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Misanthropy has been ascribed to a number of writers of satire, such as William S. Gilbert ("I hate my fellow-man"), but such identifications must be closely scrutinized because a critical or darkly humorous outlook toward mankind may be mistaken for genuine misanthropy. Jonathan Swift is widely accused of misanthropy (see A Tale of a Tub and, most especially, Book IV of Gulliver's Travels).

Another example of mistaken misanthropy is Jean-Paul Sartre's quote "Hell is other people." On the face of it, this looks deeply misanthropic, but actually Sartre was making an observation about the tendency of human beings to lack self-knowledge. We tend to project our worst fears, and our most deeply disliked personal characteristics, onto other people, rather than look inside and face them within ourselves. Thus, when we look at other people we often see the worst of what is in our own personality.

It is important to distinguish between philosophical pessimism and misanthropy. Immanuel Kant said that "Of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing can ever be made," and yet this was not an expression of the uselessness of mankind itself. Similarly, Samuel Beckett once remarked that "Hell must be like... reminiscing about the good old days when we wished we were dead." — a statement that may, perhaps, be seen as utterly bleak and hopeless, but not as anti-human or expressive of any hatred of mankind.

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, on the other hand, was almost certainly as famously misanthropic as his reputation. He wrote that "human existence must be a kind of error." More specifically, he has also been accused of misogyny. Martin Heidegger also showed misanthropy in his concern of the "they" - the tendency of people to conform to one view, which no-one has really thought through, but is just followed because, "they say so". In recent times, Anton LaVey and his brand of Satanism have voiced militant misanthropy - going so far as to advocate sterilisation of parts of the population and ghettoising "lower forms of human life".

In extreme cases, misanthropy has led to serial killings. Murderer of at least 21 people, Carl PanzramCarl Panzram ( 1891- 1930) was an American serial killer from the era of the Great Depression. Early Life He was born in Minnesota, in 1891, the son of Prussian immigrants. He was raised in poverty and logged his first arrest at the age of eight for being said "I hate all the fucking human race. I get a kick out of murdering people" while in a Washington DC jail in 1922.

Regardless of the validity of a misanthropic worldview, those with strongly-held misanthropy often suffer from low self-esteemIn psychology, self-esteem or self-worth is to a person's self-image at an emotional level; circumventing reason and logic. The term differs from ego in that the ego is a more artificial aspect; one can remain highly egotistical, while underneath have ver, depressionIt is common to feel sad, discouraged, or "down" once in a while, and anyone in this state might say they are suffering from depression. But for some people, this mood persists. For depression, or any other condition, to be termed "clinical" it must reach, and even suicidal tendencies.

Some have proposed elevating misanthropy to a protoscienceIn the philosophy of science, the term protoscience is used to describe a new area of scientific endeavor in the process of becoming established. Sometimes scientific skeptics refer to these endeavors as pathological sciences''. While protoscience is ofte of misanthropology.