c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
A good therapy helps you develop a sense of irony about your life so that when you start to repeat old and unhelpful patterns, something within you says, "There you go again; let's call this to a halt. You can do something different." Often the first step toward doing something different is developing the capacity to not act, to stay still and reflect.
— Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
If you're having a conversation with someone in speech, and it's not being tape-recorded, you can change your opinion, but on the Internet, it's not like that. On the Internet it's almost as if everything you say were being tape-recorded. You can't say, "I changed my mind.
— Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
There's something satisfying to proclaiming humility while knowing just how important you truly are.
— Michael R. Fletcher, Beyond Redemption
We have to love technology enough to describe it accurately. And we have to love ourselves enough to confront technology's true effect on us.
— Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Are you dedicated to your patient or your ego?
— M*A*S*H Episode Guide Team, M*A*S*H EPISODE GUIDE: Details All 251 Episodes with Plot Summaries. Searchable. Companion to DVDs Blu Ray and Box Set.
Effective love is rarely efficient.
— Kevin DeYoung, Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem
He found his voice in the silences, where he could sing as loud and as long as he wanted with no one to complain of it.
— Geraldine Brooks, The Secret Chord
We see a first generation going through adolescence knowing their every misstep, all the awkward gestures of their youth, are being frozen in a computer's memory.
— Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Underestimation has its uses.
— Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Humility and open-mindedness are a shield to keep your foot out of your mouth.
— Laura Gilfillan
The author says resilience is the ability to move rob a preferred state to an expanded list of alternatives.
— Andrew Zolli, Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back
Regular, modest failures are actually essential to many forms of resilience.
— Andrew Zolli, Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back
Resilient systems fail gracefully. A perfect system is often most fragile.
— Andrew Zolli, Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back
Apart from childhood and crisis, prayers have a way of being abstracted from the homely and distinctive details that are part and parcel of our ordinary and daily life.
— Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers
He was driven to use the prerogatives of his profession, to act the parson.
— E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
David would wear no purple cloth, no symbols of his kingship, when he went to greet the ark. In its presence, we were all of us servants.
— Geraldine Brooks, The Secret Chord
The truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind. Emily Dickinson
— Eugene H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers
There are so many ways to think about almost everything. And none of them is nearly as round as reality.
— Davis Miller, Approaching Ali: A Reclamation in Three Acts
It is a sign of intellectual maturity to always crawl to conclusions.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Awful momentum makes carrying through easier than calling off folly.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
Weakness is not the problem, but my delusion of my strengths is.
— Paul David Tripp, Sex and Money: Pleasures That Leave You Empty and Grace That Satisfies
He was vain and tended to surround himself with intellectual and moral pygmies.
— Stephen L. Carter, The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln
Something greater than me was happening. And yet, it was happening to me.
— Dick Van Dyke, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business
The fate of warnings in political affairs is to be futile when the recipient wishes otherwise.
— Barbara W. Tuchman
Foolish defiance was his lifelong response to being ill.
— Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life
While humility feels weak, the truth is that humility is a sign of great strength. Humility is about putting ego aside. The word humility comes from a Latin word humilitas, which means grounded or low. When we are "grounded", we aren't easily swayed. We stand firm in who we are, who we belong to, and who we are committed to be going forward. A grounded person isn't looking for recognition because she is at peace with her worth in God's eyes.
— Jill Savage, No More Perfect Moms: Learn to Love Your Real Life
I've grown more OK with mystery as I've gotten older.
— Matt      Chandler
Quite possibly, this depressive illness was the familiar sort that grew from perfectionist expectations.
— Paul C. Nagel, John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life
Andrew Carnegie was an inventor only in the sense that he adopted and adapted the discoveries of others.
— H.W. Brands, American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900
He had the ruthlessness of uninterrupted success.
— Barbara W. Tuchman
Let us retreat when we can, not when we must. Lord Chatham
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
Happiness is always on the other side of being teachable.
— Shannon L. Alder
Folly is a child of power.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
To be great, practice simplicity and express humility.
— Debasish Mridha
Those who consider themselves good teachers probably aren't.
— Joseph Epstein
I love the vastness of the ocean. I love its serenity, tranquility, humility, and purifying power.
— Debasish Mridha
It would be better to be deceived a hundred times than to live a life of suspicion.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students
God doesn't want meerly action but hearts driving action.
— Matt      Chandler
One world leader warned another "the error of relying on the capability you have rather than developing the capability you need.
— Ron Suskind, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism
Those that are too refined to be simple need to be refined again.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students
He was the sort of man who only wanted to be told what he already assumed was true.
— Stephen L. Carter, The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln
Purple prose attracts attention more than converts.
— Jeffrey Toobin, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
It's one thing to admire a man's work. It's another to get your picture in the paper doing it." General Clayton
— M*A*S*H Episode Guide Team
Policy was not reconsidered because the governing group had no habit of purposeful consultation.
— Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
I write poetry, worry, smile,laughsleepcontinue for a whilejust like most of usjust like all of us;sometimes I want to hug allMankind on earthand say,god damn all this that they've brought down upon us,we are brave and goodeven though we are selfishand kill each other andkill ourselves,we are the peopleborn to kill and die and weep in dark roomsand love in dark rooms,and wait, andwait and wait and wait.we are the people.we are nothingmore.
— Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
I write poetry, worry, smile,laughsleepcontinue for a whilejust like most of usjust like all of us;sometimes I want to hug allMankind on earthand say,god damn all this that they've brought down on us,we are brave and goodeven though we are selfishand kill each other andkill ourselves,we are the peopleborn to kill and die and weep in dark roomsand love in dark rooms,and wait, andwait and wait and wait.we are the people.we are nothingmore.
— Charles Bukowski
JFK to RFK: To survive in politics, you sometimes have to be willing to make fun of yourself.
— Robert Dallek, Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House
There is no middle ground for the selfless and the selfish.
— Tara Estacaan
It is not great counts God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students
My own spirit, soul, and body are my nearest machinery for sacred service.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students
Humility is a quality for which I have only a limited admiration. In many phases of life it is a great mistake and degenerates into defensiveness and hypocrisy.
— E.M. Forster
The very precariousness of weather excites a large amount of earnest prayer.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students
I like to introduce myself, because THEN I can get in all the facts." The usually self-deprecating John Hay on the ironic formality of signing his own commission as Secretary of State.
— John Taliaferro, All the Great Prizes : The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
He had no desire to grandstand for his country or himself.
— John Taliaferro, All the Great Prizes : The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
If he could be hard on kings and cabinets, he was invariably kind to his colleagues.
— John Taliaferro, All the Great Prizes : The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
Possibly, there was something to be said for the intellectual discipline of second-guessing what you thought was true.
— Kwame Anthony Appiah
Don't think you are irreplaceable, or the world will end when you are gone
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
The more unworthy you feel yourself to be, the more evidence have you that nothing but unspeakable love could have led the Lord Jesus to save such a soul as yours. The more demerit you feel, the clearer is the display of the abounding love of God in having chosen you, and called you, and made you an heir of bliss.
— Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, Based on the English Standard Version
I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with — which, unfortunately, is rarely the case—tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And — most important—nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
After the original rapture of conversion had settled in, (Bob) Dylan backed away from his obviously Christian lyrics and returned to his more metaphorical use of language.
— Ron       Jacobs
I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with — which, unfortunately, is rarely the case—tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end. And--most important—nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.
— J.D. Salinger
. A gentle tug on the leash and I would adjust myself quickly. I never questioned it. I knew that she knew where we were going and I never once looked back. Sometimes God does that too. He reminds us not to get too headstrong so that we remain humble and attentive to Him. He knows where He is taking us.
— Kate McGahan, JACK McAFGHAN: Reflections on Life with my Master
Size and elaboration were often mistaken for importance.
— Stephen L. Carter, Back Channel
In brokenness comes beauty, divine fragility.
— MercyMe, Undone
People who are easily embarrassed – those who blush too often and too soon – usually end up retreating from excellence.
— Joseph Bottum
To wish to withstand the Holy Spirit would be the one unforgivable sin.
— Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction
Humility is the true key to success. Successful people lose their way at times. They often embrace and overindulge from the fruits of success. Humility halts this arrogance and self-indulging trap. Humble people share the credit and wealth, remaining focused and hungry to continue the journey of success.
— Rick Pitino
The Book that made the nation was destroying the nation.
— Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis
You can recognize a saint by the wounds they don't disguise.
— Jason Gray
God gave us feelings to feel them, not to judge them. He is the Judge.
— Jason Gray
The more broken you are, the more light gets through.
— Jason Gray
I do not desire power, but rather to submit to the will of Elamm’.
— Benita J. Prins, Starscape
There is no such thing as an independent Christian.
— Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey Into Christian Faith
Culture is nested in context, not genes.
— Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
— John Maynard Keynes
Soft power is quiet persistence.
— Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
We must steel ourselves against utopias and be content with a slightly better state.
— Will Durant
As she rounded a corner one of her favourite songs came on the radio, and sunlight filtered through the trees the way it does with lace curtains, reminding her of her grandmother, and tears began to slide down her cheeks. Not for her grandmother, who was then still very much among the living, but because she felt an enveloping happiness to be alive, a joy made stronger by the certainty that someday it would all come to an end. It overwhelmed her, made her pull the car to the side of the road. Afterwards she felt a little foolish, and never spoke to anyone about it. Now, however, she knows she wasn’t being foolish. She realizes that for no particular reason she stumbled into the core of what it is to be human. It’s a rare gift to understand that your life is wondrous, and that it won’t last forever.
— Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo
I was only 44, which is childhood philosophy.
— Will Durant
Development is a voluntary process. You need a positive decision to make the right steps, but it starts with introspection.
— Thomas L. Friedman
Unlike most fine writers, he wasn't in love with his own words.
— Douglas Brinkley
Community in the American university is paradoxically a private and individual decision.
— Rebekah Nathan, My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student
Goldwater had never even considered a non-Arizonan. Like a man on his deathbed, he wanted to be surrounded only by friends.
— Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
A confused and weak man hides his weakness and uncertainty with fiery speeches.
— Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
Hubert (Humphrey) prepares for a major address by taking a deep breath.
— President Lyndon B. Johnson
Do not confuse humility with humiliation.
— Alan Cohen
A man is as old as his arteries and as young as his ideas.
— Will Durant
As with many tragedies, our story opens in a moment of triumph.
— Dan Jones, The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors
His knowledge was deep, but his pride has grown with it.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Gratitude is like the stem of the flower
— Darwies ibn Abdullah Soeker
Richard Nixon's conversation was "loaded with so many stories of all the foreign dignitaries he'd called upon in his career that he sounded like a guy who had pinioned his neighbors into watching his vacation slides.
— Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
I am a neighbour king to stretch my branches over him, just as Toghrul sheltered me when I was a weed-stalk next to a strong tree.
— Bryn  Hammond, Amgalant Two: Tribal Brawls
Humility is a peace that accepts one's strengths and limitations.
— Tim Hiller, Strive: Life is Short, Pursue What Matters
He did have his beliefs, chiefly in his own genius.
— T.J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
We could never agree about Boogie and I didn't share Miriam's reverence for professors. In fact, just in case I haven't mentioned it before, the pride of my office wall is my framed high-school graduation certificate, lit from above. Miriam has reproached me for it. "Take it down, darling," she once pleaded. But it still hangs there.
— Mordecai Richler, Barney's Version
Live humbly and for the moment.
— Fennel Hudson, Wild Carp - Fennel's Journal - No. 4
Pride makes easy decisions hard. Humility makes hard decisions easy.
— Stella Payton
...life is a continual process of learning, working hard, rising up, and then being humbled. Sliding over, then sliding over again. And again.
— Tim Hiller, Strive: Life is Short, Pursue What Matters
He was top-heavy with conceit.
— J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
I mean it takes a certain kind of maturity to live in the South these days. You don't have it yet, but you have a shadow of the beginnings of it. You haven't the humbleness of mind-" "I thought the fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom.""It's the same thing. Humility.
— Harper Lee
Bonhoeffer did not expect his life to be a tidy edifice of perfection.
— Samuel Wells
Only secure people can serve. Insecure people are always worrying about how they appear to others. They fear exposure of their weaknesses and hide beneath layers of protective pride and pretensions. The more insecure you are, the more you will want people to serve you, and the more you will need their approval.
— Rick Warren
A humble person is comfortable in their own skin.
— Tim Hiller, Strive: Life is Short, Pursue What Matters
Lippmann was very good at staying young, at not aging and becoming a prisoner of his past experiences.
— David Halberstam, The Powers That Be
Nixon under pressure turned only to reporters from publications already favorable to him; Kennedy, in trouble, turned to those most critical and dubious of him, and if anything tended to take those already for him a bit for granted.
— David Halberstam, The Powers That Be
He may have confused honor with with with ruthlessness.
— T.J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt
They (the media) found little quality of depth to him, that when she said on the platform with that which he said to them in private. The qualities of introspection and reflectiveness that they particularly treasured were missing.
— David Halberstam, The Powers That Be
One of the ladies asked about that awful Bobby Kennedy, and Goldwater responded by speaking about the attorney general with touching affection. (Mary) McGrory recalled how Jack Kennedy behaved at a similar stage in his campaign: spouting statistics, attacking carefully chosen enemies and puffing all the right friends, quoting dead Greeks, never cracking a joke lest he remind the voters how young he was.
— Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
Pedestals aren't safe...one wrong move and a nasty tumble is sure to follow. Humility is a great grounding tool.
— Sanjo Jendayi
Humility and brokenness before God is the key for Him to dwell in us.
— Sunday Adelaja
In the cosmos of time, there's not a cocksucker in this room who is more than a fart in the wind!
— Daniel S. Peña
I don’t like the idea of something where you have to depend upon the integrity of the man and not the integrity of the institution.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
A rare academic (was) a man who knew what he didn't know.
— Tom Clancy, Executive Orders
The greatest danger, of course, was to believe that I was equal to them, because assurance can morph into arrogance that Death loves to prove unfounded.
— Dean Koontz, Deeply Odd
A commander's pride got his soldiers dead.
— Tom Clancy, Executive Orders
Students in the school of prayer never graduate from the school of the Gospel.
— C.J. Mahaney, Living the Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing
We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinions because we very often differ from ourselves.
— Samuel Johnson
We never move on from the cross. We only get a more profound understanding of the cross.
— C.J. Mahaney
The only path to real promotion is to humble yourself and make yourself of no reputation and then begin to give yourself to other people and serve them.
— Sunday Adelaja
It is vital that we are equipped with the humility to understand that changing the world and keeping innovation alive require that we change ourselves.
— Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work
Excellence will give you the recognition you crave for, but humility will keep you standing longer than expected.
— Rebecca Edmund
A servant leader can always come down to the level of the one he is serving
— Sunday Adelaja
God always exalts the humble.
— Sunday Adelaja
True knowledge should not produce pride; it should produce humility...Because the more you know, the more you know how much you don't know.
— Mark Batterson, A Trip Around the Sun: Turning Your Everyday Life Into the Adventure of a Lifetime
Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.
— Rick Warren
Abilene had gone from boomtown to Bible Belt, from whorehouses to schoolmarms, without any of the intervening phases.
— David Brooks
Her characters tend to err when they reject the grubby and complex circumstances of everyday life for abstract and radical notions. They thrive when they work within the rooted spot, the concrete habit, the particular reality of their town and family.
— David Brooks
Yet the human heart is disheartened by the most unreasonable self-judgments, because even when we take on giants, we too often confuse failure with fault, which I know too well. The only way back from such a bleak despondency is to shape humiliation into humility, to strive always to triumph over the darkness while never forgetting that the honor and the beauty are more in striving than in winning. When triumph at last comes, our efforts alone could not have won the day without that grace which surpasses all understanding and which will, if we allow it, imbue our lives with meaning.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Interlude: A Special Odd Thomas Adventure
I know I have this judgmental side that I'm often fighting against. But today I recognized the depths of my assumptions about people. What I envision is nothing remotely similar to the reality. Humility hurts. Coming home is disturbing.
— Cindy McCormick Martinusen
Some people are so impoverished all they have is gold.
— Michelle Moran, Rebel Queen
There is pride, too, though - pride that he has done it alone. That his daughter is so curious, so resilient. There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a narrow conduit for another, greater thing. That's how it feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane.
— Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
Humility is a virtue, not a neurosis.
— Thomas Merton
Ego, being love's kryptonite; two souls must be on the same page of humility.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
After Galileo, Einstein and even Freud, we try to hang onto a pathetic sort of significance on this planet and in this universe, that we are in some way more special than anything else. Our supreme arrogance that in some way the world was created for us has neither scientific nor spiritual reality.
— David  Brandon, Tao of Survival: Spirituality in Social Care and Counselling
Humility cannot be taught by propaganda, though slavery can. Shouting for humility is a form of arrogance. One of my most abiding recollections is of a priest at a religious occasion once roaring, in the most threatening way imaginable: 	‘O our Lord God, we most humbly pray…!’Real humility is not always the same as apparent humility. Remember that fighting against self-conceit is still fighting: and that it will tend to suppress it temporarily. It does not cure anything.Remember, too, that humility itself does not bring an automatic reward: it is a means to an end. It enables a person to operate in a certain manner.
— Idries Shah, Reflections
Christ-as always, the model-never sat back, crossed his arms, and dismissed the annoying, the troublesome, or the unpromising. He never name-called, never judged, never treated a single person with contempt. Christ talked to everybody, he mingled with everybody, he shared his message with everybody, and he also loved everybody. So don't count the cost with anybody either. We don't waste our time with people who don't want what we have to offer. But if they do, one form of martyrdom is to give a listening ear or an understanding smile to all comers.
— Heather King
The Oracle at Delphi contained three maxims emblematic of Greek life. "Know yourself." "Nothing in excess." and, "Offer a guarantee and disaster threatens.
— Anthony Everitt, The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World's Greatest Empire
The factor that made him so powerful was also his greatest liability.
— Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians
Old men want to feel that the experience which has come with their years is valuable, that their advice is valuable, that they possess a sagacity that could be obtained only through experience— a sagacity that could be of use to young men if only young men would ask.
— Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate
They possess the self- effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don’t need to prove anything to the world:
— David Brooks
People who are humble about their own nature are moral realists. Moral realists are aware that we are all built from “crooked timber”— from Immanuel Kant’s famous line, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.
— David Brooks
There's no such thing as a mistake, really. It's just an opportunity to do something else.
— Ralph Steadman
[T]he road to character is built by confronting your own weakness.
— David Brooks
It often seems as though the silent, humble servant is secretly wiser and more discerning than the haughty master; yet through dutiful (and sometimes insecure) surrender he continues to serve and carry out petty orders in loyal acquiescence.
— Criss Jami, Healology
Humility Preceeds Glory
— Paul Gitwaza
Advice saves you time. If you ask anyone over fifty, which is more important, time or money, they will ALWAYS tell you time.
— Douglas Copeland
Those that would attain wisdom, prefer the empty stadium.Those who wish to appear wise,prefer it full.
— Tom Althouse
No person is great in isolation. It takes many hands to shape a life. Denial would mean conceit, and conceit is not the same as self-respect.
— Sweety Shinde, Arjun: Without a Doubt
We can be knowledgeable with another man's knowledge, but we can't be wise with another man's wisdom.
— Michel de Montaigne
If you're a boss, and not a leader, your time is limited.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
The toughest thing worth losing is Pride.
— Unarine Ramaru
Bob Dylan's Christianity has been allusive, idiosyncratic, and never the sort to place him on anyone's side in any Kulturkampf.
— Christopher Caldwell
Why is it that self-confidence is so often cocky and self-assured so often selfish? Neither has to be true. Having confidence doesn’t require being superior over another and being self-assured doesn’t require taking advantage of another.
— Charles F. Glassman, Brain Drain   The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life
If you go in thinking that you're smarter than everyone else, you want in a learning very much. If you go in thinking, "I'd sure like to understand this better," you end up doing precisely that.
— Alex Gibney
When man comes into the presence of God he will find, whether he wishes it or not, that all those things which seemed to make him so different from the men of other times, or even from his earlier self, have fallen off. He is back where he always was, where every man always is.
— C.S. Lewis
Entrepreneur, stay hungry, stay humble & stay hopeful.
— Onyi Anyado
Perhaps when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Study cannot happen until we are subject to the subject.
— Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth
In the name of "force protection," the military often rolls up windows, builds walls, and points rifles at the outside world. The best force protection, however, is to be surrounded by friends and allies.
— Eric Greitens, The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL
Value the wisdom of humility, as well as the sense of perspective it gives you.
— Chris Hadfield
True service is a lifestyle. It acts from the ingrained patterns of living. It springs spontaneously to meet human need.
— Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline
Radical self-denial gives the feel of adventure. If we forsake all, we even have the chance of glorious martyrdom. But in service, we must experience the many little death of going beyond ourselves. Service banishes us to the mundane, the ordinary, the trivial
— Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline
Integrity comes not from privilege, textbooks, or profession, but from being grounded in humility.
— Charles F. Glassman, Brain Drain   The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life
Look here, it's all very tidy and convenient to see the world in black and white,' said the Major, trying to soften his tone slightly. 'It's a particular passion of young men eager to sweep away their dusty elders.' He stopped to organize his thoughts into some statement short enough for a youthful attention span. 'However, philosophical rigidity is usually combined with a complete lack of education or real-world experience, and it is often augmented with strange haircuts and an aversion to bathing. Not in your case, of course—you are very neat.' Abdul Wahid looked confused, which was an improvement over the frown.'You are very strange,' he said. 'Are you saying it is wrong, stupid, to try to live a life of faith?''No, I think it is admirable,' said the Major. 'But I think a life of faith must start with remembering that humility is the first virtue before God.
— Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Frasier (Responding to the suggestion that he undertake the difficult work of closure in a relationship): "What you just said about my success made a lot of sense. I tuned you out after that.
— Frasier Crane
Much of history is fragmentary and essentially anachronistic – condemning the past for not being more like the present. It has no real interest in the pastness of the past.
— Gordon S. Wood
If Christians insist only on condemning what they don't like, they will cut themselves off from that shared cultural life.
— Greg Foster
Academics have given up trying to recover an honest picture of the past and have decided that their history-writing should be simply an instrument of moral hand-wringing.
— Gordon S. Wood
You hand over control, you start winning.
— Jeff Jarvis, What Would Google Do?
I read them (articles TR wrote on his honeymoon) all over to Edith and her corrections and help were most valuable to me.
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
I do not begin to think that I could possibly understand its inner-workings and the deepest truths of the cosmos with the 28 years that I have lived in Central New Jersey of the United States of America.
— Chris Matakas, #Human: Learning To Live In Modern Times
The complex mix of unique people rising from different identities, beliefs, education, gender, upbringing, point of views and ethnicity have unequal sense in their impact in other’s status, opportunities, resources, talents, skills and productivity. It is very good to live with cultural humility that complements competency and proficiency.” ~ an excerpt from If I Could Tell You
— Angelica Hopes
Confession is a difficult discipline for us, because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin.
— Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline
Wisdom of the Ages: "Humility" If you don't have it, you're gonna get it.
— Matthew Heines
I do so love hearing people speak passionately on any subject, other than themselves.
— Ged Thompson Liverpool Poet
He tried juggling with raw eggs – but only once.
— Nicholas Dawidoff, The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
Often, your mentors are already in your life; you just haven’t yet found a way to learn from them.
— Eric Greitens
A computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things.
— Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away
The pride which is proud of want of pride is the most intolerable of all.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
I still get plenty anxious. The weird thing, and the unpleasant surprise for me, of proceeding well into the middle, perhaps even post-prime of my career is that writing books has not got any easier. And that doesn't seem fair. I mean, I've been doing it so surely I should be getting better at it, at least a little bit blasé... And it seems to be working absolutely the opposite. This book [Big Brother] I had no confidence in the entirety of its composition, and I only decided I liked it when I finished the very final draft. This means I'm in a state of semi-misery for a long time. And I can't blithely seem either that's some little game I'm playing with myself because, you know, you can easily come along and you don't like what's you're writing for good reason. Right? So, yeah, it's very anxious making, I don't think it's so much the becoming a little more successful, I think it's becoming slightly more aware of how much has already been written, and just becoming less self-impressed as the years go by. More impressed with some people who are better than I am, but... It doesn't wow me that I can write a sentence any more. It has to be a really good sentence. And... I think that's what potentially leads to paralysis in late career, is a kind of killing humility.Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC, on June 11, 2013
— Lionel Shriver
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 Republic
People will always be tempted to wipe their feet on anything with ‘welcome’ written on it.
— Andy Partridge
The humble woman is surprised by all the good that she sees around her rather than scandalized by what she cannot judge anyway. The humble woman is grateful for her successes but not disheartened by her failures. She enjoys her gifts and readily admits her mistakes. She maintains a sense of humor, whether the news from Wall Street is giddy or glum. She faces her character defects without getting discouraged. Her humble confidence in God’s love and her enchantment with the kabod Yahweh shape a hedge of thorns against self-absorption and frees her for an unselfconscious presence to others.
— Brennan Manning
It can be unhelpful to wax eloquent about the inerrancy of Scripture without an accompanying acknowledgment that, while Scripture may be inerrant, there are no inerrant interpreters of Scripture.
— Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church
The counselee should be aware that you are not God. Better yet, she should be aware that you are aware that you are not God.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
Being big enough to know when you are small, makes you gigantic. Lack of humility is not necessarily the down fall of great relationships, it is the slippery slide ego and pride take you down that block communication, cause mis-communication and dissolution of trust, that kill a bond.--TAMMY WOOSTER 1/15
— Tammy Wooster
If we had not experienced our deep sinfulness and Jesus' deep forgiveness through the cross, we will not love others well in the midst of their struggles. If we do not see the beauty and glory of God in our own redemption, we will not be able to offer a compelling redemptive vision for those who are hopeless and who doubt God's love for them.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
The fledgling and ragtag American army turned its state into a semi-plausible advantage, encouraging enlistees to wear their own "hunting shirts" to build on the reputation of frontier marksmen.
— Joseph J. Ellis
A partner's different perspective is valuable, but the very fact that it is different means that it will require work, humility, time, and resources to incorporate that perspective. At times, this will require checking one's pride at the door.
— Ron Garan, The Orbital Perspective: Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles
Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility. The shallow-minded modern who has lost his rootage in the land assumes that he has already discovered what is important; it is such who prate of empires, political or economic, that will last a thousand years. It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values. It is only the scholar who understands why the raw wilderness gives definition and meaning to the human enterprise.
— Aldo Leopold
Vision and persistence will take you to the top of the leadership mountain, but only humility will keep you there.
— Orrin Woodward
He wrote as a young man that God's noblest gift was the gift of an inquiring mind.
— John  Adams
Quite often we are led to aporia, an impasse, unable to proceed a step further. Socrates is almost always there, but even he is only a supporting character. The starring role is given to the philosophical question. It is the philosophical question that is supposed to take center stage, cracking us open to an entirely new variety of experience.
— Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
No reproach for a person willing to give honorable service in the passion to become wise.
— Plato
Unlike Kim Cardassian or Donald Trump, Montaigne regarded the inward glance as an adventure in self-effacement not self infatuation. He was a charming and perceptive critic of his own foibles, especially alert to his weakness for inconsistency.
— Danny Heitman
… the Sufi attitude is: ‘Let the real truth, whatever it may be, be revealed to me’.
— Idries Shah, The Commanding Self
It is a sad thing to become so blinded and deafened by pride that you are no longer concerned about whether or not God is pleased with your actions.
— Thea Harris, Pour the Oil
Humility is recognizing we can't give anything to God that He hasn't already given to us.
— Benjamin Lotter
Out of humility I label not myself or others. All I can say is this
—  God is my Father. Jesus is my Savior. And the Holy Spirit dwells in me.
1052The power of one hundred proud men cannot influence the world as much as of one humble servant of God. Tom Krause
— Tom Krause
The power of one hundred proud men cannot influence the world as much as of one humble servant of God. Tom Krause
— Tom Krause
Rudeness, abruptness, gory tales of blood and thunder, and coarse language usually show up the greenhorn or counterfeit, and certainly the ill-bred. "The bravest are the tenderest; the gentlest are the daring.
— Kenneth W. Estes
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, Maldoror and the Complete Works
By being high, you become low and by being low, you become high. By being humble, you become high.
— Choa Kok Sui, Creative Transformation - The Golden Lotus Sutras on Spiritual Practice
The immediate reactions of the two superpower leaders when confronted with the gravest international crisis of their careers were much the same, shock, wounded pride, grim determination, and barely repressed fear.
— Michael Dobbs
There is only one certain test of the virtue and that is humiliation. The acceptance of humiliation alone shows the depth and reality of our humility.
— Nivard Kinsella
I should wish to see them very good friends, and would, on no account, authorize in my girls the smallest degree of arrogance towards their relations; but still they cannot be equals.” (10)
— Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
You are infinitely my superior in merit; all that I know - You have qualities which I had not supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you, beyond what - not merely beyond what one sees, because one never sees any thing like it - but beyond what one fancies might be. But still I am not frightened. It is not by equality of merit that you can be won. That is out of the question. It is he who sees and worships your merit the strongest, who loves you most devotedly, that has the best right to a return.” (326)
— Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
It is an illusion to worry about pride without having those things that may predispose someone to fall into the trap of pride...
— Assegid Habtewold, The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For Continued Success in Leadership
There is a fine line between humility and humiliation, and when Augustine’s critics, both loyal and disloyal, fault him for morbid self-criticism, they generally mean to imply that he has crossed the line. You can have a relationship with another person only if you know something of humility; otherwise your ego gets in the way. If, however, you are humiliated instead of humbled, there is no ‘you’ to enter into a relationship. Massilians and Pelagians had differing understandings of when humility before God became too much of a good thing, but they had common cause in not liking Augustine’s scruples about the human will to relate to God. If everything about the soul’s relationship to God is God’s doing, including the very desire to be in relation, where exactly does the soul surface in its redemption? The Word seems to have become a monologue.
— James Wetzel
History teacher Bob Alston's "expertise late not in his sweeping knowledge of the topic but in his ability to pick after a tumble, to get a fix on what he does not know, and to generate a roadmap to guide his new learning. He was an expert at cultivating puzzlement it was Alston's ability to stand back from first impressions, to question his quick leaps of mind, to keep track of his questions that together pointed him in the direction of new learning.
— Sam Wineburg
Never believe you're so great or important, so right or proud, that you cannot kneel at the feet of someone you hurt and offer a humble, sincere apology.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes
Courtship is driven by hormones
—  marriage is sustained by humility and self-sacrifice.
You don't have to be a big name to do big things. Shine does not require recognition.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
The height of cleverness is in one's ability to be very clever without seeming clever at all.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Humility raises us not by human arrogance but by divine grace.
— Augustine of Hippo, City of God
Vengeance would have us assault an enemy's pride to beat him down. But vengeance hides a dangerous truth, for a humbled foe gains patience, courage, strength, and greater determination.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, The Tarishe Curse
To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay.
— Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk
His joy was a release of Paul's conversion, not the heavy backslapping practical-joking humor of the Victorians, nor the cynical satire or the flippancy of the twenty first century mass media, just the gift of not taking himself or his adversaries too seriously.
— John Charles Pollock, The Apostle: The Life of Paul
I was wrong, you were right. I'm dumb, you're smart. I'm ugly, and you're a stone-cold fox.
— toooldforthis, Coming Full Circle
False humility is a form of psychosis which was imprinted on most of us since birth. It is a mental illness because it locks us in a victim state of keeping our light turned down, denying who we really are and silently begging for permission to simply show up as ourselves in the world. But there is good news. This is a jail whose lock is broken. We can walk free whenever we know the truth, and by so doing we show others an example of an end to madness. An example of freedom.
— Jacob Nordby
If you are humble you will never have to struggle against positive change.
— Paul Bamikole
They (Reagan and Kennedy) had some combination of cheerfulness and vulnerability that made them seem like boys on adventure who had become lost in needed a small kindness to get them back on the right path.
— Scott Farris, Kennedy and Reagan: Why Their Legacies Endure
I overreacted to praise, signing an autograph. I'd write a check to buy it back.
— Brian Spellman
Humility is recognizing the fullness of our sin, so we can embrace the fullness of God's mercy.
— Alisa Hope Wagner, Eve of Awakening
The only competition in art is the search for truth. No matter who gets there first, we all win.
— Joe leigh-Corrigan
You must love yourself first to the soul of your aura...
— Jennifer Pierre
Plimpton was a presence. He looked for ways in which he could make himself ridiculous. That made him a great storyteller.
— Stefan Fatsis
I am an African. I am white. I, in my humble way, and others in their much more brave way, have earned that right.
— Nadine Gordimer, The Quotable Gordimer; or, The Wit and Wisdom of Nadine Gordimer
Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was the symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.
— Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Life is not a competition with others. Life is a competition with yourself—to do your personal best each day.
— Cameron C. Taylor, 8 Attributes of Great Achievers
People who have fallacious objectives are like the barren soil. The flowers grow from soil which is composed of the right objectives.
— Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way