120 Contemptible Quotes To Inspire You

Following is our list of contemptible quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about familiarity breeds contempt.

Famous Contemptible Quotes

Contempt; the feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed. — Ambrose Bierce

Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings. — Alice Duer Miller

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain. — James A. Baldwin

The most unequivocal sign of contempt for man is to regard everybody merely as a means to one's own ends, or of no account whatever. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The unarmed man is not just defenseless - he is also contemptible. — Niccolo Machiavelli

You can have no influence over those for whom you have underlying contempt. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear. — Albert Camus

Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose Public Records to be true. — William Blake

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Pride that dines on vanity, sups on contempt. — Benjamin Franklin

The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman. — Henry Fielding

A man's admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him. — Alexis de Tocqueville

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore. — Samuel Butler

The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors. — William Hazlitt

Short Contemptible Quotes

• Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures. — Cesar Chavez
• Familiarity breeds contempt, while rarity wins admiration. — Apuleius
• Self-assurance is contemptible and fatal unless it is self-knowledge. — George Santayana
• There is a wide difference between true courage and a mere contempt of life. — Cato The Elder
• What contemptible scoundrel has stolen the cork to my lunch? — W. Clement Stone
• Rotten travesty. Yeah. Send me to jail for contempt. Try that. Go ahead. — Jack Kevorkian
• Familiarity with evil breeds not contempt but acceptance. — Roy Hattersley
• JUDGE: Are you trying to show contempt for this court? MAE WEST: I was doin' my best to hide it. — Mae West
• To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself. — Albert Einstein
• Familiarity breeds contempt - and children. — Mark Twain

Contemptible Image Quotes

Love Contempt Quotes

I believe we're going to find that respect and affection are essential to all relationships working and contempt destroys them. — John M. Gottman

Young people nowadays love luxury; they have bad manners and contempt for authority. They show disrespect for old people... contradict their parents, talk constantly in front of company, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers. — Socrates

Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together. — Milan Kundera

Whatsoever is done out of pure love, be it ever so little or contemptible in the sight of men, is wholly fruitful; for God measures more with how much love one worketh, than the amount he doeth. — Ellen G. White

Practice the vocabulary of love - unlearn the language of hate and contempt. — Sathya Sai Baba

Love of glory can only create a great hero; contempt of glory creates a great man. — CharlesMaurice de Talleyrand

The surest aid in combating the male's disease of self-contempt is to be loved by a clever woman. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Of all afflictions, the worst is self contempt. — Berthold Auerbach

Antipathy, dissimilarity of views, hate, contempt, can accompany true love. — J. August Strindberg

Love of glory can only create a great hero; contempt of glory creates a great man. — Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Familiarity Breeds Contempt Quotes

Familiarity breeds contempt. — Publilius Syrus

Familiarity with nature never breeds contempt. The more one learns, the more one expects surprises, and the more one becomes aware of the inscrutable. — Archibald Rutledge

If ever a man and his wife, or a man and his mistress, who pass nights as well as days together, absolutely lay aside all good breeding, their intimacy will soon degenerate into a coarse familiarity, infallibly productive of contempt or disgust. — Lord Chesterfield

There can be no prestige without mystery, for familiarity breeds contempt. — Charles De Gaulle

Familiarity breeds contempt, but without a little familiarity it's impossible to breed anything. — Noel Coward

Distance makes the heart grow fonder. — Simone Elkeles

Familiarity breeds contempt only when it breeds inattention. — George Santayana

But he who knows what insanity is, is sane; whereas insanity can no more be sensible of its own existence, than blindness can see itself. — Apuleius

In politics, familiarity doesn't breed contempt. It breeds votes. — Paul Lazarsfeld

Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it. — Mark Twain

Feeling Contempt Quotes

Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control. — Arthur Schopenhauer

In order to feel contempt, you generally need to cherish some kind of feelings. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

I have problems with a lot of photography, particularly street photography and photojournalism - objectifying the other, finding the contempt and exoticism that you might feel within yourself or toward yourself and projecting it out to others. There can be an abusive power to photography, too. — Barbara Kruger

If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt. — Jim Butcher

You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

To be outspoken when truth is under attack, when charity is being bruise, or when important issues of life are at stake is a good and courageous thing. To be outspoken when nothing is at stake except the feelings of someone else is a small and contemptible thing. — Lawrence G. Lovasik

Renown? I've already got more of it than those I respect, and will never have as much as those for whom I feel contempt. — Jean Rostand

How little praise warms out of a man the good that is in him, as the sneer of contempt which he feels is unjust chill the ardor to excel. — Edward George BulwerLytton

When a man is not amused, he feels an involuntary contempt for those who are. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

There are some surely whom you like and whom you dislike, for whom you entertain esteem and for whom you feel contempt? Have you not thought that you have some duties toward them, that you can aid them in leading better lives? — Paul Bourget

Contemptuous Quotes

Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience. — Christopher Hitchens

Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgasmic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming a strangely joyless national compulsion, if not a contemptuous mockery. — Betty Friedan

Children are contemptuous, haughty, irritable, envious, sneaky, selfish, lazy, flighty, timid, liars and hypocrites, quick to laugh and cry, extreme in expressing joy and sorrow, especially about trifles, they'll do anything to avoid pain but they enjoy inflicting it: little men already. — Jean De La Bruyere

He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it. — W. Somerset Maugham

Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news. — John Le Carre

The result is ... that there's no room left in the world for the weird – though plenty for crude, contemptuous, wisecracking, fun-poking imitations of it. — Fritz Leiber

I consider it a mark of great prudence in a man to abstain from threats or any contemptuous expressions, for neither of these weaken the enemy, but threats make him more cautious, and the other excites his hatred, and a desire to revenge himself. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Government is contemptuous of true religion when it confiscates the taxes of Caesar to finance the things of God. — Sam Ervin

I'm crass, contemptuous and crude, obstreperous, obnoxious, rambunctiously raw and rude. — Mario Cantone

It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, 'the greatest', but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is. — Sydney J. Harris

Detestable Quotes

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

The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education. — Frederic Bastiat

Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel. — Thomas Paine

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony. — Noam Chomsky

We should let God be the One to praise us and not praise ourselves. For God detests those who commend themselves. Let others applaud our good deeds. — Pope Clement I

Most bad," the host concluded. "If you ask me, something sinister lurks in men who avoid wine, games, the company of lovely women, and dinnertime conversation. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly detest everyone around them. — Mikhail Bulgakov

I hate imperialism. I detest colonialism. And I fear the consequences of their last bitter struggle for life. We are determined, that our nation, and the world as a whole, shall not be the play thing of one small corner of the world — Sukarno

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. — H. L. Mencken

God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsible, and we must endure it, till we can get rid of it without destroying the last hope of free government in the world. — Millard Fillmore

I detest 'Jingle Bells,' 'White Christmas,' 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,' and the obscene spending bonanza that nowadays seems to occupy not just December, but November and much of October, too. — Richard Dawkins

People Writing About Contemptible

Name	Quotes	Likes
Ambrose Bierce quotes on war, love	957	7203
Alice Duer Miller quotes on life, education and death	26	70
James A. Baldwin quotes on love, change and education	304	1627
Friedrich Nietzsche quotes on god, love and morality	2473	32550
Niccolo Machiavelli quotes on power, politics and religion	374	6168
Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes on courage, leadership and equality	1171	25085

More Contemptible Quotes

I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Suppressing a culture is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence. — Coretta Scott King

Hurt people hurt people. That's how pain patterns gets passed on, generation after generation after generation. Break the chain today. Meet anger with sympathy, contempt with compassion, cruelty with kindness. Greet grimaces with smiles. Forgive and forget about finding fault. Love is the weapon of the future. — Yehuda Berg

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering and shame.In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness,all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. — Hermann Hesse

God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools...and He has not been disappointed....If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world. — Antonin Scalia

Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. — Louis D. Brandeis

I have nothing but contempt for the deceitful thing men call 'happiness,' and find myself with no choice but to push my characters, whom I pour my heart and soul out to create, into the abyss of tragedy. — Gen Urobuchi

Hezbollah's contempt for human suffering is total, as it showed once again this morning when its rockets murdered two Israeli Arab children in Nazareth. — Tom Lantos

People cheat on each other in a hundred different ways: indifference, emotional neglect, contempt, lack of respect, years of refusal of intimacy. Cheating doesn't begin to describe the ways that people let each other down. — Esther Perel

Karpov, Kasparov, Korchnoi have absolutely destroyed chess by their immoral, unethical, prearranged games. These guys are really the lowest dogs around, and if people knew the truth about them, they would be held in more contempt than Ben Johnson, the runner, and they're going to know the truth when I do this book! — Bobby Fischer

Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life. — Elizabeth Goudge

Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose. — Czeslaw Milosz

Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose. — Ceslaw Milosz

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse predict an ailing marriage: Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling and Contempt. The worst of these is contempt. — John M. Gottman

I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts. — John Steinbeck

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. — W. E. B. Du Bois

You cannot settle a new country without suffering, exposure, and danger. Cheerful endurance of hardships and contempt of surroundings become a virtue in a pioneer. Comfort is a comparatively new thing in the United States. — Ida Tarbell

And it's a - it's a term that's based on contempt; it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism, and, everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll. — Iggy Pop

The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. — Albert Camus

For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt; whereas the absent one, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention. — Lord Chesterfield

Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man. — Lord Chesterfield

When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man. — Diogenes

Comedy is defiance. It's a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety. And it's the laughter that allows hope to creep back on the inhale. — Will Durst

From inability to let well alone; from too much zeal for the new and contempt for what is old; from putting knowledge before wisdom, science before art and cleverness before common sense; from treating patients as cases; and from making the cure of the disease more grievous than the endurance of the same, Good Lord, deliver us. — Sir Robert Hutchison, 1st Baronet

When the Soviet Union came to be run by a valetudinarian mafioso like Brezhnev, the thing itself had fallen into self-contempt. — Leonid Brezhnev

As men neither fear nor respect what has been made contemptible, all honor to him who makes oppression laughable as well as detestable. Armies cannot protect it then; and walls which have remained impenetrable to cannon have fallen before a roar of laughter or a hiss of contempt. — Edwin Percy Whipple

I have a deep-seated distrust and even contempt for people who are driven by ambition to conquer the world … those who cannot control themselves and produce vast amounts of crap that no one cares about. I find it unattractive. I like the Zen artists: they’d do some work, and then they’d stop for a while. — Saul Leiter

These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. — John Muir

My father had a deep and lifelong contempt for politicians in general ("They tell lies," he used to say with wonder, "even when they don't have to"). — Gore Vidal

If any man despises me, that is his problem. My only concern is not doing or saying anything deserving of contempt. — Marcus Aurelius

We should always look back on our own past with a sort of contempt, as long as the tenderness is there - but please let some of the contempt be there. — Dennis Potter

Isn't it fitting that so many of those who have contempt for the private sector will soon find themselves back in it? — Mitt Romney

One of the most depressing features of the ethical side of the matter is that instead of such methods arousing contempt they are more or less openly admired. And this is logical. Canonise 'business success,' and men who made a success like that of the Standard Oil Trust become national heroes! — Ida Tarbell

Incivility is not a Vice of the Soul, but the effect of several Vices; of Vanity, Ignorance of Duty, Laziness, Stupidity, Distraction, Contempt of others, and Jealousy. — Jean De La Bruyere

Know how to play the card of contempt. It is the most politic kind of revenge. For there are many of whom we should have known nothing if their distinguished opponents had taken no notice of them. There is no revenge like oblivion, for it is the entombment of the unworthy in the dust of their own nothingness. — Baltasar Gracian

In Conclusion

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