1 corinthians on Overconfidence

Conversation would be much improved by the frequent use of three words: I don’t know.

In her aptly title book, Being Wrong , Kathleen Schulz describes just how difficult it is to be wrong: A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the ti...

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make — bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake — if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible ...

Who, then, are we, we prideful late-twentieth-century creatures? Lord knows, we no longer think of ourselves as belonging to anyone or anything. We do not belong – we own; we possess. And that, to say...

’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.

Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.

Almighty God, we trust in our own strength, abilities, and resources. We think too highly of what we have to offer this world. The truth is we cannot do anything without your strength and all we have ...

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity..

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

Researchers at the University of London concluded that “a substantial majority of individuals believe themselves to be morally superior to the average person” and that this illusion of ours is “unique...

I have a lot to be humble about.

All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself

Our vision is more obstructed by what we think we know than by our lack of knowledge.

I am ignorant of His designs, but I will not cease to believe in them because I cannot penetrate them. And I will prefer to doubt my own lights rather than His justice.

All: Oh kind and generous God, You have condescended so graciously to our humble needs. You have given us holy baptism to teach us such a simple truth: the blood of Christ washes away our sins. Great ...

I am more afraid of King Alcohol than of all the bullets of the enemy.

The search for knowledge can go wrong, not as a result of individual, erroneous judgments or of mistakes creeping in at different points, but because of one single mistake at the beginning… Faith does...

On a cold January day, a forty-three-year-old man was sworn in as the chief executive of his country. By his side stood his predecessor, a famous general who, fifteen years earlier, had commanded his ...

In this excellent little character study, Tolstoy describes the inner monologue of the character Pierre Bezuhov from War & Peace , who is able to justify and convince himself that a promise made ...

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

Be humble. The world is bigger than your view of the world. And certainly, God is much bigger than your view of God.

Lord, our King, we confess our tendency to build homes and kingdoms that are more for us than they are for you. We confess the pride we take in our own security and ability to protect and to preserve....

In this short poem, the psychologist Daniel Goleman (the developer of the concept of Emotional Intelligence (E.Q.)) builds on the work of R. D. Laing’s “knots.” The poem is a helpful reminder that our...

[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not.

One helpful, practical tool to understand our blind spot is what’s called the Johari Window, an image developed as a counseling tool in the 1950s. Subjects were given a list of fifty-six adjectives, a...

Divine Creator, your ways are above our ways. No matter how hard we try, you will always confound us. Too often we try to reduce you into something we can fully comprehend, or something we can control...

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles: “tappers” or “listeners.” Tappers received a list of twen...

Heavenly Father, we confess that in our pursuit of good, we often miss opportunities to bring you honor and glory. We try to address our shortcomings by compensating for them, rather than by orienting...