It may not be possible to feel completely stripped of pride. Henry Erying said, “You see, it’s hard to feel that you are sufficiently humble. If you did, you might not be.” (To Draw Closer to God, p. 57) Our challenge is to continue stripping off the shackles of pride which characterize our society. Moroni saw our day in vision. The first thing he had to say about it was that we walk in the pride of our hearts, behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing. And I know that ye do walk in the pride of your hearts; and there are none save a few only who do not lift themselves up in the pride of their hearts, unto the wearing of very fine apparel, unto envying, and strifes, and malice, and persecutions, and all manner of iniquities (Mormon 8:35-36).
Neal A. Maxwell
"Pride keeps repentance from even starting or continuing. Some fail because they are more concerned with the preservation of their public image than with having Christ’s image in their countenances! (Alma 5:14.) Pride prefers cheap repentance, paid for with shallow sorrow. (Ensign, November 1991, p. 31.)
“Just as meekness is in all our virtues, so is pride in all our sins.” (Neal A. Maxwell Quote Book, by Cory Maxwell, p. 266)
Boyd K. Packer
“Pride is the most deadly spiritual virus.” (Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled, p. 52)
Dallin H. Oaks
“One kind of pride condemned in the scriptures is synonymous with self-satisfaction. The pride of self-satisfaction is self-righteous. Self-righteousness is ’a condition of soul that assumes and creates an air-tight justification for everything you do simply because you do it’ (Norman Podhoretz, ”Candidates’ Morality Is Not Private," Insight, June 8, 1987, p. 64).
"But what I call the pride of self-satisfaction goes deeper than mere self-justification. Self-satisfaction is the opposite of humility. A person who has the pride of self-satisfaction cannot repent, because he recognizes no shortcomings. He cannot be taught, because he recognizes no master. He cannot be helped, because he recognizes no resource greater than his own…
"The second type of pride that is condemned in the scriptures is what I have chosen to call the pride of comparison…Materialism is an attitude toward things. In contrast, the pride of comparison is an attitude toward people.
“…C. S. Lewis described the pride of comparison when he said: Pride is essentially competitive… . Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man… . It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Lewis called pride ‘the utmost evil’ and ’the complete anti-God state of mind,’ because this kind of comparison leads men to enmity and oppression and every other kind of evil. This insightful Christian saw that every person should look up to God as ‘immeasurably superior’ to him or her. He continued: Unless you Know God as that--and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison--you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.’ (Mere Christianity [New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1960], pp. 109-11.)” (Pure In Heart, pp. 95-6)
Ezra Taft Benson
“Pride does not look up to God and care about what is right. It looks sideways to man and argues who is right. Pride is manifest in the spirit of contention.” (Ensign, May 1986, p. 6)
Spencer W. Kimball
“When one becomes conscious of his great humility, he has already lost it. When one begins boasting of his humility, it has already become pride—the antithesis of humility… Somebody asked me this morning, ’How do you keep humble? Sometimes I am humble and sometimes I am unhumble.’ I think there is a formula that will never fail. First, you evaluate yourself…I would be nothing without the Lord. My breath, my brains, my hearing, my sight, my locomotion, my everything depends upon the Lord. That is the first step and then we pray, and pray often, and we will not get up from our knees until we have communicated. The line may be down; we may have let it fall to pieces, but I will not get up from my knees until I have established communication—if it is twenty minutes, if it is all night like Enos…If it takes all day long, you stay on your knees until your unhumbleness has dissipated, until you feel the humble spirit and realize, ‘I could die this minute if it were not for the Lord’s good grace. I am dependent upon him—totally dependent upon him,’ and then you read the scriptures.” (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, pp. 233-234 as taken from Latter-day Commentary on the Book of Mormon compiled by K. Douglas Bassett, p. 256)