Inferiority complex

“ If there were infallible marks by which individuals of inferior intellect, and inferior character, could be selected at their birth—would not the interests of society be served, and would not some sort of fitness seem to require, that they should be selected for the inferior and servile offices? And if this race be generally marked by such inferiority, is it not fit that they should fill them? ”

“ This constant suggestion of inferiority has done much to keep the colored [Pg 179] race back, because it has added tremendously to their sense of real or fancied inferiority and has been a discouragement to their efforts to make themselves the equals of those who look down upon them.
We can not help being influenced by other people's opinion of us. It makes us, according to its nature, think more or less of ourselves, of our ability. We are similarly affected by our environment. We unconsciously take on the superiority or inferiority of our surroundings. ”

“ A sense of inferiority is one of the prime requisites for a continued state of subjection, and nothing contributes to this sense so much, as a marked inferiority of education and training in a society accustomed to rate everything according to its money value. ”

“ The rudeness that dares any speech, or adventures upon any familiarity; the soulless, heartless, selfish intrusiveness that scruples not to invade any society,—these are not impudence, or they are such specimens of the quality as men only possess in common with inferior animals. I speak of that educated, cultivated “impudence” which, never abashed by an inferiority, felt acutely, is resolved to overbear worldly prejudices by the exercise of gifts that assert a mastery over others,—a power of rising, by the expansive force of self-esteem, into something almost estimable. ”

“ We have no right to insist that those who work for us shall wear a badge of inferiority. We have no right to thrust the suggestion of inferiority perpetually into the mind of any human being.
One of the greatest injuries we can inflict on any one is to convince him that he is a nobody, that he has no possibilities, and will never amount to anything. The suggestion of inferiority is responsible for more blighted ambitions, more stunted lives, more failures, more misery and unhappiness than almost any other single cause. ”

“ He needed to get it all straightened out.
The sense of inferiority, she'd said, the constant sense of inferiority. Let's not fool ourselves, she'd said. There isn't one of them that isn't superior to every Terran here. ”

“ I wish I could burn it into the consciousness of every person who wants to make a success of life that he cannot do so while he associates himself with inferiority and harbors a low estimate of himself. Get away from both. Have nothing to do with them. If you are a victim of the inferiority suggestion, deny the suggestion, drive it from your mind as the greatest enemy of your welfare.
You can only do what you think you can. If you hold in mind a cheap, discreditable picture of yourself; if you doubt your efficiency you are shackled, you are not free to express yourself. ”

“ Why, at that early period, when impressions are received for life, impose upon him the badge of inferiority? He is to be a man; therefore he must be trained to that self-respect without which there can be no true manhood. ”

“ The introduction of inferiority into our work is like introducing subtle poison into the system. It paralyzes the normal functions. Inferiority is an infection which, like leaven, affects the entire system. It dulls ideals, palsies the aspiring faculty, stupefies the ambition, and causes deterioration all along the line.
The human mechanism is so constituted that whatever goes wrong in one part affects the whole structure. There is a very intimate relation between the quality of the work and the quality of the character. ”

“ The suggestion of inferiority deepens this defect till it becomes a mania. Many of the tragedies of the pernicious "ranking system" by examinations in our public schools and colleges are the result of an acute sense of inferiority. Every year quite a number of public school pupils and students in academies and colleges suffer nervous breakdown, become insane or commit suicide because they fail to pass their examinations. Chagrin and humiliation at the sense of inferiority suggested by their failure unbalances them. ”

“ That means showing one's own inferiority; if, on the other hand you are bored, it is only what has made an unsuccessful attempt to please you, which is inferior. So realise, my dear friend, the enormity of your mistake. ”

“ Many of our friends who are coming to-night could not afford to dress their children as we might ours, and do you not think it would be both inhospitable and unkind, by being over-dressed, to excite any unpleasant feeling of inferiority in their minds, when actually none exists? for difference of fortune alone can never constitute inferiority. ”

“ Every suggestion of inferiority is contagious, and helps to swerve the life from its possibilities.
Every influence in our environment is a suggestion which becomes a part of us. If we live with people who lack ambition, who are slovenly, slipshod, or with people of loose morals, of low flying ideals, we tend to reflect their qualities. If we mingle much with those who use slangy, vulgar, incorrect English, people who are not careful about their manners or their expression, these things will reappear in our own conversation and manners. ”

“ I dare say you never had a chance to feel, and therefore will not be able to understand, the depressing sense of inferiority which was born with me, which grew with my growth and strengthened with my strength, and which, though somewhat repressed of late years, gets the mastery very frequently and makes me believe myself the most unlovable of beings. ”

“ You’re not worth the trouble, and it’s a confession of inferiority on our part, anyhow. The more I see of you, the less inferior I feel. Besides, I enjoy speaking out, having things understood without a lot of beating round the bush. ”

“ The shallowest and most impudent being that ever talked fooleries will assume superior airs and treat the man of intellect as an amusing but inferior creature. More than that—earnestness and reality are classed together under the head of "bad form," the vital word grates on the emasculate brain of the society man, and he compensates himself for his inward consciousness of inferiority by assuming easy airs of insolence. ”

“ Half and more of the actions, poses and speech of men and women is to demonstrate superiority or to avoid inferiority. There are some who feel inwardly inferior, yet disguise this feeling successfully. This feeling of inferiority may arise from purely accidental matters, such as appearance, deformity, tone of voice, etc., and the individual may either hide, become seclusive or else brazen it out, so to speak. ”

“ When we frequently make allowance for another in trifling matters, notions of inferiority take root in the mind, and too often produce contempt. Respect for the understanding must be the basis of constancy; the tenderness which flows from pity is liable to perish insensibly, to consume itself—even the virtues of the heart, when they degenerate into weakness, sink a character in our estimation. ”

“ It is to be noted, however, that these suggestions introduce an assumption of male superiority, or male inferiority—according to our scheme of values—which unnecessarily prejudices and confuses the issue. ”

“ If there be anything which can in any way assuage or mitigate the tortures of jealousy, it is the inferiority of the man who is preferred to yourself; whilst, on the very contrary, if there be one anguish more bitter than another, a misery for which language lacks a word, it is the superiority of the man preferred to yourself, superior, perhaps, in youth, beauty, grace. ”

“ They console themselves with the thought that they are superior to all the laymen in the world. This soothing vanity, neither noisy nor insolent, but none the less firmly rooted in their hearts, enables them to swallow the daily affront of conscious inferiority. ”

“ We try to make him understand, to make him see, and if he is aware of his inferiority we may have some success. But if he is not aware of his inferiority, we soon hold our tongues and leave him alone in his self-satisfaction, convinced that there is nothing to be done with him. Every one of us has been through this experience with a mental inferior, for there is always a mental inferior handy, just as there is always a being more unhappy than we are. ”

“ As I have grown older, and have seen the inferiority of other men and the superiority of my own mind and judgment, naturally my early opinion has been strengthened and deepened. But on that day I realised how my own sight of myself had been obscured by a too close view. My domestic exasperations, the necessary disagreeableness and pettiness of so many of the details of my great projects, the triviality of my routine of business and its harassments—all these had combined to make me belittle my own stature and bulk. ”

“ On the contrary, the inferiority of the inferior man is an additional reason why he should cling to all those rights of nature which have been given to him, that he may have wherewithal to raise himself, and be alone accountable for himself. ”

“ The consequence is that smaller degrees of superiority tend to be judged as better with higher degrees of confidence, and that a certain slight degree of inferiority tends to be incorrectly judged as "better." ”

“ They have grown up under this conviction of their inferiority, and of course they will be inferior until they claim superiority as their birthright. A vast number of men and women who are really capable of doing great things, do small things, live mediocre lives, because they do not expect or demand enough of themselves. They do not know how to call out their best.
One reason why the human race as a whole has not measured up to its possibilities, to its promise; one reason why we see everywhere splendid ability doing the work of mediocrity ”

“ As far as vanity alone is concerned, this ambitious display of rank and parentage, might, at this time of day, be dismissed with a smile. But there lurks a more serious evil in the absurd and invidious system so studiously preserved by our first nobility. Surrounded by their own dependents, and avoided by the gentry, who are seldom disposed for an intercourse in which a sense of inferiority prevails, few of the grandees are exempt from the natural consequences of such a life—gross ignorance, intolerable conceit, and sometimes, though seldom, a strong dose of vulgarity. ”

“ But there is another objection to being merely the medium of information of this low quality, that I should think would have great influence with every one who has the common self-respect of a gentleman. There is a tacit admission of inferiority in the occupation, that ought to prove too humiliating to a man accustomed to those associations, which imply equality. ”

“ But, by degrees, as her reading extended, it changed its form, and then she asked herself doubtfully: "Are women such inferior beings?" a position which carried her in front of her father at once by a hundred years, and led her rapidly on to the final conclusion that women had originally no congenital defect of inferiority, and that, although they have still much way to make up, it now rests with themselves to be inferior or not, as they choose. ”

“ Fortunately for myself, I don’t care. The only thing that sustains one 117 through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling I have always cultivated. ”

“ If we read inferior books, or associate with perpetual failures, with people who botch their work and botch their lives our own standards will suffer from the contagion.
It does not matter whether inferiority relates to manner, to work, to conversation, to [Pg 181] companions, to thought habits—wherever it occurs, its tendency is to pull down all standards and to cut down the average of achievement. We are all living sensitive plates on which the example, the thoughts and suggestions of others, our own thoughts and habits, our associations and surroundings indelibly etch themselves. ”

“ If instead of carping and harping on the little faults and mistakes of those under their jurisdiction, and prophesying their utter failure and ruin, parents, teachers, employers and others in responsible positions would recognize and appreciate laudable qualities, there would be less misery and crime in the world, fewer human failures and wrecks.
The perpetual suggestion of inferiority holds more people back from doing what they are capable of than almost anything else. ”

“ Moreover, there is a sense of power and superiority in being able to criticize everything, so it offers a natural compensation for the inferiority from which the critical or cynical person suffers. Not having admirable loving parents one must remember is a source of tremendous inferiority. A child of eight has no intelligent weapons with which to combat a hostile family situation. ”

“ No part of this community, claiming any portion of respectability, was willing to publish its own sense of inferiority so openly, as to gossip about its fellow-citizens, for no more direct admissions of inferiority can be made than this wish to comment on the subject of any one's private concerns. ”

“ A mental inferiority is likewise apparent. Friends of the negro are ready to confess this, but attribute it to his long and recent period of servitude. We deal with facts only. The inferiority is there, whatever be its cause ”

“ How far the mentally-superior may, with a balance of benefit to society, shield the mentally-inferior from the evil results of their inferiority, is a question too involved to be here discussed at length. ”

“ Most of us have known, at some time in our lives, that “sickening sense of inferiority” that comes over one when in competition with his fellows, he realizes for the first time, perhaps, the inadequacy of his personal resources—physical, mental, and moral—to achieve his personal ambitions. But we who are presumably normal have very little understanding of the struggles of the physically or mentally handicapped to accommodate themselves to a world to which they are constitutionally not adapted. ”