Top 140 Contempt Quotes

Never before has a civilization reached such a degree of a contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in mortification, felt such a rage to live.

Today, ‘fat’ has become not a description of size but a moral category tainted with criticism and contempt.

More negatives write than call. It’s a cheap shot for me to go on the air with the critical letters or E-mail I get because the reaction of the listeners is always an instantaneous expression of sympathy for me and contempt for the poor critic.

God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind of person he selects to receive it.

The sword of contempt has kept the judiciary away from searching public scrutiny, particularly within the mainstream media. The judiciary is obviously happy to live with this situation as well.

Research on child abuse suggests that religious beliefs can foster, encourage, and justify the abuse of children. When contempt for sex underlies teachings, this creates a breeding ground for abuse.

Preservation of one’s own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.

Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

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

The wide and unregulated power of contempt given to the courts has been deliberately interpreted by the courts in a manner which has served to intimidate the media from exposing corruption and misbehaviour by the courts and judges.

I had to get rid of any idea of hell or any idea of the afterlife. That’s what held me, kept me down. So now I just have nothing but contempt for the institution of the church.

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

Like any friendship or marriage, familiarity breeds more contempt, and love, and everything.

The particular article ought in my opinion to be treated with absolute contempt. It is too vile to touch.

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.

Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.

It is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind.

Terrorism is contempt for human dignity.

As the Persians wrote very little about how they ran their affairs, the Greek propaganda of the 5th century B.C. has for centuries gone virtually unchallenged – indeed, for Edward Said, it was the beginning of Europe’s long habit of misunderstanding and ill-informed contempt of the Middle East.

Clinton’s hands remain incredibly clean, don’t they, and Tony Blair’s smile remains as wide as ever. I view these guises with profound contempt.

This court is in contempt of human life, dignity and justice.

I’m always annoyed about why black people have to bear the brunt of everybody else’s contempt. If we are not totally understanding and smiling, suddenly we’re demons.

I think when it comes to women who write or who fancy ourselves ‘hip downtown literati’, there is a certain contempt for being overly sexual or really looking for boyfriends. We tend to be marginalized as some ‘Sex & The City’ Carrie Bradshaw chick-lit dummies who just want shoes and a ring.

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.

Above all, it was the style of Quakerism I was brought up with – an aggressive contempt for popular opinion. The assumption is that most people think something that is wrong, which is great.

I never met Lou Reed, never was one of those journalists lucky enough to be the object of his derision, contempt, condescension, indifference, and occasional piercing honesty.

Antipathy, dissimilarity of views, hate, contempt, can accompany true love.

In 2017, Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, an Arizona sheriff who was ordered by a federal court to stop racially profiling and was convicted of criminal contempt when he refused. Arpaio, by targeting Latinx people, was violating both the U.S. Constitution and our civil rights.

Anger and hate against one we love steels our hearts, but contempt or pity leaves us silent and ashamed.

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.

In the relations of a weak Government and a rebellious people there comes a time when every act of the authorities exasperates the masses, and every refusal to act excites their contempt.

I want to remind people that the Nazis weren’t able to take the Jews to the crematoriums immediately. The German people wouldn’t have allowed for it. Instead, the Nazis had to change public opinion. They marginalized the Jewish people, disparaged them, and made them objects of contempt.

Whence it is somewhat strange that any men from so mean and silly a practice should expect commendation, or that any should afford regard thereto; the which it is so far from meriting, that indeed contempt and abhorrence are due to it.

There is a certain belief that so long as something is published in cyberspace there is no need to respect the laws of contempt or libel. This is mistaken.

But we’re very much an American band and that’s that. I think that’s part of the appeal outside of this country and it might be part of the reason people turned away from us within this country, because familiarity breeds contempt.

To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget.

Nabokov, who I loved more than any other writer when I was young, had such contempt for dialogue. When I was younger, I never wrote a word of dialogue because of him. I thought it was a childish part of a novel.

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.

We appeal to Conservatives who just can’t see themselves voting for the corruption and the scandals and the contempt of parliamentary institutions. And of course, we also appeal to people in other parties who are disappointed in their own leadership.

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

I think throughout the 20th century, for some reason, serious writers increasingly had contempt for the average reader. You can really see this in the letters of such people as Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

To observe a profoundly stupid individual can be very enriching, and that’s why we should never feel contempt for them.

Democratic societies can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning.

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.

For 200 years, the dominant powers have also been the colonial powers: the European countries, the U.S. and Japan. They have never been required to pay their dues for what they did to those whom they possessed and treated with contempt.

Contempt for China on the part of the enemy is his weak point. Knowledge of this weak point is our strong point.

Nicaragua dealt with the problem of terrorism in exactly the right way. It followed international law and treaty obligations. It collected evidence, brought the evidence to the highest existing tribunal, the International Court of Justice, and received a verdict – which, of course, the U.S. dismissed with contempt.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

I’d like liberals to listen to my show and not feel offended. The fact that the love of my life was a liberal, I think that probably surprises people who expect me to spew just contempt for the other side.

‘Free’ is more of that ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ kind of thing. It’s about saying ‘Wait, I’m longing for something more than I have and I don’t know what it is that I want, but I know I want it.’ It has nothing to do with what I’m going through, personally.