Intellectual Superiority Quotes

• 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

  Spiritual, Judging, Mind

  William Ellery Channing (1840). “Lectures on the elevation of the labouring portion of the community”, p.35

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• What a revolting contrast exists in England between the slavery of women and the intellectual superiority of women writers.

  Flora Tristan

  Intellectual, Slavery, England

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• In fact, there is clear evidence of black intellectual superiority: in 1984, 92 percent of blacks voted to retire Ronald Reagan, compared to only 36 percent of whites.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Black, Intellectual, Facts

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• The fame that goes with wealth and beauty is fleeting and fragile; intellectual superiority is a possession glorious and eternal.

  Sallust

  Intellectual, Fleeting, Wealth

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• The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.

  Mark Twain

  Recovery, Animal, Intelligent

  Mark Twain (2009). “Mark Twain’s Book of Animals”, p.264, Univ of California Press

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• Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.

  Mark Twain

  Sports, Dog, Pain

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• Love and respect woman. Look to her not only for comfort, but for strength and inspiration and the doubling of your intellectual and moral powers. Blot out from your mind any idea of superiority; you have none.

  Giuseppe Mazzini

  Respect, Inspiration, Ideas

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• It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.

  Mark Twain

  Nature, Animal, Men

  Mark Twain (2009). “Mark Twain’s Book of Animals”, p.304, Univ of California Press

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• It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made he (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one...that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

  Mark Twain

  Sports, Dog, Pain

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• Children, by nature, are keen, passionate and curious. What was referred to as laziness is often merely an awakening of sensitivity, a psychological inability to submit to certain absurd duties, and a natural result of the distorted, unbalanced education given to them. This laziness, which leads to an insuperable reluctance to learn, is, contrary to appearances, sometimes proof of intellectual superiority and a condemnation of the teacher.

  Octave Mirbeau

  Teacher, Children, Intellectual

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• Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.

  Mark Twain

  Humble, Air, Hands

  Mark Twain, John S. Tuckey (1972). “Mark Twain's Fables of Man”, p.115, Univ of California Press

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• The ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency which naturally and properly belonged to intellectual superiority.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Order, Long, Intellectual

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