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I think musicals are a lowbrow, populist art form. And I don't mean lowbrow in a condescending way at all - they are designed to create delight, wonder, joy, surprise. And what becomes really interesting is when innovative or challenging or smart people take it and use the easy runway that the form allows to take people to another planet, or another place. Or subvert it in some way.
Sep 17, 2025
I've gotten "condescending" a million times, and that's not good.
I think feminism has always been global. I think there's feminism everywhere throughout the world. I think, though, for Western feminism and for American feminism, it not so surprisingly continues to center Western feminism and American feminism. And I think the biggest hurdle American feminists have in terms of taking a more global approach is that too often when you hear American feminists talk about international feminism or women in other countries, it kind of goes along with this condescending point of view like we have to save the women of such-and-such country; we have to help them.
Opening things up not closing them off is my job. I'm doing that for my reader. You know, Bob Gottlieb always says, "Criticism is a service industry." I take that very seriously. I do the research so I can tell you interesting things. It's not condescending, it's educational.
Cult writer. It's a weird term because it's complimentary but condescending at the same time.
Don't underestimate your kids. Don't be condescending, because they're children but they're not stupid.
No, Elenore's something else. You're beautiful. Especially when you look at me with that 'boy he's a condescending asshole' expression....Yea. Beautiful.
If I'm writing a story and you're reading it, or vice versa, you took time out of your day to pick up my book. I think the one thing that will kill that relationship is if you feel me condescending to you in the process.
If I'm writing a story and you're reading it, or vice versa, you took time out of your day to pick up my book. I think the one thing that will kill that relationship is if you feel me condescending to you in the process. And how does that happen? Well, it happens when I know more than you do, and when I know that I know more than you do, and I'm holding it back from you. So that I can then manipulate you at the end. You know, you think about like in a dating situation how terrible that would be, it's the same thing with a book.
The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect.
What's more condescending and corny than someone telling you how much more money they have than you and telling you basically, 'I don't care about poor people,' which is a large part of what you hear of corporate hip-hop on the radio.
I mean we [The Beatles] had to go through humiliation upon humiliation with the middle classes and showbiz and Lord Mayors and all that. They were so condescending and stupid. Everybody trying to use us. It was a special humiliation for me because I could never keep my mouth shut and I'd always have to be drunk or pilled to counteract this pressure. It was really hell .
I don't care who the student is, teachers should never be condescending. That should be the first rule in the teacher handbook.
Go force your condescending man-logic on the next house. You can go now.
We are expected to put the utmost energy, of every power that we have, into the service of our fellow men, never sparing ourselves, not condescending to think of what is going to happen to ourselves, but ready, if need be, to go to the utter length of self-sacrifice.
I first became interested in style when I was 16 and I had my first couple of gigs. I realised I couldn't look like the people I was performing to. Not in a condescending way, but just that it would be weird if I was wearing exactly what someone in the crowd was wearing.
The whole world is a theatre for the display of the divine goodness, wisdom, justice, and power, but the Church is the orchestra, as it were—the most conspicuous part of it; and the nearer the approaches are that God makes to us, the more intimate and condescending the communication of his benefits, the more attentively are we called to consider them.
Pity can be nearsighted and condescending; shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing.
Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.
You ever talk about a movie with someone that read the book? They're always so condescending. 'Ah, the book was much better than the movie.' Oh really? What I enjoyed about the movie: no reading.
When people are hurting, what they really need is someone who is fully there for them - not someone who is condescending or officious. The only way for you to be there for them is by facing your fear or anger, whatever feelings cause you to shut down.
Better to be despised, then, than to be ignored; or damned with condescending praise.
It's very hard not to be condescending when you're explaining something to an idiot.
Tragedy is the greatest art form of all. It gives us the courage to continue with our life by exposing us to the pain of life. It is unsentimental, it takes us seriously as human beings, it is not condescending. Paradoxically, by seeing pain we are made greater, it becomes a need.
Don't be condescending to unskilled labor. Try it for a half a day first.
I'm a terrible patient, and I find that doctors can be very condescending.
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.
Be easy and condescending in your deportment to your officers, but not too familiar, lest you subject yourself to a want of respect, which is necessary to support a proper command.
Everybody that loves Nancy loves it in a slightly condescending way. Nancy is comics reduced to their most elemental level.
But really it’s condescending and patronizing not to make fun of someone because they’re old or stupid or crippled or morbidly obese. Banged up people don’t want your pity. They just want to be treated like everyone else. Mockery, when done without prejudice or discretion, can be a form of respect. It’s the closest we’ll ever come to true equality.
I think clearly Europe has a lot to worry about. When I was working at the CIA - and I always worked with a lot of European services - they always were very condescending toward the United States, saying that we are so racist vis-à-vis blacks and other people.
I just happen to comprehend the low standards of the majority of the music-buying public, and I don’t care how condescending that sounds, it’s true. They always go for the shiny gimmicks. Always.
I'm not being condescending, I'm too busy thinking about far more important things you wouldn't understand.
Those in the west who dismiss the repressiveness of laws against women in countries like Iran, no matter how benign their intentions, present a condescending view not just of the religion but also of women living in Muslim majority countries, as if the desire for choice and happiness is the monopoly of women in the west.
You don't need great actors to do a 3D picture. All of this condescending stuff that they put out? "Oh, we will always need actors." Bullshit! They are able to take anybody and put some markers on them, and have them walk through an empty room. Then they paint in the background.
For success in training children the first condition is to become as a child oneself, but this means no assumed childishness, no condescending baby-talk that the child immediately sees through and deeply abhors. What it does mean is to be as entirely and simply taken up with the child as the child himself is absorbed by his life.
I'm not saying this in a condescending kind of way, but it's quite simple: The making of America was a heroic thing. Australia has a much murkier, much more complex view of its history. It's just full of all these open wounds we don't really know what to do with.
I do not feel that the West has really become less condescending toward foreign cultures than the Greeks and Romans were: it has only become more tolerant. Mind you, not toward Islam—only toward certain other Eastern cultures, which offer some sort of spiritual attraction to the spirit-hungry West and are, at the same time, too distant from the Western world-view to constitute any real challenge to its values.
Liberals are some of the most arrogant, condescending smart alecks, but they're just pure ignorant, and they fit the bill of people who have no love and no respect for the founding of this country.
It’s been a tough couple of years for condescending nerds. And if bookstores fall, Jon, America will be inundated with a wandering, snarky underclass of unemployable purveyors of useless and arcane esoterica.
I think the biggest hurdle American feminists have in terms of taking a more global approach is that too often when you hear American feminists talk about international feminism or women in other countries, it kind of goes along with this condescending point of view like we have to save the women of such-and-such country; we have to help them.
Jesus is humble, and His servants must not be proud; but Jesus was never mean or cowardly, nor must His servants be. There was no braver man than Christ. He could stoop to save a soul, but He would stoop to nothing by which His character might be compromised or truth and righteousness insulted. To preach the Gospel boldly is to deliver it as such a message ought to be delivered. Blush to preach of a dying Saviour? Apologize for talking about the Son of God condescending to be made man that He might redeem us from all iniquity? Never!
The Anglo-Saxon world saw India as an underdeveloped country. The land of snake charmers, the cows on the street, that "ex-colony-backward-nation" kind of viewpoint, very condescending. Europe on the other hand, saw India in a more romantic, mystical, spiritual way, as a place that's a fountain of wisdom.
What a wonder is it, that two natures infinitely distant, should be more intimately united than anything in the world; and yet without any confusion! That the same person should have both a glory and a grief; an infinite joy in the Deity, and an inexpressible sorrow in the humanity! That a God upon a throne should be an infant in a cradle; the thundering Creator be a weeping babe and a suffering man, are such expressions of mighty power, as well as condescending love, that they astonish men upon earth, and angels in heaven.
Obama administration didn't have one person who had ever worked in business. Not one Obama cabinet member had ever seriously had a job, run a company, met a payroll in the American economy. And, as such, no way of understanding how business is done, from negotiations to any other aspect of it. In fact, people in Obama's cabinet were arrogant and condescending and looking down on those people as a bunch of shysters and a bunch of cheats and people that kill their customers and they're destroying the planet.
You’re always working at the margin of what you don’t understand, that’s the only exhilarating place to be. To just illustrate what you already know is condescending, and a waste of your time.
The [Nobel] award [of Bob Dylan] is no affront to literature; it is an insult to pop music. It is a condescending ruffle of pop's hair while handing it a lollipop. An act of beaming condescension whose transparent message is: "This one guy, and just this one guy, he's so good, he transcends his trivial idiom and elevates himself into our significant one."
Watteau is no less an artist for having painted a fascia board while Sainsbury's is no less effective a business for producing advertisements which entertain and educate instead of condescending and exploiting.
Face flushed, I shook my head and stared at my white-knuckled grip on the bed. Of all my pet peeves, condescending adults were probably at the top of the list.
Kyo: Of course, I'll beat YOU, too! Yuki: Don't you ever get tired of saying that? Kyo: Beating you is my vocation! It's my goal in life! Yuki: It's so unfair that I keep having to take abuse just because you can't meet your goals. Kyo: THAT CONDESCENDING ATTITUDE OF YOURS REALLY PISSES ME OFF! Yuki: And that revolting thought process of yours pisses me off.