A Little Bit of Anything
“I have heard people who have conformed to opinions, without a pretence of investigation, as arrogant and intolerant towards anybody who differed from them, as if they stood upon a pinnacle of independent sagacity and research.” — Arthur Helps, Friends in Council, First Series
“The pride which follows the sudden emancipation of the mind from ignorance of any subject, is accompanied by a feeling that all the world must be in the state of darkness from which we have ourselves emerged.” — George Henry Lewes, The Principles of Success in Literature
“The semiliterate on the next bar stool will tell you with absolute, arrogant assurance just how to solve the world’s problems; while the scholar who has spent a lifetime studying their causes is not at all sure how to do this.” — Edwin Thompson Jaynes, Probability Theory
“I am arrogant enough to wish I were modest as he and modest enough to know that this is arrogance.” — Joseph Heller, God Knows
“When I consider how little difference there is in mankind (either in body or mind) I cannot help being astonished at the airs some people give themselves.” — William Hazlitt, “Common Places,” The Literary Examiner
