Quotes About Hubris

...for Pride that dines on Vanity sups on Contempt...

quote Euripides: "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.")

One time we had the whole world in our hands, but we ate it and burned it and it's gone now.

Cómo caíste del cielo... (Isaías 14:12)

I flew too near the sun and my wax wings fell off

How inadequate we are in our attempts to bring nature under our control, Henry thought. How careless of us to believe that we can manipulate diseases to kill, rather than to cure. We're like schoolchildren playing with matches. One day we'll burn the house down.

Achilles, without his heel, you wouldn't even know his name today.

I feel the shadow of wings across my face, Icarus wings, faltering in my flight.

The three decades following the Second World War were prolific breeders of myth. The two great military victories on opposite sides of the globe, followed by unparalleled prosperity at home and world leadership abroad, bred a national euphoria, even hubris in some, capable of the boast that America could do anything: The impossible takes a little longer.

Man has always assumed that his is the highest form of life in the universe. There is, of course, nothing at all with which to sustain this view.

Pride is a very common failing I believe.

Our hubris needs to be downsized, thinking that profiteering on Earth, on whatever level - environmentally, economically, culturally - is unlimited and everybody should get as much as he wants or she wants. Humans need to be shrunk again to their actual size.

Empires always have the hubris to think they are indestructible, when in fact they are always unsustainable.

Failure has gone to his head.

The story of 'Prometheus' is the idea that if you're given a gift from the gods, do not abuse it, and do not think you can compete.

Exercising power can do strange things to people. You can become convinced that you're irreplaceable. You can become convinced that you're always right. And I think the danger is the longer you stay in power, the more likely that is to happen.

I see the God complex around me all the time in my fellow economists. I see it in our business leaders. I see it in the politicians we vote for — people who, in the face of an incredibly complicated world, are nevertheless absolutely convinced that they understand the way that the world works.

the human moral standpoint itself shares in fallen human hubris.

Avarice and luxury, those pests which have ever been the ruin of every great state.

One of the things I've had the advantage of, growing up and being close to the top management of this company and other companies for most of my life, is seeing how CEOs start to believe in their own infallibility. And that really scares me.

Arrogance takes many forms.

No man is more prideful than he who believes himself immune to the dangers of the world.

I retitled my poem The Hyperion Cantos. It was not about the planet but about the passing of the self-styled Titans called humans. It was about the unthinking hubris of a race which dared to murder its homeworld through sheer carelessness and then carried that dangerous arrogance to the stars...

guile was no match for the world and that hubris would always be punished by the gods.