Tom Coburn Quotes

I can begin to understand how anchor monsters are made. If you're not careful, you can become used to being treated as though you're special and begin to expect it.

Because you are a great lord, you believe yourself to be a great genius. You took the trouble to be born, but no more.

Who do you think you are, a country?

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

A couple of people I knew went to university apart from me, but all the way through I was the smartest kid in the school. That's luck, but I was proud of it. And I was also proud of doing well without trying. As you get older, and it took me a long time to realise it, that's a disgusting attitude, revolting.

People should just get over themselves.

I had this attitude, that Silicon Valley obnoxious attitude, that I know what I'm doing, and the rest was going to be pretty easy.

I had a bit of a lazy streak to me, I had high opinions of myself without any real grounding reason to, I made a bit of television that did ok, and all of a sudden life was pretty relaxed for me.

There was one who thought himself above me, and he was above me until he had that thought.

No wonder, Sir, that he is vain; a man who is perpetually flattered in every mode that can be conceived. So many bellows have blown the fire, that one wonders he is not by this time become a cinder.

The rich feel full of merit.

Great deservers grow Intolerable presumers.

The arrogance that accompanies merit offends us even more than the arrogance of people who are lacking in merit: since merit itself offends us.

Is it arrogance if one is truly superior?

Those who suffer from an exaggerated sense of their own ability and accomplishment are continually subject to frustration, disappointment, and rage when reality intrudes and the world doesn't validate their idealized view of themselves.

I assumed that everything must yield to me, that the entire universe had to flatter my whims, and that I had the right to satisfy them at will.

... the belief in a superstratum of human beings ... is the most evil of all beliefs. For when you say, 'I am not as other men' -- you have lost the two most valuable qualities we have ever tried to attain: -- humility and brotherhood.

Everyone just needs to get over themselves.

Pride only, the chief of all iniquities, can make us treat gifts as if they were rightful attributes of our nature, and, while receiving benefits, rob our Benefactor of His due glory.

Snap your fingers and somebody runs / You don't care how they feel just as long as they come / Got your head in the stars now you've come this far / Just who do you think you are?

Glory consists of two parts: the one in setting too great a value upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others.

Success is always dangerous. It can make an asshole out of anybody.

He is lofty, and I am eminent.

When those with ability at their job get to thinking they can't be done without, they're already on their way out.

I feel like a lot of famous people think that they're doing a good thing by being kind. They're like, "Hey, I could be an asshole, but I'm not! Isn't it so cool that I'm so down to earth?" Like, No, you're not!