No matter how much you think of your objective self, and that you are too clever and smart to be conceited, there is a moment when you lose that rudder and believe that what you are doing is the only right thing. Others misleading do not understand.
I experienced this abhorrent feeling once, when I attended one of the honoring parties in a famous bookstore, and as the title indicates, it is an honoring ceremony, so there is no room for discussion or criticism, but rather it is a crowd of mentioning exploits and positive points. I sat for an hour listening to compliments that I don't deserve a quarter of. Believe it or not: I felt my soul narrowing and my horizon narrowing, and I saw an imaginary picture of myself that was many times bigger than my real picture.
I began to think that I am infallible and that whoever argues with me is absent and does not understand what he is saying. My chest was fed up with any criticism or blame, no matter how simple and flimsy it was, although I entered the place closer to humility and the tendency to belittle oneself. For this - and I felt that my mood was really changing - I began to thank the audience and then talk about the negative points that I do not like in my person and in my writings. Here I remembered what some Sufis do when they kiss the hands of the poor as a way to break their pride. And the most dangerous point is that another kind of vanity has begun to form in myself: vanity because I am humble and because I do all this!
When I came home it occurred to me that it was like magic... This change was induced in me by some flattery for only an hour, what disturbance and disfigurement happens to a high official when he receives praise all his life, and this praise may be so high as to approach worship? There is no doubt that we - Egyptians and Arabs in general - have an instinctive readiness to spoil every official with this excessive praise .. All his ideas are genius .. All his actions are achievements .. All his opponents are absent or agents .. In the end, you create an idol that does not accept discussion and does not admit error. There is no doubt that the right starting point is to consider the minister or the president as an ordinary person who makes mistakes, and must be told about them.
In his first ten years, Hosni Mubarak was subject to discussion, and he listened to his opponents, and knew what the opposition newspapers were saying.