Hank said
It's a simple matter of the genuinely intelligent being able to recognize that there will always be someone smarter than you. Humility is a virtue that comes with self-awareness, which is the true hallmark of intelligence.
I agree, but I think it's a little presumptuous to imply that none of these sad sacks of shit are "genuinely intelligent." The problem comes from the fact that even if you are an intelligent person, that's a very difficult trait to quantify or demonstrate. And when it's one of the few-to-only positive traits you have, people who are not particularly confident in themselves tend to put the nebulous concept of "intellect" on a pedestal.
There's two ways that can go. The first is that you retreat into yourself and say "At least I'm intelligent" while the world spins by you, but it burns like hell every time you meet someone who is smarter than you, which is always bound to happen eventually, because in your head it means that they're better than you in every conceivable way. That's the path I took for several years early in high school, until I realized that insecurity is bullshit and I'm the fucking man.
The other path is lashing out, deciding that intelligence, specifically your intelligence, is the most important trait and everyone who doesn't agree with you on everything is a fool and vastly inferior to you. Case in point, the fine gentlemen you see in this thread.