hubris

Beware of that demon called 'Changing The World'.

Trying to be more than human one becomes less.

There is no small irony here: An administration which flaunted its intellectual superiority and its superior academic credentials made the most critical of decisions with virtually no input from anyone who had any expertise on the recent history of that part of the world, and it in no way factored in the entire experience of the French Indochina War. Part of the reason for this were the upheavals of the McCarthy period, but in part it was also the arrogance of men of the Atlantic; it was as if these men did not need to know about such a distant and somewhat less worthy part of the world. Lesser parts of the world attracted lesser men; years later I came upon a story which illustrated this theory perfectly. Jack Langguth, a writer and college classmate of mine, mentioned to a member of that Administration that he was thinking of going on to study Latin American history. The man had turned to him, his contempt barely concealed, and said, __econd-rate parts of the world for second-rate minds.

Best not to take, yet doubt its strength,A leash with Demons at its length.

Don't try to create the world in your image-that was God's mistake.

I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.

Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started.

Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.

Consider an achievement accidental if it is not coupled with modesty. Because if the achiever had endeavoured for it, it would certainly have killed their pride.

The real question is why you still believe in that invisible god when a true one stands before you?

The most regretful behavior always leaches from a wound to our sanctimonious pride.

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.

The author describes megalomania as seen in Chairman Mao by saying that what he was familiar with, he was really familiar with. This zeal moved the megalomaniac with a complete lack of appreciation for what he DID NOT know.

The sciences have two extremities which meet. The first is the ignorance in which men find themselves at birth. The second is that attained by great souls. They have surveyed whatever man can know, find that they know all, meet in that same ignorance whence they started. It is a clever ignorance, which knows itself. Those among them who, having emerged from the first ignorance, have been unable to achieve the other & have some smattering of this self-satisfied knowledge, pose as experts. The latter do not disturb people, are no more mistaken in their judgments on everything than others. The masses, the skilled, make up the retinue of a nation. The others, who respect it, are equally respected by it.

The author's Socrates admonishes paramount awareness human limitations. 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.

Deeply convinced of the reality of the divine will, he (Lincoln) had no patience at all with any who were perfectly sure they knew the details of the divine will.

As with many tragedies, our story opens in a moment of triumph.

To wish to withstand the Holy Spirit would be the one unforgivable sin.