For a variety of reasons, not least arrogant politicians, conspiracy theorists, and ruling class billionaires, I have found myself contemplating hubris quite a bit recently, so I’m deviating from my single quote form this week to provide a few quotes that reflect on the very deadly sin of hubris.

I started down this meditative path when I came upon this wonderful Cicero quote, and wished that more people in a position of power, or celebrity, saw its simple truth:

“The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.”

Here, then, is a random sampling of variations on the theme:

“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.” — James Thurber

“Men and women believed and proclaimed God was firmly on their side – and easy and shallow assertion that reduced God to a sort of house deity.” — Gustav Niebuhr

“If we do good to those we evaluate as good and evil to those we evaluate at the evil, and we are wrong, we have been made the world less just.”  — Plato

“It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth.”  — Aleister Crowley

“Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune. ”  — C.G. Jung

“Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.”  — Herman Melville

“There, pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues men know and heed, a Babel of despair”  — Dante Alighieri

Image is from a slide presentation on Elements of Greek Tragedy and the Tragic Hero on slideshare.net