Quotes about humility

Through all these new, imaginative, and creative approaches to the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures there runs a constant theme, the awareness that we are dealing with life-with living populations and all their pressures and counter-pressures, their surges and recessions. Only by taking account of such life forces and by cautiously seeking to guide them into channels favorable to ourselves can we hope to achieve a reasonable accommodation between the insect hordes and ourselves. The current vogue for poisons has failed utterly to take into account these most fundamental considerations. As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life-a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no "high-minded orientation," no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.

It is always the humble man who talks too much; the proud man watches himself too closely.

I’m not one to despise other people for their sins. I haven’t found one yet, that I didn’t say to myself, I’ve done worse than this.

Ability to see the cultural value of wilderness boils down, in the last analysis, to a question of intellectual humility.

Consider that we shouldn’t call our brother a fool, since we don’t know ourselves what we are.

Practice humility at first with man and only then before God. He who despises man, has also no respect for God.

He who conquers his enemy with meekness, wins fame.

The tiger is humbled by memories of prey.

We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. ... We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. . . We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

Trees are living symbols of peace and hope. A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance. It is a reminder to all of us who have had success that we cannot forget where we came from. It signifies that no matter how powerful we become in government or how many awards we receive, our power and strength and our ability to reach our goals depend on the people, those whose work remain unseen, who are the soil out of which we grow, the shoulders on which we stand.

Maybe Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the earth — but they inherit very small plots, about six feet by three.

"I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.""Nice going, God!""Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have.""I feel very unimportant compared to You.""The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around."