Quotes about arrogance
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“We're so arrogant, aren't we? So afraid of age, we do everything we can to prevent it. We don't realize what a privilege it is to grow old with someone. Someone who doesn't drive you to commit murder or doesn't humiliate you beyond repair.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Age

“The more clearly we express it that the whole weight of our future victories will lie on our enemies, the more, in my opinion, will it tend to shorten the war. We have covered a considerable distance towards peace. The Entente no longer has any possibility of beating us economically. Do they think they can beat us militarily, now that our position in the West has become better that it ever was? If the statesmen of the Entente wanted understanding, they ought to have taken advantage of the situation now, when the Reich Chancellor has offered them the hand of understanding. They are playing a wanton game with their misguided peoples. Let the example of Russia be a warning to them. Russia, which offered us the hand of understanding, could have obtained a good peace of understanding if she had not risked this peace through the arrogance of Trotsky. May this struggle bring us victory, but may it also bring the benefits of this victory for Germany's future.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 18 March 1918

War, People, Lie, Peace

“Gratitude is a sign of maturity. It is an indication of sincere humility. It is a hallmark of civility. And most of all it is a divine principle. … Indeed, gratitude is the beginning of civility, of decency and goodness, of a recognition that we cannot afford to be arrogant. We should walk with the knowledge that we will need help every step of the way.”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes.

Way, Knowledge, Help, Sincerity

“In China's communist era, despite all of the rhetoric about internationalism and "liberation of mankind" during the Mao years, the regime, especially in its claims to legitimacy, has consistently stressed nationalism. Nationalism has taken different forms at different stages - an arrogant, bellicose style under Mao; a pragmatic, defensive style under Deng Xiaoping; and a resurgence of the arrogant, bellicose style under Jiang Zemin - but the underlying passions that shape the policies have always been caught up in a vicious cycle between self-abasement and self-aggrandizement.”

Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist

"Bellicose and Thuggish: The Roots of Chinese "Patriotism" at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century" (2002)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

Passion

“For this honour, nobility, gentility, propriety, superfluity, etc. hath (without contradiction) been the father of hellish horrid pride, arrogance, haughtiness, loftiness, murder, malice, of all manner of wickedness and impiety. Yea, the cause of all the blood that ever hath been shed - from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of the last Levellers that were shot to death.”

Abiezer Coppe (1619–1672) English writer

A Fiery Flying Roll (1650)

Death

“[Apple] brings to mind the idea of a corporate edifice complex. That's where a successful company builds a monument to its greatness just as it is losing touch with the realities of its market. … The construction of a $5 billion palatial headquarters when the company is — at best — between hit products does reflect a certain corporate arrogance.”

Peter Cohan American businessman

Is Apple the Next Dell? http://forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/04/25/is-apple-the-next-dell in Forbes (25 April 2013)

Idea, Reality, Success

“The lieutenant took his time scanning their visa chips, letting them wait in the drizzle, occasionally making a comment with the idle arrogance common to such nobodies who have just come into a small bit of power.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 2 (p. 105)

Time, Waiting

“Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.”

Willa Cather book Shadows on the Rock

Shadows on the Rock (1931), Epilogue

“It is in the United States that one may better see, if one has the taste for it, the vast Jewish panic, the mad anguish that strangles, the camouflaged arrogance, at the slightest evocation of a possibility of their regulation for the general world-wide good.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

50
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)

World, Madness

“I listened while he thought aloud and had almost forgotten my Machiavellian combination, so keen was my relish of the joyous intimacy of this communion with a mind I had passionately loved in his works. He was the first of the great writers of our day whom I had thus approached on something like terms of intimacy. As we talked I observed the strange similarity between his spoken and his written words. I admired the charming simplicity with which he abandoned himself to the pleasures of imagination, his superabundant intelligence, the liveliness of his impressions and his total absence of arrogance and of pose.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

The Age for Love

Love, Pleasure, Imagination, Intelligence

“I set up the Orchestra in 1939. I had had my supporters by that time and they used to follow me and scream during my shows. I used to like it, but said to myself: "be humble Osvaldo, don't be arrogant." There were sometimes I was in prison and a cousin of mine (a policeman) used to replaced me on the piano.”

Osvaldo Pugliese (1905–1995) Argentine pianist, tango composer

Unsourced

Support, Time

“To say he hath spoken to him in a Dream, is no more then to say he dreamed that God spake to him; which is not of force to win beleef from any man, that knows dreams are for the most part naturall, and may proceed from former thoughts; and such dreams as that, from selfe conceit, and foolish arrogance, and false opinion of a mans own goodlinesse, or other vertue, by which he thinks he hath merited the favour of extraordinary Revelation. To say he hath seen a Vision, or heard a Voice, is to say, that he dreamed between sleeping and waking: for in such manner a man doth many times naturally take his dream for a vision, as not having well observed his own slumbering. To say he speaks by supernaturall Inspiration, is to say he finds an ardent desire to speak, or some strong opinion of himself, for which hee can alledge no naturall and sufficient reason. So that though God Almighty can speak to a man, by Dreams, Visions, Voice, and Inspiration; yet he obliges no man to beleeve he hath so done to him that pretends it; who (being a man) may erre, and (which is more) may lie.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Third Part, Chapter 32
Leviathan (1651)

God, Lie, Dreams, Nature

“The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Remarks about the Committee to Re-elect the President, as quoted in The New York Times (31 March 1974)
1970s

“When I met Wittgenstein, I saw that Schlick's warnings were fully justified. But his behavior was not caused by any arrogance. In general, he was of a sympathetic temperament and very kind; but he was hypersensitive and easily irritated. Whatever he said was always interesting and stimulating and the way in which he expressed it was often fascinating. His point of view and his attitude toward people and problems, even theoretical problems, were much more similar to those of a creative artist than to those of a scientist; one might almost say, similar to those of a religious prophet or a seer. When he started to formulate his view on some specific problem, we often felt the internal struggle that occurred in him at that very moment, a struggle by which he tried to penetrate from darkness to light under an intense and painful strain, which was even visible on his most expressive face. When finally, sometimes after a prolonged arduous effort, his answers came forth, his statement stood before us like a newly created piece of art or a divine revelation. Not that he asserted his views dogmatically … But the impression he made on us was as if insight came to him as through divine inspiration, so that we could not help feeling that any sober rational comment of analysis of it would be a profanation.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Rudolf Carnap, as quoted in The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (1963) by Paul Arthur Schilpp, p. 25, and in Ludwig Wittgenstein : The Duty of Genius (1991) by Ray Monk, p. 244

Pain, People, Art, Way

“The biggest terrorist organization in the world today is the U. S. Empire. … The U. S. central command has its own death porn channel, video-logging their beheadings by drone. A drop in the bucket of the crimes and chaos the Empire has showered on this region of the world. But amidst its success in completely shredding several countries, it has also revealed a weakness – that its greed and arrogance can lead it to disaster. Any crisis for the Empire means new opportunities for the people: to expose its lies, its crimes, and to mobilize against it.”

Abby Martin (1984) American journalist

TeleSUR, September 11, 2016

Death, People, World, Success

“The Persian aggression against Iraq was a result of the arrogant, racialist and evil attitudes of the ruling clique in Iran. At the same time, it was a Zionist and imperialist conspiracy aimed at liquidating Iraq's revival and checking its development for decades. It tried to strip you of your shining mind and heart, in the same way as it tried to destroy the scientific, cultural and technical bases of your new revival. But you, with courage, patience and efficiency — thanks to the Revolution's achievements — have been able to meet a challenge which many peoples in the world may fail to meet, and which some countries in the Arab homeland have indeed failed to meet.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

People, World, Way, Courage

“Tax revenues are up 59 percent since 1980. Because of our economic growth? No. During Carter's four years, we had growth of 37.2 percent; Reagan's five years have given us 30.7 percent. The new revenues are due to four giant Republican tax increases since 1981. All republicans rightly chastised Carter for his $38 billion deficit. But they ignore or even defend deficits of $220 billion, as government spending has grown 10.4 percent per year since Reagan took office, while the federal payroll has zoomed by a quarter of a million bureaucrats… big government has been legitimized in a way the Democrats never could have accomplished. It was tragic to listen to Ronald Reagan on the 1986 campaign trail bragging about his high spending on farm subsidies, welfare, warfare, etc… the IRS has grown bigger, richer, more powerful, and more arrogant. In the words of the founders of our country, our government has "sent hither swarms" of tax gatherers "to harass our people and eat out their substance." His officers jailed the innocent George Hansen, with the President refusing to pardon a great American whose only crime was to defend the Constitution. Reagan's new tax "reform" gives even more power to the IRS. Far from making taxes fairer or simpler, it deceitfully raises more revenue for the government to waste… I want to totally disassociate myself from the policies that have given us unprecedented deficits, massive monetary inflation, indiscriminate military spending, an irrational and unconstitutional foreign policy, zooming foreign aid, the exaltation of international banking, and the attack on our personal liberties and privacy.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Letter to chairman of the RNC http://www.textfiles.com/politics/ron_paul.txt Frank Fahrenkopf (March 1987). 1980s

People, Way, Personality, Country

“He was surprised when I ignored him. He is wealthy and arrogant and used to being listened to even when what he says is nonsense—as it often is.”

Octavia E. Butler Wild Seed

Source: Wild Seed (1980), Chapter 2 (p. 25)

“From eating [meat] arrogance is born, from arrogance erroneous imaginations issue, and from imagination is born greed; and for this reason refrain from eating”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

meat
Mahayana, Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Chapter Eight. On Meat-eating

Imagination

“The first thought that occurred to me, that night when I heard the chairman of the jury announce my name, was, Just think how many people hate me at this moment. Naturally, I wanted to annoy those people even further by being arrogant.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

About the Man Booker Prize
John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

Hate, People, Nature, Thinking

“There is a certain category of fool—the overeducated, the academic, the journalist, the newspaper reader, the mechanistic "scientist", the pseudo-empiricist, those endowed with what I call "epistemic arrogance", this wonderful ability to discount what they did not see, the unobserved.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 106

Fools

“Instead of being tried as the accused, they acted like the plaintiff and with increased malice and vileness, they revealed their long-standing enmity towards the Islamic Republic and towards any flag of Islam raised to confront kufr and arrogance.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

2016, Hajj hijacked by oppressors, Muslims should reconsider management of Hajj (September 2015)

“On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian, 23 October 2004, Dumb show, http://home.valornet.com/rolandtignor/demoncrats20.htm http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/obama-barack-america-1981504-new-first Guardian columns

God, World, Law

“As seen in my loneliness, there was this difference between the Bible and the newspapers. The one reminded one that, apart from God, my life was but a bubble of air, and it bade me remember my Creator; the other fostered arrogance and loneliness.”

Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) Welsh journalist and explorer

Source: Quotes:, Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1909), p. 254

Life, God, Loneliness

“Mondrian... The constructivists?... They had certainties. They wanted a stable basis to work on, but I’m afraid that that was enormous arrogance on their part. Nothing is stable and no certainties are possible.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

11 August 1972; p. 90
1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

Parting

“As I look at drunkard men walking the streets of Montgomery and of other cities every day, I find myself saying, “But by the grace of God, you too would be a drunkard.” As I look at those who have lost balance of themselves and those who are giving their lives to a tragic life of pleasure and throwing away everything they have in riotous living, I find myself saying, “But by the grace of God, I too would be here.” And when you see that point, you cannot be arrogant. But you walk through life with a humility that takes away the self-centeredness that makes you a disintegrated personality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)

Life, Men, God, Pleasure

“Thus it was that America sank further and further into Americanism. Vast wealth and industry, and also brilliant invention, were concentrated upon puerile ends. In particular the whole of American life was organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans who wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder, either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government. Those who achieved power were satisfied so long as they could merely retain it, and advertise it uncritically in the conventionally self-assertive manners.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter II: Europe’s Downfall; Section 1, “Europe and America” (pp. 34-35)

Life, Hope, Star, Future

“I am convinced that society will look back on human arrogance and cruelty toward other animals with the same horror and disbelief that we presently reserve for atrocities committed against human beings.”

John Dear (1959) Catholic priest from the United States

Christianity and Vegetarianism (1990)

Animals

“The other night at a neighborhood restaurant the waiter, after mentioning he had read my books, said about himself, “I’m white, I’m nothing.” But that was what I wanted, you see, growing up in America—the freedom of being nothing, the confidence of it, the arrogance. And I achieved it.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Books, Confidence, Freedom, Reading

“If you were not to be its victim, this book and body would amuse you with its arrogance. It would make you laugh. Because you were not its victim, you could feel no pain of betrayal.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the eighth book, "The Book of the Seducer"
The Pillow Book

Pain, Books, Feeling, Betrayal

“Attention Deficit Democracy produces the attitudes, ignorance and arrogance that pave the way to political collapse.”

James Bovard (1956) American journalist

From Attention Deficit Democracy (Palgrave, 2006) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigrams%20Attention%20Deficit%20Democracy.htm

Way, Democracy

“Once again, my family and I find ourselves being assaulted by the obscenity that is Mumia Abu-Jamal. On Sunday October 5th, my husband's killer will once again air his voice from what masquerades as a prison, and spew his thoughts and ideas at another college commencement. Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard and honored as a victim and a hero by a pack of adolescent sycophants at Goddard College in Vermont. Despite the fact that 33 years ago, he loaded his gun with special high-velocity ammunition designed to kill in the most devastating fashion, then used that gun to rip my husband's freedom from him--today, Mumia Abu-Jamal will be lauded as a freedom fighter. Undoubtedly the administrators at Goddard who first accepted, then enthusiastically supported Abu-Jamal as their speaker will be moved by his "important message" when, if one distills that message to its basic meaning, it amounts to nothing more than the same worn out hatred for this country and everyone in law enforcement that Mumia Abu-Jamal has harbored his entire life. Many at Goddard College have said that this is a matter of Abu-Jamal's First Amendment right to speak and be heard. What a convenient way to dodge their responsibility to take a moral position on this situation. This is not a matter of First Amendment rights -- it's a matter of right and wrong. Across the country, people have been voicing their disgust with the wrong that the college is about to commit by allowing a convicted cop-killer to speak to them. Is this the message to be heard? How could they allow him to speak when Danny no longer has a voice? It is my opinion that all murderers should forfeit their right to free speech when they take the life of an innocent person. I have repeatedly seen college administrators deny conservative and religious speakers access to their campuses when even the tiniest minority feel their message is in some way offensive. What could be more offensive than having a person who violently took the life of another imparting his "unique perspective" on your students? Let's be honest. The instructors, administrators and graduates at Goddard College embrace having this killer as their commencement speaker not despite the fact that he brutally murdered a cop, but because he brutally murdered a cop. Otherwise, like so many other speakers that have been denied access to college campuses across the country, Goddard's administration would have lived up to their moral responsibility and pulled the plug on this travesty long ago. Shame on Goddard College and all associated with that school for choosing to honor an arrogant remorseless killer as their commencement speaker. Unfortunately, this is something that I am certain they will be proud of for the rest of their lives.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954) Prisoner, Journalist, Broadcaster, Author, Activist

Statement http://6abc.com/news/mumia-abu-jamal-speech-met-with-vigil-for-slain-officer/337357/ by Maureen Faulkner, widow of Daniel Faulkner, upon Abu-Jamal's delivering the Commencement Address at Goddard College in 2014 About

Life, People, School, Family

“Their strength's eternal in their sight,
They overtake the deer in flight,
And in their arrogance they smite;
But I am sage, if they are strong:
Man's love is transient as his death is long.”

Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) English writer and gardener

"The Greater Cats"
Kings Daughter (1929)

Love, Death, Strong

“I had long since insisted upon interpreting the things that Fate forced me to do as victories of my own will and intelligence, and now this bad habit had grown into a sort of frenzied arrogance. In the nature of what I was calling my intelligence there was a touch of something illegitimate, a touch of the sham pretender who has been placed on the throne by some freak chance. This dolt of a usurper could not foresee the revenge that would inevitably be wreaked upon his stupid despotism.”

Yukio Mishima book Confessions of a Mask

Source: Confessions of a Mask (1949), p. 220.

Fate, Stupidity, Intelligence, Revenge

“If the engineer does not honor the nature of the steel or the wood or the stone, his or her failure will go well beyond aesthetics: the bridge or the building will collapse and put human life in peril.
The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the material you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some of those around you. “Faking it” in the service of high values is no virtue and has nothing to do with vocation. It is an ignorant, sometimes arrogant, attempt to override one’s nature, and it will always fail.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999)

Life, Failure, Understanding, Nature

“During the rule of the Shah, arrogance, aggression, territorial expansion at the expense of the Arabs and attempts to harm Iraq's national sovereignty and the rights of the Arab nation were a constant pattern. Iraq and the Arab nation were regarded as a sphere of influence for the expansionist plans of Iranian interests. That policy has been followed throughout history by the State of Persia against its neighbours to the west, and as we have shown.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Statement of H.E. Mr. Saddam Hussein, President of the Republic of Iraq, on the Iraq-Iranian conflict (1981)

History

“It was silly to suppose that trials only hardened men, automatically making them wise. He knew many who were stupid, arrogant, and mean, in spite of having suffered.”

David Brin book The Uplift War

Source: The Uplift War (1987), Chapter 10 (p. 66)

Men, Stupidity, Suffering

“You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment and make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Home Page

World, Change

“The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Jane to Rochester (Ch. 14)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Perfection

“More and more violently, with the impotent rage of the wild beast, who wishes to maintain in the backyards of all her colonial possession, each and every sinecure upon which the American way of life was erected. Let them take heed, those sons of the Pentagon and of North American monopolies who until now have paraded their arrogance up down the lands of America… Cuba is no longer a solitary island… defended only by the vulnerable breasts of her sons… Cuba is now, in addition, a proud Caribbean island defended by the missiles of the greatest military power in history.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

As quoted in Venceremos! The Speeches and Writings of Ernesto Che Guevara (1968) by John Gerassi, p. 109-110

Life, Way, History, Rage

“The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

William of Baskerville
The Name of the Rose (1980)

Truth, Faith, Smile

“I see a whole lot. I think, first of all, I think that the world knows that terrorism is not just the United States' problem. And I think that Bush has alienated every friend that we've made over the last 200 years with his arrogance and indifference. And so it makes a lot of sense to me that Kerry, all he has to do is to try to convince people that we've got to deal with the problems in the Middle East. And we just can't have them all down to Crawford Ranch and say everything is going great… It was Rumsfeld who said that we're creating more terrorists than we're killing. And we need a president to restore the honesty, the integrity that the United States of America has abroad.”

Charles B. Rangel (1930) Recipient of the Purple Heart and politician

Rangel (2004) on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher Sept 24, 2004
On the differences between George W. Bush and John Kerry during the 2004 Presidential election campaign.

People, World, Problem, Thinking

“That God is quoted verbatim, that God is said to be speaking (when, in fact, he is being spoken for) points to either the remarkable arrogance of the biblical contributors or their unshakeable conviction that their access to the deity was total.
The fateful, and perhaps even unwitting, manipulation performed by the Hebrew Bible is to have convinced its readers that what stands in front of them is not a hodgepodge of texts worked over by countless men position across time and motivated by mundane political and theological interests. Instead, it presents itself as a self-evident treasury of the actual words, though, actions, political opinions, and future aspirations of Yahweh. From early on, apparently, interpreters wholly swallowed this argument.”

Jacques Berlinerblau (1966) Associate Professor, Director of the Program for Jewish Civilization, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service,…

Source: The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (2005), p. 65

Men, God, Fate, Quotes

“I have rejected as idolatrous the Religion of Modern Medicine and its fundamental sacrament – vivisection. For years I have encouraged my medical students to surreptitiously photograph animal conditions in their laboratories, to keep diaries, to leak the truth to the media. This sabotage serves not only to inform the public, but also helps save the integrity – indeed, the souls – of the students. For myself, I cling to the Sabbath commandment prohibiting even animals from being worked seven days a week. Every human being whose religion is derived from the Old Testament (and Eastern religions as well) knows the laws protecting animals. Only Modern Medicine, in its arrogant idolatry, sanctions cruelty to animals as the norm.”

Robert S. Mendelsohn (1926–1988) American pediatrician

Foreword to Slaughter of the Innocent, 1982, by Hans Ruesch.

Truth, Religion, Law, Soul

“I've kind of made Jack a hero that I would like to have looked up to as a little boy because as a little boy, I knew I was gay but I didn't know what it was. Didn't know who to talk to about it. … I wanted kids to like him, and I wanted women, men, I wanted everyone to like him. But first I wanted people to hate him. I wanted them to think he was arrogant and pushy and too sure of himself. And I wanted them to follow the arc of the change he went through in the final episodes of Doctor Who.”

John Barrowman (1967) Scottish-American actor, singer, dancer, musical theatre performer, writer and television personality

On Jack Harkness, in "Fall TV Preview: Captain Jack (not that one) talks about the gay barrier" http://www.seattlepi.com/default/article/Fall-TV-Preview-Captain-Jack-not-that-one-1243787.php in seattlepi (16 July 2007)

Women, Men, Hate, People

“Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work worthy the interposition of a deity. More humble, and I believe truer, to consider him created from animals.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

" Notebook C http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/vanWyhe_notebooks.html" (1838), pp. 196–197; also quoted in Charles Darwin: a scientific biography (1958) by Sir Gavin De Beer, p. 208 Other letters, notebooks, journal articles, recollected statements

Thinking, Animals

“I consider Osama bin Laden as one of the people that I admire. To me, he is in the category of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, all leaders that I admire… [who] had severe dislike for the US government and those who held power in the US. I think all of them felt the US government and its spokesmen were all arrogant, racist, hypocritical, self-righteous, and power hungry….. You asked, 'Should freedom fighters support him?' Freedom fighters all over the world, and not just in the Muslim world, don’t just support him; they revere him; they join him in battle. He is no ordinary leader or an ordinary Muslim.”

Yuri Kochiyama (1921–2014) American activist

Cited in: Janell Ross. " Google commemorates a very controversial civil-rights figure, Yuri Kochiyama https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/19/google-commemorates-a-very-controversial-civil-rights-figure-yuri-kochiyama/" at washingtonpost.com, May 19, 2016. "Yuri Kochiyama, On War, Imperialism, Osama bin Laden, And Black-Asian Politic," 2003

People, World, Support, Thinking

“Today China and the world will meet again. People will see that the planet is now smaller than at any time in history, that mankind should bid farewell to arrogance and indifference, to ignorance and discrimination, and understand that we share the same small piece of land. It will be a time to rediscover each other, to share what is good in life, to look each other in the eye and link all ten fingers.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

“ Why I’ll Stay Away from the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/07/olympics2008.china.” Guardian, August 7, 2008. 2000-09, 2008

Life, People, World, History

“Braying of arrogant brass, whimper of querulous reeds.”

William Watson (poet) (1858–1935) English poet, born 1858

Hymn to the Sea, Part iii, 8, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“We must express the view, based on our empirical observations, that a substantial number of journalists are ignorant, lazy, opinionated, and intellectually dishonest. The profession is heavily cluttered with aged hacks toiling through a miasma of mounting decrepitude and often alcoholism, and even more so with arrogant and abrasive youngsters who substitute 'commitment' for insight.”

Conrad Black (1944) Canadian-born newspaper publisher

Black, Conrad et al, "A Brief to the Special Senate Committee on the Mass Media from the Sherbrooke Record...", 1969 : Despite Black's involvement in press ownership, he heaped scorn on journalism

Alcohol, Age

“Who had used the mysterious September 11 incident as a pretext to attack Afghanistan and Iraq, killing, injuring and displacing millions of people. Whose military spending exceeded $1,000 billion dollars annually — more than the military budgets of all countries in the world combined? Who dominated the policy-making establishments of the world’s economy, as well as the Security Council, which was ostensibly responsible for safeguarding international security? Do these arrogant Powers really have the competence and ability to run or govern the world? “Can the flower of democracy bloom from [North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s] missiles, bombs and guns?”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

2011

People, World, Democracy, Flowers

“I know who I am. I am just a very thin layer of charming with some funny sprinkles wrapped around a huge creamy center of raging arrogant a-hole. I got it.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Love is Evol (2009)

Rage

“It was suddenly obvious to everybody in the studio that something quite special must be going on inside the man, because something quite special was coming out. He was singing now, cold or no cold, with power and warmth, he was letting himself go, the public arrogance was gone, the private side was in this song about the girl who, it is said, understands him better than anybody else, and is the only person in front of whom he can be unashamedly himself.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire, April 1966)

Girl, Understanding, Singing, Personality

“It goes without saying that the slogan does not mean death to the American nation; this slogan means death to the US’s policies, death to arrogance.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Explains 'Death to America' Slogan http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/irans-ayatollah-ali-khamenei-explains-death-america-slogan-n456406 (November 3, 2015) 2015

Death

“A double problem arises: There is first the difficulty of, if not the impossibility of demonstrating the existence of any creator or designer at all. I think I say something uncontroversial when I say that no theologian has ever conclusively demonstrated that such a designer can or does or ever has existed. The most you can do, by way of the argument from design, is to infer him or her or it from an apparent harmony in the arrangements - and this was at a time when that was the very best that, so to speak, could be done. But religion goes a little further than this already rather impossible task, and expects us to believe as follows: that the speaker not only can prove the existence of a said entity, but can claim to know this entity's mind - in fact, can claim to know it quite intimately; can claim to know his or her personal wishes; can, in turn, tell you what you may do, in his name - a quite large arrogation of power, you will suddenly notice, is being granted to the speaker here. The speaker can tell you that he knows - he cannot tell you how - but he can tell you that he knows, for example, that heaven hates ham, that god doesn't want you to eat pork products; he can tell you that god has a very very strong view about with whom you may have sexual relations, indeed, how you may have sexual relations with others; he can indicate, perhaps a little less convincingly but no less firmly, that there are certain books or courses of study that you might want to avoid or treat with great suspicion.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Christopher Hitchens vs. Marvin Olasky, 14/05/2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMgMUHD_kPI?t=1m35s 2000s, 2007

God, Hate, Books, Religion

“I am not interested in illustrating my time. A man’s 'time' limits him; it does not truly liberate him. Our age – it is of science – of mechanism – of power and death. I see no point in adding to its mammoth arrogance the compliment of graphic homage.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

Clyfford Still in an interview with Ti Grace Sharpless, 1963; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 201
1960s

Death, Age, Science, Time

“Never be so arrogant that you fail to give people the benefit of being as stupid as they actually are.”

Arthur Jones (inventor) (1926–2007) American inventor

The New High Intensity Training (2004)

People, Stupidity

“I was sort of an amoral little jerk when I was young. I was arrogant about being smarter than other people, but unhappy that I wasn't able to spend all my time doing what I wanted. I spent a year in a juvenile home for a first offense after an evaluation by a psychologist went very badly.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Quoted in "John Carmack Answers" http://slashdot.org/games/99/10/15/1012230.shtml Slashdot (1999-10-15)

People, Jerk, Home, Time

“With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

As quoted in William Morris & Red House (2005) by Jan Marsh, p. 65.

Love, Women, Men, Youth

“You that trust in your own righteousness, arrogate to yourselves the honor of the greatest thing that even God Himself ever did. You seem not only sufficient to perform Divine works, but such is your pride and vanity, that you are not content without taking upon you to do the very greatest work that ever God Himself wrought. God's works of providence are greater than those of creation. To take on yourself to work out redemption, is a greater thing than if you had taken it upon you to create a world.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 542.

God, World

“Wisdom is not to be found in the art of oratory, or in great books, but in a withdrawal from these sensible things and in a turning to the most simple and infinite forms. You will learn how to receive it into a temple purged from all vice, and by fervent love to cling to it until you may taste it and see how sweet That is which is all sweetness. Once this has been tasted, all things which you now consider as important will appear as vile, and you will be so humbled that no arrogance or other vice will remain in you. Once having tasted this wisdom, you will inseparably adhere to it with a chaste and pure heart. You will choose rather to forsake this world and all else that is not of this wisdom, and living with unspeakable happiness you will die.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De Docta Ignorantia

De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (1440)

Love, Wisdom, Happiness, Books

“I wish we had the technology to fight God on an equal basis,” he said in low, tight tones. “To beard him in his den. To fight back for all of the injustices heaped on humanity. To allow him to alter his smug arrogance or be blown to hell.”

Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion

Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 29 (pp. 226-227)

God, Hell, Fight

“The semiliterate on the next bar stool will tell you with absolute, arrogant assurance just how to solve the world's problems; while the scholar who has spent a lifetime studying their causes is not at all sure how to do this.”

Edwin Thompson Jaynes (1922–1998) American physicist

Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (2003)

World, Problem, Study

“Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.
The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition.
An army and navy represent the people's toys.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

What is Patriotism? (1908)

People, Intelligence, Fight, Country

“Despite a flattering supposition to the contrary, people come readily to terms with power. There is little reason to think that the power of the great bankers, while they were assumed to have it, was much resented. But as the ghosts of numerous tyrants, from Julius Caesar to Benito Mussolini will testify, people are very hard on those who, having had power, lose it or are destroyed. Then anger at past arrogance is joined with contempt for the present weakness. The victim or his corpse is made to suffer all available indignities.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Chapter VI https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Things Become More Serious, Section IV, p 115 The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

People, Thinking, Suffering, Past

“In a few weeks, or at most a few months, thanks to the skill of the Allied Commanders and the bravery of their men, the objects for which we and they have endured more than four years of sacrifice and suffering have been attained. The lands upon which the enemy had laid his cruel and predatory hand are in course of being evacuated. The exiled peoples are returning in joyous crowds across the war frontiers to their homes. The military power of the enemy is broken. His resources are spent. His armaments are in course of being surrendered. Hope breathes again in the souls of the unhappy peoples whom he has trampled in the mire. The impious spirit that claimed that Might was superior to Right and that there was no law but that of successful violence in the world has been exorcised, let us hope for ever. The conflict for international honour, righteousness, and freedom has been won, and the authors of this vast and wicked conspiracy against the liberties of mankind are fugitives on the face of the earth. My Lords, this is a great hour. It has been a wonderful victory. Are we presumptuous if we see in it the judgment of a Higher Power upon panoplied arrogance and enthroned wrong?”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1918/nov/18/the-armistice-address-to-his-majesty in the House of Lords (18 November 1918).

Men, War, People, World

“Anyway, the trick is simply this: No matter what happens, keep your heart open. Wide open. The heart is made of love, and love is indestructible, and only the arrogance of ego would presume that it requires protection. To open your heart is to reduce your ego, and this is the only magic that is ever required to experience the naked truth.”

Tony Vigorito (1950) American writer

Nine Kinds of Naked (2008)

Love, Truth, Heart

“Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled—while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Source: The Mismeasure of Man (1996), p. 36

People, Fools, Way, Thinking

“I haven't the arrogance to say I can carry the mighty load of His Cross, but I do try to walk in its shadow. He wants to carve your life like a crucifix. Every calamity is a crucifixion, crucifying your ambition, your lust. Each is a tiny lesson, and then the imprint of the crucifixion is on your life. What is your plan of sacrifice today? You and I, petty souls, sacrifice for our children. Christ sacrificed for tomorrow's whole world. Whenever I see slum-dwellers, with their hunger and poverty, that obscene poverty, I feel He is crucified like that. When I come across a person suffering from leprosy, foul smelling, ulcerous, I can see the imprint of His lips, His kiss. What did they not do to sufferers of leprosy in His time, yet the carpenter's son cared for them and touched them. That hand is an emblem for me, that hand which cared for the loneliest and the lost. The Christian is … he who not only lights the darkest corner in the world but also the darkest corner in his own heart.”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

On Christ
Baba Amte's Words of Wisdom

Life, Hunger, Children, World

“Abu Sa'id al-Khudri reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "The Garden (heaven) and the Fire argued and the Fire said, 'I have the tyrants and the arrogant.' The Garden said, 'I have the weak and poor people.' Allah judged between them, 'You, the Garden, are My mercy. By you I show mercy to whomever I wish. You, the Fire, are My punishment by whom I punish whomever I will. It is My duty to fill both of you."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 615
Sunni Hadith

People, Peace

“Satanism has re-emerged among Generation X with an arrogance that mocks its members as it blatantly destroys them.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

“Should the Iranian nation beg for the right of exploitation of nuclear energy from the bullying world powers until they accept that the nation has a nuclear right?… No. This is not the way of a free and independent nation… Rights cannot be achieved by entreating. If you supplicate, withdraw and show flexibility, arrogant powers will make their threat more serious.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

Iran leader: Won't beg for nuke power http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8PI34T00.htm June 2007. 2007

World, Way

“Almighty God, Who has given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honorable ministry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion, from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people, the multitude brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endow with Thy spirit of wisdom those whom in Thy name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth. In time of prosperity fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; all of which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

This is a misquotation of a prayer from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (ministry should be industry and arrogance should be arrogancy). This was a revision from an earlier edition. The original form, written by George Lyman Locke, appeared in the 1885 edition. In 1994 William J. Federer attributed it to Jefferson in America's God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations, pp. 327-8. See the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/national-prayer-peace. Misattributed

Wisdom, God, People, Peace

“Today too, the most important issue in the world is Palestine. If a war breaks out in Iraq, we believe it is due to the provocation of the Zionists. If it happens in Afghanistan, it is because of their provocation. If Sudan is oppressed, it is due to Zionist seduction. We consider all the arrogant, colonialist schemes to be inspired by the Zionists.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

September 18, 2009. http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/2247.htm 2009

War, World

“Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty — necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"Letter from a Region of My Mind" in The New Yorker (17 November 1962); republished as "Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind" in The Fire Next Time (1963)

Faith, Religion

“But are there not reasons against all this? Is there not such a law or principle as that of self-preservation? Does not every race owe something to itself? Should it not attend to the dictates of common sense? Should not a superior race protect itself from contact with inferior ones? Are not the white people the owners of this continent? Have they not the right to say what kind of people shall be allowed to come here and settle? Is there not such a thing as being more generous than wise? In the effort to promote civilization may we not corrupt and destroy what we have? Is it best to take on board more passengers than the ship will carry? To all this and more I have one among many answers, altogether satisfactory to me, though I cannot promise it will be entirely so to you. I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal and indestructible. Among these is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and the Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue-eyed and light-haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world, they need have no fear, they have no need to doubt that they will get their full share. But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights, to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men. I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races, but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men, People, World, Fear

“The role of the court is to apply law to the facts of the case before it … not to legislate, not to arrogate to itself the executive power, not to hand down advisory opinion on the issues of the day.”

Merrick Garland (1952) American judge

[Merrick Garland, Confirmation hearing on nomination of Merrick Garland to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, United States Senate, December 1, 1995]; quote excerpted in: March 18, 2016, The Potential Nomination of Merrick Garland, SCOTUSblog, Tom Goldstein, April 26, 2010 http://www.scotusblog.com/2010/04/the-potential-nomination-of-merrick-garland/, and also excerpted quote from this source, next cited in: [March 18, 2016, The Quotable Merrick Garland: A Collection of Writings and Remarks, http://www.nationallawjournal.com/home/id=1202752327128/The-Quotable-Merrick-Garland-A-Collection-of-Writings-and-Remarks, Zoe Tillman, The National Law Journal, March 16, 2016, 0162-7325] Confirmation hearing on nomination to United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1995)

Law

“He stared at me. “You barely know how to read and you have decided to become a great writer?” he said to me in a voice full of shock and arrogance. I’d finally had enough of him. “Yes!” I bellowed, going into my wrestling stance. “I don’t know how to read, and I’ve decided to become a great writer—WHAT OF IT?””

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Reading

“America, the great liberator, is in desperate need of being liberated from itself -- from its own excesses and arrogance. And the world needs to be liberated from American values and culture, spreading across the planet as if by divine providence.”

Kalle Lasn (1942) Estonian-Canadian film maker, author, magazine editor and activist

Cultural Jam (2000)

World

“The nature of the personal computer is simply not fully understood by companies like Apple (or anyone else for that matter). Apple makes the arrogant assumption of thinking that it knows what you want and need. It, unfortunately, leaves the “why” out of the equation — as in “why would I want this?” The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a “mouse”. There is no evidence that people want to use these things.”

John C. Dvorak (1952) US journalist and radio broadcaster

In a review of the Macintosh in The San Francisco Examiner (19 February 1984)
1980s & 1990s

People, Nature, Thinking, Personality

“These ideas are present in all sorts of unrelated cultures -- the Easter Islands, Celtic mythology, Plato's Symposium with its notion that we are all originally hermaphrodite. We became too arrogant and so the gods split us down the middle, forcing us to spend our lives chasing our other half. If we start being arrogant all over again, God will come down and split each half in half, and it will take four people to assemble a fifth, making our lives peculiarly, desperately difficult.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

In an interview in the Washington DC City Paper, 6 Apr 1990
Interviews

God, People, Idea

“There are, of course, a thousand sophistries spewed by those who wish to deny individuals the opportunity to choose. Which is an arrogant presumption of a divine scale.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 10, “An Abode of Ravens: Recovery” (p. 397)

“I had felt sick before and had been saved by Sekt. Now I was beginning to feel sick of the Sekt. I would, I knew, shortly have to vomit…. I started gently to move towards one of the open windows. The aims of the artistic policy enunciated by the National Chamber of Film might, said Goebbels, be expressed under seven headings. Oh Christ. First, the articulation of the sense of racial pride, which might, without reprehensible arrogance, be construed as a just sense of racial superiority. Just, I thought, moving towards the breath of the autumn dark, like the Jews, just like the. This signified, Goebbels went on, not narrow German chauvinism but a pride in being of the great original Aryan race, once master of the heartland and to be so again. The Aryan destiny was enshrined in the immemorial Aryan myths, preserved without doubt in their purest form in the ancient tongue of the heartland. Second. But at this point I had made the open window. With relief the Sekt that seethed within me bore itself mouthward on waves of reverse peristalsis. Below me a great flag with a swastika on flapped gently in the night breeze of autumn. It did not now lift my heart; it was not my heart that was lifting. I gave it, with gargoyling mouth, a litre or so of undigested Sekt. And then some strings of spittle. It was not, perhaps, as good as pissing on the flag, but, in retrospect, it takes on a mild quality of emblematic defiance…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Earthly Powers (1980)

Feeling, Autumn, Sense, Heart

“Language is a gift that puts lyrics to the music of our lives. Without spoken language we wouldn’t be able to say, ‘I love you’. We’d have to say ‘uuurrrgghh’ or hold up a sign. And whether it’s one person’s gentle English or another’s muddy, arrogant French, it’s our language that makes us unapproachable and difficult to understand.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Love, Music, Understanding, Personality

“Rage and wounded pride look painful on a young face. Sixteen is a difficult age to get on with. There’s much to like—the freshness, the force of conviction. But there is also a certain arrogance, an inevitable concomitant of development, perhaps, which one must always struggle to forgive.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 16 (p. 203)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

Pain, Age, Forgiveness, Rage

“The main point seems to be that I'm arrogant and narcissistic, which should be news to exactly four people.”

Barrett Brown (1981) American journalist, essayist and satirist

Huffington Post, "Palin biographer accuses me of planning anti-government violence" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barrett-brown/palin-biographer-accuses-_b_791741.html, 3 December 2010.

People

“In Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, the narrator attempts to describe a Whooping Crane in 25 words or less. One attempt at the description reads Imagine Wilt Chamberlain in a red yarmulke and snowy feathers… The narrator cuts off the attempt with the explanation You're assuming that the reader knows who Wilt Chamberlain is. Many people don't follow basketball and wouldn't understand that Wilt signifies size and strength and arrogance made palatable by grace.”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

Pop Culture

People, Imagination, Understanding, Reading

“The philosophy of nonviolence, which I learned from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during my involvement in the civil rights movement was first responsible for my change in diet. I became a vegetarian in 1965. … Under the leadership of Dr. King I became totally committed to nonviolence, and I was convinced that nonviolence meant opposition to killing in any form. I felt the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applied to human beings not only in their dealings with each other—war, lynching, assassination, murder and the like—but in their practice of killing animals for food or sport. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and brutal taking of life.”

Dick Gregory (1932–2017) American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur

Source: Dick Gregory's Natural Diet For Folks Who Eat (1973), pp. 15-16

Life, Death, Pain, War

“By nature I am a skeptic. I don't dare to think my paintings are great. I can't understand the arrogance of someone saying, 'I have created a big, important work.' I want to reject this pathetic behavior, this notion of the heroic artist. Pollock, Barnett Newman, Franz Kline, their heroism derived from the climate of their time, but we do not have this climate… On the other hand, you do need feelings like they had to some extent. So I am afraid there must be a side of me close to those feelings. Those absurd feelings.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Behavior, Feeling, Understanding, Nature

“I am arrogant enough to wish I were modest as he and modest enough to know that this is arrogance.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

“Confess your nothingness and ill-desert before God. Distrust yourself. Rely only upon God. Renounce all glory except from Him. Yield yourself heartily to His will and service. Avoid an aspiring, ambitious, ostentatious, assuming, arrogant, scornful, stubborn, willful, levelling, self-justifying behavior; and strive for more and more of the humble spirit that Christ manifested while He was here upon earth.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 331.

God, Behavior, Christ

“All women are aware of that moment when suddenly the boys don’t look at you. It’s a fairly common thing, when suddenly you no longer attract that instant male attention because of the way you look. I never really knew how to enjoy beauty, but it took the form of a subconscious arrogance, expecting things, all muddled up with celebrity.”

Julie Christie (1940) British actress and activist

As quoted in "A Role About Winter for Julie Christie, a Star in Eternal Spring http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/movies/18chri.html?_r=0" by Alan Riding in The New York Times (18 April 2007)]

Women, Beauty, Way, Boy

“My profession often gets bad press for a variety of sins, both actual and imagined: arrogance, venality, insensitivity to moral issues about the use of knowledge, pandering to sources of funding with insufficient worry about attendant degradation of values. As an advocate for science, I plead “mildly guilty now and then” to all these charges. Scientists are human beings subject to all the foibles and temptations of ordinary life. Some of us are moral rocks; others are reeds. I like to think (though I have no proof) that we are better, on average, than members of many other callings on a variety of issues central to the practice of good science: willingness to alter received opinion in the face of uncomfortable data, dedication to discovering and publicizing our best and most honest account of nature's factuality, judgment of colleagues on the might of their ideas rather than the power of their positions.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"The Razumovsky Duet", p. 270
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

Life, Imagination, Idea, Nature

“Are you really that arrogant, that logic is as optional as a fashion accessory for you?”

Scott Lynch book The Republic of Thieves

Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 9 “The Five-Year Game: Reasonable Doubt” section 2 (p. 551)

Fashion

“I sent an email to my loved one, just the other day, it’s sad communication has evolved this way. We use so many words but have so little to relay, as angels scribble down every letter that we say. All the viral attachments sent and passionate insults we vent, it’s easy to be arrogant behind user passwords we invent. But on the day the scrolls are laid, with every word and deed displayed, when we read our accounts, I know, for one, I’ll be afraid.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"Afraid To Read"
The Prophet's Hands (2003)

Love, Sadness, Angels, Way

“The difference between "organic" and "mechanical" in social matters is a moral one: the "organic" is the result of innumerable humble acts; the "mechanical" is the result of one decisive act of arrogance.”

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913–1994) Colombian writer and philosopher

Sucesivos Escolios a un Texto Implícito (1992)

Decision

“Not believing in something is not in itself a belief or a philosophy: it is the 'ism' at the end that tends to cause the trouble. Both atheists and believers can be as arrogant and witless as each other in frustrated debate, and people may choose strong and unapologetic words to raise awareness of the agenda. But despite the name-calling, it is still a fair point that to not believe in God is no more a 'belief in itself' than to not believe in the Loch Ness Monster, Poseidon or anything else one might personally consider far-fetched. Beyond that, there is only how you choose to express yourself.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Tricks of the Mind (2006)

God, People, Strong, Personality

“Men who offer laudatory speeches to the rich … are insidious because, although mere abundance is by itself quite enough to puff up the souls of its possessors, and to corrupt them, and to turn them aside from the way by which salvation can be reached, these men bring fresh delusion to the minds of the rich by exciting them with the pleasures that come from their immoderate praises, and by rendering them contemptuous of absolutely everything in the world except the wealth which is the cause of their being admired. In the words of the proverb, they carry fire to fire, when they shower pride upon pride, and heap on wealth, heavy by its own nature, the heavier burden of arrogance.”

Clement of Alexandria (150–215) Christian theologian

Source: The Rich Man's Salvation, p. 271.

Men, Pleasure, World, Way

“unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, there are many species, including almost every variety of moral type. But the best among them, as no one who has had opportunities of really knowing them will hesitate to affirm (believers rarely have that opportunity), are more genuinely religious, in the best sense of the word religion, than those who exclusively arrogate to themselves the title.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/45/mode/1up pp. 45–46

Religion, Sense

“One who is not perturbed by misfortune, who is beyond comfort, attachment and fear, who considers gold as dust. He neither speaks ill of others nor feels elated by praise and shuns greed, attachments and arrogance. He is indifferent to ecstasy and tragedy, is not affected by honors or humiliations. He renounces expectations, greed. He is neither attached to the worldliness, nor lets senses and anger affect him. In such a person resides God.”

Guru Tegh Bahadur (1621–1675) The ninth Guru of Sikhism

Guru Tegh Bahadur, Sorath 633 (Translated by Gopal Singh), Tegh Bahadur (Translated by Gopal Singh) (2005). Mahalla nawan: compositions of Guru Tegh Bahādur-the ninth guru (from Sri Guru Granth Sahib): Bāṇī Gurū Tega Bahādara. Allied Publishers. pp. xxviii–xxxiii, 15–27. ISBN 978-81-7764-897-3.

God, Fear, Feeling, Sense

Quotes about arrogance page 2

Quotes about arrogance
page 2