Quote

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.

Ambrose Bierce

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ambrose Bierce
Born: 1842
Born: June 24
Aphorist
Journalist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Meigs County
Ohio
Dod Grile
William Herman
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Submit
Majority
Respect
Attitude
Call
Subjection
Posture
Compelled

More quotes by Ambrose Bierce

Image
An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision, some wine was poured on his lips to revive him.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
RABBLE, n. In a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian fable - omnipotent on condition that it do nothing.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Hash, x. There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is. Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable. Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
HOSPITALITY, n. The virtue which induces us to feed and lodge certain persons who are not in need of food and lodging.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
alone, adj. In bad company.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
MAGIC, n. An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Adolescence: A stage between infancy and adultery.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
QUORUM, n. A sufficient number of members of a deliberative body to have their own way and their own way of having it. In the U.S. Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on Finance and a messenger from the White House.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
INTERPRETER, n. One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Homicide, /n./ The slaying of one human by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he died by one kind or another - the classification is for the advantage of the lawyers.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
PROVIDENTIAL, adj. Unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the person so describing it.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
Conversation: A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
RATTLESNAKE, n. Our prostrate brother, Homo ventrambulans.
Ambrose Bierce
Image
RIBALDRY, n. Censorious language by another concerning oneself.
Ambrose Bierce