106 Contemptuous Quotes

Following is our list of contemptuous quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about what is a contemptuous.

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Famous Contemptuous Quotes

Contempt; the feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed. — Ambrose Bierce

Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings. — Alice Duer Miller

The most unequivocal sign of contempt for man is to regard everybody merely as a means to one's own ends, or of no account whatever. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You can have no influence over those for whom you have underlying contempt. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt. — Benjamin Franklin

The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

A man's admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him. — Alexis de Tocqueville

Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge. — George Santayana

In affability there is no hatred of men, but for that very reason there is all too much contempt for men. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. - George Bernard Shaw

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. — George Bernard Shaw

The unarmed man is not just defenseless - he is also contemptible. — Niccolo Machiavelli

If any man despises me, that is his problem. My only concern is not doing or saying anything deserving of contempt. — Marcus Aurelius

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain. — James A. Baldwin

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn. — Albert Camus

Short Contemptuous Quotes

  • I'm crass, contemptuous and crude, obstreperous, obnoxious, rambunctiously raw and rude. — Mario Cantone
  • Many men are contemptuous of riches; few can give them away. — Francois de la Rochefoucauld
  • I'm not at all contemptuous of comforts, but they have their place and it is not first. — E. F. Schumacher
  • Geniuses are justifiably contemptuous of the opinions of their inferiors. — Jubal
  • Contemptuous people are sure to be contemptible. — Nicolas Chamfort
  • My strengths make me contemptuous. My weaknesses make me charitable. — Mason Cooley
  • I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition. — Edward Gibbon
  • A horse, if he happens to have a contemptuous disposition, can sneer very effectively. — Esther Meynell
  • Heraldry has been contemptuously termed 'the science of fools with long memories.' — James Planche

Contemptuous Image Quotes

Being Contemptuous Quotes

It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, 'the greatest', but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is. — Sydney J. Harris

I think we musicians are emissaries. Every time we go before the public, we're there to make converts. We can either be ugly and contemptuous in our behavior, which will turn people off, or else we can carry ourselves with dignity and pride. — Hazel Scott

Scarcely anything that I observed in the United States caused me so much sorrow as the contemptuous estimate of the people entertained by those who were bowing the knee to be permitted to serve them. — Harriet Martineau

It is because of the servility of photography that I am fundamentally contemptuous of this chance invention which will never be an art but which plagiarizes nature by means of optics. (1848) — Alphonse De Lamartine

There's an idea of the Plains as the middle of nowhere, something to be contemptuous of. But it's really a heroic place. — Ian Frazier

You achieve stature only by being good enough to deserve it, by forcing even the contemptuous and indifferent to pay attention, and to acknowledge that human relations and human emotions are of inexhaustible interest wherever they occur. — Wallace Stegner

Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth. — E. L. Doctorow

Contemptible Quotes

Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures. — Cesar Chavez

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering and shame.In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness,all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. — Hermann Hesse

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

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

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

I believe we're going to find that respect and affection are essential to all relationships working and contempt destroys them. — John M. Gottman

People cheat on each other in a hundred different ways: indifference, emotional neglect, contempt, lack of respect, years of refusal of intimacy. Cheating doesn't begin to describe the ways that people let each other down. — Esther Perel

Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life. — Elizabeth Goudge

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

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse predict an ailing marriage: Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling and Contempt. The worst of these is contempt. — John M. Gottman

Feeling Contempt Quotes

Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control. — Arthur Schopenhauer

In order to feel contempt, you generally need to cherish some kind of feelings. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

I have problems with a lot of photography, particularly street photography and photojournalism - objectifying the other, finding the contempt and exoticism that you might feel within yourself or toward yourself and projecting it out to others. There can be an abusive power to photography, too. — Barbara Kruger

If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt. — Jim Butcher

You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

To be outspoken when truth is under attack, when charity is being bruise, or when important issues of life are at stake is a good and courageous thing. To be outspoken when nothing is at stake except the feelings of someone else is a small and contemptible thing. — Lawrence G. Lovasik

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

How little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chill the ardor to excel. — Edward George BulwerLytton

When a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary contempt for those who are. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

There are some surely whom you like and whom you dislike, for whom you entertain esteem and for whom you feel contempt? Have you not thought that you have some duties toward them, that you can aid them in leading better lives? — Paul Bourget

Love Contempt Quotes

Young people nowadays love luxury; they have bad manners and contempt for authority. They show disrespect for old people... contradict their parents, talk constantly in front of company, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers. — Socrates

Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together. — Milan Kundera

Whatsoever is done out of pure love, be it ever so little or contemptible in the sight of men, is wholly fruitful; for God measures more with how much love one worketh, than the amount he doeth. — Ellen G. White

Practice the vocabulary of love - unlearn the language of hate and contempt. — Sathya Sai Baba

Love of glory can only create a great hero; contempt of glory creates a great man. — CharlesMaurice de Talleyrand

The surest aid in combating the male's disease of self-contempt is to be loved by a clever woman. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Of all afflictions, the worst is self contempt. — Berthold Auerbach

Antipathy, dissimilarity of views, hate, contempt, can accompany true love. — J. August Strindberg

Love of glory can only create a great hero; contempt of glory creates a great man. — Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Every time I tried to express my most heartfelt desires to be morally good I met with contempt and ridicule; and as soon as I would give in to vile passions I was praised and encouraged. Ambition, love of power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance-all of it was highly esteemed. — Leo Tolstoy

People Writing About Contemptuous

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Read quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche
quotes on god, love and morality

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Read quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce
quotes on war, love

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Read quotes by Alice Duer Miller

Alice Duer Miller
quotes on life, education and death

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Read quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
quotes on courage, leadership and equality

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Read quotes by Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer
quotes on life, love and marriage

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Read quotes by Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin
quotes on education, freedom and life

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More Contemptuous Quotes

Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience. — Christopher Hitchens

Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgasmic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming a strangely joyless national compulsion, if not a contemptuous mockery. — Betty Friedan

Children are contemptuous, haughty, irritable, envious, sneaky, selfish, lazy, flighty, timid, liars and hypocrites, quick to laugh and cry, extreme in expressing joy and sorrow, especially about trifles, they'll do anything to avoid pain but they enjoy inflicting it: little men already. — Jean De La Bruyere

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it. — W. Somerset Maugham

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

The result is ... that there's no room left in the world for the weird – though plenty for crude, contemptuous, wisecracking, fun-poking imitations of it. — Fritz Leiber

I consider it a mark of great prudence in a man to abstain from threats or any contemptuous expressions, for neither of these weaken the enemy, but threats make him more cautious, and the other excites his hatred, and a desire to revenge himself. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Government is contemptuous of true religion when it confiscates the taxes of Caesar to finance the things of God. — Sam Ervin

Almost all of my early art dealt with the fallout from middle-class taboos, the messy, the ambivalent emotions couples felt, the inherent racism, the sexual tensions and the unhappiness roiling below the surface of our prim suburban lives. Meanwhile I was a suburban bad boy - cynical, sarcastic, contemptuous of all authority. — Eric Fischl

Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths. — Fulton J. Sheen

Passion is not friendly. It is arrogant, superbly contemptuous of all that is not itself, and, as they very definition of passion implies the impulse to freedom, it has a might intimidiating power. It contains a challenge. It contains an unspeakable hope. — James A. Baldwin

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

The most important point of [Susan] Fiske's work is that it provides a taxonomy for our differing feelings about different Thems - sometimes fear, sometimes ridicule, sometimes contemptuous pity, sometimes savagery. — Robert M. Sapolsky

To describe religions as mind viruses is sometimes interpreted as contemptuous or even hostile. It is both. I am often asked why I am so hostile to organized religion. — Richard Dawkins

She [Sadie Thompson] gathered herself together. No one could describe the scorn of her expression or the contemptuous hatred she put into her answer. "You men! You filthy dirty pigs! You're all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!" — W. Somerset Maugham

The Kantian imperative to have the courage to think for oneself has involved a contemptuous disregard for the resources of tradition and an infantile view of authority as inherently oppressive. — Terry Eagleton

When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark, And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark: But, when the tide rises and sharks are around, His voice has a timid and tremulous sound. — Lewis Carroll

Antiwhite racism is developing in sections of our cities where individuals - some of whom have French nationality - contemptuously designate French people as gaulois on the pretext they don't share the same religion, color or origins. — Jean-Francois Cope

Hannibal at eighteen was rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust, but he only half-listened to the climax. He was watching and breathing Lady Murasaki... — Thomas Harris

How come the Muggles don’t hear the bus?” said Harry. “Them!” said Stan contemptuously. “Don’ listen properly, do they? Don’ look properly either. Never notice nuffink, they don’. — J. K. Rowling

I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding — Jane Austen

In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman. — Oswald Spengler

Another distinguished critic has agreed with Gide--that old lady in the anecdote who was accused by her niece of being illogical. For some time she could not be brought to understand what logic was, and when she grasped its true nature she was not so much angry as contemptuous. 'Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish!' she exclaimed. 'How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?' Her nieces, educated young women, thought that she was pass — E. M. Forster

Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium. — Henry W. Fowler

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

I may love individual people, but I am contemptuous of the arrogance , and in a way, it's both ruined me and fuels me. It's ruined me because nobody cares about these issues, and then it's the source of most of my storytelling now, because I am so preoccupied with it. It fuels me, because this is my outrage. I do believe in that great tradition of literature and storytelling. You know, the downfall and the folly of it all. — Larry Fessenden

When parents are educated about how not to involve children in their conflicts and co-parent amicably, a lot of the ill effects of divorce can be alleviated. Divorce is always painful. But kids in a high-conflict marriage or low-conflict but contemptuous ones are often better off in the long run when the parent can disengage. — Stephanie Coontz

I read a lot of conservatives. They are thoughtful and intelligent and annoying, and I always read them because they have viewpoints that challenge my own, even thought they are wrong. But this does me no good because, being intelligent and sophisticated human beings, they are all contemptuous of Trump. They hate him. They find him...vulgar. — Gene Weingarten

So in 1924, Eleanor Roosevelt really gets a sense of what the limits of the battle and the contours of the battle are going to be. The men are contemptuous of the women, and the women really need to organize. She writes an article which becomes an article she writes in different ways over and over and over again: Women need to organize. They need to create their own bosses. They need to have support networks and gangs so that they are a force. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

Ours is not a culture that respects the sick, the old or the vulnerable. We strive for independence, competence, and mastery. In embracing such 'frontier' values, we may become intolerant of human wholeness, contemptuous of anything in ourselves, and in others, that has needs or is capable of suffering. The denial of a vulnerability is the ultimate barrier to compassion. — Rachel Naomi Remen

Whenever I have found that I have blundered, or that my work has been imperfected, and when I have been contemptuously criticised, and even when I have been overpraised, so that I have felt mortified, it has been my greatest comfort to say hundreds of times to myself that 'I have worked as hard as I could, and no man can do more than this.' — Charles Darwin

The New York Times is most definitely a left-wing concern that is openly contemptuous of the conservative, traditional point of view. That is the primary reason the paper may soon dissolve. — Bill O'Reilly

In selling his scheme, Obama has been promoting the myth that our system is no better than those of other advanced nations. His recent statements have betrayed his openly contemptuous attitude toward American health care and out top-flight medical profession. His attitude is consistent with his revealed general attitude about America, which he denigrates every time he gets a chance, especially on foreign soil. — David Limbaugh

I have never had much confidence in my own work, and even now when I am assured (still much to my grateful surprise) that it has value for other people, I feel diffident, reluctant as it were to expose my world of imagination to possibly contemptuous eyes and ears. — J. R. R. Tolkien

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