Quotes about self
page 8

“Whether or not we can get together, remember well that art “lives” where absolute freedom is. With all the training thrown to nowhere, with a mind (if there is such a verbal substance) perfectly unaware of its own working, with the “self” vanishing nowhere, the art of JKD attains its perfection.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: The Warrior Within: The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 156

Art, Freedom, Perfection, Self-confidence

“The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life....The pain that you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997) p. 25

Life, Pain, Parting, Self-confidence

“As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence - your deeper self - behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking. When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream - a gap of "no-mind." At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

Source: The Power of Now (1997)

Feeling, Thinking, Self-confidence

“What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live. “I cannot live with myself any longer.” This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.” “Maybe,” I thought, “only one of them is real.””

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

Source: The Power of Now (1997) Introduction

Feeling, Self-confidence

“When I’m being love, I don’t get drained, and I don’t need people to behave a certain way in order to feel cared for or to share my magnificence with them. They’re automatically getting my love as a result of me being my true self. And when I am nonjudgmental of myself, I feel that way toward others.”

Anita Moorjani (1959) writer

“Feuerbach is the only one who has a serious, critical attitude to the Hegelian dialectic and who has made genuine discoveries in this field. He is in fact the true conqueror of the old philosophy. The extent of his achievement, and the unpretentious simplicity with which he, Feuerbach, gives it to the world, stand in striking contrast to the opposite attitude (of the others). Feuerbach’s great achievement is: (1) The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned;(2) The establishment of true materialism and of real science, by making the social relationship of “man to man” the basic principle of the theory; (3) His opposing of the negation of the negation, which claims to be the absolute positive, the self-supporting positive, positively based on itself.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Source: Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole, p. 64.
Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

World, Making love, Religion, Support

“The main thing for us to remember is that, the same crime element that white people are scared of, black people are scared of. The same crime element that white people fear, black people fear. So we defend our self from the same crime element that they are scared of, you know what I'm saying, while they are waiting for legislations to pass and everything, we're next door to the killer, we're next door to him you know. Because we up in the projects where it's 80 niggas in the building. All them killers that they letting out, they're right there in that building. Just because we're black we get along with the killers or something? We get along with rapist's because we're black and from the same hood? What is that? We need protection too.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Ed Gordon interview (1994)

People, Fear, Waiting, Self-confidence

“Five souls are the most dignified in creation: a scholar who is not self-indulgent (moderate), a Sufi jurisprudent, a humble rich person, a thankful poor one, and a noble who follows the Sunnah.”

Sufyan al-Thawri (716–778) Muslim Scholar and founder of Thawri Madhhab

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 28

Soul, Personality, Self-confidence

“What the exploiter needs is that the will and intelligence of the victim be disengaged from the projects of resistance and escape but that they not be simply broken or destroyed. Ideally, the dis-integration and mis-integration of the victim should accomplish the detachment of the victim's will and intelligence from the victim’s own interests and their attachment to the interests of the exploiter. This will effect a displacement or dissolution of self-respect and will undermine the victim’s intolerance of coercion. With that, the situation transcends the initial paradigmatic form or structure of coercion; for if people don’t mind doing what you want them to do, then, in a sense, you can’t really be making them do it. In the limiting case, the victim’s will and intelligence are wholly transferred to a full engagement in the pursuit of the dominating person’s interests. The “problem” had been that there were two parties with divergent interests; this sort of solution (which is very elegant, as that word is used in logic) is to erase the conflict by reducing the number of interested parties to one. This radical solution can properly be called “enslavement.””

Marilyn Frye book The Politics of Reality

Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 60

People, Making love, Intelligence, Problem

“Efficient exploitation requires that those exploited be relatively mobile, self-animating and self-maintaining—the more so as the work in question requires greater intelligence, attention or ingenuity. But it also requires that they not be free enough, strong enough or willful enough to resist, escape or significantly misfit the situation of exploitation.”

Marilyn Frye book The Politics of Reality

Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 59

Intelligence, Question, Strong, Animals

“Art is a self-care medium for me”

Lauren Jauregui (1996) Cuban-American singer and songwriter

Lauren Jauregui Wants to Show You the Real Her, Marie Claire, October 25, 2018 https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a24180000/lauren-jauregui-expectations-interview/,

Art, Self-confidence

“I feel like style is just a constant evolution because it’s an expression of self. Some days I’ll be in like a grungy mood and just don’t wanna fuck with anybody, and some days I’m just like 'hi world I love you'”

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,

Love, World, Making love, Feeling

“Concepts vs. self-actualization.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Instead of dedicating your life to actualize a concept of what you should be like, ACTUALIZE YOURSELF. The process of maturing does not mean to become a captive of conceptualization. It is to come to the realization of what lies in our innermost selves.
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 44

Self-confidence

“Forgiveness is choosing to love. It is the first skill of self-giving love.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Love, Forgiveness

“He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Life

“Citizenship demands a sense of common purpose; participation in the hard work of self-government; an obligation to serve to our communities.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Sixth State of the Union Address (January 2014)

Communication, Sense

“No man has need of religion who is self-righteous, who is all he wants to be and all he ought to be.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: The Armor of God (1943), Ch. 1, p. 4

Religion

“The idea of non-interference of the supernatural in human fate was a turning point in human self-awareness & spiritual freedom.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Fate, Idea, Freedom

“Truth is what we are. It is our essential nature and Being. It is the pure Self, the limitless one, the ultimate reality – it is awareness itself.”

Mooji (1954) Jamaican spiritual teacher

Greater than Sky, Vaster than Space, (2018), Part I

Truth, Nature, Reality

“We can naturally say with reasonable certainty that the greater events we are told are fact... However, the histories, causes, propaganda and acts related to these and other events are exactly what self-serving rulers of religious and political power systems creatively recorded.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Revolution by Number

History, Nature

“Ideals are a spiritual product of society’s self-critical attitude toward life. Putting them into practice is governed by the same society’s conscience.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Life

“I consider self experimentation an architect’s obligation and duty.”

Jiri Lev (1979)

Source: Testing Ground for Sustainable Design https://www.dwell.com/article/tasmanian-house-jiri-lev-architect-cafe0e3d.

“Self-interest must be sacrificed before one can enter through the door of philosophy.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The sun is standing all alone and it is dependent upon itself in almost the same manners as we claim that the Creator is self-dependent.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Sun, Dependency

“If you make the mistake of capitalism, you should not be criticized. But we should have self-criticism.”

Hu Yaobang (1915–1989) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

In 1980, during his inspection tour in Tibet, as quoted in Southern Mongolia: Self-Determination Activist Tortured in Prison and Kept Under House Arrest https://unpo.org/article/19652?id=19652

“Every self-manifestation bestows a new creation and removes a pre-ceding creation. Its removal is the essence of annihilation (fanaa) in the passing self-manifestation and subsistence (baqaa) in the bestowal of the following self-manifestation.”

Ibn Arabi The Ringstones of Wisdom

Source: Binyamin Abrahamov.Ibn Al-Arabi's Fusus Al-Hikam: An Annotated Translation of "The Bezels of Wisdom" p. 92, كلَّ تجلٍّ يعطي خلقًا جديدًا ويذهب بخلق: فذهابه هو الفناء عند التجلِّي والبقاء لما يعطيه التجلِّي الآخر Bezels of Wisdom (فصوص الحكم) https://archive.org/details/abeer_20160509/page/n127/mode/2up

“The mystery of the world's existence — the mystery of the emergence of self-organizing matter or the mystery of the beginning of its motion.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

World

“"No self, no problem,” said the Buddhist master when asked to explain the deeper meaning of Buddhism.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003)

Problem

“The mind is incessantly looking not only for food for thought; it is looking for food for its identity, its sense of self. This is how the ego comes into existence and continuously re-creates itself.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Chapter 3 The Egoic Self

Food, Sense

“When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world. Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the “I Am” that is deeper than name and form.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Chapter 1 Silence and Stillness

World, Sense

“Schooling is organized by command and control from without; education is self-organized from within…”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling (2008)
Source: Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, New Society Publishers (2013) p. 177

Education, School

“All the misery on the planet arises due to a personalized sense of me or us. That covers up the essence of who you are. When you are unaware of that inner essence, in the end, you always create misery. It's as simple as that. When you don't know who you are, you create a mind-made self as a substitute for your beautiful, divine being and cling to that fearful and needy self. Protecting and enhancing that false sense of self then becomes your primary motivating force.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 5

Fear, Beauty, Motivation, Sense

“Many things in your life matter but only one thing matters absolutely. It matters whether you succeed or fail in the eyes of the world. It matters whether you are healthy or not healthy, whether you are educated or not educated. It matters whether you are rich or poor. It certainly makes a difference in your life. Yes, all these things matter, relatively speaking. But they don't matter absolutely. There is something that matters more than any of those things and that is finding the essence of who your are beyond that short-lived entity, that short-lived personalized sense of self. You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 5

Life, World, Education, Peace

“The human condition: Lost in thought Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalized sense of self that is conditioned by the past. In you, as in each human being, there is a dimension of consciousness far deeper than thought. It is the very essence of who you are. We may call it presence, awareness, the unconditioned consciousness. In the ancient teachings, it is the Christ within, or your Buddha nature.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Chapter 2 Beyond the Thinking Mind

Life, People, Nature, Sense

“The stipulation that a community must first be as self-supporting as possible in regard to food will do away with large scale cultivation of any one article, such as sugar, by a population who, living in a small area, must therefore depend upon obtaining much of their food from abroad.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter VII The Council for Economics

Food, Communication, Support, Dependency

“Do not squander your time,
self respect
nor
piece of mind
to shed light on someone else's true colors.
Lack of Character always reveals itself
in the end.
Trust vibes.
Energy does not lie!”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Lie, Color, Light, Time

“Now I could let these dream killers kill my self esteem,
Or use my arrogance as the steam to power my dreams
I use it as my gas, so they say that I'm gassed
But without it I'd be last, so I ought to laugh.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Last Call
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

Dreams

“It seems, we living the American dream
But people highest up got the lowest self esteem.
The prettiest people do the ugliest things
For the road to riches and diamond rings.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

All Falls Down
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

People, Dreams

“An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me; the book of a self-taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. When one can have the cooked flesh, why have the raw?”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Diary entry on James Joyce's Ulysses (16 August 1922), quoted in Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary (1953; 1965), p. 47

Books, Cooking

“Deficient self-confidence and self respect, develops low self esteem, and induces the need to find faults in others; wisdom and quality self-confidence, engenders one’s ability to find excellence in the traits of others.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1983

Wisdom, Confidence, Self-confidence

“When you come from your memory, you create one kind of experience. When you come from your intention, you create another kind of experience altogether. Always, with your choices, you are answering a single question: Who am I? Every act is an act of self-definition.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Question, Memory

“Success in any area of your life is not found in producing what you think you must produce on your journey, it’s found in the love, the joy, the happiness, and the sense of True Self that you experience—and that others experience in their life because of you—along the way. That alone can produce the rest of what you think you are “supposed to” produce.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Love, Life, Happiness, Way

“Ultimately, both self and belief drift away, like autumn leaves in a stream.”

Ladybelle Fiske (nickname)

Autumn

“Self-knowledge is the only basis of true knowledge.”

John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author

Knowledge

“Foolish Ever, don't you realize there's no longer any difference between you and your-monster? You are the monster. It's your dark side, your shadow self, and you've now joined as one.”

Alyson Nöel book Dark Flame

Source: Dark Flame

“I'm a bartender. I like recipes. They're concretes. Was the drink recipe for seduction one shot charm and two shots self-deception, shaken, not stirred?”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

Drink

“Till swollen with cunning, of a self-conceit,
His waxen wings did mount above his reach,
And, melting, Heavens conspir'd his overthrow.”

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) English dramatist, poet and translator

Source: The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus

“Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture…Show me a woman who doesn’t feel guilty and I’ll show you a man.”

Erica Jong book Fear of Flying

Variant: Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture... Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.
Source: Fear of Flying

Women, Feeling