#inferior

We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with essences. The only ideals allowed are healthy ones -- those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#ambition #democracy #egalitarianism #equality #essence

There's not alcoholic in the world who wants to be told what to do. Alcoholics are sometimes described as egomaniacs with inferiority complexes. Or, to be cruder, a piece of shit that the universe revolves around. ↗

— Anthony Kiedis

#inferiority-complex #alcohol

The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance. ↗

— Jane Austen

#clichés #desirability #disdain #education #empowerment

To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly. ↗

— James D. Watson

#apologise #continent #drawn #genetically #i

I have often noticed that a bribe has that effect - it changes a relation. The man who offers a bribe gives away a little of his own importance; the bribe once accepted, he becomes the inferior, like a man who has paid for a woman. ↗

— Graham Greene

#away #becomes #bribe #changes #effect

The truly proud man knows neither superiors or inferiors. The first he does not admit of - the last he does not concern himself about. ↗

— William Hazlitt

#admit #concern #does #first #himself

I had to confront my fears and master my every demonic thought about inferiority, insecurity, or the fear of being black, young, and gifted in this Western culture. ↗

— Lauryn Hill

#being #black #confront #culture #demonic

Fear is the thought of admitted inferiority. ↗

— Elbert Hubbard

#fear #inferiority #thought

The foreign accent was a promise, and indeed, all over the country, European imports added spice to the sciences, the arts, and other areas. What one had to give was not considered inferior to what one received. ↗

— Rudolf Arnheim

#added #areas #arts #considered #country

When I was young I had so many inferiority complexes. I had an inferiority complex because I didn't go to university. I had an inferiority complex because I didn't train. Then it gets tiring. And you do get bored of it. ↗

— Helena Bonham Carter

#bored #complex #complexes #get #gets