Quotable Quotes: Arrogance
by Miki Saxon
Last week’s Quotes were on egotism and I termed it the co-joined twin of arrogance. In other words, egotism is yin to arrogance’s yang.
Arrogance will eventually crash and burn as many corporate chieftains have proven, especially over the last decade.
Not surprising when you consider the words of Samuel Butler, “The truest characters of ignorance are vanity, and pride and arrogance.”
And they certainly prove the Arabian proverb, “Arrogance diminishes wisdom”
Many of the most arrogant believe the popular unwisdom, “It’s only arrogance if you’re wrong.”
Proving David Hume’s sage words, “When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.”
And Sydney J. Harris offers an additional view, “Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.”
But it is Jorge Luis Borges who puts his finger on the true problem, “…the image of the Lord had been replaced by a mirror.”
It would be nice to believe that all those mirrors on Wall Street were smashed in the financial quake, but that is merely wishful thinking.
Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/essygie/3898825852/
