Superiority

Famous quotes containing the word superiority:

    A woman who occupies the same realm of thought with man, who can explore with him the depths of science, comprehend the steps of progress through the long past and prophesy those of the momentous future, must ever be surprised and aggravated with his assumptions of leadership and superiority, a superiority she never concedes, an authority she utterly repudiates.
    Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)

    Man’s characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience superior to his own, the superiority of which he feels. Because the greater, better part of his existence transcends the body, he escapes the body’s yoke, but is subject to that of society.
    Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)

    Obscurantism is the academic theorist’s revenge on society for having consigned him or her to relative obscurity—a way of proclaiming one’s superiority in the face of one’s diminished influence.
    David Lehman (b. 1948)