by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Subject to another’s authority, the proud person first hates the particular yoke that weighs upon him.
Secondly, the proud man begins to hate all authority in general and all yokes, and, even more, the very principle of authority considered in the abstract.
Because he hates all authority, he also hates superiority of any kind and deep down he develops a true hatred for God.
This hatred for any inequality has gone so far as to drive high-ranking persons to risk losing their positions just to avoid accepting the superiority of another.
There is more. In a height of virulence, pride could even lead a person to fight for anarchy and to refuse the supreme power were it offered to him. This is because the simple existence of that power implicitly attests to the principle of authority, to which every man, the proud included – can be subject.
Pride, then, can lead to the most radical and complete egalitarianism.
Pride is sneaky. It wriggles in the moment you begin to let your guard down. Looking back on my life, I find that the biggest mistakes were made from sheer, mindless, irrational pride, or from irrational fear or both.
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