Tim Harford Quotes

A professional is one who believes he has invented breathing.

When you start believing you're something special, then you're not going to be striving to move forward.

The man who has everything figured out is probably a fool.

The more people that praise you, the more there is danger to develop arrogance.

There are a lot of people very sure of themselves that need to be brought back down to Earth. As good as they think they are, they're really not.

Unchecked pride evolves into swagger, a hypnotizing mask of insecurity that can and does compromise our ability to make progress and attain power. Pride stands in the way of forgiveness and a strategic approach to navigating a chessboard rigged to prevent pawns from becoming kings and queens.

You display inordinate pride for someone who has completed a task which could have been performed by a lesser primate in a shorter time.

There is no folly of which a man who is not a fool cannot get rid except vanity; of this nothing cures a man except experience of its bad consequences, if indeed anything can cure it.

Pride is a powerful narcotic, but it doesn't do much for the auto-immune system.

hubris, n. Every time I call you mine, I feel like I'm forcing it, as if saying it can make it so. As if I'm reminding you, and reminding the universe: mine. As if that one word from me could have that kind of power.

Pride comes before a fall - although in [Henry Kissinger's] case it's more conceit than pride.

He knows so little and knows it so fluently.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

Be careful of success; it has a dark side.

We're all victims of our own hubris at times.

Thinking you're a genius is death.

By my count, more business leaders have failed and derailed because of arrogance than any other character flaw.

The minute I get a big head and start acting like the big man on campus, it's all downhill from there.

Always beware your moment of triumphalism: such emotions are a poor steer on the future.

I believe that people start to get into trouble when they start to believe their own hype.

Bonfire of the Vanities: The lesson of that book is, never start believing your own press.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

I was probably being a little cocky, which I do when I feel that I don't know what I'm talking about.

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

I feel arrogant trying to give people advice.