Wit & Attitude Quote by Carroll O'Connor

Pride is the one vice O'Connor gives himself permission to keep, but only under strict terms: earn it. The line reads like a bouncer’s rule at the door of self-respect - if you didn’t build it, you don’t get to wear it. That blunt conditional (“but if I were going to...”) is doing a lot of moral work. He’s not selling humility as sainthood; he’s confessing a suspicion of pride’s usual function as camouflage for insecurity, status, or inherited advantage.

The jab at “race pride” lands because it’s phrased with the casual clarity of someone tired of euphemisms. “Kind of stupid” isn’t a professor’s takedown; it’s a workingman’s dismissal. That tonal choice matters. O'Connor was an actor best known for inhabiting Archie Bunker, a character built to expose how easily identity becomes a substitute for achievement and a permission slip for prejudice. In that cultural context, the quote reads like a corrective to the era’s loud tribal certainties: you can’t take credit for biology, ancestry, or a flag any more than you can take credit for the weather.

The subtext is also a warning about politics. Group pride can feel like solidarity, but it can slide into entitlement, grievance, or superiority without ever asking the harder question: what have you actually done? O'Connor’s ethic is almost meritocratic, but it’s really about responsibility. Pride is only defensible when it points back to labor, choices, and the risk of being wrong.