role of a sacrificial animal, against the vile impertinence of any creed that proposes to immolate the irreplaceable value which is your consciousness and the incomparable glory which is your existence
Ayn Rand
#36. I'd developed a style in dealing with foreigners that won their trust quickly. That style was two parts showman, two parts flatterer, and one part philanderer, combined with a hint of mischief, a sniff of condescension, and a pinch of contempt.
Gregory David Roberts
#37. Why does someone, in the midst of your worst suffering, decide the time has come to drive home, disguised in the form of character analysis, all the contempt they have been harbouring for you for all these years?
Philip Roth
#38. A woman usually respects her father, but her view of her husband is mingled with contempt, for she is of course privy to the transparent devices by which she snared him.
H.L. Mencken
#39. Every anonymous communication is deserving of contempt, just because it's not signed.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#40. Those that look with contempt upon worldly honours shall be recompensed with the honour that cometh from God, which is the true honour.
Matthew Henry
#41. Rotten travesty. Yeah. Send me to jail for contempt. Try that. Go ahead.
Jack Kevorkian
#42. Not long ago the world looked on the dark ages with contempt for its brutality, yet here it is again, in full force, a lawless sadism unpolished by all the charms of religion and civilization." Sitting
Diane Ackerman
#43. Prosperity has this property; it puffs up narrow souls, makes them imagine themselves high and mighty, and leads them to look down upon the world with contempt; but a truly noble spirit appears greatest in distress;
Plutarch
#44. Who's gonna give me a TV show? I didn't work for an impeached, disbarred President who was held in contempt by a federal judge. That's what they look for in objective reporters.
Ann Coulter
#45. 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
#46. She was nothing more than a mere good-tempered, civil and obliging Young Woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her
she was only an Object of Contempt
Jane Austen
#47. Servility is disgusting to a truly noble character, and engenders only contempt.
Hosea Ballou
#48. The Communist leaders respect only firmness and have contempt for persons who continually give in to them.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#49. We should distinguish carefully skepticism about Big Government from contempt for all government.
Mitch Daniels
#50. We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he is signifying contempt for ours.
James M. Barrie
#51. Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man.
Lord Chesterfield
#52. Our contempt for any particular poem must be perfect, be total, because only a ruthless reading that allows us to measure the gap between the actual and the virtual will enable to to experience, if not a genuine poem - no such thing - a place for the genuine, whatever that might mean.
Ben Lerner
#53. 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
#54. The real test of nonviolence lies in its being brought in contact with those who have contempt for it.
Mahatma Gandhi
#55. I find that those men who are personally most polite to women, who call them angels and all that, cherish in secret the greatest contempt for them.
Germaine Greer
#56. Give us a genuine Christianity that may provoke persecution, but will not provoke contempt.
A.C. Dixon
#57. Ornamental pattern work, to be raised above the contempt of reasonable men, must possess three qualities: beauty, imagination and order.
William Morris
#58. 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
#59. We say that word [bureaucracy] with such contempt. But it's that contempt that keeps this thing that we own and we pay for as something that's working against us.
Jennifer Pahlka
#60. It's amazing how just dressing differently can affect your influence; dress like a beggar and your assumed poverty gains you looks of contempt; dress in gold-lined robes and people are more willing to accommodate you; sport armour and you look strong, dutiful, and prepared.
A.J. Darkholme
#61. Adieu! but let me cherish, still, The hope with which I cannot part. Contempt may wound, and coldness chill, But still it lingers in my heart. And who can tell but Heaven, at last, May answer all my thousand prayers, And bid the future pay the past With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?
Anne Bronte
#62. Familiarity breeds contempt and children.
Mark Twain
#63. Unfortunately, in Hollywood, there are those directors that have some contempt for actors. We've all experienced that, in one way or another.
Vin Diesel
#64. Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to say, 'Those who can, do, those who can't, teach,' forgetting that those who teach get to write the history books.
Michael Ignatieff
#65. My eyes jut to a snarling, seething Seth who stares me down with utter contempt.
Anonymous
#66. Who gives an empire, by the gift defeats All end of giving; and procures contempt Instead of gratitude.
Edward Young
#67. One's love for despotism is in exact proportion to one's contempt for one's country.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#68. Indifference is the strongest contempt.
Ha Jin
#69. I have nothing but contempt for the deceitful thing men call 'happiness,' and find myself with no choice but to push my characters, whom I pour my heart and soul out to create, into the abyss of tragedy.
Gen Urobuchi
#71. Bring the two aliens up here under surveillance." With a microsecond pause, and a finely calculated micro-modulation of pitch and timbre - nothing you could actually take offense at - Marvin managed to convey his utter contempt and horror of all things human. "Just that?" he said.
Douglas Adams
#72. This might be the last chance he had to sit with her, the only chance he had to see her face holding concern for him rather than fear or contempt. Too bad she was still half-buzzed from the enthrallment. He lifted a dark curl away from her face, memorizing her features.
Susannah Sandlin
#73. To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget.
Mason Cooley
#74. There is something shameful about the death of a play. It does not die with pity, but contempt. A book may fail, but who is there to know it? It dies and is buried, and is decently interred on the bookseller's shelf; but the play dies to laughter, to scorn and disdain.
Mary Roberts Rinehart
#75. 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
#76. Our contempt of wealth does not extend beyond the hour when we can get it in possession.
Julia McNair Wright
#77. There is so much hate among people, so much contempt inside people who'd like you to think they're moral, that they have to hire prizefighters to do their hating for them. And we do. We get into a ring and act out other people's hates.
Floyd Patterson
#78. If you prefer illusions to realities, it is only because all decent realities have eluded you and left you in the lurch; or else your contempt for the world is mere hypocrisy and funk.
George Santayana
#80. This only grant me, that my means may lie too low for envy, for contempt too high.
Abraham Cowley
#81. For the male sickness of self-contempt, the surest cure is to be loved by a clever woman
Friedrich Nietzsche
#83. Those who would most scornfully repudiate Christianity as a mere "opiate of the people" have a contempt for the rich, that is, for all mankind except the poor.
C.S. Lewis
#84. I like familiarity. In me it does not bring contempt-only more familiarity.
Gertrude Stein
#85. I frowned, gaping at the blond in disbelief. "You're the grim reaper?"
Tod glanced at me for the first time, his frown practically etched into place. "You were
expecting someone older? Taller? Maybe kind of gaunt and skeletal?"Contempt dripped from his words like acid.
Rachel Vincent
#86. The waiter was a kind of surrogate uncle or grandfather for the duration of the meal; he paradoxically made you feel at home by treating you with undisguised contempt.
Ted Merwin
#87. In the next economic downturn there will be an outbreak of bitterness and contempt for the supercorporate chieftains who pay themselves millions. In every major economic downturn in US history the villains have been the heroes during the preceding boom.
Peter Drucker
#88. Hunger and cold, ill-health and pain are nothing. They pass. The thing that remains is ignorant criticism, well-meaning but futile advice, the contempt of a subordinate, the feelings of the underdog.
Alice Foote MacDougall
#89. I wanted to look calm, and to let them know that they could not demoralize us. I had no fear or sense of humiliation, only contempt for them. What had turned people into monsters? What
Jung Chang
#90. If any man despises me, that is his problem. My only concern is not doing or saying anything deserving of contempt.
Marcus Aurelius
#91. A coward,' he declared with dignity, when he'd stopped coughing and had got his breath back, 'dies a hundred times. A brave man dies but once. But Dame Fortune favours the brave and holds the coward in contempt.'
-
Dandelion
Andrzej Sapkowski
#92. I don't even suffer. My disdain for everything is so complete that I even disdain myself. The contempt I have for the sufferings of others I also have for my own. And so all my suffering is crushed under the foot of my disdain.
Fernando Pessoa
#93. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.
Charles Dickens
#94. And what if, besides love, there can be no respect either, if on the contrary there is already loathing, contempt, revulsion - what then?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#95. Hayden McGregor glanced with contempt at the pitch-black road. "I do not fear the darkness. It fears me." He dismissed the approaching gloom with a narrowed stare. His steel gray eyes holding it back with a contemptuous regard.
Grace Willows
#96. Making mathematics accessible to the educated layman, while keeping high scientific standards, has always been considered a treacherous navigation between the Scylla of professional contempt and the Charybdis of public misunderstanding.
Gian-Carlo Rota
#98. On the positive side, a strong sense of comradely loyalty triggers genuine affection and friendship. On the negative side, it may strengthen contempt for the lives of opponents and, of course, the loss of a comrade may be followed by even greater brutality in battle.
Nel Noddings
#99. A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell.
Alexander Smith
#100. It was difficult for her to preserve that haughty, sullen, and coldly indifferent demeanour that appears to be essential to the mannequin as she sails in with deliberate steps, turns round slowly and, with an air of contempt for the universe equalled only by the camel's, sails out.
W. Somerset Maugham
