46 Arrogance Quotes

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

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.

'He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest.'

Tibetans look at a person who holds himself above others, believing he is better than others and knows more, and they say that person is like someone sitting on a mountain top: it is cold there, it is hard, and nothing will grow. But if the person puts himself in a lower position, then that person is like a fertile field.

The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.[1]

I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that's not saying much. We are impossibly conceited animals, and actually dumb as heck. Ask any teacher. You don't even have to ask a teacher. Ask anybody. Dogs and cats are smarter than we are.

Delmore carries such a petty, personally involved, New Yorkish atmosphere around with him it's almost unpleasant for me to see him. He thinks that Schiller and St Paul were just two Partisan Review editors.

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.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

I'm not stupid!' in [his] experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove it's own inaccuracy.

Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to an indiscriminate contempt for the Human.

'I'm wicked, as you say, and I'm rude and I'm boorish and I discovered, after marrying Mr Scaddon, that I could be all these things and worse and that there would still be plenty of people to lick my boots.'

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

Everyone's thinking they're the new W. Axl Rose, just running their mouths and living in this world where nothing is real. Like, it's really easy to write a couple of songs, but that doesn't mean you get to run your mouth. The only guy who can do that is Michael Jackson. He wrote Thriller, so he can say whatever the fuck he wants.

You both refuse to listen to anybody else. You know better about everything. And when you're both done, many many innocent people are dead.

And when you're with yourself, oh don't let it go to your head. ~ 'Carlos (Don't Let It Go To Your Head)

I was thinking of 'duh?' in the sense of 'a sentence containing several words more than three letters long, and possibly requiring general knowledge or a sense of history that extends past last Tuesday, has been used in my presence.'

She looks so haughty that I should have thought her a princess at the very least, with a pedigree reaching as far back as the Deluge. But this lady was no better born than many other ladies who give themselves airs; and all sensible people laughed at her absurd pretensions.

I think arrogant people disappoint me. Nobody has a right to think they are better than anyone else.

i asked him why is it that you are so greatly favored ask rather said warty bliggens what the universe has done to deserve me

well well boss there is something to be said for the lyric and imperial attitude believe that everything is for you until you discover that you are for it sing your faith in what you get to eat right up to the minute you are eaten for you are going to be eaten

Admit it, Aaron. We're two of a kind. We both think we're leader of a mighty nation

The answer was so obvious to her that she clearly didn't understand a word he was saying

The only difference between them and me is that I'm so good at it

Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a 'flighty' person, who endeavours 'to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation,' and whose 'mode of dealing with nature' is reprobated as 'utterly dishonourable to Natural Science.' And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want of intelligence, or of conscience, or of both, is so great, that, by way of an objection to Mr. Darwin's views, he can ask, 'Is it credible that all favourable varieties of turnips are tending to become men?'; who is so ignorant of paleontology, that he can talk of the 'flowers and fruits' of the plants of the Carboniferous epoch; of comparative anatomy, that he can gravely affirm the poison apparatus of the venomous snakes to be 'entirely separate from the ordinary laws of animal life, and peculiar to themselves'... Nor does the reviewer fail to flavour this outpouring of preposterous incapacity with a little stimulation of the odium theologicum. Some inkling of the history of the conflicts between Astronomy, Geology, and Theology, leads him to keep a retreat open by the proviso that he cannot 'consent to test the truth of Natural Science by the word of Revelation;' but, for all that, he devotes pages to the exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's theory 'contradicts the revealed relation of the creation to its Creator,' and is 'inconsistent with the fulness of his glory.' If I confine my retrospect of the reception of the 'Origin of Species' to a twelvemonth, or thereabouts, from the time of its publication, I do not recollect anything quite so foolish and unmannerly as the Quarterly Review article...

Charles Greville was the most conceited person with whom I have ever been brought in contact, though I have read Cicero and known Bulwer-Lytton.

Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities.

'That man is not in his own way,' - John Mayer on his friend's justified arrogance (From MTV.com)

To John Kenneth Galbraith, who had been appointed American ambassador to India, 'I hear you are going to In-jea. A most interesting country. I had a very good time there in my early youth. You must do the pig-sticking in Rajasthan. And you will find the people most agreeable in their own way. They have been most uncommonly decent to my niece.' (Galbraith, Ambassador's Journal, 36)

Cologne, Germany: 'Claud & I had a stroll in the centre of town afterwards & had great fun making the Hun men civilians get off the pavement for us .... It does one worlds of good to know how humiliating it must be for the Huns' (9 January 1919)

Lo sabe todo, absolutamente todo. Figurense lo tonto que sera.

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of humankind pass by.

All politicians are humble, and seldom let you forget it. They go around the country boasting about their humility. They are proud of their humility. Many are downright arrogant about their humility and insist that it qualifies them to be President.

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.

I'm God.

I got to see, while I was over there [England] footage of the Rodney King trial, which I had never seen while I was here. I saw footage over there of the Rodney King trial. I think I figured out why the L.A. riots occurred. Did you guys see these cops testifying, man? Did these guys have balls or what, man? These guys carry their balls in a wheelbarrow, man. ''Scuse me, 'scuse me. Man with big balls is here to testify.' 'Place your right testicle on the bible.' Whishh BOOOM. This guy, Officer Coon : is life too fucking weird or what? Officer Coon looks in the camera and actually says: 'Oh, that Rodney King beating tape, it's all in how you look at it.' The courtroom murmurs: 'Jesus, what balls. I've never seen balls of this magnitude. He must have a specially fitted uniform in which to place these large testicles.' 'That's incredible. All in how you look at it, Officer Coon?' 'That's right. It's how you look at the tape.' 'Well would you care to tell the court how you're looking at that?' 'Yeah, okay, sure. It's how you look at it. For instance, well, if you play it backwards, you see us help King up and send him on his way.' 'Mmm . . . not guilty.' ''Scuse me, 'scuse me. Man with big balls has just been acquitted.'

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.