But we easily forget that until Gates stepped aside from his business to, yes, save the world, he was widely despised as someone who gave us products that vexed us and made our lives harder in as many ways as they helped us, who often seemed to be in it for corporate enrichment and domination above all.

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As he saw it now, the more a person was despised, the more he or she resembled Jesus in his last agonies, when he was abandoned by almost all the people he had come to save.

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He vigorously practiced what is now known as investigative journalism, not because business was inherently bad but because he despised "bad actors, " those who were cheating investors, customers, employees.

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"Darwin was aware that his theories would be despised but that does not mean he was afraid of saying what he believed, " the scholar added.

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He was a politician, yet he despised politics.

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No one outside Memphis, he says, could truly understand how despised Kaufman was.

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After lobbying a visitor to his Oxford college too brusquely, he was eased out and took a job at another university which he despised.

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