Most people, fortunately, do not believe in such extremes, yet most people also appear to be ethnocentric enough to believe, at least just a little, that their own race is superior to others.
I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
If feelings of pride begin to turn to feelings of superiority, when we think that our group or our beliefs are better than those around us, however, then we begin to develop prejudiced attitudes that can be harmful.
The brilliance of the top roll, apart from the sense of superiority you now feel, is that you have not had to use any joints but made most effective use of your muscle power.
Now with anger, you've got two people on an even playing field. It's still somewhat of a healthy relationship. But when anger turns to contempt, you've been dismissed. It's associated with moral superiority.
Interestingly while highly acclaimed for their restaurants, it's a well-known fact that French people themselves don't actually eat anything, Surviving solely on tiny cups of espresso and the feeling of superiority.
Often a couple's finances are arranged so that the husband can take all the pride of owning the home, even if, in reality, his wife is jointly supporting the household.
Her social superiority over him, which hitherto had scarcely ever impressed her, became unpleasantly insistent, and for the first time she felt that she had stooped in loving him.
It's the open-hearted vulnerability of this work that sets it apart from what great artists used to want their self-portraits to reflect, class status and intellectual superiority.
Of course, he smiled darkly at their delusion, but passed it by with the sad superiority of one who knew that his fidelity like his love was unalterable.