The Collaborative International Dictionary
Self-righteousness \Self`-right"eous*ness\, n. The quality or state of being self-righteous; pharisaism.
Wiktionary
n. Confidence in one's own righteousness, self-assurance, smug.
Wikipedia
Self-righteousness (also called sanctimoniousness, sententiousness, and holier-than-thou attitudes) is a feeling or display of (usually smug) moral superiority derived from a sense that one's beliefs, actions, or affiliations are of greater virtue than those of the average person. Self-righteous individuals are often intolerant of the opinions and behaviors of others.
The term "self-righteous" is often considered derogatory (see, for example, journalist and essayist James Fallows' description of self-righteousness in regard to Nobel Peace Prize winners) particularly because self-righteous individuals are often thought to exhibit hypocrisy due to the belief that humans are imperfect and can therefore never be infallible, an idea similar to that of the Freudian defense mechanism of reaction formation. The connection between self-righteousness and hypocrisy predates Freud's views, however, as evidenced by the 1899 book Good Mrs. Hypocrite: A Study in Self-Righteousness, by the pseudonymous author "Rita."
Usage examples of "self-righteousness".
The self-righteousness with which the older man had treated them yesterday seemed to Baden much more in keeping with what he knew about Niall.
In other words, special rootedness in the biosphere can indeed be reasonably claimedthere is literally a million years of rich tradition of the wise woman who feels the currents of embodiment in nature and communion, and celebrates it with healing rituals and knowing ways of connecting wisdom, a wisdom that does not worship merely the agentic sun and its glaring brightness, but finds in the depths and the organic dark the ways of being linked in relationship, that puts care above power and nurturance above self-righteousness, that reweaves the fragments with concern, and midwifes the communions and the unsung connections that sustain us each and all.
It's just—oh hell, the thing that irritates me about these ecofreaks isn't what they call for, it's their goddammed self-righteousness.
It's justoh hell, the thing that irritates me about these ecofreaks isn't what they call for, it's their goddammed self-righteousness.
Its presence could be seen and felt-in the angry faces of people on the harvesters, in the hoarding of food supplies and metals, in the false confidence and self-righteousness of the government speeches, and in the tense warning notes that flew between the Inner and Outer Systems.
Next I enlarged upon the divers failings of New Tammany College, past and present, as revealed to me by Max and partially confirmed by my own reading and observation: its oppression of Frumentians, its lawless Informationalism, its staggering wastefulness, its pillage of natural resource and despoil of natural beauty, its hostility to learning and refinement, its apotheosis of the lowest percentile, its vulgarity, inflated self-esteem, self-righteousness, self-deception, sentimentality, hypocrisy, artificiality, simple-mindedness, naï.
Her innate self-righteousness and resentfulness began to surface again.
So two things happen: people who've been barred by a eugenics board, feeling they've been unjustly deprived, hide their sour-grapes pose behind a mask of self-righteousness - and a lot of people who can't face the responsibility of raising prodgies seize on this as an excuse to copy them.