Deference Quotes

• The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all others, charity.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Positive, Forgiveness, Respect

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• Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.

  William Shenstone

  Compliment, Indirect, Elegant

  William Shenstone (1764). “The Works, in Verse and Prose”, p.254

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• Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Merit, Esteem, Eminence

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• Gentlemen, be courteous to the old maids, no matter how poor and plain and prim, for the only chivalry worth having is that which is the readiest to to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve womankind, regardless of rank, age, or color.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Color, Gentleman, Age

  Louisa May Alcott (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Louisa May Alcott (Illustrated)”, p.604, Delphi Classics

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• Great men always pay deference to greater.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Greatness, Men, Pay

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• If we wish our civilization to survive we must break with the habit of deference to great men.

  Karl Popper

  Men, Civilization, Wish

  Karl Popper (2012). “The Open Society and its Enemies”, p.33, Routledge

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• People who expect deference resent mere civility.

  Mason Cooley

  People, Civility, Resent

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• Among well bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt for others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.

  David Hume

  Air, People, Victory

  David Hume (1870). “Essays, Literary, Moral, and Political”, p.463

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  I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.

  William Penn

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.

  William Hazlitt

  Self, Gentleman, Return

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Table Talk: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things”

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• The most congenial social occasions are those ruled by cheerful deference of each for all.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Happiness, Cheerful, Social

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• Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or "surrender" as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing-absolutely nothing-in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Teaching, Arrogance, Islam

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.129, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.

  William Shenstone

  Silence, Gains, Persons

  William Shenstone (1764). “The Works, in Verse and Prose”, p.52

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• The feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom.

  Mencius

  Feelings

  "The Mencius". 2A:6, as translated by Wing-tsit Chan in "A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy", p. 65, 1963.

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• Let us not live a life … that would bring regret. … It is not going to matter very much how much money you made, what kind of a house you lived in, what kind of a car you drove, the size of your bank account—any of those things. What is going to matter is that dear woman who has walked with you side by side as your companion through all of the years of life and those children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and their faithfulness and their looking to you … with respect and love and deference and kindness.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Children, Kindness, Regret

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• The authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools; and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind.

  Edward Gibbon

  Plato, School, Exercise

  Edward Gibbon (1840). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1”, p.55

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• Knowledge, which is power, knows no limits, either in its enslavement of creation or in its deference to worldly masters.

  Theodor Adorno

  Knowledge, Limits, Creation

  Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno (2002). “Dialectic of Enlightenment”, p.2, Stanford University Press

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• The disquieting thing about newscaster-babble or editorial-speak is its ready availability as a serf idiom, a vernacular of deference. "Mr. Secretary, are we any nearer to bringing about a dialogue in this process ?

  Christopher Hitchens

  Availability, Speak, Process

  Christopher Hitchens (2014). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.252, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• [F]riends praise your abilities to the skies, submit to you in argument, and seem to have the greatest deference for you; but, though they may ask it, you never find them following your advice upon their own affairs; nor allowing you to manage your own.

  William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne

  Sky, Advice, May

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• Truth cannot be sacrificed at the altar of pretended tolerance. Real tolerance is deference to all ideas, not indifference to the truth.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Real, Ideas, Tolerance

  Twitter post from Jan 13, 2015

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• The president's need for complete candor and objectivity from advisers calls for great deference from the courts.

  Warren E. Burger

  Objectivity, President, Needs

  Warren E. Burger (1984). “Significant Supreme Court Opinions of the Honorable Warren E. Burger: Chief Justice of the United States”

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• Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy as the sensitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.

  William Shenstone

  Doe, Intimacy, Sensitive

  William Shenstone (1764). “The Works in Verse and Prose, of William Shenstone, Esq;: Essays on men, manners, and things. A description of The Leasowes, the seat of the late William Shenstone, Esq. Verses to Mr. Shenstone”, p.207

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• Nothing is more natural to men in office, than to look with peculiar deference towards that authority to which they owe their official existence.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Men, Office, Peculiar

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2015). “The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution”, p.109, Coventry House Publishing

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• A child might be made to bow every time he met a certain person by pressure on his neck muscles, and bowing would finally become automatic. It would not, however, be an act of recognition or deference on his part, till he did it with a certain end in view - as having a certain meaning.

  John Dewey

  Children, Views, Might

  John Dewey (2012). “Democracy and Education”, p.34, Courier Corporation

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• Deference and intimacy live far apart.

  Moliere

  Intimacy, Wooing

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