Pride/Quotes

God forbid that I thought,
forgive that I'd think:
I was the Fairest of Them All,
I was the biggest of the small,
I was the sharpest in the shed,
I was the brightest of the head.

—Starflyer 59, "The Brightest of the Head"

"April 4; shot rings out in the Memphis sky. Free at last, they took your life, they could not, take your..."

—U2, "In the Name of Love"

Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.

—John Milton

"The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps."

—Marcellus Wallace, Pulp Fiction, telling Butch Coolidge to throw a big fight.

Pride is not a sin. Hubris is not a failing. The galaxy is not a mere collection of stars, it is our birthright! For too long have men looked up the infinite expanses of darkness before them and looked back inward, seeking solance in their huddled, weak soulfires. I see the black depths before me and all I can see is an eternity of war and conquest in the Emperor's name.

—Lord Solar Macharius, Warhammer 40,000

Pooh-Bah: I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering. But I struggle hard to overcome this defect. I mortify my pride continually. When all the great officers of state resigned in a body, because they were too proud to serve under an ex-tailor, did I not unhesitantly accept all their posts at once?

—The Mikado

For you can have no greater sign of a more confirmed pride, than when you think that you are humble enough.

—William Law

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only sin is pride.

—Sophocles, Antigone

Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot.

—G. K. Chesterton

Question: How many bosses does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: One. He holds the light bulb and the universe revolves around him to screw it in.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

—Benjamin Franklin

There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. ... There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

—CS Lewis, "The Great Sin," Mere Christianity

'I understand Miss Weatherwax is a very proud woman,' said Letice.
Nanny Ogg puffed at her pipe again.
'You might as well say the sea is full of water,' she said.
The other witches were silent for a moment.
'I daresay that was a valuable comment,' said Letice, 'but I didn't understand it.'
'If there ain't no water in the sea, it ain't the sea,' said Nanny Ogg. 'It's just a damn great hole in the ground. Thing about Esme is ...' Nanny took another noisy pull at the pipe, 'she's all pride, see? She ain't just a proud person.'
'Then perhaps she should learn to be a bit more humble...'
'What's she got to be humble about?' said Nanny sharply.

—Terry Pratchett, "The Sea and the Little Fishes"

Vanity is definitely my favorite sin. Self-love, the all-natural opiate. It's not like you didn't care for Mary Ann, Kevin. You were just a little more involved with someone else: yourself.

—John Milton, The Devil's Advocate

"Do you know what your sin is Doctor? It's pride."

—The Operative, Serenity

I always wonder how arrogant villains ascended into power. Arrogance usually leads to overestimating one’s own abilities and underestimating the abilities of others. I would expect them to have underestimated a fairly minor antagonist fairly early on and gotten themselves blasted. Or perhaps, if they were summoning demons to aid them, they would have summoned a more powerful demon than they could control and gotten eaten. Or they would have commanded their “loyal” soldiers to follow them into a life-and-death situation and had the soldiers refuse. The odds aren’t good that someone as arrogant as most fantasy Dark Lords would have survived long enough to become a Dark Lord.

— Limyaael's Fantasy Rants - Rant on creating non-Dark Lord villains.