52 Quotes On Arrogance

Arrogance, often masked as confidence, can be a double-edged sword. It’s a trait that can alienate others and cloud judgment, yet it’s also deeply woven into the fabric of human nature. Whether we encounter it in our personal lives, our workplaces, or within ourselves, understanding arrogance can offer profound insights into human behavior. In this post, we've curated a collection of the top 52 quotes on arrogance. These thought-provoking words from scholars, philosophers, and everyday individuals highlight the many facets of arrogance, offering wisdom and perhaps a touch of humility. Dive in and reflect on what these quotes reveal about this complex trait.

1. “Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.” - Virginia Woolf

2. “Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

3. “Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared. It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It's the sure-footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life. ” - Ann Landers

4. “You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I - I'll take what nobody can give a man, except himself. I will have built Cortlandt. - Howard Roark” - Ayn Rand

5. “Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.” - Emma Goldman

6. “It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.” - Anatole France

7. “Arrogance is in everything I do. It is in my gestures, the harshness of my voice, in the glow of my gaze, in my sinewy, tormented face.” - Coco Chanel

8. “Women scheme when they are weak, they lie out of fear. Men scheme when they are strong, they lie out of arrogance.” - Julian Barnes

9. “... It's the rareGod who needs less stroking that a rockStar or poetician ...” - Alice Fulton

10. “However my mother had once said, ‘When you go to art school, you’ll find everybody sitting around practicing how to do their signature'; and sure enough, there they were, some of them doing just that.” - Richard Williams

11. “Early in my career...I had to choose between an honest arrogance and a hypercritical humility... I deliberately choose an honest arrogance, and I've never been sorry.” - Frank Lloyd Wright

12. “I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.” - Christopher Hitchens

13. “One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the children of Israel continue to suffer? My grandmother Dodo thought it was because the goyim were jealous. The seder for Passover (which is a shame-faced simulacrum of a Hellenic question-and-answer session, even including the wine) tells the children that it's one of those things that happens to every Jewish generation. After the Shoah or Endlösung or Holocaust, many rabbis tried to tell the survivors that the immolation had been a punishment for 'exile,' or for insufficient attention to the Covenant. This explanation was something of a flop with those whose parents or children had been the raw material for the 'proof,' so for a time the professional interpreters of god's will went decently quiet. This interval of ambivalence lasted until the war of 1967, when it was announced that the divine purpose could be discerned after all. How wrong, how foolish, to have announced its discovery prematurely! The exile and the Shoah could now both be understood, as part of a heavenly if somewhat roundabout scheme to recover the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other pieces of biblically mandated real estate.I regard it as a matter of self-respect to spit in public on rationalizations of this kind. (They are almost as repellent, in their combination of arrogance, masochism, and affected false modesty, as Edith Stein's 'offer' of her life to expiate the regrettable unbelief in Jesus of her former fellow Jews.) The sage Jews are those who have put religion behind them and become in so many societies the leaven of the secular and the atheist.” - Christopher Hitchens

14. “How many consuming fires can there be in the words: freedom, peace and democracy and how easy they can be extinguished by ignorance, stupidity and arrogance?” - Sorin Cerin

15. “I could smell an arrogance, it was my cheap fragrance.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

16. “Smartass Disciple: Why do arrogant people like to say complex words ?Master of Stupidity: Ask them straight! You'll get a simple scary version.” - Toba Beta

17. “Your arrogance doesn't cheapen me.” - Toba Beta

18. “If you feel deserve to judge the arrogant,it's a sign that you're so far of humbleness.” - Toba Beta

19. “Be careful not to mistake insecurity and inadequacy for humility! Humility has nothing to do with the insecure and inadequate! Just like arrogance has nothing to do with greatness!” - C. JoyBell C.

20. “Arrogance is a creature. It does not have senses.It has only a sharp tongue and the pointing finger.” - Toba Beta

21. “You'll need to do a better job, Annabelle. No more dates like the first one tonight.""Agreed. And no more making me sit through your Power Matches introductions, either. As you so wisely pointed out, helping Portia Powers isn't in my best interests.""Then why are you still trying to talk me into seeing Melanie again?""Hunger makes me weird.""You got rid of the last one in fourteen minutes. Well done. I'm rewarding you by letting you sit in on all the introductions from now on."She nearly choked on an ice cube. "What are you talking about?""Exactly what I said.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

22. “At times his arrogance did resolve itself into simplicity, though it was difficult, especially for strangers, to distinguish these occasions.” - Patrick White

23. “The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I have finished my travels.” - Mark Twain

24. “Pride is the mother of arrogance.” - Toba Beta

25. “Arrogant people beat each other.” - Toba Beta

26. “Kindness is strength. Good-nature is often mistaken for virtue, and good health sometimes passes for genius. Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and calm. Intelligence is not the foundation of arrogance. Insolence is not logic. Epithets are the arguments of malice.” - Robert Green Ingersoll

27. “But self-abasement is just inverted egoism. Anyone who acts with genuine humility will be as far from humiliation as from arrogance.” - Stephen Mitchell

28. “Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in 'measurements' when he did not know what he was measuring.” - Robert A. Heinlein

29. “Problem with an old friend who is too busy: he always perceives you as if never changed.” - Toba Beta

30. “Wenn ich den Eindruck hätte, dass in dem, was Sie da sagen, auch nur ein Körnchen Vernunft steckt, würde ich mir vielleicht die Mühe machen, mich auf eine solche Diskussion einzulassen. Aber wie die Dinge liegen, werde ich einfach an etwas anderes denken, während Sie weiter vor sich hin plappern.” - Kazuo Ishiguro

31. “a grin that wasn't natural, and that combined in a strange way affection and arrogance, the arrogance of the idealist who doesn't realize how easily he can be fooled.” - Frank O'Connor

32. “I am incapable of mediocrity.” - Serge Gainsbourg

33. “The logic behind patriotism is a mystery. At least a man who believes that his own family or clan is superior to all others is familiar with more than 0.000003% of the people involved.” - Criss Jami

34. “Simply minding one's own business is more offensive than being intrusive. Without ever saying a word one can make a person feel less-than.” - Criss Jami

35. “Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!' Is it not so?” - H. Rider Haggard

36. “Oh, Gods."His eyes shone with want and predatory satisfaction. "The name's William. It's a common mistake.” - Ilona Andrews

37. “Those who travel to mountain-tops are half in love with themselves, and half in love with oblivion.” - Robert MacFarlane

38. “Through a strange kind of geographic arrogance, Europeans like to think that the world was a silent, dark, unknown place until they trooped out and discovered it.” - Tahir Shah

39. “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” - Oliver Cromwell

40. “English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and arrogant-down (directed at the small guy).” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

41. “To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance-- not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write.” - Richard Hugo

42. “I should prefer that you do not mention my name at all in connection with this case, as I choose to be only associated with those crimes which present some difficulty in their solution.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

43. “Arrogance is thinking you are above someone else, Confidence is knowing no one is above you.” - Habeeb Akande

44. “Love is the blind revelation of arrogance.” - Lionel Suggs

45. “They (theological liberals)seemed to know what the answer was supposed to be and weren’t much concerned with how to get there. They knew only that whatever answers the Fundamentalists came up with must be wrong.” - Eric Metaxas

46. “Arrogance likes to appear humble in public.” - Toba Beta

47. “Before I met the Jesuits, I’d never encountered another group who thought that intellect and arrogance were treasures beyond price and necessities in waging wars against blasphemers, heretics.” - Pat Conroy

48. “What do you believe reveals more about a man’s character, his arrogance or his attempt to disguise it?” - Aaron B. Powell

49. “This boy was likely to die soon, but he died yesterday - because of a doctor's arrogance, his unwillingness to seek a consult, his neglect to get a full and thorough history. Arrogance! We are clinicians, scientists. We observe time-honored procedures and analyses - that's how we are trained. And this is what happens when we subjugate that training to arrogance!” - Dr. Hooten Monday Mornings

50. “Quotes? you want quotes?To sound important, quote yourself” - LeTony Quas Marrazo

51. “Since the war, we're the only intelligent species left in the universe, therefore we think everything in this universe has to conform to our paradigm of what makes sense. Do you have any idea how arrogant that view is and on how little of this universe we base it?” - Robert Buettner

52. “Nobody wants to give up a weekend-long excuse to dress up and attempt to outshine one another.” - Elizabeth Eulberg