Quotes on Humility

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.

Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.

The world will be saved by the western woman.

Of course you will insist on modesty in the children, and respect to their teachers, but if the boy stops you in your speech, cries out that you are wrong and sets you right, hug him!

God made so many different kinds of people; why would God allow only one way to worship?

Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons.

Public opinion rarely considers the needs of the next generation or the history of the last. It is frequently hampered by myths and misinformation, by stereotypes and shibboleths, and by an inate resistance to innovation.

The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around.

Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego.

ALL things in Nature work silently. They come into being and possess nothing. They fulfil their functions and make no claim.

We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he is signifying contempt for ours.

When merit has been achieved, do not take it to yourself; for if you do not take it to yourself, it shall never be taken from you.

If the purpose of the universe was to create humans then the cosmos was embarrassingly inefficient about it.

There is no such thing as philosophy-free science, just science that has been conducted without any consideration of its underlying philosophical assumptions.

Don't judge men's wealth or godliness by their Sunday appearance.

Professions of humility are the very cream, the very essence of pride; the really humble person wishes to be, and not to appear so. Humility is timorous, and starts at her shadow; and so delicate that if she hears her name pronounced it endangers her existence.

Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of self.

Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Virtue is the act by which one aims and/or keeps it.

One that does not think to highly of himself is more than he thinks.

As patience leads to peace, and study to science, so are humiliations the path that leads to humility.