“Pride is a switch that turns off priesthood power. Humility is a switch that turns it on.”
Pride
LDS Quotes on Pride
“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.”
“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
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. . . . It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.
“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
“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.”
“What is the central characteristic of those having only five loaves and two fishes? What makes it possible, under the Master’s touch, for them to serve, lift, and bless so that they touch for good the lives of hundreds, even thousands? After a lifetime of dealing in the affairs of men and women, I believe it is the ability to overcome personal ego and pride – both are enemies to the full enjoyment of the Spirit of God and walking humbly before him. The ego interferes with husbands and wives asking each other for forgiveness. It prevents the enjoyment of the full sweetness of a higher love. The ego often prevents parents and children from fully understanding each other. The ego enlarges our feelings of self-importance and worth. It blinds us to reality. Pride keeps us from confessing our sins and shortcomings to the Lord and working out our repentance.”
| Ensign, May 1994, p. 6
“Pride is the complete anti-God state of mind. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say people are proud of being rich or clever or good looking, but they are not. They are proud being richer or cleverer or better looking than others.”
“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.”
“The root of all evil is not money, but the love of money.”