Francois Rene de Chateaubriand Quotes

You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light.

Regardless of its causes, thoughtlessly blaming the present is a weakness which, even if it is never outlawed, ought to be resisted. Though commonly flaunted as a sign of sophistication, it can be an opportunity for one-upmanship and an excuse for misanthropy, especially against the young.

Power tends to confuse itself with virtue, and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor.

Tolerance is love sick with the sickness of haughtiness.

The self-righteous feel no need to be charming, and thus double their offensiveness.

When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that's awfully hard not to poke.

Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de très bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak.

There's one thing that always interests me about you good people, not your certainty that the rest of us are swine, - no doubt we are, - but your certainty that your opinions are pearls.

Whatever makes us feel superior to other people, whatever tempts us to convey a sense of superiority, that is the gravity of our sinful nature, not grace.

There is always the fear of self-righteousness possessing us, the fear of arrogating to ourselves a superiority that we do not possess.

Pride has a greater share than goodness in the reproofs we give other people for their faults; and we chide them not so much to make them mend those faults as to make them believe that we ourselves are without fault.

To this day we seem to act in the world as though we know what's right for everybody.

We had enough quite enough snobbery in this world without exporting it to the hereafter.

Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.

The faith in which I was brought up assured me that I was better than other people; I was saved, they were damned.... Our hymns were loaded with arrogance - self-congratulation on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us, what hell everybody else would catch come Judgment Day.

The proud hate pride in others.

It is a curious fact that of all the illusions that beset mankind none is quite so curious as that tendency to suppose that we are mentally and morally superior to those who differ from us in opinion.

Self-righteousness is a manifestation of self-contempt.

Most people are fools, most authority is malignant, God does not exist, and everything is wrong.

One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.

We can all perceive the difference between ourselves and our inferiors, but when it comes to a question of the difference between us and our superiors we fail to appreciate merits of which we have no proper conceptions.

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

A proud person is so busy looking down on others they cannot humble themselves to look up at God.

A snob is unreliable. The work he praises might just be good.

The idea that anyone would think their religious ideas make them morally superior is just preposterous.