Demeaning Quotes - Page 2

• I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful

  Kara Walker

  Beautiful, Art, Mean

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• And if your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited. ... When we see people acting in an abusive, arrogant, or demeaning manner toward others, their behavior almost always is a symptom of their lack of self-esteem. They need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves.

  Clayton Christensen

  Attitude, Self Esteem, Opportunity

  Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Business Review (2016). “The Clayton M. Christensen Reader”, p.203, Harvard Business Review Press

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• Do not consider any act of service as demeaning. Sweeping the streets, for example, is not below your dignity. Do you not sweep the floor of your homes? Do you not scrub and wash off dirt? When you undertake such tasks, the villagers will also gladly share in them. Why feel ashamed to be good? The ridicule that may be cast on you has been the reward of many saints. It will soon fade away. Muhammad was driven out of Mecca by those who could not appreciate his teachings. Jesus was crucified. But their names resound in the heart of millions.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Jesus, Teaching, Heart

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• Most of us grew up with a very damaging story that something is wrong with us. Gradually - or as in my case, suddenly - we become resolved not to believe this anymore. It takes a dedicated practice to follow up on that resolution, because the conditioning is very strong to keep generating self-demeaning stories.

  Tara Brach

  Strong, Believe, Self

  Source: www.tarabrach.com

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• ...And another item from the growing file of people who voluntarily wear dunce caps... You'll be talking cordially to someone and make an offhand reference, 'I recently read where--' and they'll cut you off and say, 'Oh, I don't read'... This is a tragedy on so many different levels. First, because they don't read, they don't know enough to keep it to themselves. Next, and this is the most amazing part, they use a demeaning tone like I'm the stupid one for wasting time with books.

  Tim Dorsey

  Stupid, Book, Cutting

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• I hate the word starchitect. Stuff like that comes from mean-spirited, untalented journalists. It's demeaning.

  Frank Gehry

  Hate, Mean, Stuff

  Source: www.playboy.com

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• We need to look beyond the obvious. Yes, there are minstrel images in hip-hop. Yes, there are demeaning, anti-racist, misogynistic and homophobic representations. We could make the same case about the church and our government. But hip-hop, like society, isn't one dimensional.

  Bakari Kitwana

  Government, Hip Hop, Church

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• I don't really think myself that sex work is necessarily more demeaning than other kinds of demeaning work.

  Alix Kates Shulman

  Sex, Thinking, Kind

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• I'd rather be somewhere building a house, if I knew how. The whole idea of being a professional artist is like a demeaning kind of thing.

  Willis Earl Beal

  Artist, Ideas, House

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• It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this [Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'] and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made by anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well.

  Douglas Adams

  Long, Doe, Monkeys

  Douglas Adams (2005). “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time”, p.133, Del Rey

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• A man with money to pay for a meal can talk about hunger without demeaning himself. ... But for a man with no money hunger is a disgrace.

  Vicki Baum

  Men, Meals, Pay

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• Persecution means an attempt to drive out, attempt to subjugate, and there are various ways that that can be done. Sarah Palin's opponents and her critics would like to see her leave the public square by insulting, degrading, demeaning, abusing and ridiculing her, and - by pretending that she has nothing to say.

  Matthew Continetti

  Mean, Squares, Insulting

  "Without Further Ado, Sarah Palin Returns". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. November 20, 2009.

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• Some people think it's demeaning to victims if you ever say anything out-loud about sexual abuse of children. I don't know if that's true.

  Louis C. K.

  Children, Thinking, People

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• As the mother of a son, I do not accept that alienation from me is necessary for his discovery of himself. As a woman, I will not cooperate in demeaning womanly things so that he can be proud to be a man. I like to think the women in my son's future are counting on me.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Mother, Son, Men

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin (1983). “Family politics: love and power on an intimate frontier”, McGraw-Hill Companies

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• Put the strong, masculine figure in a school with tough kids and you have a certain control. It's very demeaning to the kids and very demeaning to the tough, black guy, but that's how they worked it.

  Lynne Stewart

  Strong, School, Kids

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The celebrity culture demands a camera-ready-at-all-times look or else the photo is circulated in a demeaning headline.

  Zoe Cassavetes

  Cameras, Culture, Looks

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• The amount of people that I feel like... I'm not being self-demeaning, but I actually feel like I'm not as cool as them, you know what I mean?

  Justin Vernon

  Mean, Self, People

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• It's the end of the day where wives stay home and raise the kids and all that. That demeaning stuff? No more. Country club memberships, that's what you shoot for! To hell with that.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Country, Home, Kids

  "Clinton’s Performance Was Great, But I’ll Tell You the Real Story of Bill and Hillary". "The Rush Limbaugh Show", www.rushlimbaugh.com. July 27, 2016.

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• Obama also allowed Hillary supporters to insert an absurd statement into the platform suggesting that media sexism spurred her loss and that “demeaning portrayals of women ... dampen the dreams of our daughters.” ... It would have been better to put this language in the platform: “A woman who wildly mismanages and bankrupts a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar campaign operation, and then blames sexism in society, will dampen the dreams of our daughters.”

  Maureen Dowd

  Dream, Daughter, Loss

  "Yes, She Can" by Maureen Dowd, www.nytimes.com. August 12, 2008.

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• Beyond love, beyond unrequited love, perhaps even beyond any other passion known to humanity, deep, deep in the depths of the turgid, clinging, swamplike pit of despair that lies dormant within every soul, lurks JEALOUSY. Jealousy, that most demeaning and debilitating of emotions. Jealousy, which can double the strength of the love upon which it is based, but whilst doubling it, warp and pervert it, untill it is no longer recognizable as the thing of beauty it once was. Jealous love is no more like true love than Mr Hyde was like Dr Jekyll or a stagnant swamp is like a freshwater lake.

  Ben Elton

  Lying, Jealous, Unrequited Love

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• It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.

  John Knowles

  Immature, Affection

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• I don't think comedy is necessarily an attack. It's finding humour in life. I don't think if you're making a joke about something you're automatically demeaning it.

  David Walliams

  Thinking, Comedy, Humour

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• To be told that one can be dependent on one's parents until age 26 should strike a young person who wants to grow up as demeaning, not as something to celebrate.

  Dennis Prager

  Growing Up, Parent, Age

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• I hate the celebrity architect thing. I just do my work. The press comes up with this stuff and it sticks. I hate the word starchitect. Stuff like that comes from mean-spirited, untalented journalists. It's demeaning.

  Philip Johnson

  Hate, Architect, Journalist

  Source: business.highbeam.com

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• We need to encourage designers and agencies to be responsible. We need to make sure everyone is sensitive to the issues. But to calculate the girls' body mass - I personally think it is demeaning.

  Diane von Furstenberg

  Girl, Thinking, Agency

  "Fat is a fashionable issue" by Jess Cartner-Morley, www.theguardian.com. January 27, 2007.

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