Quotes About Humility

We learned pretty early on in this band that you can't have snobbery in music.

When I was trying to get into acting, to have been a model was about as low as you could get in the acting profession. But that wasn't sexism, it was snobbery, which I knew and took very humbly.

Inverted snobbery is just as dangerous as snobbery itself, you know - that pride in having nothing.

The more I speak and travel, I realize I don't have it that bad. There are so many people that have it so much worse than I do.

I see people every day who think they're the be all and end all of the industry. I've seen so many people come and go, but the industry doesn't revolve around one person.

Believe me, I have met so many people who absolutely have no reason to feel important, and they do!

I guess my critics say, 'He must be crazy. Nothing can be that beautiful.' But when you think that there are so many people around the world who have nothing, you realize how lucky you are to be making a living in the big leagues.

There are so many people who are so much better qualified to write about politics than I am.

I think anyone who gets the Nobel Prize has to be a little bit embarrassed to be picked out when there have been so many people who have contributed.

I grew up listening to AM radio in the '70s and hearing all of that great soul and rhythm and blues music, which definitely influenced the way I sing. But singing gospel has made me a much more humble person. There are so many people who were geniuses who only a few people knew about when they were alive.

With music you spend so much time standing on stage in front of an audience you get a false sense of your own importance. It's worth keeping that in check.

An experience of awe appears to be an excellent antidote for egotism.

If you ever manage to become perfect, you have to die instantly before you ruin things for everyone else.

Kings and philosophers shit—and so do ladies.

Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

Kings and philosophers defecate, and so do ladies.

Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?

It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man.

To learn that we have said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing; we must learn that we are nothing but fools, a far broader and more important lesson.

If you walk on stilts, you're still walking on your feet. If you sit on the highest throne in the world, you're still sitting on your ass.

Upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses.

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity.

No one is exempt from speaking nonsense. The great misfortune is to do it solemnly.

Que sçay-je? (What do I know?)