If productiveness is not usually considered a moral virtue, the final of Rand's major virtues is widely considered a downright vice. The Old Testament warns that “pride goes before destruction.” The New Testament agrees that “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” Like greed, pride ranks as one of the seven deadly sins, yet even to say this does not capture its special infamy in the Christian tradition. Pride is “the great sin,” C. S. Lewis testifies, because it is “the beginning of all sin,” as Ecclesiastes warns. Other sins are “mere fleabites” in comparison. The antithesis of pride, humility, is what is commonly praised as virtuous.

Pride has not been universally condemned. Aristotle, famously, praised pride as the crown of the virtues. Hume ridiculed humility as a “monkish virtue” and allowed that “a due degree of pride” can afford beneficial “confidence and assurance.” Today, people will often support group pride proclaimed by a union or a minority, such as Hispanics or gays. Such exceptions notwithstanding, for the most part, people regard individual pride warily, typically greeting it as a fault. (One cultural illustration: the New York Times review of the fifth Harry Potter book, which matter-of-factly refers to the hero's need to question “his own weaknesses – anger, pride, and ambition.”) When it is not categorically rejected as a vice, pride tends to be only grudgingly tolerated as a necessary tool of self-defense – armor against being a doormat – rather than welcomed as a positive good.