Jane Hawking Quotes

They trespassed upon my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew. Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.

I freely admit that I am a bit of a misfit.

It is horrid to smirk.

Most people are not intellectuals — a fact that intellectuals have terrible trouble coming to terms with.

… when we know a thing we have only scorn for other people who don’t happen to know it.

I had friends, but I was always a bit weird.

I meet people who are so sniffy about daytime TV.

The scorn of genius is the most arrogant and the most boundless of all scorn.

I'm not being condescending, I'm too busy thinking about far more important things you wouldn't understand.

[Oliver Wendell] Holmes never believed in the truth and morality of the laws he was upholding. He said, "I loathe the thick-fingered clowns we call the people."

The object in America is to avoid contact, to treat all as foes unless they're known to be friends. Here you have a million crabs living in a million crevices. ... But the garden's greatest benefit, I feel, as not relief to the eyes, but to make the eyes sees our neighbors.

The public be damned.

I've always considered myself smarter than everyone around me, and sometimes, believe me, I've been ashamed of it. At the least, all my life I've looked away and never could look people straight in the eye.

we are so scornful when we are young!

I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.

And with his arms crossed he looks pityingly down from his spiritual height on everything that anyone says.

There are many that despise half the world; but if there be any that despise the whole of it, it is because the other half despises them.

Arrogance is, as it were, a solicitation on the part of one seeking honor for followers, whom he thinks he is entitled to treat with contempt.

Stupid, fragile mortals.

I have been despised by better men than you.

For intellectuals, everyone's mind is closed but their own.

Do you suppose that it is within your power to insult me? You evidently are not aware to whom you are speaking? Do you imagine that the envenomed spittle of five hundred little gentlemen of your type, heaped one upon another, would succeed in slobbering so much as the tips of my august toes?

Mama was always saying I was a brain snob, that I didn't like people who didn't think. I didn't know if that was snobby. Who wanted to walk around explaining everything to people all the time?

The world must be rather a rough place for clever people. Ordinary folk dislike them, and as for themselves, they hate each other most cordially.

Ugarte: You despise me, don't you? Rick Blaine: If I gave you any thought I probably would.