In a world that often rewards loud voices and bold claims, the quiet virtue of humility can sometimes be overshadowed. Yet, it's humility that grounds us, offering a steady foundation from which we can truly grow and connect with others. Embracing humility allows us to navigate our lives with grace, acknowledge our limitations, and open our hearts to lifelong learning. Whether you're seeking personal growth or a deeper connection with those around you, exploring perspectives on humility can be both enlightening and enriching. Dive into this carefully curated collection of inspiring quotes on humility, and let them serve as gentle reminders of the power and beauty found in staying humble.
1. “A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.” - Alexander Pope
2. “It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.” - Mahatma Gandhi
3. “See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little.” - John XXIII
4. “To have humility is to experience reality, not in relation to ourselves, but in its sacred independence. It is to see, judge, and act from the point of rest in ourselves. Then, how much disappears, and all that remains falls into place.In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.” - Dag Hammarskjöld
5. “Life is a long lesson in humility.” - J.M. Barrie
6. “The greatest wisdom consists in knowing one's own follies.” - Madeleine De Souvre Sable
7. “If someone were to ask whether communications skills or meekness is most important to a marriage, I'd answer meekness, hands down. You can be a superb communicator but still never have the humility to ask, 'Is it I?' Communication skills are no substitute for Christlike attributes. As Dr. Douglas Brinley has observed, 'Without theological perspectives, secular exercises designed to improve our relationship and our communication skills (the common tools of counselors and marriage books) will never work any permanent change in one's heart: they simply develop more clever and skilled fighters!” - John Bytheway
8. “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.” - Abraham Lincoln
9. “A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.” - Albert Einstein
10. “In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.” - Winston Spencer-Churchill
11. “A blush of breeze rose from the grass. Jacob felt as if an angel's wing had beat against his cheek. He touched his cheek slowly. He felt embarrassed by the thought."That I should think an angel came to me."He wept. And, again, the brush of breeze against his cheek.” - Noah BenShea
12. “Until you have suffered much in your heart, you cannot learn humility.” - Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
13. “Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?” - Carl Sagan
14. “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.” - Orson F. Whitney
15. “It is easy to do good, but it takes a lifetime to become human!” - AainaA-Ridtz A R
16. “There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. […] There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves.[…]The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility.” - C.S. Lewis
17. “Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and above is trouble.” - Andrew Murray
18. “It is not for you to say - you Englishmen, who have conquered your freedom so long ago, that you have conveniently forgotten what blood you shed, and what extremities you proceeded to in the conquering - it is not for you to say how far the worst of all exasperations may, or may not, carry the maddened men of an enslaved nation. The iron that has entered into our souls has gone too deep for you to find it. Leave the refugee alone! Laugh at him, distrust him, open your eyes in wonder at the secret self which smolders in him, sometimes under the every-day respectability and tranquility of a man like me - sometimes under the grinding poverty, the fierce squalor, of men less lucky, less pliable, less patient than I am - but judge us not. In the time of your first Charles you might have done us justice - the long luxury of your freedom has made you incapable of doing us justice now. ” - Wilkie Collins
19. “But the vicar of St. Botolph's had certainly escaped the slightest tincture of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in this - that he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him, and could judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him. [from Middlemarch, a quote my mother thinks describes the kind of man my father was]” - George Eliot
20. “It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"!(Institutio III.2.3)” - John Calvin
21. “I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.” - Lao Tzu
22. “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” - Ernest Hemingway
23. “It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.” - Publilius Syrus
24. “Here is the path to the higher life: down, lower down! Just as water always seeks and fills the lowest place, so the moment God finds men abased and empty, His glory and power flow in to exalt and to bless.” - Andrew Murray
25. “We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior toward the world - to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it. And now, perhaps very close to too late, our great error has become clear. It is not only our own creativity - our own capacity for life - that is stifled by our arrogant assumption; the creation itself is stifled.We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it. (pg. 20, "A Native Hill")” - Wendell Berry
26. “Until we understand what the land is, we are at odds with everything we touch. And to come to that understanding it is necessary, even now, to leave the regions of our conquest - the cleared fields, the towns and cities, the highways - and re-enter the woods. For only there can a man encounter the silence and the darkness of his own absence. Only in this silence and darkness can he recover the sense of the world's longevity, of its ability to thrive without him, of his inferiority to it and his dependence on it. Perhaps then, having heard that silence and seen that darkness, he will grow humble before the place and begin to take it in - to learn from it what it is. As its sounds come into his hearing, and its lights and colors come into his vision, and its odors come into his nostrils, then he may come into its presence as he never has before, and he will arrive in his place and will want to remain. His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them - neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them - and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again.(pg. 27, "A Native Hill")” - Wendell Berry
27. “It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility. ” - Rachel Carson
28. “I'm a writer by profession and it's totally clear to me that since I started blogging, the amount I write has increased exponentially, my daily interactions with the views of others have never been so frequent, the diversity of voices I engage with is far higher than in the pre-Internet age—and all this has helped me become more modest as a thinker, more open to error, less fixated on what I do know, and more respectful of what I don't. If this is a deterioration in my brain, then more, please."The problem is finding the space and time when this engagement stops, and calm, quiet, thinking and reading of longer-form arguments, novels, essays can begin. Worse, this also needs time for the mind to transition out of an instant gratification mode to me a more long-term, thoughtful calm. I find this takes at least a day of detox. Getting weekends back has helped. But if there were a way to channel the amazing insights of blogging into the longer, calmer modes of thinking ... we'd be getting somewhere."I'm working on it.” - Andrew Sullivan
29. “There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people.” - Robert Louis Stevenson
30. “To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.” - Ursula K. Le Guin
31. “Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying.” - St. Vincent de Paul
32. “Humility means accepting reality with no attempt to outsmart it.” - David Richo
33. “There is no one who would not rather appear to know than to be taught.” - Quintilian
34. “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” - Rick Warren
35. “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
36. “Alas! in the clothes of the greatest potentate, what is there but a man?” - Robert Louis Stevenson
37. “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life. (Address to Congress on Resigning Commission Dec 23, 1783)” - George Washington
38. “The disillusionment with our own abilities is, perhaps, one of the most important things that can ever happen to us.” - Tim Hansel
39. “The devil…the prowde spirite…cannot endure to be mocked.” - Thomas More
40. “An exceedingly confident student would in theory make a terrible student. Why would he take school seriously when he feels that he can outwit his teachers?” - Criss Jami
41. “A fear of weakness only strengthens weakness.” - Criss Jami
42. “For the believer, humility is honesty about one's greatest flaws to a degree in which he is fearless about truly appearing less righteous than another.” - Criss Jami
43. “Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.” - Shannon Alder
44. “I have the charisma of the chipmunk. I never have thought I was smart. I thought the people I dealt with were dumb.” - Hyman George Rickover
45. “Yeah, that’s my experience. Humbling to the point where you have major regrets about some of the stupid things you said, some of the things you thought were right. You keep going to these countries, and it’s like, you forgot the lesson from the last time. Because the first person you encounter kind of bitch-slaps you upside the head in the most wonderful, innocent way and you realize, God, I’m still an asshole. And this guy, by doing nothing except being broke and so incredibly polite—it takes you aback, you realize, I’m still not there yet. I still have like eight miles to go before I can even get into the parking lot of humility. I have to keep going back. It’s like going back to a chiropractor to get a readjustment. That’s me in Africa, that’s me in Southeast Asia. You come back humbled and you bring that into your life. It’s made me much more tolerant of other peoples—and I’m not saying I used to be a misogynist, or I used to be a racist, that was never my problem. But I can be extremely headstrong, impatient, rude. Like, “Hurry up, man. What’s your problem? Get out of my way.” That sentiment comes easy to me. Going to these countries, you realize none of that is necessary, none of it’s cool, it’s nothing Abraham Lincoln would do, and so why are you doing it? Those are the lessons I’ve learned.” - Henry Rollins
46. “I had the chance to make every possible mistake and figure out a way to recover from it. Once you realize there is life after mistakes, you gain a self-confidence that never goes away.” - Bob Schieffer
47. “Love the life you have been given. And be humbled by it. It is not to be despised.” - G. Willow Wilson
48. “There is no humility in calling yourself a Christian; placing Christ in the role of colleague. The humility lies in the truth of your imperfection and a more accurate description as a student of Christianity; placing Christ back in the role as head teacher.” - Steve Maraboli
49. “Humiliation is the only ladder to honoring God's Kingdom.” - Andrew Murray
50. “Stand by; for I am holier than you!" What a parody on holiness! Jesus the Holy One is the humble One: the holiest will ever be the humblest. There is none holy but God: we have as much of holiness as we have of God.” - Andrew Murray
51. “We feel that, for the honour of God (and also, though we do not say this, for the sake of our own reputation as spiritual Christians), it is necessary for us to claim that we are, so to speak, already in the signal-box, here and now enjoying the inside information as to the why and wherefore of God’s doings. This comforting pretence becomes part of us: we feel sure that God has enabled us to understand all His ways with us and our circle thus far, and we take if for granted that we shall be able to see at once the reason for anything that may happen to us in the future. And then something very painful and quite inexplicable comes along, and our cheerful illusion of being in God’s secret councils is shattered. Our pride is wounded; we feel that God has slighted us; and unless at this point we repent, and humble ourselves very thoroughly for our former presumption, our whole subsequent spriritual life may be blighted.” - J.I. Packer
52. “When I look at the clues that indicate the nature of Jesus – born in a barn, questionable parents, spotty ancestry, common name, misdirected announcement, unattractive looks, reared in a bad neighborhood, owning nothing, surrounding himself with unattractive co-workers, and dying a shameful death – I find his whole approach unable to fit into the methods that automatically come to mind when I think about “winning the world.” His whole approach could easily be described as nonthreatening or nonmanipulative. He seemed to lead with weakness in each step of life. He had nothing in the world and everything in God and the Spirit.” - Gayle D. Erwin
53. “The sexual mechanisms of the two genders are just not compatible, that’s the horrible truth of it. (...)This is a truth we dare not acknowledge these days - because sameness is our religion and heretics are no more welcome now than they ever were - but I’m going to acknowledge it, because I’ve always felt that humility before the facts is the only thing that keeps a rational man together. Be humble in the face of facts, and proud in the face of opinions, as George Bernard Shaw once said. He didn’t, actually. I just wanted to put some authority behind this observation of mine, because I know you’re not going to like it.” - Hugh Laurie
54. “He is as full of valor as of kindness. Princely in both.” - William Shakespeare
55. “Every subject's duty is the King's; but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore, should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were no sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive the day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.” - William Shakespeare
56. “We try, when we wake, to lay the new day at God’s feet; before we have finished shaving, it becomes our day and God’s share in it is felt as a tribute which we must pay out of ‘our own’ pocket, a deduction from the time which ought, we feel, to be ‘our own’. A man starts a new job with a sense of vocation and, perhaps, for the first week still keeps the discharge of the vocation as his end, taking the pleasures and pains from God’s hand, as they came, as ‘accidents’. But in the second week he is beginning to ‘know the ropes’: by the third, he has quarried out of the total job his own plan for himself within that job, and when he can pursue this he feels that he is getting no more than his rights, and when he cannot, that he is being interfered.” - C.S. Lewis
57. “Charles Francis Adams was singular for mental poise — absence of self-assertion or self-consciousness — the faculty of standing apart without seeming aware that he was alone — a balance of mind and temper that neither challenged nor avoided notice, nor admitted question of superiority or inferiority, of jealousy, of personal motives, from any source, even under great pressure.” - Henry Adams
58. “It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.” - Herman Hesse
59. “The barrier during self-improvement is not so much that we hate learning, rather we hate being taught. To learn entails that the knowledge was achieved on one's own accord - it feels great - but to be taught often leaves a feeling of inferiority. Thus it takes a bit of determination and a lot of humility in order for one to fully develop.” - Criss Jami
60. “By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.” - Jane Austen
61. “For me, walking in a hard Dakota wind can be like staring at the ocean: humbled before its immensity, I also have a sense of being at home on this planet, my blood so like the sea in chemical composition, my every cell partaking of air. I live about as far from the sea as is possible in North America, yet I walk in a turbulent ocean. Maybe that child was right when he told me that the world is upside-down here, and this is where angels drown.” - Kathleen Norris
62. “When your only regret is if anyone thinks you regret anything - that is the definition of conviction.” - Criss Jami
63. “How sweet is that? I know I'm no boy expert, but I have heard entire lectures on reading body language, and I have to say that assuming that a person will have forgotten your name is way high on my "indicators of humbleness" list (not that I have one, but I totally have a starting point now).” - Ally Carter
64. “His enthusiasm and willingness to use what he learned made him get ahead in Spanish.” - Elisabeth Elliot
65. “Son, never trust a man who doesn’t drink because he’s probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They’re the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They’re usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they’re a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can’t trust a man who’s afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It’s damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he’s heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl.” - James Crumley
66. “When you really have something to offer to the world, then you can become truly humble. A tree when it has no fruit to offer, remains erect. But when the tree is laden with fruit, it bends down. If you are all pride and ego, then nobody will be able to get anything worthwhile from you. When you have genuine humility, it is a sign that you have something to offer to mankind.” - Sri Chinmoy
67. “True humility means giving joy to others.” - Sri Chinmoy
68. “The humility of wisdom is the happy consciousness that all things come from God, are sustained by God, and exist for God. This wisdom is rooted in the pride-destroying, joy-giving cross of Christ.” - John Piper
69. “a true leader must be able to command with an iron fist, not just a humble heart.” - Evan Meekins
70. “To turn the tide of materialism in the Christian community, we desperately need bold models of kingdom-centered living. Despite our need to do it in a way that doesn't glorify people, we must hear each other's stories about giving or else our people will not learn to give.” - Randy Alcorn
71. “Even Kings and emperors with heaps of wealth and vast dominion cannot compare with an ant filled with the love of God.” - Guru Nanak
72. “Some people would rather die in their pride, than live in their humility.” - Anthony Liccione
73. “By and large, the mission of any ghost is to offer humility. They point out what's important by mocking what is not.(Joshua Malina, Sports Night)” - Aaron Sorkin
74. “Know thy own point: this kind, this due degreeOf blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.” - Alexander Pope
75. “A child's cry touches a father's heart, and our King is the Father of his people. If we can do no more than cry it will bring omnipotence to our aid. A cry is the native language of a spiritually needy soul; it has done with fine phrases and long orations, and it takes to sobs and moans; and so, indeed, it grasps the most potent of all weapons, for heaven always yields to such artillery.” - Charles H. Spurgeon
76. “The humble sinner will sometimes be interpreted as one of the filthiest in the eyes of man yet immersed in the eyes of God, and this is due to the volition of honesty regarding his own corruption.” - Criss Jami
77. “Every time I create something, whether an idea or a work of art, initially, its supposed completion seems absolutely perfect to me. However the more I think about it, stare it down, the more it marinates in my soul over the hours, days, and weeks, the more flaws I start to find in it; and finally, the more I'm pressed to continue enhancing it. It essentially turns out that whatever thing a flawed and imperfect, human eye once thought was amazing begins to appear quite wretched. This is why, eternally, God cannot be impressed by mere talents or by mortal achievements. To perfect eyes, I imagine that great is not really that great; rather, humility is ultimately a human being's true greatness.” - Criss Jami
78. “If we can't accept what we don't know, there really is no hope.” - Rachel Joyce
79. “We will never be cleansed until we confess we are dirty. And we will never be able to wash the feet of those who have hurt us until we allow Jesus, the one we have hurt, to wash ours.” - Max Lucado
80. “But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity of a lover. The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy. There never was a man in love who did not declare that, if he strained every nerve to breaking, he was going to have his desire. And there never was a man in love who did not declare also that he ought not to have it.” - G.K. Chesterton
81. “Humility is to make a right estimate of oneself.” - Charles H. Spurgeon
82. “Having all the answers just means you've been asking boring questions.” - Joey Comeau
83. “The one who is born of the earth, dreams of the sky. The one who is born of the sky, dreams of the earth.” - C. JoyBell C.
84. “Love, forgiveness, modesty, humility and gratitude are most important virtues in life.” - P Remes
85. “... no sensitive Christian can be satisfied with a distinction between righteousness and unrighteousness drawn only between communities, with each individual belonging unambiguously on one or the other side of the line. The behavior of "the righteous" is often very disappointing, while "the unrighteous" regularly perform in a manner that is much better than our theology might lead us to expect of them. Thus the need for a perspective that allows for both a rather slow process of sanctification in the Christian life and some sort of divine restraint on the power of sin in the unbelieving community. These theological adjustments to a religious perspective that might otherwise betray strong Manichean tones provide us with yet another reason for openness to a broad-ranging dialogue: Christians have good grounds for believing that their own weakness can be corrected by encountering the strengths of others.” - Richard J. Mouw
86. “He is the kind of person I should expect to rescue one from a mad dog at any risk but then insist on a stoical indifference to the fright afterward." Jefferson Davis's future wife describing him at first meeting.” - Shelby Foote
87. “I get it, you know. I'm operating on privilege too. It may be a number of notches down from yours but it's every bit as unearned. I think the trick is to never forget it.” - Sabrina Vourvoulias
88. “The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize."[Modernism's Patriarch (Time Magazine, June 10, 1996)]” - Robert Hughes
89. “Let them hear your voice so rarely that a simply-uttered word creates a hush of expectancy in the room.” - Richelle E. Goodrich
90. “What should you, O man, do, you who seek your own glory whenever you do anything good, while when you do something bad, you figure out ways to blame God.” - Augustine of Hippo
91. “Don't underestimate the poor, because his soul treasures to Phoenix of Wits” - Miguel Ángel Sáez Gutiérrez
92. “you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility, and commitment.” - H. Ross Perot
93. “When you wake up each morning with a burning passion to accomplish a goal, you've already won the day.” - George Alexiou
94. “Kindness is a currency that can cover a multitude of interpersonal debts.” - George Alexiou
95. “What each man is in Your eyes, thus he is, and no more.” - Francis of Assisi
96. “In humility, we find our true calling and our greatest honor.” - Dillon Burroughs
