It reached #1 in New Zealand, the first time a U2 single topped a country's singles chart.
Robert Christgau in The Village Voice complained of "the moralism with the turn-somebody-else's-cheek glorification of Martin Luther King's martyrdom."
Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone wrote that "'Pride' gets over only on the strength of its resounding beat and big, droning bass line, not on the nobility of its lyrics, which are unremarkable."
The 1984 Pazz & Jop poll of 240 music critics ranked "Pride" as the 12th best single of that year, a higher ranking than the overall album, which finished 29th.
In 1989, Spin named the song the 65th-greatest single in history.