LDS Quotes on Pride
“Remaining true to our Christian principles is the only way divine influence can help us. The Spirit has a near impossible task to get through to a heart that is filled with hate or anger or vengeance or self-pity.”
“You may remember a story about a ship’s captain who had a problem with his pride. One night at sea, this captain saw what looked like the light of another ship heading toward him. He had his signalman blink to the other ship: “Change your course 10 degrees south.” The reply came back, “Change your course 10 degrees north.” The ship’s captain answered: “I am a captain. Change your course south.” To which the replay came, “Well, I am a seaman first class. Change your course north.” This so infuriated the captain, he signaled back, “I say change your course south. I am on a battleship!” To which the reply came back, “And I say change your course north. I am in the lighthouse.” Like the captain, if we fail to modify our course and purge ourselves of pride, we may find ourselves shipwrecked upon the shoals of life. . . .”
| Ensign, May 1994, p. 68
“We feel innately there should be a correlation between our worth and our reward. Before we can even put language to the intuitive concepts we feel, we sense a value we learn to call ‘fairness’…If we resent it when others receive more than their just desserts, it may be because we feel that our happiness is somehow compromised, cheapened, diluted, if our reward isn’t greater than the other, undeserving, person’s. This is in fact selfishness masquerading as high-minded virtue.”
“A zero-sum game is one in which there is a fixed number of resources, and one can only acquire more if someone else receives less. Any benefit won by me can only come at a cost to you…
“Happiness is not a zero-sum game, but our telestial instincts lead us to act and think as if it were. Human psychology seems indelibly conditioned to measure our well-being by comparison with our neighbor. To a disappointing degree, we assess our own happiness by measuring our conditions and circumstances against those of others. What makes me feel rich or fortunate or successful is not an absolute quantity; it is more often the sense that I am richer or more fortunate or more successful than my neighbor or colleague.”
“The antidote for pride is humility—meekness, submissiveness. God will have a humble people. Either we can choose to be humble or we can be compelled to be humble. Alma said, “Blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble.” Let us choose to be humble. We can choose to humble ourselves by conquering enmity toward our brothers and sisters, esteeming them as ourselves, and lifting them as high or higher than we are. We can choose to humble ourselves by receiving counsel and chastisement. We can choose to humble ourselves by forgiving those who have offended us. We can choose to humble ourselves by rendering selfless service. We can choose to humble ourselves by going on missions and preaching the word that can humble others. We can choose to humble ourselves by getting to the temple more frequently. We can choose to humble ourselves by confessing and forsaking our sins and being born of God. We can choose to humble ourselves by loving God, submitting our will to His, and putting Him first in our lives. Let us choose to be humble. We can do it. I know we can.”
“Pride does not look up to God and care about what is right. It looks sideways to man and argues who is right. Pride is manifest in the spirit of contention. Was it not through pride that the devil became the devil? Christ wanted to serve. The devil wanted to rule. Christ wanted to bring men to where He was. The devil wanted to be above men. Christ removed self as the force in His perfect life. It was not my will, but thine be done. . . . Humility responds to God’s will – to the fear of His judgments and the needs of those around us. To the proud, the applause of the world rings in their ears; to the humble, the applause of heaven warms their hearts. Someone has said, “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.” (C. S. Lewis) Of one brother, the Lord said, “I, the Lord, am not well pleased with him, for he seeketh to excel, and he is not sufficiently meek before me.”
| “Cleansing the Inner Vessel,” Ensign, May 1986, p. 4
“Contemplate the advantages of life in a society in which considerations of status were only secondary, where citizens were more concerned with their responsibilities than their rights, and where those in authority might even occasionally step forward and humbly acknowledge, “I could be wrong.” Must our need to be “right” be so all-consuming? Surely this intolerance of others and their viewpoints is nothing less than the hubris the Greeks viewed and warned against as the suicidal sin. One wonders how differently even recent world history might be written if its principal participants had yielded to the gentle nudgings of humility.”
| “To Walk Humbly with Thy God,” Ensign, May 2001, p. 10
“The root of all evil is not money, but the love of money.”