In my experience, Keith, many folks who fancy themselves "photographers" are indeed a pretentious, arrogant, and condescending lot. A quick perusal of many threads here has done nothing to dissuade me from that view.
It's interesting how people can become condescending through labeling and perceptions about ownership of some item or another. For example, if I tell you that I own a yacht (and I do,) that immediately conjures a stereotype in most people's minds. That stereotype is likely that I'm wealthy, probably educated in some Ivy League school; and undoubtedly a snob. If I add that I shoot Leica exclusvely and I have three bodies, that stereotype is further reinforced.
None of that stereotype is true; my "yacht" is a 1996 21' sailboat that is a trailer-sailor, and gets used on lakes in the Midwest U.S. I paid a little over $6k for the boat, motor, and trailer. My education is from a very humble college in SoCal... and yet pretty much everyone who read my first statement would see the stereotype in the last paragraph if I said "I own a yacht." As far as the cameras, I have an M9P, an M8, and an M4-P. The M9P was an extravagant buy at $5k for me, the M8 was $2k and I essentially got the M4-P for free after buying it as a package deal and selling off the accessories. Five of my eight lenses (I've said this before) are CV and the other three '60s vintage Leitz Canada. Yet the immediate stereotype exists.
HCB was very much like many of us... interested in a variety of disciplines and became really good at photography through daily practice; nothing any one of us here couldn't do if we could support ourselves financially while doing that. He has become legend because he was talented, the times he lived and worked in, and because of the sheer volume of his work.
As Major Tom's post above indicates, too much is made of quotes from famous people taken out of context, just because they're famous and the public assigns too much significance to them because they're famous. Being famous doesn't make you right, or even important. It just means lots of people know about you.
