Today we mark the birth in 1884 of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt. A United Nations diplomat, humanitarian, and wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the most admired women of her day. An assertion from her autobiography—"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent"—is still widely quoted today, and it inspired our examination into other views about inferiority.

Thirty-seven years before Roosevelt was born, in an 1847 speech to the U.S. Senate, John C. Calhoun recognized the power of inferiority when he declared, "The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority."

Half a century after Calhoun, American orator Robert G. Ingersoll added his perspective on inferiority and superiority when he proclaimed, "I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart, the best brain."

Folks with the best hearts and the best brains may find solace in the understanding offered up by José Ortega y Gasset. In 1911, that Spanish philosopher told us that rancor (bitter, deep-seated ill will) was nothing but "an outpouring of a feeling of inferiority."