Snobbery QUOTES

1 " It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money. "

2 " ...[T]he only means I have to stop ignorant snobs from behaving towards genre fiction with snobbish ignorance is to not reinforce their ignorance and snobbery by lying and saying that when I write SF it isn't SF, but to tell them more or less patiently for forty or fifty years that they are wrong to exclude SF and fantasy from literature, and proving my arguments by writing well. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin , The Wild Girls

3 " The worst form of snobbery is to deny information "

4 " There is simply no limit to the tyrannical snobbery that otherwise decent people can descend into when it comes to music. "

― , Moab Is My Washpot

5 " A fig for your precious society with its bridge parties, its inane chatter, its cheap mentality; its dances and vulgar banquets; its snobbery and cheap pretension. The humblest library can show you upon a single shelf better society and far more select company than all the drawing-rooms of Europe, America, and South Africa. "

― , Round My Library Fire: A Book about Books

6 " One must avoid snobbery and misanthropy. But one must also be unafraid to criticise those who reach for the lowest common denominator, and who sometimes succeed in finding it. This criticism would be effortless if there were no " people" waiting for just such an appeal. Any fool can lampoon a king or a bishop or a billionaire. A trifle more grit is required to face down a mob, or even a studio audience that has decided it knows what it wants and is entitled to get it. And the fact that kings and bishops and billionaires often have more say than most in forming appetites and emotions of the crowd is not irrelevant, either. "

7 " As it happened I was no longer interested in literature as a form of snobbery or even of self-definition — I had no desire to prove that one book was better than another; in fact, if I read something I admired I found myself increasingly disinclined to mention it at all. What I knew personally to be true had come to seem unrelated to the process of persuading others. I did not, any longer, want to persuade anyone of anything. "

8 " Much of his time at Oxford passed by his own account under a dark cloud of listlessness and depression. He was dismayed by the undergraduates' relentless snobbery and unremitting emphasis on money. "

― Hilary Spurling , Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time

9 " There’s no snobbery like that of the poor toward one another. "

― Dorothy Salisbury Davis

10 " Horror itself is a bit of a bullied genre, the antagonist being literary snobbery and public misconception. And I think good horror tackles our darkest fears, whatever they may be. It takes us into the minds of the victims, explores the threats, disseminates fear, studies how it changes us. It pulls back the curtain on the ugly underbelly of society, tears away the masks the monsters wear out in the world, shows us the potential truth of the human condition. Horror is truth, unflinching and honest. Not everybody wants to see that, but good horror ensures that it's there to be seen. "

― Kealan Patrick Burke

11 " I deserted the world and sought solitude because I became tired of rendering courtesy to those multitudes who believe that humility is a sort of weakness, and mercy a kind of cowardice, and snobbery a form of strength. "

― Kahlil Gibran , The Treasured Writings of Kahlil Gibran

12 " Stalin was always exceptional, even from childhood. We have relied on Trotsky’s unrecognizably prejudiced portrait for too long. The truth was different. Trotsky’s view tells us more about his own vanity, snobbery and lack of political skills than about the early Stalin. "

― Simon Sebag Montefiore , Young Stalin

13 " Llandrindon joined in the discussion. " I believe what Mardling is asking," he said, " is how one will be able to tell the difference between a shopgirl and a well-to-do woman if they are both clean and similarly dressed. And if a gentleman is not able to tell what they are by their appearance, how is he to know how to treat them?" Stunned by the snobbery of the question, Matthew considered his reply carefully. " I've always thought all women should be treated with respect no matter what their station." " Well said," Westcliff said gruffly, as Llandrindon opened his mouth to argue.No one wished to contradict the earl, but Mardling pressed, " Westcliff, do you see nothing harmful in encouraging the poor to rise above their stations? In allowing them to pretend there is no difference between them and ourselves?" " The only harm I see," Westcliff said quietly, " is in discouraging people who want to better themselves, out of fear that we will lose our perceived superiority." The statement caused Matthew to like the earl even more than he had previously. "

14 " ...and I know what it is that's going to destroy the world. Lack of communication - reciprocal communication: cultural, political, intellectual - whatever you like. But more, it's snobbery and self-deceit, which are artificial, protective barriers that prevent communication. "

15 " I don’t know’,” he said. “Those three words from a willing soul are the start of a grand and magnificent voyage.” And with that he began a discourse that lasted for several weeks, covering scene-setting, establishing conflict, plot twists, and first- and third-person narration. [ I learned in these rapid-fire mini-dissertations that like most literature lovers I would come to know, Henry was a book snob. He assumed that if a current author was popular and widely enjoyed, then he or she had no merit. He made a few exceptions, such as Kurt Vonnegut, although that was mostly because Vonnegut lived on Cape Cod and so he probably had some merits as a human being, if not as a writer.
I think that the way Henry saw it was that he was not being a snob. In fact I would venture that in his view of things, snobbery had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was a matter of standards. It was bout quality in the author’s craftsmanship. "

― John William Tuohy , No Time to Say Goodbye: A Memoir of a Life in Foster Care

16 " This is not a " guilty pleasure" of mine, simply because I don't believe in " guilty" pleasures. Snobbery is just the public face of insecurity. "

17 " England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly. "

― George Orwell , Why I Write

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

― Rick Riordan , The Throne of Fire (The Kane Chronicles, #2)

19 " Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died. "

20 " There's a snobbery at work in architecture. The subject is too often treated as a fine art, delicately wrapped in mumbo-jumbo. In reality, it's an all-embracing discipline taking in science, art, maths, engineering, climate, nature, politics, economics. "

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