Khalil Gibran Quotes

The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

The truly proud man knows neither superiors nor inferiors. The first he does not admit of: the last he does not concern himself about.

Men and nations cannot bear to feel inferior.

There is no good in living in a society where you are merely the equal of everybody else. The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors.

One does not hate so long as one continues to rate low, but only when one has come to rate equal or higher.

When you praise someone you call yourself his equal.

They hate you because you act like you're better than they are

I just can't see either a man or a woman in a dependency position, because from this sort of relationship flows a feeling of superiority on one side and inferiority on the other, and that's a form of slow poison. As I see it, men wouldn't want somebody inferior to them unless they felt inadequate themselves. They're intimidated by a mature woman.

They looked down on her; and she looked up through them.

Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.

No man is more inferior than those who insist on being equal.

Only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way. Utopias of equality are biologically doomed, and the best that the amiable philosopher can hope for is an approximate equality of legal justice and educational opportunity.

I think there's always going to be some kind of bigotry or some kind of racism. There has to be, because people can't feel that they have any hero qualities unless there's someone beneath them.

I don't want you to think I'm better than people or that I know better than people.

Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.

Arrogance really comes from insecurity, and in the end our feeling that we are bigger than others is really the flip side of our feeling that we are smaller than others.

The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.

To strive with an equal is dangerous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, degrading.

Envy not greatness: for thou mak'st thereby Thyself the worse, and so the distance greater.

I'm better than dirt. Well, most kinds of dirt, not that fancy store-bought dirt... I can't compete with that stuff.

The envious are not satisfied with equality; they secretly yearn for superiority and revenge. In the French Revolution of 1848, a woman coal-heaver is said to have remarked to a richly dressed lady: 'Yes, madam, everything's going to be equal now; I shall go in silks and you'll carry coal.'

Elisabeth, again, while she praises her, is so far from hiding the Divine glory, that she ascribes everything to God. And yet, though she acknowledges the superiority of Mary to herself and to others, she does not envy her the higher distinction, but modestly declares that she had obtained more than she deserved.

... the belief in a superstratum of human beings ... is the most evil of all beliefs. For when you say, 'I am not as other men' -- you have lost the two most valuable qualities we have ever tried to attain: -- humility and brotherhood.

People hate those who make them feel their own inferiority.