Social Comparison Quotes

There are other people who have it a lot worse

The negro is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.

Envy is a declaration of inferiority.

It’s not greed that drives the world, but envy.

The envious are more likely to be mollified by seeing others deprived of some advantage than by gaining it for themselves. It is not what they lack that chiefly troubles them, but what others have.

"Mediocrity" doesn't mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.

Animals don't know as much about jealousy as people, but they're not ignorant of it, either.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.

I was the tallest guy in the school, and I was very conscious of being larger than anybody - classmates and teachers.

We judge people in areas where we’re vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we’re doing. If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

The masses do not like those who surpass them in any regard. The average man envies and hates those who are different.

I think it's pathetic that women and men treat each other worse than we treat our pets. It's love or hate.

The military thinks about weapons the way women think about perfume.

I never knew how ugly and how stupid I was until, you know, we had Twitter.

We judge people in areas where we're vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we're doing.

People are always angry at anyone who chooses very individual standards for his life; because of the extraordinary treatment which that man grants to himself, they feel degraded, like ordinary beings.

All envy is proportionate to desire; we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us.

I don't think I'm very cool as a person. I'm just better than anyone else at acting cool.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

I think Americans love success - but hate the people who have it.

Comparison is painful. Don't be cowed by other people's pretty pictures. When you feel unimpressive, or irrelevant, that has nothing to do with what you're actually capable of.

For my part, the thing I would wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. But what the typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals.

Europeans don't seem to have the groupie mentality.

I think that, in comparison, New Yorkers and Northerners are so guarded.