"We rise in glory as we sink in pride"
About this Quote
A neat bit of spiritual jujitsu: the line flips our default wiring. Modern culture trains us to treat pride like fuel and glory like proof. Andrew Young, speaking from the pulpit tradition, insists the opposite is true - that real elevation is inseparable from a deliberate lowering of the self.
The wording matters. "Rise" and "sink" are physical verbs, almost cinematic, turning inner posture into bodily motion. "Glory" isn’t framed as self-congratulation but as something you enter, a radiance that arrives when you stop trying to generate it. "Pride" isn’t just confidence; it’s the swollen, brittle ego that needs to be seen winning. The line’s implicit argument is that pride is heavy. It pulls you down because it makes every act transactional: every kindness becomes branding, every achievement a bid for dominance, every community a stage.
As a clergyman - and in Young’s case, a civil rights-era minister who moved between church leadership and public service - the subtext is also political. Movements fracture when leaders treat moral struggle as personal mythology. The quote doubles as a warning to anyone doing public good: if your identity depends on being the hero, you’ll eventually sabotage the very cause that made you feel heroic.
It works because it refuses the cheap binary of humility as self-erasure. The promise is not "be smaller"; it’s "be free". Glory, in this frame, is what’s left when ego stops taking up all the oxygen.
The wording matters. "Rise" and "sink" are physical verbs, almost cinematic, turning inner posture into bodily motion. "Glory" isn’t framed as self-congratulation but as something you enter, a radiance that arrives when you stop trying to generate it. "Pride" isn’t just confidence; it’s the swollen, brittle ego that needs to be seen winning. The line’s implicit argument is that pride is heavy. It pulls you down because it makes every act transactional: every kindness becomes branding, every achievement a bid for dominance, every community a stage.
As a clergyman - and in Young’s case, a civil rights-era minister who moved between church leadership and public service - the subtext is also political. Movements fracture when leaders treat moral struggle as personal mythology. The quote doubles as a warning to anyone doing public good: if your identity depends on being the hero, you’ll eventually sabotage the very cause that made you feel heroic.
It works because it refuses the cheap binary of humility as self-erasure. The promise is not "be smaller"; it’s "be free". Glory, in this frame, is what’s left when ego stops taking up all the oxygen.
Quote Details
| Topic | Humility |
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