#superior

Authority is not a quality one person "has," in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him. ↗

— Erich Fromm

#authority #him #interpersonal #looks #person

Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him. ↗

— Romain Gary

#befalls #declaration #dignity #him #humor

One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down. ↗

— Pauline Kael

#him #his #philistine #put #reverence

Incongruity, they say, is one of the main ingredients of humor. Maybe it's because everybody can feel superior to me. I honestly don't know. ↗

— Emmett Kelly

#everybody #feel #honestly #humor #i

Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true. ↗

— Pete Townshend

#being #brilliant #british #class #culturally

In the voyeurism of Reality TV, the viewer's passivity is kept intact, pampered and massaged and force-fed Chicken McNuggets of carefully edited snippets that permit him or her to sit in easy judgment and feel superior at watching familiar strangers make fools of themselves. Reality TV looks in only one direction: down. ↗

— James Wolcott

#chicken #direction #down #easy #edited

Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#fundamentalist #got #haven #i #stuff

We have never understood why men mount the heads of animals and hang them up to look down on their conquerors. Possibly it feels good to these men to be superior to animals, but it does seem that if they were sure of it they would not have to prove it. Often a man who is afraid must constantly demonstrate his courage and, in the case of the hunter, must keep a tangible record of his courage. For ourselves, we have had mounted in a small hardwood plaque one perfect borrego [bighorn sheep] dropping. And where another man can say, "There was an animal, but because I am greater than he, he is dead and I am alive, and there is his head to prove it," we can say, "There was an animal, and for all we know there still is and here is proof of it. He was very healthy when we last heard of him. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#hunting #trophy #courage

This pre-eminence is something [men] have unjustly arrogated to themselves. And when it's said that women must be subject to men, the phrase should be understood in the same sense as when we say we are subject to natural disasters, diseases, and all the other accidents of this life: it's not a case of being subjected in the sense of obeying, but rather of suffering an imposition, not a case of serving them fearfully, but rather of tolerating them in a spirit of Christian charity, since they have been given to us by God as a spiritual trial. ↗

— Moderata Fonte

#empowerment #feminism #gender #inequality #men

It is vital that we avoid any hint of moral superiority in our dealings with one another in the environmental movement; if it developed into factionalism it would destroy us, as factionalism has destroyed so many other progressive movements in America. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#factionalism #moral-superiority #environmentalism