Johann Lamont Quotes

If you think everything you've done is great, you're probably dumb.

If you think you're right 80% of the time, you're deluded.

If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed.

Self-criticism, like self-administered brain surgery, is perhaps not a good idea. Can the 'self' see the 'self' with any objectivity?

If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength.

I'm not quite pompous enough to think of myself as an educator or a man capable of definitive refutation of falsehoods.

We can be critical of the things that we love. That is possible.

I'm willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong.

Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.

I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate, and I'm just an arrogant little thing. It's hard for me to admit that I can't understand something, let alone not be in charge of it.

It's hubris to think that the way we see things is everything there is.

The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.

A strong sense of identity gives man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same..

Be careful of hubris about ideas—especially your own. Remember always, that there is one commonality between all the good ideas that were ever created and all the bad ideas: The people you created them thought that they were good ideas.

Being unbiased is a lot like being humble: as soon as you think you are, you aren’t. Neither are a finite state of being but a continuous struggle to not allow our perspectives poison our opinions.

No men are oftener wrong than those that can least bear to be so.

I'm not a mad genius.

I don't believe I ever come across as a know-it-all.

When as smart as you think you are is as wrong as you turn out to be, your life can fall out from under you.

If I started thinking too much about how influential I've been, then I'd be more of a turd than I already am.

Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all.

What we cut off from our other faults is very often but so much added to our pride.

You are so proud of your intelligence," said the master. "You are like a like a condemned man, proud of the vastness of his prison cell.