Quotes about yourself
page 7

“The secret to feeling great about yourself is not to be found in searching for people who are less than you and then show yourself superior to them, but in searching for people who are more than you and then show yourself worthy of their company.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: CLL statistics for 2002 (was: Looking for Lisp compiler) http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3250612397276876@naggum.no.html (Usenet article). Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

People, Secret, Feeling, Search

“You have to look at yourself objectively. Analyze yourself like an instrument. You have to be absolutely frank with yourself. Face your handicaps, don't try to hide them. Instead, develop something else.”

Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993) British actress

Source: Audrey Hepburn (2002), p. 108

“I say you call yourself Goldstein, Silverstein, and Rubinstein because you're stealing all the gold and silver and rubies all over the earth — and it's true, because of your thieving and stealing and roguing, and lying all over the face of the planet earth.”

Khalid Abdul Muhammad (1948–2001) American activist

Speech in Baltimore (19 February 1994), quoted in New York Times (28 February 1994) "Islamic Figure In New Tirade Against Jews"

Lying

“Why, being dead, do you rely on yourself? You were able to die of your own accord; you cannot come back to life of your own accord. We were able to sin by ourselves, and we are still able to, nor shall we ever not be able to. Let our hope be in nothing but in God. Let us send up our sighs to him; as for ourselves, let us strive with our wills to earn merit by our prayers.”
Quid de se praesumit mortuus? Mori potuit de suo, reviviscere de suo non potest. Peccare per nos ipsos et potuimus et possumus nec tamen per nos resurgere aliquando poterimus. Spes nostra non sit, nisi in Deo 14. Ad illum gemamus, in illo praesumamus; quod ad nos pertinet, voluntate conemur, ut oratione mereamur.

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

348A:4 Against Pelagius; English translation from: Newly Discovered Sermons, 1997, Edmund Hill, John E. Rotelle, New City Press, New York, ISBN 1565481038, 9781565481039 pp. 311-312. http://books.google.com/books?id=0XjYAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Let+us+send+up+our+sighs+to+him,+let+us+rely+on+him%22&dq=%22Let+us+send+up+our+sighs+to+him,+let+us+rely+on+him%22&hl=en&ei=Q75kTajHBoO8lQfW9cTaBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA Editor’s comment: “This sounds like a slightly Pelagian remark! But it is presumably intended to reverse what one may call the Pelagian order of things; and see the last few sections of the sermon, 9-15, on the effect of the heresy on prayer.” http://books.google.com/books?id=0XjYAAAAMAAJ&q=%22This+sounds+like+a+slightly+Pelagian+remark%22&dq=%22This+sounds+like+a+slightly+Pelagian+remark%22&hl=en&ei=9cBkTYenLsKqlAfs56mVBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA Sermons

Life, God, Hope, Dead

“Irony: Do not let yourself be governed by it, especially not in unproductive moments. In productive ones try to make use of it as one more means of seizing life.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Two (5 April 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Life

“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 5: A Crisis in My Mental History (p. 100)

Happiness, Happy

“If you have the right to work with your hands and to gather the harvest for yourself and your children, have you not a right to cultivate your brain? Have you not the right to read, to observe, to investigate — and when you have so read and so investigated, have you not the right to reap that field? And what is it to reap that field? It is simply to express what you have ascertained — simply to give your thoughts to your fellow-men.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

Men, Children, Reading

“When you wonder about the mystery of yourself, look to Christ who gives you the meaning of life. When you wonder what it means to be a mature person, look to Christ who is the fullness of humanity. And when you wonder about your role in the future of the world and of the United States, look to Christ.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Address to High School Students Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1979/october/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19791003_ny-madison-square-garden_en.html

Life, World, Future, Christ

“I had said, Mr. Yahya Khan, you are the President of this country. Come to Dhaka, come and see how our poor Bengali people have been mown down by your bullets, how the laps of our mothers and sisters have been robbed and left empty and bereft, how my helpless people have been slaughtered. Come, I said, come and see for yourself and then be the judge and decide. That is what I told him.”

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920–1975) Bengali revolutionary, founder ("father") of Bangladesh

Quote, This time the struggle is for our freedom (1971)

People, Sister, Country

“Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls, will stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Presidential debate (28 October 1980) http://www.juntosociety.com/pres_debates/carterreagan.html 1980s

Thinking, Decision

“And I said to myself: From now on help anyone and everyone so far as it lies within your power. Cease to be apathetic, indifferent! Exalt yourself by devoting yourself to others, enrich yourself by making everyone's destiny your own, by enduring and understanding every facet of human suffering through your pity. And my heart, astonished at its own workings, quivered with gratitude to the sick girl whom I had hurt unwittingly and who, through her suffering, had taught me the creative magic of pity.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Girl, Understanding, Suffering, Help

“He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire. Perhaps only a man can realize to the full the tragedy of such an undesired relationships; for him alone the necessity to resist t is at once martyrdom and guilt. For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off! Only a moment ago you felt free, you belonged to yourself and were in debt to no one, and now suddenly you find yourself pursued, hemmed in, prey and object of the unwelcome desires of another. Shaken to the depths of your soul, you know that day and night someone is waiting for you, thinking of you, longing and sighing for you - a woman, a stranger. She wants, she demands, she desires you with every fibre of her being, with her body, with her blood. She wants your hands, your hair, your lips, your manhood, your night and your day, your emotions, your senses, and all your thought and dreams. She wants to share everything with you, to take everything from you, and to draw it in with her breath. Henceforth, day and night, whether you are awake or asleep, there is somewhere in the world a being who is feverish and wakeful and who waits for you, and you are the centre of her waking and her dreaming. It is in vain that you try not to think of her, of her who thinks always of you, in vain that you seek to escape, for you no longer dwell in yourself, but in her. Of a sudden a stranger bears your image within her as though she were a moving mirror - no, not a mirror, for that merely drinks in your image when you offer yourself willingly to it, whereas she, the woman, this stranger who loves you, she has absorbed you into her very blood. She carries you always within her, carries you about with her, no mater whither you may flee. Always you are imprisoned, held prisoner, somewhere else, in some other person, no longer yourself, no longer free and lighthearted and guiltless, but always hunted, always under an obligation, always conscious of this "thinking-of-you" as if it were a steady devouring flame. Full of hate, full of fear, you have to endure this yearning on the part of another, who suffers on your account; and I now know that it is the most senseless, the most inescapable, affliction that can befall a man to be loved against his will - torment of torments, and a burden of guilt where there is no guilt.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Love, Hate, Friendship, Fate

“If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law - if that is not what we have always cried out against in Fascist states - then what is it?… If we are to survive as a free democracy, then we must be prepared, in principle, to concede to our enemies - even those who do not subscribe to our views - as much constitutional rights as you concede yourself.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew, Legislative Assembly Debates, Sept 21, 1955
1950s

Law, Democracy

“Know Thyself. All else will be known to thee of its own accord. Discriminate between the undying, unchanging, all-pervading, infinite Atma and the ever-changing, phenomenal and perishable universe and body. Enquire, "Who am I?" Make the mind calm. Free yourself from all thoughts other than the simple thought of the Self or Atma. Dive deep into the chambers of your heart. Find out the real, infinite "I". Rest there peacefully for ever and become identical with the Supreme Self.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

Universe, Change, Heart

“The frontier is the edge between what you know and what you don't know. You want to put yourself on that edge.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

“Always imagine yourself on the battlefield under the fiercest attack; never forget this crucial element of training.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

Source: Budo (1938), p. 36

Imagination, Training, Forgetting

“For me, life is about enjoying yourself because you only live once. We should try to make the most of things and follow our dreams.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Quoted by New Weekly, ninemsn Australia, 19 April 2009

Life, Dreams

“Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.”

Joseph Roux (1834–1905) French poet

Part 5, XXII
Meditations of a Parish Priest (1866)

“Take away a man’s actual sense of manhood — which is conventionally based on the ability to work, to earn money, to be self-sufficient, to provide for children — and you’ve got to give them something else. And they did.This hideous religion that’s all over the country — these huge church-malls — that’s what substitutes for these lost towns. But that’s not a town. That’s a cult. A town is diverse, in a real way, not in this fake way we have now. A community is a butcher and a doctor, a minister, a town troublemaker. A "community" is not a bunch of people united by some grievance. That’s just self-righteousness — incredibly dangerous and antidemocratic. People have become so rigid; their opinions seem to them like themselves. When that happens (and it has happened) people can’t change their minds. If you are identified by your opinions — if that is the very basis of yourself — how can you change your mind?”

Fran Lebowitz (1950) author and public speaker from the United States

Ruminator Magazine interview with Susannah McNeely (August/September 2005).

Money, Children, People, Religion

“There is probably no point in my going into your questions now; for what I could say about your tendency to doubt or about your inability to bring your outer and inner lives into harmony or about all the other thing that oppress you - : is just what I have already said: just the wish that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith; that you may gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people. And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Nine (4 November 1904)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Life, People, Faith, Confidence

“Lastly, what is history for? This is perhaps a harder question than the others; a man who answers it will have to reflect rather more widely than a man who answers the three we have answered already. He must reflect not only on historical thinking but on other things as well, because to say that something is `for' something implies a distinction between A and B, where A is good for something and B is that for which something is good. But I will suggest an answer, and express the opinion that no historian would reject it, although the further questions to which it gives rise are numerous and difficult.
My answer is that history is `for' human self-knowledge. It is generally thought to be of importance to man that he should know himself: where knowing himself means knowing not his merely personal peculiarities, the things that distinguish him from other men, but his nature as man. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a man; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of man you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the man you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what he can do until he tries, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.”

R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) British historian and philosopher

Source: The Idea of History (1946), p. 10

Men, History, Question, Nature

“…to be redeemed to aim at the highest value, to sacrifice what's no longer useful and valid in yourself, and to tell the truth. And the consequence of that is, existence on a deep state of meaning that justifies the tragedy of being and the possibility of transforming your own life, in the most beneficial positive direction, while simultaneously doing that for the people around you. And that's Redemption.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

podcast episode 5 ( https://jordanbpeterson.com/podcasts/podcast-episode/episode-5/) Other

Life, People, Truth

“A guy, a fighter is going to tell you that, ooh, he's not nervous, that he believes in himself 100%. I think he's a liar, or I think he's just not all there. Before [you] fight, you always have some little doubt about yourself, and I think that's what keeps you sharper. So yes, I was confident, but at the same time I was worried. I think that little feeling makes me sharper and makes me stronger.”

Georges St. Pierre (1981) Canadian mixed martial artist

UFC 65 post fight press conference.
MMA

Guy, Feeling, Confidence, Thinking

“Forests in the day are friendly places. They remind you of Sunday walks, swooshing leaves, holding a parent's big, warm hand, or providing that hand yourself. At night the woods take the gloves off and remind you why you're nervous in the dark. Night forests say "Go find a cave, monkey-boy, this place is not for you."”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 1

Boy, Parent, Night

“To know that no one before you has seen an organ you are examining, to trace relationships that have occurred to no one before, to immerse yourself in the wondrous crystalline world of the microscope, where silence reigns, circumscribed by its own horizon, a blindingly white arena — all this is so enticing that I cannot describe it.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Letter to his sister Elena Sikorski (1945); in Nabokov's Butterflies: Unpublished and Uncollected Writings (2000) Edited and annotated by Brian Boyd and Robert Michael Pyle, p. 387.

World, Silence

“Only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

For Anne Gregory http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1483/, st. 3 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

Love, God

“You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.”

Taisen Deshimaru (1914–1982) Japanese Buddhist monk

As quoted in Just Before Dark : Collected Nonfiction (1999) by Jim Harrison, p. 39

Rage

“And so you have to be practical in asking yourself how can you achieve the goals of equality and inclusion, but also recognize that the market system produces a lot of wealth and goods and services. And it also gives individuals freedom because they have initiative. And so you don't have to be rigid in saying it’s either this or that, you can say -- depending on the problem you're trying to solve, depending on the social issues that you're trying to address what works. And I think that what you’ll find is that the most successful societies, the most successful economies are ones that are rooted in a market-based system, but also recognize that a market does not work by itself. It has to have a social and moral and ethical and community basis, and there has to be inclusion. Otherwise it’s not stable. And it’s up to you -- whether you're in business or in academia or the nonprofit sector, whatever you're doing -- to create new forms that are adapted to the new conditions that we live in today.”

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

2016, Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative Town Hall (March 2016)

Communication, Business, Problem, Thinking

“Know your worth! People always act like they're doing more for you than you're doing for them. Ask yourself this question, "Why would they do that?" Obviously, you bring something to the table for them to even do business with you”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Source: Thank You and You're Welcome (2009), p.3-4

People, Question, Business

“Many will think they may reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are opposed to the authority of certain men held in the highest reverence by their inexperienced judgments; not considering that my works are the issue of pure and simple experience, who is the one true mistress. These rules are sufficient to enable you to know the true from the false — and this aids men to look only for things that are possible and with due moderation — and not to wrap yourself in ignorance, a thing which can have no good result, so that in despair you would give yourself up to melancholy.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Men, Thinking, Falseness, Despair

“Would you deny for others what you demand for yourself?
Cool down mama, cool off
You speak of signs and wonders, I need something other.
I would believe if I was able, but I'm waiting on the crumbs from your table.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Lyrics, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

Waiting

“At the end of every television broadcast, the names of the people who worked on it are listed. Why, you may ask yourself sometimes, would so many people want to take credit for such a bad show? Well, its just like what's happened to the dollar. Credits in television suffer from inflation. There are more of them and they arent worth what they used to be, even on a good show.”

Andy Rooney (1919–2011) writer, humorist, television personality

[Andy Rooney, w:Andy Rooney, 6, Credits, Years of Minutes, 2003, PublicAffairs, 978-1586482114]

People, Suffering

“Music is a Place to take Refuge. It's a Sanctuary from Mediocrity and Boredom. It's Innocent and it's a Place you can loose yourself in Thoughts, Memories and Intricacies.”

Lisa Gerrard (1961) Australian musician, singer and composer

Music, Memory

“Beginnings are usually scary and endings are usually sad, but it’s the middle that counts. You have to remember this when you find yourself at the beginning.”

Sandra Bullock (1964) American actress and producer

As quoted in Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News (8 January 2009)

Sadness

“You cannot find yourself in the past or future. The only place where you can find yourself is in the Now.”

Eckhart Tolle book A New Earth

A New Earth (2005)

Past, Future

“The distinction between being a fool and developing yourself is not as clear a distinction as people might like to imagine. They're practicing what they need to practice in order to cope with the world.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

People, World, Fools, Imagination

“So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Speech to the National Association of Evangelicals (8 March 1983)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)

History, Evil

“Even in love, people betray themselves. And when you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself. I would say a great part of human history is a history of self-betrayal and betrayal of others.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

" Isaac Bashevis Singer's Universe http://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/03/archives/isaac-bashevis-singers-universe-errors-and-betrayals.html" by Richard Burgin in The New York Times (3 December 1978)

Love, People, History, Betrayal

“I hate doctors! They'll do anything — anything to keep you coming to them. They'll sell their souls! What's worse, they'll sell yours, and you never know it till one day you find yourself in hell!”

Eugene O'Neill Long Day's Journey into Night

Source: Long Day's Journey into Night (1955), Page 76 (Act 2, Scene 1)

Hate, Soul, Hell

“But everyone in the world has a cross. Mine is mine, yours is yours: I only can make you conscious of your cross and, apart from that, you free yourself or not. This depends on you.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

World, Dependency

“One’s language is a spiritual location. It houses your soul. If you were born in America all essential communication, your deepest conversations with yourself, will be in English. … Your English is the principal instrument of your humanity.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Part I, p. 27
A Jewish Writer in America (2011)

Soul, Communication, Housing

“The Master said, […] "Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles." […] "Have no friends not equal to yourself." […] "When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them."”

James Legge (1815–1897) missionary in China

Bk. 1, Ch. 8 (p. 7)
Translations, The Confucian Analects

Fear, Faith, Sincerity

“To the Youth in Europe and North America,
The recent events in France and similar ones in some other Western countries have convinced me to directly talk to you about them. I am addressing you, [the youth], not because I overlook your parents, rather it is because the future of your nations and countries will be in your hands; and also I find that the sense of quest for truth is more vigorous and attentive in your hearts.
I don’t address your politicians and statesmen either in this writing because I believe that they have consciously separated the route of politics from the path of righteousness and truth.
I would like to talk to you about Islam, particularly the image that is presented to you as Islam. Many attempts have been made over the past two decades, almost since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, to place this great religion in the seat of a horrifying enemy. The provocation of a feeling of horror and hatred and its utilization has unfortunately a long record in the political history of the West.
Here, I don’t want to deal with the different phobias with which the Western nations have thus far been indoctrinated. A cursory review of recent critical studies of history would bring home to you the fact that the Western governments’ insincere and hypocritical treatment of other nations and cultures has been censured in new historiographies.
The histories of the United States and Europe are ashamed of slavery, embarrassed by the colonial period and chagrined at the oppression of people of color and non-Christians. Your researchers and historians are deeply ashamed of the bloodsheds wrought in the name of religion between the Catholics and Protestants or in the name of nationality and ethnicity during the First and Second World Wars. This approach is admirable.
By mentioning a fraction of this long list, I don’t want to reproach history; rather I would like you to ask your intellectuals as to why the public conscience in the West awakens and comes to its senses after a delay of several decades or centuries. Why should the revision of collective conscience apply to the distant past and not to the current problems? Why is it that attempts are made to prevent public awareness regarding an important issue such as the treatment of Islamic culture and thought?
You know well that humiliation and spreading hatred and illusionary fear of the “other” have been the common base of all those oppressive profiteers. Now, I would like you to ask yourself why the old policy of spreading “phobia” and hatred has targeted Islam and Muslims with an unprecedented intensity. Why does the power structure in the world want Islamic thought to be marginalized and remain latent? What concepts and values in Islam disturb the programs of the super powers and what interests are safeguarded in the shadow of distorting the image of Islam? Hence, my first request is: Study and research the incentives behind this widespread tarnishing of the image of Islam.
My second request is that in reaction to the flood of prejudgments and disinformation campaigns, try to gain a direct and firsthand knowledge of this religion. The right logic requires that you understand the nature and essence of what they are frightening you about and want you to keep away from.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

Message of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei To the Youth in Europe and North America http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2001, Khamenei.ir (January 21, 2015) 2015

War, People, Truth, Youth

“The highest of all holidays in the Satanic religion is the date of one's own birth. Every man is a god if he chooses to recognize himself as one. So, the Satanist celebrates his own birthday as the most important holiday of the year. Despite the fact that some of us may not have been wanted, or at least were not particularly planned, we're glad, even if no one else is, that we're here! You should give yourself a pat on the back, buy yourself whatever you want, treat yourself like the king (or god) that you are, and generally celebrate your birthday with as much pomp and ceremony as possible. After one's own birthday, the two major Satanic holidays are Walpurgisnacht and Halloween (or All Hallows' Eve). The solstices and equinoxes are also celebrated as holidays, as they herald the first day of the seasons.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

God, Religion, Birthday, Birth

“At such moments I don't think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains. This is where Mother and I differ greatly. Her advice in the face of melancholy is: "Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you're not part of it." My advice is: "Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer. Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy."”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Dan denk ik niet aan al de ellende, maar aan het mooie dat nog overblijft. Hierin ligt voor een groot deel het verschil tussen moeder en mij. Haar raad voor zwaarmoedigheid is: "Denk aan al de ellende in de wereld en wees blij, dat jij die niet beleeft!"
Mijn raad is: "Ga naar buiten, naar de velden, de natuur en de zon, ga naar buiten en probeer het geluk in jezelf te hervinden en in God. Denk aan al het mooie dat er in en om jezelf nog overblijft en wees gelukkig!"
7 March 1944
Variant translations:
:Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
Think of all the beauty that is still left in and around you and be happy!
(1942 - 1944)

Happiness, World, Beauty, Nature

“With each new child, your ability to love grows. It’s not a matter of dividing your love among more children, so that each one gets less of it, but you actually have more to give with each new delivery. Children help you to stop thinking of yourself and expand your horizons. This is a joyful challenge. It’s more difficult than football or any other job, but also more rewarding.”

Matt Birk (1976) Player of American football

Baltimore Ravens’ Matt Birk Stays Centered on Christ http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/baltimore-ravens-matt-birk-stays-centered-on-christ (February 3, 2013)

Love, Children, Thinking, Help

“The moment when you really experience that you have created yourself being whatever way you are, at that same moment you will never have to be that way again.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in — [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 252, 0-517-53502-5]

Way

“I think it was really interesting to see how Malia and Sasha reacted. They were disappointed. They paid attention to what their mom said during the campaign and believed it because it’s consistent with what we have tried to teach them in our household and what I’ve tried to model as a father with their mom and what we’ve asked them to expect from future boyfriends or spouses. But what we’ve also tried to teach them is resilience and we’ve tried to teach them hope and that the only thing that is the end of the world is the end of the world. And so, you get knocked down, you get up, brush yourself off and you get back to work.”

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

2017, Final News Conference as President (January 2017)

World, Hope, Disappointment, Moms

“Once you begin to take yourself seriously as a leader or as a follower, as a modern or as a conservative, then you become a self-conscious, biting, and scratching little animal whose work is not of the slightest value or importance to anybody.”

Virginia Woolf A Letter to a Young Poet

"A Letter to a Young Poet"
The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)

Animals

“The gospel freely admitted makes a man happy. It gives him peace with God, and makes him happy in God. It gives to industry a noble, contented look which selfish drudgery never wore; and from the moment that a man begins to do his work for his Saviour's sake, he feels that the most ordinary employments are full of sweetness and dignity, and that the most difficult are not impossible. And if any of you, my friends, is weary with his work, if dissatisfaction with yourself or sorrow of any kind disheartens you, if at any time you feel the dull paralysis of conscious sin, or the depressing influence of vexing thoughts, look to Jesus, and be happy. Be happy, and your joyful work will prosper well.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 368.

God, Happiness, Peace, Feeling

“I’ve been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prize fighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy. There are those who say I’m impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash, and overbearing. Whether I’m any of those things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am —and this ought to be made very clear—I am a very serious woman.”

Bella Abzug (1920–1998) American politician

Bella!, introduction (1972)

Courage

“My mother once told me never be a second-rate version of somebody else when you can be a first-rate version of yourself.”

Liza Minnelli (1946) American actress and singer

"[G]racefully handl[ing] audience demands for 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow,'" as quoted in "Coy Minnelli wows spirited audience; UM announces MCA construction" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LQY1AAAAIBAJ&sjid=QE8KAAAAIBAJ&pg=3215%2C676019 by Alicia Amstead, in The Bangor Daily News (September 18, 2006), p. A10

“Sex is difficult; yes. But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious. If you just recognize this and manage, out of yourself, out of your own talent and nature, out of your own experience and childhood and strength, to achieve a wholly individual relation to sex (one that is not influenced by convention and custom), then you will no longer have to be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your dearest possession.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Four (16 July 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Sex, Nature, Childhood

“Get hold of yourself, be confident once more, don't forget that it is not given to just anyone to have idolized discouragement without succumbing to it.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Confidence, Forgetting

“Instead of supposing that a work of art must be something that all can behold—a poem, a painting, a book, a great building—consider making your own life a work of art. You have yourself to begin with, and a time of uncertain duration to work on it. You do not have to be what you are, and even though you may be quite content with who you are, it will not be hard for you to think of something much greater that you might become. It need not be something spectacular or even something that will attract notice from others. What it will be is a kind of excellence that you project for yourself, and then attain—something that you can take a look at, with honest self-appraisal, and be proud of.”

Richard Taylor (philosopher) (1919–2003) American philosopher, born 1919

Source: Restoring Pride: The Lost Virtue of Our Age (1995), p. 64

Life, Books, Art, Thinking

“Why should you trouble yourself about the future? You do not even properly know about the present. Take care of the present, the future will take care of itself.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

Future

“I can tell you that — and this is something I have told him — that this is a job of such magnitude that you can’t do it by yourself. You are enormously reliant on a team. Your Cabinet, your senior White House staff, all the way to fairly junior folks in their 20s and 30s but who are executing on significant responsibilities. And so, how you put a team together to make sure that they’re getting you the best information and they are teeing up the options from which you will ultimately make decisions. That’s probably the most useful constructive advice and the most constructive advice that I’ve been able to give him, that if you find yourself isolated because the process breaks down or if you’re only hearing from people who agree with you on everything or if you haven’t created a process that is fact-checking and probing and asking hard questions about policies or promises that you’ve made, that’s when you start making mistakes. And as I indicated in some of my previous remarks, reality has a way of biting back if you’re not paying attention to it.”

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

On the job of the U.S. President and the need of good advisers and staff
2017, Final News Conference as President (January 2017)

People, Way, Question, Reality

“Money, you've got lots of friends
Crowding round the door
When you're gone, spending ends
They don't come no more
Rich relations give
Crust of bread and such
You can help yourself
But don't take too much.”

Billie Holiday (1915–1959) American jazz singer and songwriter

God Bless The Child

Money, Help

“If you dig a pit for others to fall into,
you will fall into it yourself.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Rumi Daylight (1990)

“[Nasreddin had to don his finest clothes in order to be admitted to a fancy dinner party. ]
He reached over, took a piece of meat and stuffed it in his shirt. He poked the next piece into his cummerbund. Then he jammed one into each pocket of his pants. All eyes were on Nasreddin as he gathered the long sleeves of his cloak and soaked them in the bowl of hot gravy. A stunned guest jumped to his feet and demanded, Effendi! [Sir! ] What is the meaning of your outrageous behavior?" "Well," said Nasreddin Odjah, "when you find yourself in a place where clothes are more welcome than the person wearing them, you must feed the clothes first and the person afterward!"”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Flora Joy, Treasures from Europe: stories and classroom activities (2003), "Nasreddin Odjah's Clothes (Macedonia)", , p. 104

Behavior, Personality, Clothes

“You've got to believe in yourself
Or no one will believe in you
Imagination like a bird on the wing
Flying free for you to use”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Believer, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads and Bob Daisley
Song lyrics, Diary of a Madman (1981)

Imagination, Bird, Flying

“Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.”

Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Danish physicist

As quoted in Values of the Wise : Humanity's Highest Aspirations (2004) by Jason Merchey, p. 63

Thinking

“The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

"Perennial Fashion — Jazz" (1978), Prisms, p. 129, as translated by Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber (1981)

“I know the title of a King is a glorious title, but assure yourself that the shining glory of princely authority hath not so dazzled the eyes of our understanding, but that we well know and remember that we also are to yield an account of our actions before the great judge. To be a king and wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to them that bear it.”

Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) Queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until 1603

The Golden Speech (1601)

Understanding

“Submit to Islam and be safe. Or agree to the payment of the Jizya (tax), and you and your people will be under our protection, else you will have only yourself to blame for the consequences, for I bring the men who desire death as ardently as you desire life.”

Khalid ibn al-Walid (592–642) companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad

This letter was written by Khalid, from his head-quarters in Babylonia, to the Persian monarch Emperor Yazdegerd III before invading it. (History of the World, Volume IV [Book XII. The Mohammedan Ascendency], page 463, by John Clark Ridpath, LL.D. 1910.

Life, Death, Men, People

“You have to keep your reflexes so that when you want it — it’s there. When you want to move — you are moving. And when you move, you are determined to move! Not accepting even one inch less than 100 percent of your honest feelings. Not anything less than that. So that is the type of thing you have to train yourself into. To become one with your feelings so that, when you think — it is.”

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

Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 126

Feeling, Thinking, Training

“What, after all, is a pretty woman? It's a mere subjective impression – what you yourself think of her. That's what I paint, another kind of beauty of my own.”

André Derain (1880–1954) French painter and engraver

Source: The Wild Men of Paris', 1910, p. 406

Beauty, Thinking, Painting

“If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 24e

“To detach yourself elegantly from the world; to give contour and grace to sadness; a solitude in style; a walk that gives cadence to memories; stepping towards the intangible; with the breath in the trembling margins of things; the past reborn in the overflow of fragrances; the smell, through which we conquer time; the contour of the invisible things; the forms of the immaterial; to deepen yourself in the intangible; to touch the world airborne by smell; aerial dialogue and gliding dissolution; to bathe in your own reflecting fragmentation…”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The Book of Delusions (1936)

World, Sadness, Solitude, Memory

“(a picture of)a naked woman, although she was covering her pubis with her right hand and her breasts with her left. _ _ _ _ covering yourself up like that is worse than showing everything”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), pp. 58–59 (Vintage 2003)

“Ishta-devata and Guru are aids - very powerful aids on this path. But an aid to be effective requires your effort also. Your effort is a sine qua non. It is you who should see the sun. Can spectacles and the sun see for you? You yourself have to see your true nature. Not much aid is required for doing it!”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

Nature, Effort, Sun

“If you are going to sell yourself, you should at least get a good price.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“The deepest and most organic death is death in solitude, when even light becomes a principle of death. In such moments you will be severed from life, from love, smiles, friends and even from death. And you will ask yourself if there is anything besides the nothingness of the world and your own nothingness.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Love, Life, Death, World

“A. There is something cosmically constitutive about consciousness, B. That might well be considered divine, and C. That is instantiated in every person. Ask yourself if you're not a criminal if you don't act that out. And then ask yourself, what does that mean? Even if this is a metaphor, it's true enough that we mess with it at our peril.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Personality

“I believe in clear-cut positions. I think that the most arrogant position is this apparent, multidisciplinary modesty of "what I am saying now is not unconditional, it is just a hypothesis," and so on. It really is a most arrogant position. I think that the only way to be honest and expose yourself to criticism is to state clearly and dogmatically where you are. You must take the risk and have a position.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Conversations with Žižek by Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), p. 45

Way, Thinking

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”

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

Attributed to Gandhi in Stone, The Full Spectrum Synthesis Bible, iUniverse, 2001. link to Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=K6NiilgGaqMC&pg=PA168&dq=%22lose+yourself+in+the+service+of+others%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMI9pbPuNK_yAIVVMxjCh0RxgLp#v=onepage&q=%22lose%20yourself%20in%20the%20service%20of%20others%22&f=false. However, very similar quotes are found in the nineteenth century: "Have you sorrows or trials that seem very heavy to bear? Then let me tell you that one of the best ways in the world to lighten and sweeten them is to lose yourself in the service of others ..." from Trine, What All The World's A-Seeking (1896) Google Books link https://books.google.com/books?id=9oM7AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA78&dq=%22lose+yourself+in+the+service+of+others%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAWoVChMIrZvI7tG_yAIVEcVjCh0WsgJW#v=onepage&q=%22lose%20yourself%20in%20the%20service%20of%20others%22&f=false; "To lose yourself in the service of others may be to truly find yourself" from Usher, Protestantism (1897) Googe Books link https://books.google.com/books?id=kftDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA43&dq=%22lose+yourself+in+the+service+of+others&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMI4_Ls6NG_yAIVQsdjCh1iSAL7#v=onepage&q=%22lose%20yourself%20in%20the%20service%20of%20others&f=false. Disputed

Way

“You cannot look at the success of black people by seeing who is on the front of Ebony magazine or by looking at Oprah. When you consider that only 1 percent of all business revenue comes from black-owned businesses, you have to ask yourself if this class disparity is the kind of society we want.”

Elaine Brown (1943) American activist

UCLA Thurgood Marshall Lecture. (2008). Thurgood Marshall Lecture on Law and Human Rights. [Online Video]. 17 April. Available from: http://forum-network.org/lecture/education-liberation-black-panther-party. [Accessed: 13 March 2012].

People, Business, Success

“How does America find its way in this new, global economy? What will our place in history be? Like so much of the American story, once again, we face a choice. Once again, there are those who believe that there isn’t much we can do about this as a nation. That the best idea is to give everyone one big refund on their government—divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it—Social Darwinism—every man or woman for him or herself. It’s a tempting idea, because it doesn’t require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford—tough luck. It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job—life isn’t fair. It let’s us say to the child who was born into poverty—pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it is especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life’s lottery, that we’re the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won’t be the chump who Donald Trump says: “You’re fired!” But there is a problem. It won’t work. It ignores our history. It ignores the fact that it’s been government research and investment that made the railways possible and the internet possible. It’s been the creation of a massive middle class, through decent wages and benefits and public schools that allowed us all to prosper. Our economic dependence depended on individual initiative. It depended on a belief in the free market; but it has also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, the idea that everybody has a stake in the country, that we’re all in it together and everybody’s got a shot at opportunity. That’s what’s produced our unrivaled political stability.”

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

Knox College Commencement Address (4 June 2005)
2005

Life, Health, Education, School

“Doctors! You know yourself, without the help of any doctors that your case has no foundation! I care not a straw for your Doctors! For every Doctor and Lawyer that upholds your case I could find a thousand that would find our marriage good and valid!”

Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536) first wife of Henry VIII of England (1485–1536)

Alison Weir (1991). The Six Wives of Henry VIII. ISBN 0802136834, p. 213.

Marriage, Help

“(to Liam) "No, don't be sorry [for yourself]." (twin sister finishes for him)”

Zayn Malik (1993) British singer

Sister

“Save yourself from the wrath of Allah (swt), and do not abandon speaking the truth, even though it (apparently) causes your destruction. Know that truth does not lead into your annihilation; rather it is a saviour. Always let go of the untruth; even though it (apparently) saves you. Untruth is never a saviour, and it eventually leads into annihilation.”

Musa al-Kadhim (745–799) Seventh of the Twelve Imams and regarded by Sunnis as a renowned scholar

Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 408.
Religious Wisdom

Truth

“And clenching your fist for the ones like us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty, you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind, we are ugly but we have the music."”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"Chelsea Hotel #2"
Other Lyrics

Beauty, Music

“O scenes of the beautiful world! Never have you presented yourself to more appreciative eyes.”

Thomas Mann book Confessions of Felix Krull

Bk. 2, Ch. 4
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man (1954)

World, Beauty

“To injure an opponent is to injure yourself. To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

The Art of Peace (1992)

Peace, Art

“Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Love, Way

“By knowing yourself as the awareness in which phenomenal existence happens, you become free of dependency on phenomena and free of self seeking in situations, places, and conditions. In other words, what happens or doesn't happen is not that important anymore. Things lose their heaviness, their seriousness. A playfulness comes into your life. You recognize this world as a cosmic dance, the dance of form.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Stillness Speaks (2003)

Life, World, Dance, Dependency

“Do not consider yourself deprived because your dreams were not fulfilled; the truly deprived have never dreamed.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 79.

Dreams

“At the end of the day, if you are in Aljunied, ask yourself: Do you want one MP, one Non-Constituency MP, one celebrity who has been away 30 years, and two unknowns to look after you? Or would you prefer me and my hand-picked colleagues?”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

assessment on the alternative Workers' Party candidates contesting in the Aljunied GRC for General Elections 2011 (Yahoo News, April 30, 2011, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/aljunied-voters-will-regret-choosing-wp--mm-lee.html) 2010s

“Fun seems to be a three-letter word these days, although with directors like Tim Burton and George Lucas, it's fun, fun, fun while working yourself to death. But if you compare those Hammer movies to what has been made in the last 20 years - Brian de Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Wes Craven, Tim Burton and Peter Jackson have all said the same thing to me: 'We were brought up on your movies.”

Christopher Lee (1922–2015) British actor and singer

And it certainly shows in theirs. Work hard - and play plenty of golf https://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/feb/24/books.guardianreview (February 23, 2001)

Death

“It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique (1963), Ch. 14 "A New Life Plan for Women".

“You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits, but I hope you don't. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although I believe you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, although I do believe you have that debt. It's because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition.”

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

Wesleyan Graduation Ceremony, Middletown, Connecticut (25 May 2008) http://www.politico.com/pdf/PPM42_remarks_of_obama.pdf 2008

Hope, Thinking, Help, Housing

“And at last we've got to the end of this ideal racecourse! Now that you accept A and B and C and D, of course you accept Z."
"Do I?" said the Tortoise innocently. "Let's make that quite clear. I accept A and B and C and D. Suppose I still refused to accept Z?"
"Then Logic would take you by the throat, and force you to do it!" Achilles triumphantly replied. "Logic would tell you, 'You can't help yourself. Now that you've accepted A and B and C and D, you must accept Z!' So you've no choice, you see."
"Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down," said the Tortoise. "So enter it in your notebook, please. We will call it
(E) If A and B and C and D are true, Z must be true.
Until I've granted that, of course I needn't grant Z. So it's quite a necessary step, you see?”

Lewis Carroll book What the Tortoise Said to Achilles

"I see," said Achilles; and there was a touch of sadness in his tone.
"What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", Mind, n.s., 4 (1895), pp. 278–80

Sadness, Help

“Live as though only God and yourself were in this world, so that your heart may not be detained by anything human.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

The Sayings of Light and Love

God, World, Heart

“I think, the people around home are very supportive to us and those are the people who really matter to us, our close friends and close family and I think if they feel you are doing the right thing you can only be true to yourself and you sort of have to ignore a lot of what's said, obviously take it on board, but you have to be yourself really and that's how I have stuck by it really.”

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (1982) Wife of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge

First post-engagement interview (2010)

People, Family, Feeling, Home

“Far less import than your belief of whether god exists is what you think your belief entails. Does it direct your behaviour by rules and commandments that are set out before you or does it require you to think them through yourself? Does it require you to try to make sense of the world, or does it give up on sense itself? And I think these are the crucial distinctions. Not whether you add belief in a god to them.”

Susan Neiman (1955) American academic

Beyond Belief conference (November 2006)

God, World, Thinking, Sense

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Helen Schucman (1909–1981) Clinical Psychologist

Jesus' Course in Miracles (2000) by Helen Schucman and William Thetford, Ch. 16 The Forgiveness of Illusions, p. 162

Love, Deep, Courageous, Relationship

“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”

Laozi book Tao Te Ching

Variant translation by Lin Yutang: "He who knows others is learned; he who knows himself is wise".
Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 33, as interpreted by Stephen Mitchell (1992)

Wisdom, Intelligence, Success

“You can't have the conversation about rights without the conversation about responsibility, because your rights are my responsibility. That's what they are technically. So, you just can't have only half of that discussion. And we're only having half of that discussion. Then the questions is, 'well what are you leaving out if you're only having that half of the discussion.' And the answer is, 'well, you're leaving out responsibility.' And then the questions is, 'Well, what are you leaving out if you're leaving out responsibility.' And the answer might be: 'Well maybe you're leaving out the meaning of life.' Here you are, suffering away. What makes it worthwhile? Rights? It's almost impossible to describe how bad an idea that is. Responsibility. That's what gives life meaning. Lift a load. Then you can tolerate yourself. Look at yourself. You're useless. Easily hurt. Easily killed. Why should you have any self-respect? Pick something up and carry it. Make it heavy enough so that you can think, yah, well, useless as I am, at least I can move that from there to there. For men, there's nothing but responsibility. Women have their sets of responsibilities. They're not the same. Women have to take primary responsibility for having infants at least, then also for caring for them. They're structured differently than men for biological necessity. Women know what they have to do. Men have to figure out what they have to do. And if they have nothing worth living for, then they stay Peter Pan. And why the hell not? The alternative to valued responsibility is low class pleasure. Why lift a load if there's nothing in it for you? And that's what we're doing to men and boys that's a very bad idea. Basically we give them the message, 'you're pathological and oppressive.' They often respond, 'fine then, why the hell should I play? If I get no credit for bearing responsibility, then you can be sure I won't bear any.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Then your life is useless and meaningless, and you're full of self contempt and nihilism, and that's not good. And so that's what I think is going on at a deeper level with regard to men needing this direction. A man has to decide that he's going to do something. He has to decide that."
Concepts

Life, Women, Men, Pleasure

“If you wish to thoroughly accustom yourself to correct and good positions for your fingers, fasten a frame or a loom divided into squares by threads between your eye and the nude figure which you are representing, and then make the same squares upon the paper where you wish to draw the said nude but very faintly. You should then put a pellet of wax on a part of the network to serve as a mark which as you look at your model should always cover the pit of the throat, or if he should have turned his back make it cover one of the vertebrae of the neck. …The squares you draw may be as much smaller than those of the network in proportion as you wish your figure to be less than life size…”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XXIX Precepts of the Painter

Life, Parting, Drawing

“Think before you speak. Read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn't make up yourself - a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions.”

Fran Lebowitz book Social Studies

"Tips for Teens".
Social Studies (1981)

Age, Thinking, Reading

Quotes about yourself page 7

Quotes about yourself
page 7