“The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.”

—  Alan Watts

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The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)

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Alan Watts 107
British philosopher, writer and speaker 1915–1973

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H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"Le Contrat Social", in: Prejudices: Third Series (1922)
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Context: All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.

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“I frequently ask leaders if they know what their personal values are, and most say yes. Then I ask them: ‘Have you written them down?’ Most say no.  Values are incredibly important! They determine who we really are—what our character is, the real you when the mask is off.”

Don Soderquist (1934–2016)

Don Soderquist “ Live Learn Lead to Make a Difference https://books.google.com/books?id=s0q7mZf9oDkC&lpg=pg=PP1&dq=Don%20Soderquist&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2006 p. 68-69.
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“Separate we come, and separate we go, And this be it known, is all that we know.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

Variant: Separate we come, and separate we go, and this be it known, is all that we know.
Source: Self written obituary in verse, The New York Herald Tribune (1969), cited in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) edited by Larry Chang, p. 664

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