Arrogance Humility Quotes & Sayings

I still feel there is a case to be made for my old belief that as man approaches the 'new heaven and the new earth'
or the space-age universe, if you will, he must do so with humility rather than with arrogance. — Rachel Carson

I think flexibility, humility, and multilingualism should take the place of sticklerism, arrogance, and nationalism when we think about language. I — Robert Lane Greene

Humility, meekness, magnanimity, and love to preserve unity! These, these are the roads, the true roads of the Church. Let us listen to this again. Humility against vanity, against arrogance - humility, meekness, magnanimity, and love preserve unity. — Pope Francis

Ibn Ata' Allah said: God may open up for you the gates of obedience, but without opening up for you the gates of acceptance. On the other hand, He may Allow you to fall into disobedience which happens to lead you to the right path. DISOBEDIENCE that teaches you HUMILITY is better than PIETY that fills you with VANITY and ARROGANCE. — Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

Knowing more than someone does not necessarily mean that you know every single thing they know. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

... everyone knew that sin was evil, and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvellous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalisation, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honour, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. — Joseph Heller

Respect and humility go together. Humility is not meekness, but the opposite of arrogance. A wise old Indian man once said, "Empty drums make the loudest noise." Grandfather often repeated this phrase to indicate that those with the least understanding are the most arrogant. — Arun Gandhi

Humility and Dignity had a daughter, called Arrogance, who was ashamed of her name and used to hide behind Pride. But Pride was in love with Truth, therefore arrogance married Illusion and forever despised Truth. Pride and Truth had a daughter, called Happiness, while Arrogance and Illusion had a son, called Despair. When both meet, one of them cries. — Robin Sacredfire

The remedy for selfishness is service. The remedy for arrogance is humility. The remedy for confusion is the clarity earned by living your code of values and speaking of it with others. Truth, kindness, and affirming the positive instead of emphasizing the negative are some of the value's that will help you to come back into grace. — Alma Daniel

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. 1 Peter 3:15 When you're challenged or asked about your faith, you shouldn't respond arrogantly. You shouldn't be defiant or forceful, as if you were tearing trees out of the ground. Rather, you should respond with fear and humility, as if you were standing before God and answering him. If you were summoned before kings and princes and had prepared yourself well in advance with Scripture, you might think, "Just wait; I'll answer correctly." But the devil will grab the sword out of your hands and give you a shove. You will be disgraced and find out you put your armor on in vain. He can even take your best verses from your hands so that you can't use them, even though you have them memorized. God allows this to happen to subdue your arrogance and make you humble. — Martin Luther

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance. — T. S. Eliot

Of all trees , I observe God hath chosen the vine, a low plant that creeps upon the helpful wall; of all beasts, the soft and patient lamb; of all fowls, the mild and guileless dove . Christ is the rose of the field, and the lily of the valley. When God appeared to Moses , it was not in the lofty cedar nor the sturdy oak nor the spreading palm; but in a bush, a humble, slender, abject shrub; as if He would, by these elections, check the conceited arrogance of man. — Owen Feltham

Humility moves more mountains than arrogance. — Alan Cohen

The actual confident man, the man truly sure of himself, is not he who esteems himself higher than others, but he who is sure enough that he can bear to esteem others higher than himself. — Criss Jami

Pride makes easy decisions hard. Humility makes hard decisions easy. — Stella Payton

A fight is going on inside me," said an old man to his son. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf is evil. He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you."
The son thought about it for a minute and then asked, "Which wolf will win?"
The old man replied simply, "The one you feed. — Wendy Mass

One is not necessarily made self-centered because he is foolish, but one is very often made foolish because he is self-centered. — Criss Jami

Think outside the box? Indeed. But to add balance to that, one should not in the process forget what the inside of the box looks like as well. Those who are best at thinking outside the box do it not to puff themselves up, but to see how small they really are. As a contented fish in its fish tank appears to have a small, boring existence to us, imagine a larger, more perceptive kingdom (even by scientific taxonomy) to whom our contented existences may appear to be small and boring. This is where true creativity and massive perceptive abilities spawn a sense of intellectual humility; the kind which God adores. — Criss Jami

Sometimes the best virtue learned on the battlefield is modesty. — David Halberstam

Faith taints or at worst removes our curiosity about the world, what we should value, and what type of life we should lead. Faith replaces wonder with epistemological arrogance disguised as false humility. Faith immutably alters the starting conditions for inquiry by uprooting a hunger to know and sowing a warrantless confidence. — Peter Boghossian

The exegetical foundations would appear to be weak, and one shouldn't build huge theological edifices, no matter how splendid or consistent, on weak foundations. — Ben Witherington III

His core business still is self-promotion. — Joe Nocera

Some of you need a lesson in humility. While your arrogance may give you a sense of power, it may serve you better to put it aside. Those are the times you will be the light of the world. — J 'son M. Lee

Your heart is the center of humility, your mind could be the source of arrogance. — Tariq Ramadan

After Galileo, Einstein and even Freud, we try to hang onto a pathetic sort of significance on this planet and in this universe, that we are in some way more special than anything else. Our supreme arrogance that in some way the world was created for us has neither scientific nor spiritual reality. — David Brandon

A medical man likes to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set at nought. — George Eliot

Where everyone wants to be a leader, it makes one a follower to want to be a leader, and a leader to know what to follow. — Criss Jami

I'll take honest arrogance over fake humility any day. — Mary Doria Russell

But self-abasement is just inverted egoism. Anyone who acts with genuine humility will be as far from humiliation as from arrogance. — Stephen Mitchell

Our society is afflicted by a spirit of thoughtless arrogance unbecoming those who have been so magnificently blessed. How grateful we should be for the bounties we enjoy. Absence of gratitude is the mark of the narrow, uneducated mind. It bespeaks a lack of knowledge and the ignorance of self-sufficiency. It expresses itself in ugly egotism and frequently in wanton mischief ...
Where there is appreciation, there is courtesy, there is concern for the rights and property of others. Without appreciation, there is arrogance and evil.
Where there is gratitude, there is humility, as opposed to pride. — Gordon B. Hinckley

He (Lincoln) differed from fanatical moralists primarily in that he was always perplexed. No sooner did he believe he was doing God's will that he began to admit that God's purposes might be different from his own. In short, he never forgot the men's contrast between the absolute goodness of God and the faltering goodness of all who are in the finite predicament. — Elton Trueblood

When I begin praying Christ into someone's life, God often permits suffering in that person's life. If Satan's basic game plan is pride, seeking to draw us into his life of arrogance, then God's basic game plan is humility, drawing us into the life of his Son. — Paul E. Miller

One of my biggest challenges is figuring out how to shoehorn my newfound knowledge into conversations. — A. J. Jacobs

Religion is meant to teach us true spiritual human character. It is meant for self-transformation. It is meant to transform anxiety into peace, arrogance into humility, envy into compassion, to awaken the pure soul in man and his love for the Source, which is God. — Radhanath Swami

The author describes megalomania as seen in Chairman Mao by saying that what he was familiar with, he was really familiar with. This zeal moved the megalomaniac with a complete lack of appreciation for what he DID NOT know. — David Halberstam

In spite of the fact that religion looks backward to revealed truth while science looks forward to new vistas and discoveries, both activities produce a sense of awe and a curious mixture of humility and arrogance in their practitioners. All great scientists are inspired by the subtlety and beauty of the natural world that they are seeking to understand. Each new subatomic particle, every unexpected object, produces delight and wonderment. In constructing their theories, physicists are frequently guided by arcane concepts of elegance in the belief that the universe is intrinsically beautiful. — Paul Davies

Shred the fake mask of humility into pieces. And put on the mask of arrogance if needed. — Abhijit Naskar

Learning requires a large dose if humility to offset our built-in arrogance, which is usually supported by deafness and massive ignorance. New knowledge can prompt us to modify our beliefs. If we want to stick to our prior convictions, we should avoid new information like the plague and close our minds to everything but the opinions that square with our own. This is the way of censors and bookburners. — Robert Funk

I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim - so modestly and so humbly - to possess. It is time to withdraw our 'respect' from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world. — Christopher Hitchens

It is important that you strive for humility, but not humiliation, for a cool, level-headed confidence, not a stiff, delusional arrogance. — Michael Johnson

Horace Greeley pursues temperance to extravagance." Lord Acton — Harold Holzer

Fiction writing starts off by requiring the towering arrogance that enables one to sit down at the typewriter in the belief that someone somewhere will actually be eager to read the productions of our own private imaginations. But that arrogance must be buffered by the humility that leads us to learn our craft and strive to make our work comprehensible and inviting and accessible to the reader. — Lawrence Block

False humility is quite like the worst of both worlds: both that of Meekness and that of Conceit. — Criss Jami

Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel. — Joe Klein

Rather than seeing ourselves as insignificant specks in the immensity of the cosmos, we can consider that immensity an indicator of our worth. It seems the Creator invested a great deal-a universe of 50 billion trillion stars, plus a hundred times more matter, all fine-tuned to mind-boggling precision-for us. If not for the strength and abundance of evidence in support of that notion, it would seem the height of arrogance. Humility demands that we take a deeper and wider look at that evidence. — Hugh Ross

Humility raises us not by human arrogance but by divine grace. — Augustine Of Hippo

Arrogance created to project a self-image of superiority is the very trait that demonstrates to others deeply hidden inferiority. — Sam Owen

Insensitivity makes arrogance ugly; empathy is what makes humility beautiful. — Renford Reese

What causes all this?"

"Pride. What else? — W.P. Kinsella

When your sense of respect for others..
Your humility despite a chance at arrogance..
is MISCONSTRUED, MISUNDERSTOOD AND JUDGED..
Put a stop , pull the brakes..Some people do not deserve it!! — Abha Maryada Banerjee

Those that are too refined to be simple need to be refined again. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The eye of danger and the face of fear are what really pull off a person's mask. — Criss Jami

The greatest danger, of course, was to believe that I was equal to them, because assurance can morph into arrogance that Death loves to prove unfounded. — Dean Koontz

Folly is a child of power. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Cockiness is a display of an empty lifestyle, humility is when you see yourself as a zero while others are making you their hero. — Michael Bassey Johnson

I should wish to see them very good friends, and would, on no account, authorize in my girls the smallest degree of arrogance towards their relations; but still they cannot be equals. (10) — Jane Austen

Successful investors must temper the arrogance of taking a stand with a large dose of humility, accepting that despite their efforts and care, they may in fact be wrong. — Seth Klarman

The rise of science, which with monotonous regularity refuted the cosmologies of the prophets and produced miracles which they could never match, eventually destroyed all these faiths. It did not destroy the awe, nor the reverence and humility, which all intelligent beings felt as they contemplated the stupendous universe in which they found themselves. What it did weaken, and finally obliterate, were the countless religions each of which claimed with unbelievable arrogance, that it was the sole repository of the truth and that its millions of rivals and predecessors were all mistaken. — Arthur C. Clarke

Humility is by definition a starting point - and it sends you off on a journey from there. The arrogance of certainty is both a starting point and an ending point - no journeys needed. — Tim Urban

Arrogance repels the Lord; humility attracts the Lord. — Radhanath Swami

A Native American wisdom story tells of an old Cherokee who is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed. — Kristin Neff

Lie naked on the table, and let them cut. Criticism is surgery, and humility is the anesthetic that allows you to tolerate it. In the end, the process will make you a stronger, more flexible, and truly creative writer. It will replace attitude with genuine confidence, and empty arrogance with artistry. — Molly Cochran

For I am aware what ability is requisite to persuade the proud how great is the virtue of humility, which raises us, not by a quite human arrogance, but by a divine grace, above all earthly dignities that totter on this shifting scene. — Augustine Of Hippo

I am Christ as he was. He is not important; his way is important," Bobby answered.
"Tell us about the way," another Evangel in the crowd asked.
"Love is the way; hate is not the way.
"Kindness is the way. Humility is the way. Beauty is the way.
"Pride is not the way. Arrogance is not the way. Boasting is not the way.
"Giving is the way. Taking is not the way.
"Follow the way and it will lead you to God. Jesus is the way.
"The way is in each of you. You are your own master and savior. — Randy Attwood

The greatness of non-violent resistance is that even as man is faced with tyranny, and the resulting suffering, he responds to hate with love, to prejudice with tolerance, to arrogance with humility, to humiliation with dignity, and to violence with reason. — Liu Xia

I like to introduce myself, because THEN I can get in all the facts." The usually self-deprecating John Hay on the ironic formality of signing his own commission as Secretary of State. — John Taliaferro

It's a kind of arrogance to be so certain you're past redemption. — Ellis Peters

Early in my career ... I had to choose between an honest arrogance and a hypercritical humility ... I deliberately choose an honest arrogance, and I've never been sorry. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The peacock's plumage is its enemy: O many the king who hath been slain by his magnificence! — Maulana Jalaluddin Mohammad Balkhi

Simple life Ethos
If you must judge. Let your moral beacon guide you to a decision you can live with,
If you feel generous, give with humility so others could live with dignity,
If you became aware of injustice, your inaction or silence are part of it,
Living life without courage, is like living without honour,
If your arrogance started to control your behavior, then it's time for you to stratify to heaven where there are no earthly human beings
Never live behind the rocks. Always move to find comfort in brighter places, and
Always deem yourself to be courageous when others call upon you....... — Husam Wafaei

It takes just a litte attitudinal slip to show a big pride. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

There are two circumstances that lead to arrogance: one is when you're wrong and you can't face it; the other is when you're right and nobody else can face it. — Criss Jami

Listening is central to the development of humility. Arrogance speaks. Humility listens. — Brad Lomenick

It's much easier on the emotions when one sees life as an experiment rather than a struggle for popularity. — Criss Jami

Success is born out of arrogance, but greatness comes from humility. — Marco Pierre White

If you want to be a writer, you should go into the largest library you can find and stand there contemplating the books that have been written. Then you should ask yourself, 'Do I really have anything to add?' If you have the arrogance or the humility to say yes, you will know you have the vocation. — Margaret Atwood

is good enough? In these times the terms good and God are seemingly synonymous. We believe that what is generally accepted as good must be aligned with God's will. Generosity, humility, and justice are good. Selfishness, arrogance, and cruelty are evil. The distinction seems pretty straightforward. But is that all there is to it? If good is so obvious, why does Hebrews 5:14 teach that we must have discernment to recognize it? — John Bevere

When blindness and boldness, ignorance and arrogance, weakness and willfulness, meet together in men, it renders them odious to God, burdensome in society, dangerous in their counsels, disturbers of better purposes, intractable and incapable of better direction, miserable in the issue. Where Christ shows his gracious power in weakness, he does it by letting men understand themselves so far as to breed humility, and magnify God's love to such as they are. — Richard Sibbes

An exceedingly confident student would in theory make a terrible student. Why would he take school seriously when he feels that he can outwit his teachers? — Criss Jami

Never mistake arrogance for intellect. — D.B. Harrop

The humanitarian, like the missionary, is often an irreducible enemy of the people he seeks to befriend, because he has not imagination enough to sympathize with their proper needs nor humility enough to respect them as if they were his own. Arrogance, fanaticism, meddlesomeness, and imperialism may then masquerade as philanthropy. — George Santayana

Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion. — Robert Macfarlane

Someone with a low degree of epistemic arrogance is not too visible, like a shy person at a cocktail party. We are not predisposed to respect humble people, those who try to suspend judgement. Now contemplate epistemic humility. Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot, yet has the rare guts to say "I don't know." He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. He hesitates, he will not commit, and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. He introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion.
This does not necessarily mean he lacks confidence, only that he holds his own knowledge to be suspect. I will call such a person an epistemocrat; the province where the laws are structured with this kind of human fallibility in mind I will can an epistemocracy. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in 'measurements' when he did not know what he was measuring. — Robert A. Heinlein

You can't let the truth bring out the worst and let it get the best of you. — Criss Jami

Be careful not to mistake insecurity and inadequacy for humility! Humility has nothing to do with the insecure and inadequate! Just like arrogance has nothing to do with greatness! — C. JoyBell C.

Insecurity was never humility; just as arrogance was never success. — Shannon L. Alder

Doubt is my boon companion, the faithful St. Bernard ever at my side. Whether writing essays or just going about daily life, I am constantly second-guessing myself. My mind is filled with 'yes, buts,' 'so whats?' and other skeptical rejoinders. I am forever monitoring myself for traces of folly, insensitivity, arrogance, false humility, cruelty, stupidity, immaturity and, guess what, I keep finding examples. Age has not made me wiser, except maybe in retrospect. — Phillip Lopate

It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character. — Joseph Heller

No one is is sure of his premise as the man who knows too little. — Barbara W. Tuchman

As with many tragedies, our story opens in a moment of triumph. — Dan Jones

Kissinger would probably be outraged even if he reread his own memoirs, on the grounds that they are not favorable enough. — Walter Isaacson

The opposite of humility is arrogance
the belief that we are wiser or better than others. Arrogance promotes separation rather than community. It looms like a brick wall between us and those from whom we could learn. — John Templeton

Richard Nixon's conversation was loaded with so many stories of all the foreign dignitaries he'd called upon in his career that he sounded like a guy who had pinioned his neighbors into watching his vacation slides. — Rick Perlstein

[Soetsu Yanagi's] main criticism of individual craftsmen and modern artists is that they are overproud of their individualism. I think I am right in saying Yanagi's belief was that the good artist of craftsman has no personal pride because in his soul he knows that any prowess he shows is evidence of that Other Power. Therefore what Yanagi says is 'Take heed of the humble; be what you are by birthright; there is no room for arrogance'. — Bernard Leach

Denys (Finch-Hatton) has been written about before and he will be written about again. If someone has not already said it, someone will say that he was a great man who never achieved greatness, and this will not only be trite, but wrong; he was a great man who never achieved arrogance. — Beryl Markham

The Christian churches and Christianity have nothing in common save in name: they are utterly hostile opposites. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life. — Leo Tolstoy

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed." - CHEROKEE LEGEND — Arianna Huffington

If arrogance is the heady wine of youth, then humility must be its eternal hangover. — Helen Van Slyke

Americans abroad have long been accused of such blinging arrogance and display. I find the charge generally unfair. Arrogance is incorrectly ascribed to what is really the cultural clumsiness of an insular (if continental) people less exposed to foreign ways and languages than most other people on Earth.
True, America as a nation is not very good at humility. But it would be completely unnatural for the dominant military, cultural and technological power on the plant to adopt the demeanor or, say, Liechtenstein. The ensuing criticism is particularly grating when it comes from the likes of the French, British, Spanish, Dutch (there are many others) who just yesterday claimed dominion over every land and people their Captain Cooks ever stumbled upon. — Charles Krauthammer