#superiority

Quoting Samuel Johnson: "Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves. ↗

— James Boswell

#equality #fear #gender #intelligence #men

Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper. ↗

— Wilkie Collins

#control #dispute #empowerment #intelligence #men

Harriet was silent. She suddenly saw Wimsey in a new light. She knew him to be intelligent, clean, courteous, wealthy, well-read, amusing and enamoured, but he had not so far produced in her that crushing sense of utter inferiority which leads to prostration and hero-worship. But she now realised that there was, after all, something god-like about him. He could control a horse. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#hero-worship #horses #love #riding #superiority

Everyone judges constantly: positively judging one person is the same as negatively judging everyone else; it is to say that that person is superior in some sense. ↗

— Criss Jami

#human #human-nature #judging #judgmental #logic

Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did. ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#education #empowerment #inequality #knowledge #men

Man of an hard heart! Hear me, Proud, Stern, and Cruel! You could have saved me; you could have restored me to happiness and virtue, but would not! You are the destroyer of my Soul; You are my Murderer, and on you fall the curse of my death and my unborn Infant’s! Insolent in your yet-unshaken virtue, you disdained the prayers of a Penitent; But God will show mercy, though you show none. And where is the merit of your boasted virtue? What temptations have you vanquished? Coward! you have fled from it, not opposed seduction. But the day of Trial will arrive! Oh! then when you yield to impetuous passions! when you feel that Man is weak, and born to err; When shuddering you look back upon your crimes, and solicit with terror the mercy of your God, Oh! in that fearful moment think upon me! Think upon your Cruelty! Think upon Agnes, and despair of pardon! ↗

— Matthew Gregory Lewis

#arrogance #callousness #catholicism #cold-hearted-people #cruelty

Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#being #decrees #destroying #inferior #inferiority

One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority. ↗

— Napoleon Bonaparte

#every #maintain #must #superiority #tactics

Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves. ↗

— William Ellery Channing

#break #establish #great #great minds #intellectual