Self Importance Quotes

“I have not always been wrong. History will bear me out, particularly as I shall write that history myself.”

“We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted.”

“Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.”

“Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.”

“The only thing worse than quoting me, is not quoting me”

“I was in one of the most grand attitudes I ever struck, with my arm stretched up pointing to the sun. It was a noble effect. You could see the shudder sweep the mass like a wave.”

“It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously”

“Oh sky, without me, do not change, Oh moon, without me, do not shine; Oh earth, without me, do not grow, Oh time, without me, do not go. ...Oh, you cannot go, without me.”

“The New York papers have long known that no large question is ever really settled until I have been consulted.”

“I have no expectation that any man will read history aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age, by men whose names have resounded far, has any deeper sense than what he is doing today.”

“There isn't a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the Equator if it had had its rights.”

“France has more need of me than I have need of France.”

“When I die, it will be a shipwreck, and as when a huge ship sinks, many people all around will be sucked down with it.”

“Don't ever squeeze a fighter's hand, man. You're doing good just to lay your eyes on me”

“A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificiant by and by. The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.”

“I'm the most recognised and loved man that ever lived”

“Floyd Paterson? Boy, he's the complete opposite to me. He no way like me. They go down in history for just being athletes. I'm getting more praise and credit for doing what I'm doing now on this show than coming here and beating five of your English champions.”

“When my title was taken away boxing died.”

“Everyone believes in his youth that the world really began with him, and that all merely exists for his sake.”

“I have never yet known a poet who did not think himself super-excellent.”

“No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.”

“A man . . . must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow.”

“It seems to me that to take a book of mine into his hands is one of the rarest distinctions that anyone can confer upon himself. I even assume that he removes his shoes when he does so-not to speak of boots.”

“Wherever I sit is the head of the table.”

“What you are to do without me I cannot imagine.”