Arrogant quotes
212 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside arrogant — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"My career as a critic still lay in the future but unconsciously I may have been preparing for it. They were not easy companions, these intellectuals I was now getting to know. They were overbearing and arrogant, excessively competitive; they lacked magnanimity and often they lacked common courtesy. But they were intellectually energetic and - this particularly attracted me - they were proof against cant."
"I say that whoever claims to have finished a canvas is terribly arrogant."
"Everyone thought I was bold and fearless and even arrogant, but inside I was always quaking."
"The patronage state is an arrogant state. It assumes it can spend your money better than you do. Yet it expects you to work for it in the first place."
"I am too inquisitive, too skeptical, too arrogant, to let myself be satisfied with an obvious and crass solution of things. God is such an obvious and crass solution; a solution which is a sheer indelicacy to us thinkers - at bottom He is really nothing but a coarse commandment against us: ye shall not think!"
"There are some among the so-called elite who are overbearing and arrogant. I want to foster leaders, not elitists."
"Sometimes I may be totally arrogant, sometimes I may totally be the most humble guy you've ever met, sometimes I may be in between. But that's life. Who isn't like that? What's the big deal if I had an arrogant moment."
"It is superstitious to put one's hopes in formalities, but arrogant to refuse to submit to them."
"I can come off as pretty arrogant, but it's because I know I'm right."
"To disregard what the world thinks of us is not only arrogant but utterly shameless. [Lat., Negligere quid de se quisque sentiat, non solum arrogantis est, sed etiam omnino dissoluti.]"
"To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood."
"Never be arrogant or abrasive. Treat your opponent respectfully if they really and truly believe they are right."
"There is a root arrogance in any writer; a hugely arrogant assumption that anyone is going to listen to them."
"Pride and entitlement always go with unforgiveness. The longer you hold someone's offense over them, the more likely you are to start feeling arrogant and entitled to your posture toward him."
"The point here is ... to be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded."
"What is more arrogant than honesty?"
"The one thing coaches cannot tolerate... is the individual who grows arrogant because he excelled at a lower level and believes he has nothing else to learn."
"In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself."
"Don Karnage-he's one of my all-time favorites. He's so brash and so bold and so arrogant-and he just doesn't know what he's doing."
"Knowledge does not corrupt, unless it is arrogant; but then it is not true knowledge."
