Michael Faraday Quotes

When a youth was giving himself airs in the Theatre and saying, 'I am wise, for I have conversed with many wise men,' Epictetus replied, 'I too have conversed with many rich men, yet I am not rich!’.

None are more unjust in their judgments of others than those who have a high opinion of themselves.

The people I respect the least are the ones that take themselves way too seriously.

Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.

Wow. I am really pretentious.

Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it.

You aren't that big a hot shot that we'd build this for you.

Who think themselves most wise are greatest fools

I consider everybody who takes themselves seriously to be a little bit off. And Silicon Valley seems to be the most effusive about how important their contributions are to society.

For people who never tire of telling the world what a moral high ground they've taken in opposing Donald Trump, they sure don't seem to mind offering up a bellyful of gloats and taunts.

Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making.

Pedants, who have the least knowledge to be proud of, are impelled most by vanity.

It is the small men and not the great who hold their noses in the air.

No matter how much someone may irritate me, I have no right to puff myself up with my own self-importance so as to declare that person to be absolutely incompetent, assuming a posture of disdain from my own position of false superiority.

The first Degree of Folly, is to conceit one's self wise; the second to profess it; the third to despise Counsel.

That politeness which we put on, in order to keep the assuming and the presumptuous at a proper distance will generally succeed. But it sometimes happens that these obtrusive characters are on such excellent terms with themselves that they put down this very politeness to the score of their own great merits and high pretensions, meeting the coldness of our reserve with a ridiculous condescension of familiarity, in order to set us at ease with ourselves.

It's easy to be an educated fool.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Many said selfishness was the flaw of our modern age; but then self-conceit emerged from a corner of the deepest hell to join selfishness.

He who considers himself a paragon of wisdom is sure to commit some superlatively stupid act.

It is always easy to shut a book, but not quite so easy to get rid of a lettered coxcomb.

There are a lot of self important people who make you believe they're artistes and high on the intelligence quotient and I've sat down and listened to them and just been bored.

Pride is over-estimation of oneself by reason of self-love.

The bookful blockhead ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head, With his own tongue still edifies his ears, And always list'ning to himself appears. All books he reads, and all he reads assails.