Quote of the Day: Humility—A Disappearing Virtue?

Please note that by humility, I don’t mean self-deprecation. Humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself. It means putting yourself in proper perspective. It means you don’t presume to know more than you do. This was the central lesson of the classic essay, “I, Pencil”   by FEE’s esteemed founder Leonard E. Read. If no one person in the world knows how to make a pencil from start to finish, it’s preposterously presumptuous for anyone to think that he can plan an economy or the lives of millions of people.

Pastor Timothy Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City makes this keen observation: “Until the 20^th century, most cultures held that having too high an opinion of oneself was the root of most of the world’s troubles. Misbehavior from drug addiction to wars resulted from pride that needed to be deterred or disciplined. The idea that you were bigger or better, or more self-righteous, or somehow immune from the rules that govern others—the absence of humility, in other words, gave you license to do unto others what you would never allow them to do unto you.”…

“In our midst are people who think that if only they had government power on their side, they could pick tomorrow’s winners and losers in the marketplace, set prices or rents where they ought to be, decide which forms of energy should power our homes and cars, and choose which industries should survive and which should die. They make grandiose promises they can’t possibly keep without bankrupting all of us. They should stop for a few moments and learn a little humility.”

This is from the Foundation for Economic Education president Lawrence Reed at their website, the Fee.org

The opposite side of humility is what the great Austrian F. A. Hayek calls as the “Fatal Conceit”