"There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult"
About this Quote
Contempt is the one social weapon you can’t sheath after the fact. Chesterfield, the consummate 18th-century court politician, is mapping the emotional physics of status: people can tolerate pain, even loss, if it reads as impersonal or transactional. What they can’t tolerate is being positioned as lesser. An “injury” can be chalked up to necessity, accident, or the rough play of competing interests. An “insult” is personal; it claims the right to judge your worth. Contempt goes further still. It doesn’t merely oppose you, it denies you standing.
The line is less moral instruction than survival briefing for a world where reputation functioned like currency and politics ran on face-to-face dependency. In Chesterfield’s milieu - salons, patronage networks, parliamentary factions - your future could hinge on whether someone felt respected enough to keep you in the room. Contempt ruptures that economy because it signals permanence: if you’re beneath regard, no apology counts, no compensation restores balance. A wound can heal; humiliation metastasizes.
The subtext is tactical and a little chilly. Chesterfield isn’t praising dignity so much as warning the powerful to ration their disdain. Contempt feels like dominance, but it creates durable enemies because it invites retaliation aimed not at your policies or your pocketbook, but at your social legitimacy. Modern politics still runs this script: voters will endure hard outcomes, even austerity, longer than they’ll endure being treated as stupid, backward, or invisible. Insult is the spark; contempt is the accelerant.
The line is less moral instruction than survival briefing for a world where reputation functioned like currency and politics ran on face-to-face dependency. In Chesterfield’s milieu - salons, patronage networks, parliamentary factions - your future could hinge on whether someone felt respected enough to keep you in the room. Contempt ruptures that economy because it signals permanence: if you’re beneath regard, no apology counts, no compensation restores balance. A wound can heal; humiliation metastasizes.
The subtext is tactical and a little chilly. Chesterfield isn’t praising dignity so much as warning the powerful to ration their disdain. Contempt feels like dominance, but it creates durable enemies because it invites retaliation aimed not at your policies or your pocketbook, but at your social legitimacy. Modern politics still runs this script: voters will endure hard outcomes, even austerity, longer than they’ll endure being treated as stupid, backward, or invisible. Insult is the spark; contempt is the accelerant.
Quote Details
| Topic | Respect |
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