Best 65 quotes in «misanthropy quotes» category

I’m such a negative person, and always have been. Was I born that way? I don’t know. I am constantly disgusted by reality, horrified and afraid. I cling desperately to the few things that give me some solace, that make me feel good. I hate most of humanity. Though I might be very fond of particular individuals, humanity in general fills me with contempt and despair. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate the modern world. For one thing there are just too Goddamn many people. I hate the hordes, the crowds in their vast cities, with all their hateful vehicles, their noise and their constant meaningless comings and goings. I hate cars. I hate modern architecture. Every building built after 1955 should be torn down! I despise modern music. Words cannot express how much it gets on my nerves – the false, pretentious, smug assertiveness of it. I hate business, having to deal with money. Money is one of the most hateful inventions of the human race. I hate the commodity culture, in which everything is bought and sold. No stone is left unturned. I hate the mass media, and how passively people suck up to it. I hate having to get up in the morning and face another day of this insanity. I hate having to eat, shit, maintain the body – I hate my body. The thought of my internal functions, the organs, digestion, the brain, the nervous system, horrify me. Nature is horrible. It’s not cute and loveable. It’s kill or be killed. It’s very dangerous out there. The natural world is filled with scary, murderous creatures and forces. I hate the whole way that nature functions. Sex is especially hateful and horrifying, the male penetrating the female, his dick goes into her hole, she’s impregnated, another being grows inside her, and then she must go through a painful ordeal as the new being pushes out of her, only to repeat the whole process in time. Reproduction – what could be more existentially repulsive? How I hate the courting ritual. I was always repelled by my own sex drive, which in my youth never left me alone. I was constantly driven by frustrated desires to do bizarre and unacceptable things with and to women. My soul was in constant conflict about it. I never was able to resolve it. Old age is the only relief. I hate the way the human psyche works, the way we are traumatized and stupidly imprinted in early childhood and have to spend the rest of our lives trying to overcome these infantile mental fixations. And we never ever fully succeed in this endeavor. I hate organized religions. I hate governments. It’s all a lot of power games played out by ambition-driven people, and foisted on the weak, the poor, and on children. Most humans are bullies. Adults pick on children. Older children pick on younger children. Men bully women. The rich bully the poor. People love to dominate. I hate the way humans worship power – one of the most disgusting of all human traits. I hate the human tendency towards revenge and vindictiveness. I hate the way humans are constantly trying to trick and deceive one another, to swindle, to cheat, and take unfair advantage of the innocent, the naïve and the ignorant. I hate the vacuous, false, banal conversation that goes on among people. Sometimes I feel suffocated; I want to flee from it. For me, to be human is, for the most part, to hate what I am. When I suddenly realize that I am one of them, I want to scream in horror.

I wish I was friends with things," he said at last, "but I'm not. I never had anything to be friends with, and I can't bear people.

I must ration my tendons when people near me.

Mornington suspected his Christianity of being the inevitable result of having moved for some time as a youth of eighteen in circles which were, in a rather detached and superior way, opposed to it; but it was a religion which enabled him to despise himself and everyone else without despising the universe, thus allowing him at once in argument or conversation the advantages of the pessimist and the optimist.

Man is a self-conscious nothing.

Marvin disregarded it with cold loathing while his logic circuits chattered with disgust and tinkered with the concept of directing physical violence against it. Further circuits cut in saying, Why bother? What's the point? Nothing is worth getting involved in. Further circuits amused themselves by analyzing the molecular components of the door, and of the humanoids' brain cells.

Misanthropist’s manifesto: Do not tell a friend what your enemy ought not to know. Giving way neither to love nor hate is one half of world wisdom: to say nothing and believe nothing, is the other half. Distrust is the mother of safety. To forget at any time the bad traits of a man’s character is like throwing away hard-earned money. Better to let men be what they are than to take them for what they are not. By being polite and friendly, you can make people pliable and obliging: hence politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

Most people are full of themselves and speak only the obnoxiously superficial, in other words they're annoying as hell

Most people are so mind-bogglingly aggravating that it's impossible to overreact to them, even if that means killing yourself.

My consultants recommended several nihilists and existentialists but I rejected them all. A black turtleneck sweater does not a misanthrope make. Nihilists and existentialists tend to be bohemians, who invariably run in packs; despite their alienated stance, they have always struck me as a sociable lot who surround themselves with people because they are forever saying "Nothing matters," and they need someone to say it to.

Nero would be long since forgotten without his outbursts of bloody clowning. ~ Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay

Of course, I'm not quite ready to forsake all the products of society, just yet. I have my clothes, my books, etc... But more and more I can see myself leaving much of the rest behind - leaving their makers, and the crucible from which they proceed. If at times, after all, I might benefit by the rays of the sun, must I seek also to reside in its nuclear core?

Nineteen twentieths of [mankind is] opaque and unenlightened. Intimacy with most people will make you acquainted with vices and errors and follies enough to make you despise them.

I wish I loved the human Race, I wish I loved its silly face, and when I'm introduced to one, I wish I thought "what jolly fun"!

[Patricia Highsmith] was an extremely unbalanced person, extremely hostile and misanthropic and totally incapable of any kind of relationship, not just intimate ones. I felt sorry for her, because it wasn't her fault. There was something in her early days or whatever that made her incapable. She drove everybody away and people who really wanted to be friends ended up putting the phone down on her. It seemed to me as if she had to ape feelings and behaviour, like Ripley. Of course sometimes having no sense of social behaviour can be charming, but in her case it was alarming. I remember once, when she was trying to have a dinner party with people she barely knew, she deliberately leaned towards the candle on the table and set fire to her hair. People didn't know what to do as it was a very hostile act and the smell of singeing and burning filled the room.

people diminish me; the longer I sit and listen to them the more empty I feel but I don't get the idea that they feel empty, I feel that they enjoy the sound from their mouths.

Qualsiasi uomo notevole, chiunque cioè non appartenga a quei 5/6 dell'umanità dotati tanto miseramente dalla natura, rimarrà dopo i quarant'anni difficilmente esente da una certa traccia di misantropia.

People think they're interesting. That's their first mistake.

Pero, en general, la humanidad me pareció siempre detestable. No tengo inconvenientes en manifestar que a veces me impedía comer en todo el día o me impedía pintar durante una semana el haber observado un rasgo; es increíble hasta qué punto la codicia, la envidia, la petulancia, la grosería, la avidez y, en general, todo ese conjunto de atributos que forman la condición humana pueden verse en una cara, en una manera de caminar, en una mirada. Me parece natural que después de un encuentro así uno no tenga ganas de comer, de pintar, ni aun de vivir.

people say that I’m sour and misanthropic, and I tell them they’re probably right.

Repeated and prolonged proximity to moribund logging communities set off my misanthropy.

She had to fight against developing too combative a personality or becoming altogether a misanthrope. She suddenly caught herself. "Misanthrope" is someone who dislikes everybody, not just men. And they certainly had a word for someone who hates women: "misogynist." But the male lexicographers had somehow neglected to coin a word for the dislike of men. They were almost entirely men themselves, she thought, and had been unable to imagine a market for such a word.

Their arrogance protected them against any liking for their fellow-man, against the slightest interest in the strangers sitting all about them, amidst whom M. de Stermaria adopted the manner one has in the buffet-car of a train, grim, hurried, stand-offish, brusque, fastidious and spiteful, surrounded by other passengers whom one has never seen before, whom one will never see again and towards whom the only conceivable way of behaving is to make sure that they keep away from one's cold chicken and stay out of one's chosen corner-seat.

The most overrated things are fame, the future, marriage, being rich, happiness, being in love, sanity, being alive, sex, and human beings.

The one thing in me more powerful than a general misanthropy is an inescapable compassion for individuals.

The people naturally adhere most to doctrines which demand the least self-exertion and the least use of their own reason, and which can best accommodate their duties to their inclinations.

There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offenses, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.

There would never be a way for me to live comfortably with people. Maybe I'd become a monk. I'd pretend to believe in God and live in a cubicle, play an organ and stay drunk on wine. Nobody would fuck with me. I could go into a cell for months of meditation where I wouldn't have to look at anybody and they could just send in the wine.

There is nothing I detest so much as the contortions of these great time-and-lip servers, these affable dispensers of meaningless embraces, these obliging utterers of empty words, who view every one in civilities

The rest is just sex, copulation, the perpetuation of the vile species.

Why do you dislike people?" "I didn't say I disliked people. Not to like people isn't the same as to dislike them." He sounded profound and I needed time to mull over that idea.

Weapons of Mass Destruction: Radioactive, Biological, or Chemical weapons capable of causing mass casualties and great destruction. I wonder why humans aren't on the list?

We ought to punish pitilessly that shameful pretence of friendly intercourse. I like a man to be a man, and to show on all occasions the bottom of his heart in his discourse. Let that be the thing to speak, and never let our feelings be beneath vain compliments

What's wrong with people is people. There's no cure for that.

What are we going to tell the Intergalactic Council of Ministers the first time one of our teenage mothers threw her newborn baby into a dumpster, huh? How're we gonna explain that to the space people? How are we gonna let them know that our ambassador was only late for the meeting because his breakfast was cold and he had to spend half an hour punching his wife around the kitchen? What are they gonna think when they find out that it's just a local custom that over 80 million women in the Third World have had their clitorises forcibly removed in order to reduce their sexual pleasures so they won't cheat on their husbands? Can't you just sense how eager the rest of the universe is for us to show up? Can't you see them out there?

You may plainly perceive the traitor through his mask; he is well known every-where in his true colors; his rolling eyes and his honeyed tones impose only on those who do not know him. People are aware that this low-bred fellow, who deserves to be pilloried, has, by the dirtiest jobs, made his way in the world; and that the splendid position he has acquired makes merit repine and virtue blush. Yet whatever dishonourable epithets may be launched against him everywhere, nobody defends his wretched honour. Call him a rogue, an infamous wretch, a confounded scoundrel if you like, all the world will say “yea, ” and no one contradicts you. But for all that, his bowing and scraping are welcome everywhere; he is received, smiled upon, and wriggles himself into all kinds of society; and, if any appointment is to be secured by intriguing, he will carry the day over a man of the greatest worth. Zounds! these are mortal stabs to me, to see vice parleyed with; and sometimes times I feel suddenly inclined to fly into a wilderness far from the approach of men.

You are not special. You're just fucking not. You're a bland, boring motherfucker just like everybody else. You ever been to the mall and just looked in the eyes of the fellow travelers and seen how dull and lifeless their eyes are? Yours look like that too. You know why? 'Cause you're just as bland, you're just as fucking boring, there's nothing special about you. And trying to piggyback on the accomplishments of your race, or like, any fucking larger group really, is pathetic. You have to stand on individual merit and you just can't accept the fact that you suck. It's alright! I suck, Weber sucks, everyone sucks! We're all fucking shit, we suck dick, we're lame as fuck. And that's okay. That's fine.

You can't overestimate the stupidity of the general public.

Racism? But isn't it only a form of misanthropy?

As soon as I entered the house, my wife took me in her arms, and kissed me; at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal for so many years, I fell into a swoon for almost an hour. At the time I am writing, it is five years since my last return to England. During the first year, I could not endure my wife or children in my presence; the very smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them to eat in the same room. To this hour they dare not presume to touch my bread, or drink out of the same cup, neither was I ever able to let one of them take me by the hand. The first money I laid out was to buy two young stone-horses, which I keep in a good stable; and next to them, the groom is my greatest favourite, for I feel my spirits revived by the smell he contracts in the stable. My horses understand me tolerably well; I converse with them at least four hours every day. They are strangers to bridle or saddle; they live in great amity with me and friendship to each other.

Are you sick now?" "No." "Then what's wrong?" "I don't like people." "Do you think that's right?" "Probably not.

Misanthropy is a suit of armor lined with thorns.

8 April 1891 The obscenity of nostrils and mouths; the ignominious cupidity of smiles and women encountered in the street; the shifty baseness on every side, as of hyenas and wild beasts ready to bite: tradesmen in their shops and strollers on their pavements. How long must I suffer this? I have suffered it before, as a child, when, descending by chance to the servant's quarters, I overheard in astonishment their vile gossip, tearing up my own kind with their lovely teeth. This hostility to the entire race, this muted detestation of lynxes in human form, I must have rediscovered it later while at school. I had a repugnance and horror for all base instincts, but am I not myself instinctively violent and lewd, murderous and sensual? Am I any different, in essence, from the members of the riotous and murderous mob of a hundred years ago, who hurled the town sergeants into the Seine and cried, 'String up the aristos!' just as they shout 'Down with the army!' or 'Death to the Jews!

...And suddenly, from behind me, I hear the metaphysically abrupt arrival of the office boy. I feel like I could kill him for barging in on what I wasn't thinking. I turn around and look at him with a silence full of hatred, tense with latent homicide, my mind already hearing the voice he'll use to tell me something or other. He smiles from the other side of the room and says 'Good afternoon' in a loud voice. I hate him like the universe. My eyes are sore from imagining.

Anna… envied Joan’s deep connection with the human race. She was a member of the club. Anna was half convinced she’d been begotten by a passing alien life-form on a human woman. It was as good an explanation as any for the sense she had of being an outsider.

As a professional misanthrope, I believe that if you are going to hate a person, you ought to do it properly. You should go and live in his shoes for a while, and see at the end of it how much you hate yourself.

A sour view of things, I grant you; but one borne out by the history of our age and of the age to come, when Trinity--not the Christians' but Oppenheimer's--will turn Alamogordo sand to glass. In the future, dead cities will molder behind rusting thorns no prince can ever penetrate; dirty bombs will engender tribes of lepers--not by germs, but by deadly atoms; and radioactive isotopes will be left to cool for an age or more, sealed in burial chambers with a pharaoh's curse.

Celui qui n'a pas le goût de l'absolu se contente d'une médiocrité tranquille

At that moment I realised all the things I miss, all the fascinating stories I don't get to hear, because I refuse to mix with people on principle.

Betrayed and wronged in everything, I’ll flee this bitter world where vice is king, And seek some spot unpeopled and apart Where I’ll be free to have an honest heart.