Quotes About Arrogance

Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.

The arrogance that accompanies merit offends us even more than the arrogance of people who are lacking in merit: since merit itself offends us.

I would like to see us get this place right first before we have the arrogance to put significantly flawed civilizations out onto other planets, even though they may be utterly uninhabited.

Arrogance is the obstruction of wisdom.

I like to think that my arrogance, impetuosity, impatience, selfishness and greed are the qualities that make me the lovable chap I am.

In a world that has gone global, we no longer have a choice. If we don't export freedom, we risk importing the viruses which have corrupted other nations. ... Some critics complained that President Bush was arrogant when he suggested America can and should export freedom to other countries. This implies the people of unfree countries may not wish to be free. Which is the greater arrogance?

We should always keep an open mind about any new phenomenon in nature. To merely say that's impossible, therefore it doesn't exist, is to commit a serious error. A much better approach would be to say That's quite unlikely, but show me the evidence you have that says that it may be so. It would be the height of arrogance to think that man knows everything possible about the Universe or the Earth. There are many things yet to be discovered, and that is why we have scientific research (or any kind of research). That should be the rationalist's approach to parapsychology and the occult.

Every time I think you’ve reached the limits of arrogance, you show me new heights. Truly, your egotism is like the Universe—ever expanding.

We certainly would be happy for more help, but not at the price of condescension and arrogance. If the Europeans believe they can afford to be less committed in Somalia, please - we can deal with it ourselves.

Alphas simply did not grovel; arrogance was part of the job description.

I feel like that's something the church has done really badly is actually confessing. We are sinners. We are broken, shattered people that do things selfishly, out of arrogance, pride, lust, greed. And all have fallen short. That doesn't mean some we're definitely a part of that inclusive all.

There is nothing less to our credit than our neglect of the foreigner and his children, unless it be the arrogance most of us betray when we set out to "Americanize" him.

You know; when I look at the night sky and I see this enormous splendor of stars and galaxies, I sometimes ask the question, well how many worlds are we talking about? Well do the math, there are about 100 billion galaxies that are in the visible universe and each galaxy in turn contains about 100 billion stars, you multiply and you get about ten billion trillion stars. Well I think it is the height of arrogance to believe that we are alone in the universe, my attitude is that the universe is teaming, teaming with different kinds of life forms

Sigmund Freud often remarked that great revolutions in the history of science have but one common, and ironic, feature: they knock human arrogance off one pedestal after another of our previous conviction about our own self-importance.

It happens to all of us, I concluded that Easter Sunday morning. God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over.

Watch your attitude. I don't mean to sound like so much of an old head, but there is another generation behind me, out there, doing it now. I find that, with the whole hip-hop generation, there's a lot of attitude. Whether it's confidence or arrogance or whichever, I will always say to a young guy, “Nobody wants to work with an asshole.” You know, you can still be a great player. You can still play all of the baddest licks in the world. But if you don't have a good attitude, nobody's going to work with you.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

Arrogance is an exaggeration of the truth.

The soul force we need in America today, more than any other, is the spirit of atonement. We need to humble ourselves before God and ask forgiveness for the things we have done wrong. We need to ask God to forgive us for our arrogance.

The arrogance is not greatness but swelling; and the swelling seems big but it's not healthy.

Watching President Obama apologize last week for America's arrogance - before a French audience that owes its freedom to the sacrifices of Americans - helped convince me that he has a deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions.

There are some men who, in a spirit of arrogance, think they are superior to women. They do not seem to realize that they would not exist but for the mother who gave them birth. When they assert their superiority they demean her.

If love closes, the self contracts and hardens: the mind having nothing else to occupy its attention and give it that change and renewal it requires, busies itself more and more with self-feeling, which takes on narrow and disgusting forms, like avarice, arrogance and fatuity.

That is why it is so important to let certain things go. To release them. To cut loose. People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards; sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Don't expect to get anything back, don't expect recognition for your efforts, don't expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Complete the circle. Not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are.

Memory of our good works makes us negligent and leads to arrogance. Do not think of your good deeds, so that God may remember them.

The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.

I have seen myself lose intolerance, narrowness, bigotry, complacence, pride and a whole bushel-basket of other intellectual vices through my contact with Nature and with men. And when you take weeds out of a garden it gives you room to grow flowers. So, every time I lost a little self-satisfaction, or arrogance, I could plant some broadness or love of my own in its place, and after a while the garden of my mind began to bloom and be fragrant and I found myself better equipped for my work and more useful to others as a consequence.

Timing and arrogance are decisive factors in the successful use of talent.

If you wish to help someone, give secretly and avoid arrogance.

True power does not need arrogance, a long beard and a barking voice. True power strangles you with silk ribbons, charm and intelligence.

Look, first of all, the climate is changing. I don't think the science is clear what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. It's convoluted. And for the people to say the science is decided on, this is just really arrogant, to be honest with you, it's this intellectual arrogance that now you can't even have a conversation about it. The climate is changing, and we need to adapt to that reality.

Arrogance is a great obstruction to wisdom.

I don't have the Big Idea. I don't have the arrogance to even want to have the Big Idea. But I believe the physics of resisting power is as old as the physics of accumulating power. That's what keeps the balance in the universe... the refusal to obey.

Heaven is angered by my arrogance; my proof [of the four-color theorem] is also defective.

The Negro cannot win the respect of his oppressor by acquiescing; he merely increases the oppressor's arrogance and contempt.

True politeness is consideration for the opinions of others. It has been said of dogmatism that it is only puppyism come to its full growth; and certainly the worst form this quality can assume is that of opinionativeness and arrogance.

Yiddish for gall, nerve, arrogance-whatever

A solid answer to everything is not necessary. Blurry concepts influence one to focus, but postulated clarity influences arrogance.

We have come to look at our planet as a resource for our species, which is funny when you think that the planet has been around for about five billion years, and Homo sapiens for perhaps one hundred thousand. We have acquired an arrogance about ourselves that I find frightening. We have come to feel that we are so far apart from the rest of nature that we have but to command.

Perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this [step by step, from humans to apes to monkeys to lemurs] - leading us insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures, from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental Mammalia. It is as if nature herself had forseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman severity had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into prominence the slaves, admonishing the conqueror that he is but dust.

The scientist has to take 95 per cent of his subject on trust. He has to because he can't possibly do all the experiments, therefore he has to take on trust the experiments all his colleagues and predecessors have done. Whereas a mathematician doesn't have to take anything on trust. Any theorem that's proved, he doesn't believe it, really, until he goes through the proof himself, and therefore he knows his whole subject from scratch. He's absolutely 100 per cent certain of it. And that gives him an extraordinary conviction of certainty, and an arrogance that scientists don't have.

We are always seeking our opposite, whether we know it or not. When we discover what that is we can dissolve our arrogance.

The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man.

A little arrogance in the hands of the capable is well earned - and in most case, deserved.

The Fates are here because of supernal anger, celestial imbalance, and arrogance of men and gods that must be curbed.

In closing, the greatest threat to peace on this earth is the arrogance of a super-power [America] that is out of control.

Let us, on both sides, lay aside all arrogance. Let us not, on either side, claim that we have already discovered the truth. Let us seek it together as something which is known to neither of us. For then only may we seek it, lovingly and tranquilly, if there be no bold presumption that it is already discovered and possessed.