Quotes About Humility

Level 5 leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves.

Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence - more plow horse than show horse.

Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.

It is very important to grasp that Level 5 leadership is not just about humility and modesty. It is equally about ferocious resolve, an almost stoic determination to do whatever needs to be done to make the company great.

Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They

Darwin Smith stands as a classic example of what we came to call a Level 5 leader—an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will.

I'm saying that some men are saints. Some are happy being meek and humble and unambitious. Some men are born content to be second-best.

The Blessed Jesus said, 'First cast the mote out of your own eye before you cast the beam out of mine.

Death is preferable?" "I've already written my death poem, Lady: " When I die, don't burn me, don't bury me, just throw my body on a field to fatten some empty-bellied dog. " "That could be arranged. Easily.

Although he had a directing hand in everything, he always remained a student at heart.

Padre Divino, concedimi una tregua. Accetta la mia fraudolenta rettitudine. Revoca l'arroganza che mi lega agli intrighi di altri e mi conduce verso orridi errori e unioni sbagliate. Tempera la mia ambizione con la Tua grazia, Signore.

nothing that crawls the earth is for my sport.

Very few men attain enough of human knowledge to be fully aware how much remains to be learned, and of that which they never can hope to acquire.

My eyes are true and as delicate as a hummingbird's in the day; but they are nothing worth boasting of by starlight.

To those who live in the narrow circle of human interests and human feelings, there ever exists, unheeded, almost unnoticed, before their very eyes, the most humbling proofs of their own comparative insignificance in the scale of creation, which, in the midst of their admitted mastery over the earth and all it contains, it would be well for them to consider, if they would obtain just views of what they are and what they were intended to be.

So much the better — so much the better; for I have always found that a conceited man never knows content. All things prove it. Why have we not the wings of the pigeon, the eyes of the eagle, and the legs of the moose, if it had been intended that man should be equal to all his wishes?

One of the misfortunes of a nation, is to hear little besides its own praises.

All that we can do with any spiritual discipline is produce within ourselves something of the silence, the humility, the detachment, the purity of heart and the indifference which are required if the inner self is to make some shy, unpredictable manifestation of his presence.11

The lesson here for me was that one sure way to be numbered among the dead would be to set out on a ruthless campaign never to make anything out of anything. The tragic irony of such an endeavor is that, should one succeed, one becomes someone who makes something out of the fact that he never makes anything out of anything! This maze suspiciously resembles the dilemma of the humble person who becomes proud about being humble.

riches have never made people great but love does it every day—we

I've always been uncomfortable, so to speak, when the focus is on me.

I come from very common stock, and I've always been uncomfortable with pretension and all the forms it can take, including disingenuous broadcasting.

I never want to be a showoff or attention getter or something that, truthfully, is kind of repulsive to me, but I get uncomfortable.

I'm uncomfortable with the limelight. I'm not the type to go to the places where I know I'll be seen. I'd rather keep a low profile.