“Most people think themselves kind enough, but rather like a magician thinking he is fooling an audience who can see through his trick, we are the worst judges of the effect we have on others. True, we can mentally point out various kindnesses we have committed and those pleasant aspects of ourselves. Yet by doing so, we ignore the real test cases: how we behave under pressure, how nice we are to people we don’t like, how we deal with other people who seem determined to not live up to our unrealistic expectations.”

— Derren Brown

Books, There’s Probably No God - The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (2009)

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Derren Brown 136

British illusionist 1971

Titon Rahmawan

“I feel the world is the way it is because we don’t talk about ourselves ever. We don’t talk about how we feel, we don’t talk about how we experience things. And not knowing yourself is when you project your insecurities and your fears and your bullshit onto other people. And so that just kind of creates a whole collective where nobody’s aware of themselves, and if you don’t have self-awareness then how can we have collective awareness?”

Lauren Jauregui (1996) Cuban-American singer and songwriter

Fifth Harmony Was Just The Beginning For Lauren Jauregui, Nylon Magazine, September 5, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtrtUi4Vmnw,

“How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.”

John Irving book The Cider House Rules

Source: The Cider House Rules

“… we have to be kind, we have to be charitable and we can't condemn people just because they get in a mess…even the best people can get into ghastly messes,…we must never judge other people too harshly because although they can make awful mistakes they can still be very nice people.”

Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 4: Kester

“To be manipulative is to speak and act in a way that guarantees that we get the response we want to get from other people. So you see, manipulation is how most of us try to get love. Manipulation is how most of us try to get safety… because we do not trust the world to be kind to us. Everyone is manipulative, we are simply more or less aware of that aspect within ourselves.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“We are living a moment of truth in Iraq, a moment in which we have to look fair and square at disagreeable realities, in which we have to look at ourselves. The pictures from Abu Ghraib prison are a kind of mirror in which we have to look at ourselves and ask: what kind of people did this? How did this become possible? Could I have done a thing like this to those people?”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

From "Living Fearlessly in a Fearless World" Ignatieff Commencement Address to Whitman College (USA), 2004

“I'm not saying I came up with anything [laughs]. It's like people thinking we would be more real if we went onstage in jeans and T-shirts. How ignorant is that, to think that because they don't wear a suit onstage that someone is giving you the real deal? People do come and see us and think, "Look at all these gimmicks."”

Jack White (1975) American musician and record producer

Go ahead, man. Go ahead and think that.
From the article White on White from Rolling Stone Magazine
In response to a question about his relationship with Meg being false
On 'gimmicks

“It is very true that we ought to think of the happiness of others; but it is not often enough said that the best thing we can do for those who love us is to be happy ourselves.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

Happiness if Generous
Alain On Happiness (1928)

“And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Ars Poetica?"
Context: There was a time when only wise books were read
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics. And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.

“The true test of intelligence is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do”

John Holt book How Children Fail

How Children Fail (1964).

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