Condescension Quotes

“A number of years ago, when I was a freshly-appointed instructor, I met, for the first time, a certain eminent historian of science. At the time I could only regard him with tolerant condescension.

I was sorry of the man who, it seemed to me, was forced to hover about the edges of science. He was compelled to shiver endlessly in the outskirts, getting only feeble warmth from the distant sun of science- in-progress; while I, just beginning my research, was bathed in the heady liquid heat up at the very center of the glow.

In a lifetime of being wrong at many a point, I was never more wrong. It was I, not he, who was wandering in the periphery. It was he, not I, who lived in the blaze.

I had fallen victim to the fallacy of the 'growing edge;' the belief that only the very frontier of scientific advance counted; that everything that had been left behind by that advance was faded and dead.

But is that true? Because a tree in spring buds and comes greenly into leaf, are those leaves therefore the tree? If the newborn twigs and their leaves were all that existed, they would form a vague halo of green suspended in mid-air, but surely that is not the tree. The leaves, by themselves, are no more than trivial fluttering decoration. It is the trunk and limbs that give the tree its grandeur and the leaves themselves their meaning.

There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before. 'If I have seen further than other men,' said Isaac Newton, 'it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”
― Isaac Asimov, Adding a Dimension: Seventeen Essays on the History of Science

“People talk to old people like they're children.'Oh you're very old aren't you?' Yeah I'm old. I'm not stupid.”
― craig ferguson

“What are others worth that they have the nerve to sneer at any human being?”
― Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter

“Little people need to belittle.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“...when we condescend, when we act consistently with a sense of the character of people in general which demeans them, we impoverish them AND ourselves, and preclude our having a part in the creation of the highest wealth, the testimony to the mysterious beauty of life we all value in psalms and tragedies and epics and meditations, in short stories and novels.”
― Marilynne Robinson

“Fun tip: Being told 'I kept you in the dark to protect you' is not only frustrating, but condescending as well. It's a truly economical way to demean someone; if you're looking to fit more denigration into an already busy schedule, give it a try.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea

“Have you seen that Chris Rock movie about hair?’ No, I haven’t seen that Chris Rock movie about hair. I don’t need to see a Chris Rock movie about black hair when I have my own head of black hair for reference. But if I had $1 for every white person who has asked me if I’ve seen that movie and then proceeded to educate me on the problems with my own damn hair and the black hair industry I’d have enough money to keep myself in Indian Remy for life.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“HEY NERD BOY! I KNOW YOU THINK YOU'RE SOMEHOW BEING MADE FUN OF, BUT THAT GIRL IS GENUINELY REACHING OUT TO YOU! YOU KNOW ABOUT FRIENDS, RIGHT? INSTEAD OF CONDESCENDING TO HER IN A PREEMPTIVE SHIELDING OF YOUR BRUISED AND BATTERED EGO, MAYBE JUST TALK TO HER ABOUT THE BOOK YOU BOTH LIKE? DO THIS NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE AND YOU'RE WRITING A COMIC TO DEAL WITH ALL THESE FEELINGS YEARS LATER!”
― Brennan Lee Mulligan, Strong Female Protagonist: Book One

“If they don’t understand you, some people will attack you. This is a sign of profound ignorance, which should never be tolerated.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“There is no point in fighting condescension with condescension.”
― Amitava Kumar

“Sadly, the natural world is not short of people who believe that rattling off Latin names incessantly makes them appear clever, whereas most of us know instinctively that this suggests insecurity at best, but possibly social and sexual dysfunction as well. If somebody corrects you sternly by using an obtuse name for something, they probably know neither human nature nor any other kind very profoundly.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Connect with Nature

“Don't try to bring anyone down to your knee, lift everyone up above your head.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Heart Force One: Need No Gun to Defend Society

“Enough with this condescending outlook of life from a high and mighty, intellectual pedestal! Come down, come down to earth, come down to the street, come down to the soil, for that's where life is.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“The Lament of the Demobilised

“Four Years,” some say consolingly. “Oh well,
What’s that? You’re young. And then it must have been
A very fine experience for you!”
And they forget
How others stayed behind and just got on –
Got on the better since we were away.
And we came home and found
They had achieved, and men revered their names
But never mentioned ours;
And no one talked heroics now, and we
Must just go back and start again once more.
“You threw four years into the melting-pot –
Did you indeed!” these others cry. “Oh well,
The more fool you!”
And we’re beginning to agree with them.”
― Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth

“Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

“When all combine without condescension, we shall witness God's face.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulldozer on Duty

“[A man], who is in prosperity, while he sees that others have to contend with great wretchedness and that he could help them, thinks: What concern is it of mine? Let everyone be as happy as Heaven pleases, or as he can make himself; I will take nothing from him nor even envy him, only I do not wish to contribute anything to his welfare or to his assistance in distress! Now no doubt, if such a mode of thinking were a universal law, the human race might very well subsist, and doubtless even better than in a state in which everyone talks of sympathy and good-will, or even takes care occasionally to put it into practice, but, on the other side, also cheats when he can, betrays the rights of men, or otherwise violates them. But although it is possible that a universal law of nature might exist in accordance with that maxim, it is impossible to will that such a principle should have the universal validity of a law of nature. For a will which resolved this would contradict itself, inasmuch as many cases might occur in which one would have need of the love and sympathy of others, and in which, by such a law of nature, sprung from his own will, he would deprive himself of all hope of the aid he desires.”
― Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals

“Then she wants to say that, oh, Christ, of course she knows, the condescension Europeans shower on Americans is not always warranted; she's a novelist, which is tantamount to being a one-woman card catalogue for useless knowledge.”
― Lauren Groff, Florida

“I have more flaws, more faults and more sins than common sense can comprehend; and the condescension in this sentence 'consequents' in more to end.”
― Criss Jami

“He had this in common with Oedipus, that he was growing old. Even to himself it had become obvious. He had lost interest in other people’s affairs, and seldom attended when they spoke to him. He was fond of talking himself but often forgot what he was going to say, and even when he succeeded, it seldom seemed worth the effort. His phrases and gestures had become stiff and set, his anecdotes, once so successful, fell flat, his silence was as meaningless as his speech. Yet he had led a healthy, active life, had worked steadily, made money, educated his children. There was nothing and no one to blame: he was simply growing old.”
― E.M. Forster, The Celestial Omnibus and other Stories

“The drive for expression takes a million shapes, when all combine without condescension we'll see God's face.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulldozer on Duty

“...the Men Who Knew came out of the woodwork.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me

“The girls, their feet in the cold water, utter cries like a seagull's. Moreover, they are immediately transformed into seagulls, and these in turn into the obscure object of desire, swaying and waddling like the ostrich at the end of Buñuel's film. The summer has arrived.

I was very anxious she might be disappointed and I could never have forgiven her for that. I shall never forgive anyone who passes a condescending or contemptuous judgement on America.

They are at the centre of the world and they don't know it. What they prefer is to be at the centre of books and the earth.

Only sequoias have the heroic, fabulous, antediluvian stature of the first days of the world, being contemporary with the great prehistoric animals. And indeed their scaley bark resembles a carapace. They are the only trees on a par with the geological and mineral scenario of the deserts. After them it is the little species that have triumphed.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“It's routine, it's a dance and it really needs to stop... And I really wish that these students and the professors who support them understood how dumb they are being considered - not how dumb they look 'cause then it becomes "why are you so concerned what white people think of us?" That's not the point, it's that these people quietly are thinking "these people are dumb and so we're going to approach them on their level." I don't know where people get the idea that that's black strength or that it's "progressive". People REALLY need to get past that. And I just think that black students who protest over things that don't make sense - there's such thing as sensible black protest - but if it's about something that Doesn't. Make. Any. Damn. Sense. And you're making these demands that your school becomes some sort of anti racism academy along the lines of Maoist ideology - you have to understand that the people who give in to you think that you are DUMB AS S*** and you have to understand that that is a problem. You've been condescended to. But no, they don't get it, they just think that to stick your fist in the air and yell certain slogans makes you somebody of higher wisdom and makes you a person who is continuing the struggle of Dr. King. No.”
― John McWhorter

“It's sort of self-congratulatory to be the person who walks around pitying other people. I don't do that very much. I just know that there are plenty of people who are in terrible trouble and can't get out. And so I'm impatient with those who think that it's easy for people to get out of trouble. I think there are some people who really need a lot of help.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

“Amity above assumption, comity over condescension, that's the way forward.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mücadele Muhabbet: Gospel of An Unarmed Soldier

“Never Ask (The Sonnet)

Never ask a poet,
Why they write what they write.
If they knew why they write,
No poetry will have any light.
Never ask a painter,
Why they paint what they paint.
If they knew why they paint,
All paint will turn bleak and faint.
Never ask a scientist,
Why they are curious the way they are.
If they knew the reason for their curiosity,
There wouldn't be any science, nor uplift's desire.
The drive for expression takes a million shapes,
When all combine without condescension we'll see God's face.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulldozer on Duty

“... you saw how he was more than happy to serve Amarantha to remain unscathed.'
...
Rhys let out a dark laugh. 'Well played, Tamlin. You're learning.'

Ire contorted Tamlin's face at the condescension.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings and Ruin

“The belief that you know more than everyone else is a recipe for mediocrity.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“You've driven one of these before."

"Yeah." One of these, nice way to put it. Oh, you've held a tennis racket before, oh, you've worn shoes before, oh, you've used a toothbrush before. Bug Eyes is a weisenheimer but he was right. The lady is white. That surprised condescension in the voice is an unmistakable characteristic of the Caucasian, a special characteristic of the female Caucasian. The funny thing is they don't even know they do it.”
― Ann Petry, The Narrows