In particular, the conceit of linking his research to the ups and downs of his relationship with a tiresomely pro-communist (and humourless) girlfriend from East Germany is jarringly intrusive and self-referential.

ECONOMIST: Communist jokes

The second flaw is the conceit that President Obama and his advisers can break the vicious (downward) cycle by spending other people's money.

FORBES: The Left's Grip On The American Economy

To the outsider's eye these complaints tend to display a high degree of pettiness and conceit, as with the applicant for a medical job with the commission who argued that his non-hiring was explicable only by a prejudice on the commission's part against Swedish medical qualifications.

ECONOMIST: Jacob Soderman, wrist-tapper general