11 uses
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Definition
very bad (deserving no respect)
- I am not committing the contemptible act of asking you to take me on faith.1.5 Part 1 Chapter 5 — The Climax of the D'Anconias (72% in)
- There, he thought, was the most contemptible representative of the species.1.6 Part 1 Chapter 6 — The Non-Commercial (40% in)
- It's no use pretending about it, we all know it-and I think it's contemptible.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (19% in)
- ...and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own-I would refuse, I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every, power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living...2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (58% in)
- You're the man who would know that just as an idea unexpressed in physical action is contemptible hypocrisy, so is platonic love-and just as physical action unguided by an idea is a fool's self-fraud, so is sex when cut off from one's code of values.2.4 Part 2 Chapter 4 — The Sanction of the Victim (87% in)
- Even from within that unstated, unnamed, undefined muck which represented his code of values, he was able to realize which one of them was the more dependent on the other and the more contemptible.2.5 Part 2 Chapter 5 — Account Overdrawn (80% in)
- I did it-in the name of pity for the most contemptible woman I know.2.6 Part 2 Chapter 6 — Miracle Metal (95% in)
- Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.2.7 Part 2 Chapter 7 — The Moratorium on Brains (27% in)
- To me-the foulest man on earth, more contemptible than a criminal, is the employer who rejects men for being too good.3.1 Part 3 Chapter 1 — Atlantis (46% in)
- If there are degrees of evil, it is hard to say who is the more contemptible: the brute who assumes the right to force the mind of others or the moral degenerate who grants to others the right to force his mind.3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (33% in)
- But the damned and the guiltiest among you are the men who had the capacity to know, yet chose to blank out reality, the men who were willing to sell their intelligence into cynical servitude to force: the contemptible breed of those mystics of science who profess a devotion to some sort of 'pure knowledge' the purity consisting of their claim that such knowledge has no practical purpose on this earth-who reserve their logic for inanimate matter, but believe that the subject of dealing...3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (95% in)
There are no more uses of "contemptible" in Atlas Shrugged.
Typical Usage
(best examples)