Hubris Quotes

We have lived for too long in a world, and tragically in a Church, where the wills and affections of human beings are regarded as sacrosanct as they stand, where God is required to command what we already love, and to promise what we already desire.

~ N.t. Wright

Jim Crow repeated the old strategies of the reptilian powers of the air: to convince human beings simultaneously and paradoxically that they are gods and animals. In the Garden, after all, the snake approached God's image-bearer, directing her as though he had dominion over her (when it was, in fact, the other way around). He treated her as an animal, and she didn't even see it. At the same time, the old dragon appealed to her to transcend the limits of her dignity. If she would reach for the forbidden, she would be like God, knowing good and evil. He suggested that she was more than a human; she was a goddess.

~ Russell D. Moore

To wish to withstand the Holy Spirit would be the one unforgivable sin.

~ Karl Barth

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

~ Dan Jones

The author's Socrates admonishes paramount awareness human limitations. If we do good to those we evaluate as good and evil to those we evaluate at the evil, and we are wrong, we have been made the world less just.

~ Plato

The sciences have two extremities which meet. The first is the ignorance in which men find themselves at birth. The second is that attained by great souls. They have surveyed whatever man can know, find that they know all, meet in that same ignorance whence they started. It is a clever ignorance, which knows itself. Those among them who, having emerged from the first ignorance, have been unable to achieve the other & have some smattering of this self-satisfied knowledge, pose as experts. The latter do not disturb people, are no more mistaken in their judgments on everything than others. The masses, the skilled, make up the retinue of a nation. The others, who respect it, are equally respected by it.

~ Comte De Lautréamont

Deeply convinced of the reality of the divine will, he (Lincoln) had no patience at all with any who were perfectly sure they knew the details of the divine will.

~ Elton Trueblood

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

Men and women believed and proclaimed God was firmly on their side – and easy and shallow assertion that reduced God to a sort of house deity.

~ Gustav Niebuhr

The most regretful behavior always leaches from a wound to our sanctimonious pride.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Consider an achievement accidental if it is not coupled with modesty. Because if the achiever had endeavoured for it, it would certainly have killed their pride.

~ Raheel Farooq

The real question is why you still believe in that invisible god when a true one stands before you?

~ Ben Willoughby

Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.

~ Herman Melville

Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started.

~ Mary Midgley

I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.

~ Vladimir Nabokov

Don't try to create the world in your image-that was God's mistake.

~ Marty Rubin

Best not to take, yet doubt its strength,A leash with Demons at its length.

~ Mckenzie Bodkin

Do you use 'True Will' as an excuse to do nothing?Have you declared yourself enlightened?Damn your weak philosophies, a pox and a pestilence your despicable sloth and arrogance.

~ Peter J. Carroll

There is no small irony here: An administration which flaunted its intellectual superiority and its superior academic credentials made the most critical of decisions with virtually no input from anyone who had any expertise on the recent history of that part of the world, and it in no way factored in the entire experience of the French Indochina War. Part of the reason for this were the upheavals of the McCarthy period, but in part it was also the arrogance of men of the Atlantic; it was as if these men did not need to know about such a distant and somewhat less worthy part of the world. Lesser parts of the world attracted lesser men; years later I came upon a story which illustrated this theory perfectly. Jack Langguth, a writer and college classmate of mine, mentioned to a member of that Administration that he was thinking of going on to study Latin American history. The man had turned to him, his contempt barely concealed, and said, “Second-rate parts of the world for second-rate minds.

~ David Halberstam

Beware of that demon called 'Changing The World'.

~ Marty Rubin

Trying to be more than human one becomes less.

~ Marty Rubin

And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Inscriptions here of various Names I view'd,The greater part by hostile time subdu'd;Yet wide was spread their fame in ages past,And Poets once had promis'd they should last.

~ Alexander Pope

For many generations…they obeyed the laws and loved the divine to which they were akin…they reckoned that qualities of character were far more important than their present prosperity. So they bore the burden of their wealth and possessions lightly, and did not let their high standard of living intoxicate them or make them lose their self-control…But when the divine element in them became weakened…and their human traits became predominant, they ceased to be able to carry their prosperity with moderation.

~ Plato

Unbridled talent can handicap you with hubris.

~ Khang Kijarro Nguyen

Don't you know about the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that they were incapable of stopping it? Such was the high opinion it had of its talents.

~ Zhuangzi

Why should there be some sort of virtue always attributed to a frank admission of vice?

~ Gordon R. Dickson

As though I had displeased the gods with my erotic hubris, I managed to be the only bisexual girl in the history of colleges who failed to arouse the interest of the campus queers immediately upon setting foot in the dorms.

~ Valentine Glass

Feelings of superiority always stem from an illusion.

~ Marty Rubin

When we don’t put the brakes on our self-absorption, we have nothing stopping us from total self-destruction. We become the fruits of our actions.

~ Zeena Schreck

But who names a starship the Icarus? What kind of man possess that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?

~ Amie Kaufman

Every medicine is vain.

~ Aeschylus

Annabeth:My fatal flaw. That's what the Sirens showed me. My fatal flaw is hubris. Percy: the brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches?Annabeth:No, Seaweed Brain. That's HUMMUS. hubris is worse.Percy: what could be worse than hummus? Annabeth: Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else... Even the gods.

~ Rick Riordan

Don't you ever feel like, what if the world really IS messed up? What if we COULD Do it all over again from scratch? No more war. Nobody homeless. No more summer reading homework.'m listening. Annabeth: I mean, the West represents a lot of the best things mankind ever did--that's why the fire is still burning. That's why OlympusIs still around. But sometimes you just see the bad stuff, you know? And you start thinking the way Luke does: 'If I could tear this all down, i would do it better.'. Don't you ever feel that way? Like YOU could do a better job I'd you ran the world?Percy:Um...no. Me running the world would be kind of a nightmare. Annabeth: then you're lucky. Hubris isn't your fatal flaw.Percy: what is?Annabeth: I don't know, Percy, but every hero has one. If you don't find it and learn to control it...well, they don't call it 'fatal' for nothing. Percy(thinking to himself): I thought about that. It didn't exactly cheer me up.

~ Rick Riordan

The Duke has decreed that the Castle is not cold. The gentleman's lips are almost blue from this lack of cold. And the Duke is right and correct in this as in all things....some very beautiful tapestries line the walls, but many of them are also full of holes. Perhaps the Duke has decreed that there are no moths, either.

~ Christopher Peter Grey

Most humans turn away from God simply for the privilege of deluding themselves into thinking they are the masters of their own destiny.

~ Dennis Garvin

The scientists have given [modern man] the impression that there is nothing he cannot know, and false propagandists have told him that there is nothing he cannot have.

~ Richard M. Weaver

Dreams of innocence are just that, they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.

~ Michael Pollan

Air travelers, of course, are famous for their hubris. They carry on too many bags and use the restroom when the seat-belt sign is on.

~ Meghan Daum