Pride Comes Before A Fall

The phrase pride comes before a fall comes from a verse out of the Bible.

It’s Proverbs 16:18 (NKJV): “Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall.”

It’s true because the very act of thinking you are above everything makes you vulnerable to the unexpected.

But be cautious – as Franklin points out – for beating down pride is never a victory.

It is a constant fight.

Maybe treat it as a system, rather than a goal?

For more on pride/ego, see Ego Is The Enemy, By: Ryan Holiday.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

-Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin