These pompous quotes will inspire you. Pompous excessively elevated or ornate pompous rhetoric or affectedly and irritatingly grand, solemn, or self-important.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging pompous quotes, pompous sayings, and pompous proverbs.
Best Pompous Quotes
- “If you can get humor and seriousness at the same time, you’ve created a special little thing, and that’s what I’m looking for, because if you get pompous, you lose everything.” ~ Paul Simon
- “Undermine their pompous authority, reject their moral standards, make anarchy and disorder your trademarks. Cause as much chaos and disruption as possible but don’t let them take you ALIVE.” ~ Sid Vicious
- “I think my mission is to become the greatest human I can. I know that sounds pompous, but what else do we have?” ~ Kathleen Turner
-
“People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.” ~ William Makepeace Thackeray
- “Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.” ~ William Zinsser
- “Take events in your life seriously, take work seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously, or you’ll become affected, pompous and boring.” ~ Shelley Duvall
- “Clergymen tend to be unreliable and pompous figures. Seldom Jewish rabbis, less often Catholic priests, but Protestant ministers tend to be… not really very admirable. Not necessarily evil, but silly. And wrong, of course.” ~ Charlton Heston
-
“Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.” ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton
- “That’s what’s so great about the Internet. It allows pompous blow-hards to connect with other pompous blow-hards in a vast circle-jerk of pomposity.” ~ Bill Maher
- “A man sufficiently gifted with humor is in small danger of succumbing to flattering delusions about himself, because he cannot help perceiving what a pompous ass he would become if he did.” ~ Konrad Lorenz
- “Take your work seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously” ~ Clint Eastwood
-
“What I don’t like are pompous, pretentious movies.” ~ Peter Jackson
- “The human heart concerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “I believe that in the course of the next century the notion that it’s a woman’s duty to have children will change and make way for the respect and admiration of all women, who bear their burdens without complaint or a lot of pompous words!” ~ Anne Frank
- “Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us.” ~ Thomas Browne
-
“Clutter is the disease of American writing.” ~ William Zinsser
- “Career is too pompous a word. It was a job, and I have always felt privileged to be paid for doing what I love doing.” ~ Barbara Stanwyck
- “At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers’ groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.” ~ Bernard Cornwell
- “I hope this doesn’t sound pompous but I don’t think of myself as famous, whatever fame I’ve got has come through what I’ve done and associations of things I’ve done.” ~ Peter Cushing
-
“Maxwell is serious, dedicated, awkward, forgetful, pompous to a certain degree, sentimental.” ~ Don Adams
- “Here’s something pompous – you take your day and artistically create it, so every moment has an artistic flavor.” ~ William Shatner
- “Of course there are collaborations. But in official meetings with Western diplomats from the US and the European Union, the major issues of our relationships are simply not discussed. The topics are on climate change or any other issues they want us to agree with them on. But they never discuss how we could develop an equal relationship. They should stop using pompous orchestrated summits and begin a serious dialogue with small meetings.” ~ Yoweri Museveni
- “One thing is certain: the humility of faith, if it is followed by the proper consequences-by the acceptance of the work and sacrifice demanded by our providential task-will do far more to launch us into the full current of historical reality than the pompous rationalizations of politicians who think they are somehow the directors and manipulators of history.” ~ Thomas Merton
-
“I don’t want to make pompous, serious films.” ~ Danny Boyle
- “I wrote the book because I wanted to be able to share some things that I had learned and as pompous as that may sound, as you get to a certain point in life, you figure so what am I doing?” ~ Goldie Hawn
- “Chicago – a pompous Milwaukee.” ~ Leonard Louis Levinson
- “War is something Arafat sends others to do for him. That is, the poor souls who believe in him. This pompous incompetent caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations, Clinton’s mediation.” ~ Oriana Fallaci
-
“Embraces are comminglings from the head even to the feet, And not a pompous high priest entering by a secret place.” ~ William Blake
- “Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you.” ~ Cheryl Strayed
- “In college I was one of six males who auditioned for five male roles in a comedy play. I was the one rejected. At that moment I made up my mind never to place myself at the mercy of some pompous, goateed, black-turtleneck-shirted “should I yay him or nay him?” pantywaist ever again.” ~ Emo Philips
- “Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent as more suitable; A vile conceit in pompous words express’d, Is like a clown in regal purple dress’d.” ~ Alexander Pope
-
“I make a living out of being pompous! Why should I change?” ~ Nicholas Parsons
- “Bourgeois democracy is democracy of pompous phrases, solemn words, exuberant promises and the high-sounding slogans of freedom and equality. But, in fact, it screens the non-freedom and inferiority of women, the non-freedom and inferiority of the toilers and exploited.” ~ Vladimir Lenin3
- “Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.” ~ William Hazlitt
- “Some of us, I think, us small, pompous arty ones probably read too much George Steiner and kind of got the idea that we were entering to this kind of post-culture age and that we’d better do something postmodernist – quickly, before somebody else did.” ~ David Bowie
-
“I, for example, am a pompous asshole, but my comics are genius!” ~ Brian K. Vaughan
- “I found so-called great art too pompous, too stiff. What at this time was called minor art was freer, more imaginative, more open to all kinds of unorthodox expression, all kinds of daring in the handling of materials, and I preferred to surround myself with this type of art than with the great collectors’ pieces. I had always in my mind that I was collecting for learning.” ~ Jacques Lipchitz
- “Behold the works of our philosophers; with all their pompous diction, how mean and contemptible they are by comparison with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man?” ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- “Women always think that if they tell a man not to be pompous that will shut him up, but I am an old hand at that game. I know that if a man bides his time his moment will come.” ~ Robertson Davies
-
“Hot air expands, and seriously pompous attitude is the inflation of choice by those lacking substance.” ~ Vanna Bonta
- “On our way home we were waiting for the bus when a very fat, pompous-looking woman reeled out of a pub shouting, “Melancholia? Ad nauseam.”” ~ Joe Orton
- “Make your copy straightforward to read, understand and use. Use easy words; those that are used for everyday speech. Use phrases that are not too imprecise and very understandable. Do not be too stuffy; remove pompous words and substitute them with plain words. Minimize complicated gimmicks and constructions. If you can’t give the data directly and briefly, you must consider writing the copy again.” ~ Jay Abraham
- “Christianity had ceased to be the creed of the poor. He spoke with pompous exaggeration. Whether man were the best or the worst of created beings.” ~ Georg Ebers
-
“James Lipton: The most pompous arrogant failure in history.” ~ David Cross
- “Mythographer was suggested by the man who made my website, actually. I do write a lot about myth and I do feel it’s a bit pompous to state it that way, but it does distinguish me from other writers. When it was first on the web, people began to use it in an ironical and satirical way. Now, however, people tend to use it straight.” ~ Marina Warner
- “These papers of the day have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and durable volumes.” ~ Samuel Johnson
- “The nice thing about us lot is that what we do is of no consequence. We don’t do things that are important; we spend our lives doing things which are not important. That’s what’s nice about us, we’re not pompous. We never do anything very bad that’s gonna change the world. We’re not serious, we’re butterflies. We live for a day.” ~ Marianne Faithfull
-
“Those who call themselves art photographers are pompous, arrogant egoists.” ~ Arnold Newman
- “From the beginning of time, we’ve told stories, Shamans and Medicine People, and not to be pompous about it, but I feel like that is the lineage I take down and where I come from. There is magic to storytelling.” ~ Lynn Collins
- “Aaron Sorkin whole thing was that he didn’t want the pomposity of the presidency in the West Wing. But once we cast Martin Sheen and we realised Martin’s incredible accessibility, nothing felt pompous or aloof. If the show is about all the planets, let’s end it with the sun.” ~ Thomas Schlamme
- “Without sounding pompous, I really do feel that I have a set of standards that I must adhere to, even leaving aside considerations of what the readers expect.” ~ Jonathan Kellerman
-
“I don’t want to make pompous, serious films; I like films that have a kind of vivacity about them.” ~ Danny Boyle
- “For me to be pompous is the most horrible thing in the world. It’s like putting a wall around you. It screws you up. You’d better be willing to change your views or adapt and be modern.” ~ Jean Pigozzi
- “Most of the time when I receive a script, it says something like ‘Rosenberg is the fat, slovenly Mayor, who doesn’t want the kids to use the Skateboard Park,’ or ‘Stein is a pompous, rotund attorney, imposing to all.’ It would be so freeing to get a script where my character is simply described as ‘A Man.'” ~ Fred Melamed
- “You need philosophy. It sounds a little pompous but I think when you direct a film, the only way to find a response to the questions you keep asking yourself is to have a philosophy.” ~ Michel Gondry
-
“Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.” ~ Thomas Browne
- “There are so few people who can really take hold of art and sort of eat and chew it up. Somehow it’s got to be held special, sacred in a corner, and if you don’t do the same thing with it, if you’re not equally reverential, serious, and pompous about it, well, then you’re not a great artist. Who needs that?” ~ Twyla Tharp
- “The camel carries on his dreary circular task with his usual slow and pompous step and head poised superciliously, as if it were a ritual affair above the comprehension of the vulgar; and no doubt he comforts himself for the dullness of life by a sense of virtue, like many other formalists beside him.” ~ Freya Stark
- “Mind you, Mount Rushmore isn’t exactly the Parthenon or the Sistine Chapel either. After the naïve daftness of the Crazy Horse monument, I find the pompous idiocy of those four presidents somehow more risible still. Wishing to show respect or feel a vicarious thrill of admiration and pride, I can only giggle. For which I am very sorry. Any loyal American reading this who feels outraged and insulted is free to explode with derisive snorts of laughter at any British equivalent.” ~ Stephen Fry
- “The reason people hate America is because they don’t like being treated like garbage by arrogant, pompous, hypocritical, self-righteous, duplicitous, imperialist political and bureaucratic hacks.” ~ Jacob G. Hornberger , Pompous quotes arrogant
-
“I hate elitists. I hate conceited people. I hate pompous people.” ~ Neil Cavuto
- “In my more pompous moments I like to think of myself as a writer rather than a humorist, but I suppose that’s merely the vanity of advancing age.” ~ S. J. Perelman
- “If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the pompous “wisdom” of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error.” ~ Mark Twain , Pompous quotes attitude
- “I don’t want to sound pompous, but I think it is important that when one makes arguments of consequence that he go and see what those consequences are. Having championed the war, I wanted to see the products of my own argument.” ~ Lawrence Kaplan
- “Never sound pompous. You always sound noble, noble. Absolute character of music is nobility. Even popular music can be noble, you see. If it’s not noble, then it’s not very good… Music is an art of emotion, of nobility, of dignity, of greatness, of love, of tenderness. All that must be brought out in music but never a show of pompousness.” ~ Arthur Rubinstein
