Quotes About Humility

Humility is awareness that you are an underdog in the struggle against your own weakness.

there was perhaps a strain of humility that was more common then than now, that there was a moral ecology, stretching back centuries but less prominent now, encouraging people to be more skeptical of their desires, more aware of their own weaknesses, more intent on combatting the flaws in their own natures and turning weakness into strength.

if you think you can organize your own salvation you are magnifying the very sin that keeps you from it.

They possess the self- effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don't need to prove anything to the world:

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.

God laughs at people like us.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know and the more you know that you don't know.

People are trying to be smart—all I am trying to do is not to be idiotic, but it's harder than most people think.

Now, I don't consider myself the smartest chip in the cookie, but I ain't the dumbest, either.

If we've deluded ourselves into thinking that our angry mass emails or conversation-stopping talking points serve as a ministry or carry out the purposes of God, we need to slow down and take a breath.

And for the sake of humility--a characteristic crucial to sacred questioning we might do well to confess that we're capable at any moment of such bad religion ourselves.

While pride and self-satisfaction might play well on TV, the Lord detests the proud face.3 It's the look of impenetrable ignorance. It doesn't ask questions. It has no reverse gear and won't admit to ever flip-flopping. When there is no soul-searching, is the soul still there?

The poet Mary Rose O'Reilly describes the process aptly: "People all over the world are doing very hard things—turning the other cheek, giving all they have to the poor, eating potatoes without salt—because some confused and yawning student took a note.

My pencil and I are more clever than I.

the Principle of Mediocrity opposes the pre-Enlightenment arrogance of believing ourselves significant in the world; the Spaceship Earth metaphor opposes the Enlightenment arrogance of aspiring to control the world.

I think what a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.

We're all entitled to a little stupidity now and then. --Beldin

I don't care how famous a guitarist is, he ain't learned everything. There's always somewhere to go, something to mash up, but he ain't found it yet. You never learn everything on that guitar neck.

Be yourself, but disarm potential critics where you can by being self-deprecating.

despite the unpopularity of the notion, surrender plays a crucial role in the spiritual journey as understood by most major religions and spiritual traditions. Far from being a sign of weakness, only surrender to something or someone bigger than us is sufficiently strong to free us from the prison of our egocentricity. Only surrender is powerful enough to overcome our isolation and alienation.

Far from being a sign of weakness, only surrender to something or someone bigger than us is sufficiently strong to free us from the prison of our egocentricity. Only surrender is powerful enough to overcome our isolation and alienation.

The way of the true self is always the way of humility. Pride and arrogance move us toward our false self, but humility and love allow us to live the truth of our being.

It is hard to be angry when one has seen the sun rise,' she said. It seems to be true,' he admitted. 'I wonder why.' Because it makes one feel so small and insignificant. It has been rising forever and will rise forever no matter what we do or do not do. All our problems are as nothing to the sun.

Often, the only polite thing to do if one has accomplished something significant is to instead make fun of oneself.