Quotes About Hubris

That sovereign of insufferables.

In the financial sector, those whom the gods want to destroy they first teach math.

One look tells you ours have had more food, nicer clothing, and better dental care," said Dean Highbottom. "Assuming anything more, a physical, mental, or especially a moral superiority, would be a mistake. That sort of hubris almost finished us off in the war.

But surely, you're not comparing our children to theirs?" asked Lucky. "One look tells you ours are a superior breed." "One look tells you ours have had more food, nicer clothing, and better dental care," said Dean Highbottom. "Assuming anything more, a physical, mental, or especially a moral superiority, would be a mistake. That sort of hubris almost finished us off in the war.

Scientists may be in the business of laughing at their predecessors, but owing to an array of human mental dispositions, few realize that someone will laugh at their beliefs in the (disappointingly near) future.

The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know.

Epistemic arrogance bears a double effect: we overestimate what we know, and underestimate uncertainty, by compressing the range of possible uncertain states (i.e., by reducing the space of the unknown).

We have always been crazy but weren't skilled enough to destroy the world. Now we can.

True, our knowledge does grow, but it is threatened by greater increases in confidence, which make our increase in knowledge at the same time an increase in confusion, ignorance, and conceit.

our knowledge does grow, but it is threatened by greater increases in confidence, which make our increase in knowledge at the same time an increase in confusion, ignorance, and conceit.

those who are very good at predicting the past will think of themselves as good at predicting the future

on how human nature knows no upper bound, as if to punish itself.

The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know. Lack of knowledge and delusion about the quality of your knowledge come together—the same process that makes you know less also makes you satisfied with your knowledge.

Expert problems (in which the expert knows a lot but less than he thinks he does) often bring fragilities, and acceptance of ignorance the reverse.

to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man's own righteousness.

However baby man may brag of his science and skill . . . ," Melville writes in Moby-Dick, "yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make.

every man believes that he can tame a nymph but it only leads to the grave — for the man.

In the 1930s, Sylvanus G. Morley of Harvard, probably the most celebrated Mayanist of his day, espoused what is still the best-known theory: The Maya collapsed because they overshot the carrying capacity of their environment. They exhausted their resource base, began to die of starvation and thirst, and fled their cities en masse, leaving them as silent warnings of the perils of ecological hubris.

There's always some idiot who thinks that after the revolution they'll be the one sitting on top of the hill of corpses, dining on caviar served out of a bowl made of a chromed baby's skull.

What kind of power was it if everybody knew that it would never be used? Better to say that it was not there, that it was no more than the power in the anus of the proud dog who tried to put out a furnace with his puny fart.... He turned the yam with a stick.

I got by on talent. That was my fatal mistake.

J. P. Morgan. He was kind of a douche.

Reality dictates that no matter how bright and capable a leader might be, the work of the organization must be accomplished by trusted colleagues. A leader's inference that he or she is primarily responsible for the organization's success demonstrates blatant hubris.

Pride is a dangerous indulgence.