Quotes about self
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Hunter S. Thompson photo
Šantidéva photo
Pablo Neruda photo

“He who does not travel, who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.
He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

dies slowly…
Muere lentamente quien no viaja, quien no lee,
quien no oye música,
quien no encuentra gracia en sí mismo.
Muere lentamente
quien destruye su amor propio,
quien no se deja ayudar...
Poem "Muere lentamente" (Dying Slowly), wrongly attributed to Pablo Neruda. See "Fake Pablo Neruda Poem Spreads on Internet" http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=325275&CategoryId=14094 by Ana Mendoza, Latin American Herald Tribune (12 January 2009).
Misattributed
Source: Selected Poems

Lynn Margulis photo
John Wooden photo

“Success is peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction and knowing you’ve made the effort, do the best of what you’re capable.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Interview on Charlie Rose https://archive.org/details/WHUT_20100614_130000_Charlie_Rose (2000)

Eckhart Tolle photo
C.G. Jung photo

“Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
John Dewey photo
Joan Didion photo
George Orwell photo
Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Daniel Radcliffe photo

“(on way to relax) “I just like to lock my self in a small room and listen to music and watch films all day!””

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

http://dan-radcliffe.net/index.php/information/facts-favorites/

Paul Valéry photo
Eugene O'Neill photo
Albert Bandura photo

“If self-efficacy is lacking, people tend to behave ineffectually, even though they know what to do.”

[Albert Bandura, 1982, Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency, American Psychologist, 37, 2, 122-147, 10.1037/0003-066X.37.2.122, 0003-066X] (p. 127)

Edgar Guest photo
Friedrich Schiller photo

“Self Confidence has always been the parent of great actions.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

History of the Thirty Years War - Volume II
The Thirty Years War

Nanak photo
Tupac Shakur photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Benjamin H. Freedman photo
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.
Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.
Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Variant translation: A loss of courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days...
Harvard University address (1978)

“The flower has no weekday self, dressed as it always is in Sunday clothes.”

Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) Mauritian artist

Sens-plastique

Pope Pius XII photo
Subh-i-Azal photo

“Glorified art Thou, O God my God! I indeed testify to Thee and all-things at the moment when I am in Thy presence in pure servitude, upon this, that verily Thou art God, no other God is there besides Thee! Thou art unchanged, O my God, within the elevation of Grandeur and Majesty, and shall be unalterable, O my desirous boon, within the pinnacle of power and perfection inasmuch as nothing shall frustrate Thee and nothing shall extinguish Thee! Thou art unchanged as Thou art the Capable above Thy creation and Thou art unalterable as Thou indeed shall be as from before inasmuch as nothing is with Thee of anything and nothing is in Thy rank of anything! Thou accomplisheth and willeth and doeth and desireth! Glorified art Thou, O God my God, with Thy praise, salutations be upon the Primal Point, the Chemise of Thy Visage and the Light of Thy direction and the Luminosity of Thy Beinghood and the Clarity of Thy Selfhood and the Ocean of Thy Power by all that which Thou hath bestowed upon Him of Thy Stations and Thy Culminations and Thy Foundations, for nothing shall frustrate Thee of anything and nothing shall extinguish Thee of anything! No other God is There besides Thee, for verily Thou art the Lord of all the worlds! And blessings, O God my God, be upon the one who was the first to believe in Thee, the Visage of Thy Selfhood and the Decree of Thy direction; and upon the one who was the last to believe in Thee, the Essence of Thy direction and the Visage of Thy Holiness; and upon those whom Ye have made martyrs/witnesses (shuhadá’) unknown except by Thy Command nor restrained except by Thy Wisdom; then upon those to whom Ye have promised that Ye shall make Him manifest on the Day of Resurrection and He whom Ye will upraise on the Day of the Return by all which Thou will bestow upon Him of Thy Power and Thy Strength, for nothing shall extinguish Thee and nothing shall frustrate Thee! Ye determine all-things, for verily Thou art powerful over whatsoever Thou willeth! And I indeed testify, O my God, between Thy hands that verily there is no other god besides Thee and that He whom Ye shall make manifest on the Day of Resurrection is the Chemise of Thy Creativity and the Visage of Thy Manifestation and the direction of Thy Victory and the substance of Thy Pardoning and the branch of Thy Singularity and the clarity of Thy Unicitarianism and the Pen [of the Letter] Nún (al-qalam al-nún) within Thy Beinghood and the setting of the Cause-Command within Thy Essentiality inasmuch as there is no difference between Him and Thee except that He is Thy servant in Thy grasp, such that whatsoever is in the Heavens and the earth and what is between them will then be filled by His Name and by His Light until it be made apparent that no other god is there besides Thee and no Beloved is there like unto Thee and no Desired One is there other than Thee and no Dread is there of Thy like and no Justice of Thy equal! No other god is there besides Thee! Glorified art Thou, O God, and by Thy praise, blessings, O my God, be upon the Guide to the Throne of the Hidden Cloud and the Path to Thy Presence in the Sina'i of Authorization and the Caller by Thy Logos-Self and the Crier of Thy Permission between Thy Hands and the Ariser of Thy Attendance by Thy Command; then the Triumph, O my God, by all that which Thou will bestow upon Him of Thy Power, then that which will be made manifestly apparent of the Word upon the earth and what is upon it by Thy grandeur, and also in this that nothing shall ever put out His Light! Verily nothing shall frustrate Thee of anything and nothing shall extinguish Thee of anything! Thy mercy encompasseth all-things and verily Thou art powerful over what Ye have willed; and to the one who prays to Thee, Hearing, Answering, for verily Thou art Observant over us, and verily Thou art High, Praised beyond that which the inner hearts can comprehend!”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

Ethics of the Spirituals

George Orwell photo

“Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

Clarice Lispector photo
Jackson Pollock photo
Piet Mondrian photo
Albert Bandura photo

“Self-belief does not necessarily ensure success, but self-disbelief assuredly spawns failure.”

[Self-efficacy: The exercise of control, Bandura, Albert, w:Albert Bandura, 1997, W. H. Freeman, New York, 9780716728504, http://books.google.com/books?id=eJ-PN9g_o-EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=bandura+isbn:9780716728504&hl=en&ei=HAwYTbKsLpTmsQPp8cCPCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false] (p. 77)

Karl Marx photo
José José photo
Nanak photo
Ronda Rousey photo

“When I was in school, martial arts made you a dork, and I became self-conscious that I was too masculine. I was a 16-year-old girl with ringworm and cauliflower ears. People made fun of my arms and called me "Miss Man." It wasn't until I got older that I realized: These people are idiots. I'm fabulous.”

Ronda Rousey (1987) American judoka, mixed martial artist, professional wrestler and actress

"6 Feminist Quotes From Ronda Rousey That Prove She's More Than Just A Trash Talker", in Bustle.com (3 August 2015) http://www.bustle.com/articles/101566-6-feminist-quotes-from-ronda-rousey-that-prove-shes-more-than-just-a-trash-talker

Charlemagne photo

“It is not lack of self-restraint but care for others which makes me dine in Lent before the hour of evening.”

Charlemagne (748–814) King of the Franks, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor

Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

John Galt (novelist) photo

“This work is not for the many; but in the unconscious, perfectly natural, irony of self-delusion, in all parts intelligible to the intelligent reader, without the slightest suspicion on the part of the autobiographer, I know of no equal in our literature…This and The Entail would alone suffice to place Galt in the first rank of contemporary novelists.”

John Galt (novelist) (1779–1839) British writer

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, manuscript note written in his copy of The Provost; cited from Thomas Middleton Raysor (ed.) Coleridge's Miscellaneous Criticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936), p. 344.
Criticism

George Orwell photo

“[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

From a review of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, New English Weekly (21 March 1940)

John of the Cross photo
Ghani Khan photo
Rudolf Steiner photo
U.G. Krishnamurti photo

“Food, clothing and shelter — these are the basic needs. Beyond that, if you want anything, it is the beginning of self-deception.”

U.G. Krishnamurti (1918–2007) Indian philosopher

Stopped in Our Tracks, Book Two: Excerpts from U.G.'s Dialogues http://www.well.com/user/jct/chandra.htm (2005) by K. Chandrasekhar

Andrea Dworkin photo
Alex Jones photo

“We're such self-centered crap we don't even notice Hell itself rising up against us.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

As heard in "Jones Iver - Alex Jones Rants as an Indie Folk Song" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWd6XgBVIcg by Nick Lutsko, released on the Super Deluxe YouTube channel (14 July 2017)

Michelle Rodriguez photo

“I quit high school really young, and I always loved information. I'm a self-taught kind of chick. I don't have any tactics on studying, memorizing things. It's selective memory. If I feel like it's going to be a prominent factor in the future, then I will remember that.”

Michelle Rodriguez (1978) American actress, screenwriter and DJ

CinemaBlendInterview: Michelle Rodriguez Talks Technology And Aliens In Battle: Los Angeles 11 March 2011 http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Interview-Michelle-Rodriguez-Talks-Technology-And-Aliens-In-Battle-Los-Angeles-23609.html

Andrea Dworkin photo
Fukuzawa Yukichi photo

“Therefore, to teach them [women] at least an outline of economics and law is the first requirement after giving them a general education. Figuratively speaking, it will be like providing the women of civilized society with a pocket dagger for self-protection.”

Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) Japanese author, writer, teacher, translator, entrepreneur and journalist who founded Keio University

From Fukuzawa Yukichi on Japanese Women (1988), trans. Kiyooka Eiichi.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Chiaki Mukai photo
George Orwell photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
George Orwell photo
Jordan Peterson photo
Wilhelm Reich photo

“You dare not think that you ever might experience your self differently: free instead of cowed; open instead of tactical; loving openly instead of like a thief in the night.”

Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: "What right do you have to tell me things?" I can see this question in your apprehensive look. I hear this question from your impertinent mouth, Little Man. You are afraid to look at yourself, you are afraid of criticism, Little Man, just as you are afraid of the power they promise you. You would not know how to use this power. You dare not think that you ever might experience your self differently: free instead of cowed; open instead of tactical; loving openly instead of like a thief in the night. You despise yourself Little Man. You say: "Who am I to have an opinion of my own, to determine my own life and to declare the world to be mine?" You are right: Who are you to make a claim to your life?

Alan Watts photo

“It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951)
Context: There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)
Context: Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?
If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.
This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward.

Timothy Leary photo

“The only abuse of drugs is the control of drugs by other people.... The only control is self-control.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

Harvard Law School Forum (1966)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“Let us assume that the artist does not OWE anybody anything: nevertheless, it is painful to see how, by retiring into his self-made worlds or the spaces of his subjective whims, he CAN surrender the real world into the hands of men who are mercenary, if not worthless, if not insane.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: Let us not violate the RIGHT of the artist to express exclusively his own experiences and introspections, disregarding everything that happens in the world beyond. Let us not DEMAND of the artist, but — reproach, beg, urge and entice him — that we may be allowed to do. After all, only in part does he himself develop his talent; the greater part of it is blown into him at birth as a finished product, and the gift of talent imposes responsibility on his free will. Let us assume that the artist does not OWE anybody anything: nevertheless, it is painful to see how, by retiring into his self-made worlds or the spaces of his subjective whims, he CAN surrender the real world into the hands of men who are mercenary, if not worthless, if not insane.

George Orwell photo

“As time goes on and the horrors pile up, the mind seems to secrete a sort of self-protecting ignorance which needs a harder and harder shock to pierce it, just as the body will become immunised to a drug and require bigger and bigger doses.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," The Tribune (17 January 1947)
"As I Please" (1943–1947)
Context: This business of making people conscious of what is happening outside their own small circle is one of the major problems of our time, and a new literary technique will have to be evolved to meet it. Considering that the people of this country are not having a very comfortable time, you can't perhaps, blame them for being somewhat callous about suffering elsewhere, but the remarkable thing is the extent to which they manage to be unaware of it. Tales of starvation, ruined cities, concentration camps, mass deportations, homeless refugees, persecuted Jews — all this is received with a sort of incurious surprise, as though such things had never been heard of but at the same time were not particularly interesting. The now-familiar photographs of skeleton-like children make very little impression. As time goes on and the horrors pile up, the mind seems to secrete a sort of self-protecting ignorance which needs a harder and harder shock to pierce it, just as the body will become immunised to a drug and require bigger and bigger doses.

Ludwig von Mises photo

“This is an old and well-tried method of justifying aggression. Louis XIV and Napoleon I, Wilhelm II and Hitler were the most peace-loving of all men. When they invaded foreign countries, they did so only in just self-defence. Russia was as much menaced by Estonia or Latvia as Germany was by Luxemburg or Denmark.”

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)
Context: It is, they say, not Russia that plans aggression but, on the contrary, the decaying capitalist democracies. Russia wants merely to defend its own independence. This is an old and well-tried method of justifying aggression. Louis XIV and Napoleon I, Wilhelm II and Hitler were the most peace-loving of all men. When they invaded foreign countries, they did so only in just self-defence. Russia was as much menaced by Estonia or Latvia as Germany was by Luxemburg or Denmark.

Aesop photo

“Self-conceit may lead to self-destruction.”

The Frog and the Ox.

Ramana Maharshi photo

“The Self itself is God.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Nan Yar = Who am I?

Malcolm X photo

“Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and our people rediscover their identity and thereby increase their self respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964), as quoted in By Any Means Necessary (1970)
By Any Means Necessary (1970)

“There seems to be some problem about my identity. But no one can find it, because it’s not there—I have lost all interest in having a self. Being a person has always meant getting blamed for it.”

Rachel Cusk (1967) British writer

On abandoning being a memoirist in “Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/07/rachel-cusk-gut-renovates-the-novel in the New Yorker (Aug 2017)

Matka Tereza photo

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

This is a variant or paraphrase of The Paradoxical Commandments, by Kent M. Keith, student activist, first composed in 1968 as part of a booklet for student leaders, which had hung on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta, India, and have sometimes become misattributed to her. The version posted at his site http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com begins:
Misattributed

Emil M. Cioran photo
Nathuram Godse photo
George Orwell photo

“Before, he had fought against the money code, and yet he had clung to his wretched remnant of decency. But now it was precisely from decency that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; to cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself—to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being under ground.”

He liked to think of the lost people, the under-ground people: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. It is a good world that they inhabit, down there in their frowzy kips and spikes. He liked to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. That was where he wished to be, down in the ghost-kingdom, below ambition. It comforted him somehow to think of the smoke-dim slums of South London sprawling on and on, a huge graceless wilderness where you could lose yourself forever.
Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 10

Richard Wright photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Bruce Lee photo

“Be self aware, rather than a repetitious robot”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
W.E.B. Du Bois photo
Rebecca Solnit photo
William Shakespeare photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Eugene O'Neill photo

“None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.”

Page 63 (Act 2, Scene 1)
Long Day's Journey into Night (1955)
Source: Long Day's Journey Into Night
Context: But I suppose life has made him like that, and he can't help it. None of us can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize it, and once they're done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever.

Eckhart Tolle photo

“In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Ramana Maharshi photo
Jean-Luc Godard photo

“Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Cited in: Paul Bowden, Telling It Like It Is https://books.google.nl/books?id=w8_p1eGVj8gC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=%22Art+attracts+us+only+by+what+it+reveals+of+our+most+secret+self%22+%22jean+luc+godard%22&source=bl&ots=2zIpIhvB_1&sig=uImQSWu8ATehPk0hAhfck-ZowJc&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjwydLuqp_LAhVhDJoKHdrjACcQ6AEIUjAG#v=onepage&q=%22Art%20attracts%20us%20only%20by%20what%20it%20reveals%20of%20our%20most%20secret%20self%22%20%22jean%20luc%20godard%22&f=false, 2011, p. 182
Source: "What Is Cinema?" Les Amis du Cinéma (Paris, October 1, 1952).

Eckhart Tolle photo