Superiors Quotes - Page 37

• ...But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Philosophy, Cat, Thinking

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.77, Simon and Schuster

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• We should pay as much reverence to youth as we should to age; there are points in which you young folks are altogether our superiors: and I can't help constantly crying out to persons of my own years, when busied about their young people--leave them alone; don't be always meddling with their affairs, which they can manage for themselves; don't be always insisting upon managing their boats, and putting your oars in the water with theirs.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Years, Water, People

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “The book of snobs. Sketches and travels in London. Denis Duval”, p.131

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• I am persuaded that if the brutes even--if the dog, the horse, the ox, the elephant, the bird, could speak, they would confess, that, at the bottom of their nature, their instincts, their sensations, their obtuse intelligence, assisted by organs less perfect than ours, there is a clouded, secret sentiment of this existence of a superior and primordial Being, from whom all emanates, and to whom all returns.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Dog, Horse, Elephants

  Alphonse de Lamartine (1850). “Lamartine on Atheism: Atheism Among the People”, p.11

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• The superior man, while his parents are alive, reverently nourishes them; and, when they are dead, reverently sacrifices to them. His thought to the end of his life is how not to disgrace them.

  Confucius

  Sacrifice, Men, Parent

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• It is the way of the superior man to prefer the concealment of his virtue, while it daily becomes more illustrious, and it is the way of the mean man to seek notoriety, while he daily goes more and more to ruin.

  Confucius

  Mean, Men, Way

  Confucius (2009). “The Confucian Analects, the Great Learning & the Doctrine of the Mean”, p.431, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.

  Confucius

  Men, Soul, Superior Man

  "A Little Book of Aphorisms". Book by Frederick B. Wilcox, p. 185, 1947.

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• It's simply not enough to just show up and do your work. Superior performance is not, never has been, nor will it ever be, the by-product of ordinary efforts.

  Gary Ryan

  Effort, Ordinary, Enough

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• 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

  Judging, Persons, Positively

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.94, Criss Jami

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• Every new generation believes its own period to be absolutely superior intellectually - greater than all past cultures yet equal among its modern cultures.

  Criss Jami

  Believe, Past, Generations

  Criss Jami (2016). “Healology”, p.38, Criss Jami

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• When homo sapiens is changing, it will not be by the whole race gaining simultaneously whatever qualities better fit it for survival, but rather by certain types of mankind proving superior to the rest in survival value, so that they contribute a larger proportion to the later generations, and in so doing drag the average qualities of humanity in the same direction.

  Charles Galton Darwin

  Race, Average, Humanity

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• True kindness is a pure divine affinity, Not founded upon human consanguinity. It is a spirit, not a blood relation, Superior to family and station.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Kindness, Blood, Spirit

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.217, Jazzybee Verlag

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• A new life is innocent, like an empty page, ready for the hard lessons ahead. GENNITA LOW, Facing Fear To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.

  Ouida

  Vices, New Life, Lessons

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• If you believe that there's a being superior to yourself and that will guide you, strengthen you that helps a lot but, you know, you just have to stay the course. You just got to stay in there. You cannot be waffling or taking a poll to see what people think. You have to do what you think is right.

  George H. W. Bush

  Believe, Thinking, People

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• The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with steady restriction among all the thrifty, energetic and superior stocks constitutes a national and race danger which is impossible to exaggerate. I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed before another year has passed.

  Winston Churchill

  Cutting, Race, Years

  Winston Churchill's addree as Home Secretary to Prime Minister Asquith on compulsory sterilization of 'the feeble-minded and insane', as quoted in "'Race', Sport and British Society" edited by Ben Carrington and Ian Mcdonald, 2001.

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• Every being ought to do that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Sake, Constitution, Rational

  Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (2015). “Stoic Six Pack: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius The Golden Sayings Fragments and Discourses of Epictetus Letters from a Stoic and The Enchiridion”, p.41, Lulu.com

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• What greater weakness can there be than not to know what is the source of one's being, of one's life, of one's senses, of one's knowledge, and what is to be their end? What can be more deeply disheartening than to wonder whether one's soul is, perhaps, a material thing, like a stone or a reptile, corruptible like these base creatures? Is there not more strength and greatness of mind in admitting the idea of a being superior to all other beings, who has made them all and to whom all owe their existence; of a being supremely perfect, who is pure, who had no beginning and can have no ending, of whom our soul is the image and, so to speak, a portion, being a spiritual and immortal thing?

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Spiritual, Men, Ideas

  "Of Freethinkers". "Characters", Book by Jean De La Bruyère, www.ourcivilisation.com. 1688.

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• Feminism is the result of a few ignorant and literal-minded women letting the cat out of the bag about which is the superior sex. Once women made it public that they could do things better than men, they were, of course, forced to do them.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Sex, Cat, Men

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People”, p.87, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity - the political allocation of wealth and opportunity - is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

  George Will

  Opportunity, Justice, Political

  "Tincture of Lawlessness". www.realclearpolitics.com. May 14, 2009.

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• With respect to the authority of great names, it should be remembered that he alone deserves to have any weight and influence with posterity, who has shown himself superior to the particular and predominant error of his own times; who, like the peak of Teneriffe, has hailed the intellectual sun before its beams have reached the horizon of common minds.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Names, Errors, Mind

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”, p.15

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• Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom; therefore, when we are in doubt and puzzle out the truth by our own exertions, we have gained a something that will stay by us, and which will serve us again. But, if to avoid the trouble of the search we avail ourselves of the superior information of a friend, such knowledge will not remain with us; we have not bought but borrowed it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Doubt, Information, Temples

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.144

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• Ideas may be superior to vested interest. They are also very often the children of vested interest.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Children, Ideas, May

  "The Age of Uncertainty". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977.

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• People who think of themselves as tough-minded and realistic, among them influential political leaders and businessmen as well as go-getters and hustlers of smaller caliber, tend to take it for granted that human nature is selfish and that life is a struggle in which only the fittest may survive. According to this philosophy, the basic law by which man must live, in spite of his surface veneer of civilization, is the law of the jungle. The "fittest" are those who can bring to the struggle superior force, superior cunning, and superior ruthlessness.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Philosophy, Selfish, Struggle

  "Language in Thought and Action". Book by S. I. Hayakawa (p. 8), 1949.

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• When we trust the makers of baby formula more than we do our own ability to nourish our babies, we lose a chance to claim an aspect of our power as women. Thinking that baby formula is as good as breast milk is believing that thirty years of technology is superior to three million years of nature's evolution. Countless women have regained trust in their bodies through nursing their children, even if they weren't sure at first that they could do it. It is an act of female power, and I think of it as feminism in its purest form.

  Christiane Northrup

  Baby, Children, Believe

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• Among these widely differing families of men, the first that attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power, and in enjoyment, is the white, or European, the MAN pre-eminently so called, below him appear the Negro and the Indian.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Men, White, Attention

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2003). “Democracy in America”, p.304, Barnes & Noble Publishing

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• The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment.

  Karl Marx

  Men, Self, Hands

  Karl Marx, Lawrence H. Simon (1994). “Marx: Selected Writings”, p.161, Hackett Publishing

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