Harry Stack Sullivan Quotes

What's the point of being better than someone else?

I generally find that comparison is the fast track to unhappiness. No one ever compares themselves to someone else and comes out even. Nine times out of ten, we compare ourselves to people who are somehow better than us and end up feeling more inadequate.

Sometimes the only way you can feel good about yourself is by making someone else look bad. And I'm tired of making other people feel good about themselves.

What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.

The only time people do not like praise is when too much of it is going toward someone else.

Isn't it kind of silly to think that tearing someone else down builds you up?

All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.

If you have a strong ego [and] something good happens to an acquaintance of yours, [it] makes you feel bad. It's called envy. ... The ego thinks something has been taken away from you because somebody else has received something good. It's a complete illusion, but that's the madness of the ego.

Never hate jealous people. They are jealous because they think you are better than them.

Envy is a declaration of inferiority.

I'm in trouble because I'm normal and slightly arrogant. A lot of people don't like themselves and I happen to be totally in love with myself.

For some reason, we can't just enjoy somebody else's success. Somehow, that's going to affect us. If they have more, then I have less - and I don't know why.

Anybody that's got a problem with me is probably envious or wants to be me, and that's how I've always looked at it.

I'm better than Olivier.

Other women looked on me as a rival. And it pained me a great deal.

All sins have their origin in a sense of inferiority otherwise called ambition.

I've never been jealous. I've never had to be.

I'm not going to be horrible just for the sake of having attitude or make other people feel small just to make me feel bigger.

Miss India actually made me feel small.

Sometimes I feel like I have a good shot, and then I see somebody that has a better shot.

Any time you get into that chip on the shoulder, trying to prove that I can do this and I can do that, it takes away from what you're capable of doing and who you are as a player, as well as a person.

I've never felt the need to show that I am either clever or tall because I'm not.

I don't think I'm as good as people say.

Never get into the petty habit of measuring yourself worth against other people's net worth.

I think a lot of people can get wrapped up in comparing themselves. And that's when the tragic downfall comes, because there will always be someone more beautiful.