Alissa Quart Quotes

Men and nations cannot bear to feel inferior.

Insecurity is a natural part of human nature, and there are times we feel our stories are not worth telling, so we turn to the people we admire for strength. If we dress like someone everyone thinks is cool, perhaps we'll be seen as cool.

It seems to be part of the human condition to need someone you can look down on. I still don't get that one.

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.

One often has need of one, inferior to himself.

If you have been put in your place long enough, you begin to act like the place.

Many young girls are constantly consumed by controlling and managing their body image to the extent that they are much more involved in the production of the self than in living.

The poor yield to the rich, the common people to the upper ten, the servants to their masters, the ignorant to the scholars; but there is nobody who does not imagine that he is really better than others.

The Superclass tries to promote its values. Ordinary people complain of divine injustice, they envy power, and it pains them to see others having fun. They don’t understand that no one is having fun, that everyone is worried and insecure, and that what the jewels, cars, and fat wallets conceal is a huge inferiority complex.

I have many times marveled at how I could feel so good about myself while eating peanuts in a middle seat on Southwest Airlines and yet feel so condescended to in first class on United.

Seeing the rich and famous screw up makes us feel superior, or at least not quite so inferior.

Somebody accumulates a lot of muscle and think himself to be a big man. But this big man is only big when all around him are smaller.

Notwithstanding the supposed egalitarian ethos of some hunter-gatherer societies, humans are a hierarchical social species. We care greatly about where we stand in comparison to some relevant reference group.

I'm a confident person next to the guy in the street, but if you go into the showbiz world, it seems the guys who are most successful are the most confident, and I don't think I fit into that category.

I don't make much of comparisons in general, it's not how I think people construct themselves and I don't think it's a healthy way of dealing with your own reality.

I used to care a lot about what other people thought - like teammates.

I don't think the people in power realize how detrimental it can be to a way a girl looks at herself if she flips through a magazine and only sees one type of woman.

I'm drawn to the figure of the ungrateful subaltern as a trope in literature. In real life, it is often dangerous to demand more.

I think all girls do struggle with image, despite not knowing what's going on with other people.

In America, nobody's boyfriend wants them to be smarter than he is, and no one wants to admit it.

In secondary school, I became aware of the idea of being cool, and that was a bit of a shell shock.

The light-skinned girls always thought they were better looking. So did the teachers, too. That meant most of the dark complexion ones didn't like themselves.

When it comes to personal appearance, people are quick to cast judgment on people who look better than them. It's part of the human inferiority complex.

Because I would be around so many people in the fashion industry, there's this kind of dialogue. People would always say, 'Oh your daughter is so beautiful. Is she a model?' And it was so strange for me to hear because I felt so not beautiful inside.

There should be a tacit code or understanding among privileged people not to endorse things that give others an inferiority complex.