"The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors"
About this Quote
Hazlitt doesn’t just insult small-minded hecklers; he anatomizes their strategy. The “insignificant” aren’t merely rude, they’re tactical. Sneering is portrayed as a low-cost weapon: “safe from reprisals” suggests a social ecology where consequence tracks status. If you’re too minor to threaten anyone, you can throw stones without expecting one back. That’s a bleak, very modern observation about how cruelty often travels downhill in risk.
The subtext is less about individual nastiness than about status as a closed economy. Hazlitt frames self-esteem as something you either build or counterfeit. His sneerers can’t “rise” internally through achievement or virtue, so they attempt the cheaper alchemy of comparison: lower the neighbor and you feel taller. It’s not confidence; it’s accounting.
As a critic writing in an England newly thick with print culture, clubs, and partisan noise, Hazlitt knew how public opinion could become a sport for people with little skin in the game. The line reads like an early diagnosis of the heckle as social performance: derision as a bid for relevance when relevance isn’t otherwise available.
What makes it work is the cold causal chain. Hazlitt doesn’t moralize, he explains motive: insignificance breeds safety; safety breeds sneering; sneering becomes a substitute ladder for self-respect. It’s cynicism with a civic point: a culture that rewards cheap contempt will manufacture more of it, and the loudest scorn won’t necessarily come from the powerful, but from the protected and petty.
The subtext is less about individual nastiness than about status as a closed economy. Hazlitt frames self-esteem as something you either build or counterfeit. His sneerers can’t “rise” internally through achievement or virtue, so they attempt the cheaper alchemy of comparison: lower the neighbor and you feel taller. It’s not confidence; it’s accounting.
As a critic writing in an England newly thick with print culture, clubs, and partisan noise, Hazlitt knew how public opinion could become a sport for people with little skin in the game. The line reads like an early diagnosis of the heckle as social performance: derision as a bid for relevance when relevance isn’t otherwise available.
What makes it work is the cold causal chain. Hazlitt doesn’t moralize, he explains motive: insignificance breeds safety; safety breeds sneering; sneering becomes a substitute ladder for self-respect. It’s cynicism with a civic point: a culture that rewards cheap contempt will manufacture more of it, and the loudest scorn won’t necessarily come from the powerful, but from the protected and petty.
Quote Details
| Topic | Humility |
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