Authenticity Quotes

Our suppressing who we are to fit in is exhausting. It kills flow and creativity. It also prevents genuine connection with others.

~ Henna Inam

I did not come this far to settle for less than I deserve.

~ April Williams

Being true to ourselves is about having courage to define our own version of what it is to live a successful life.

~ Henna Inam

A prophet is always underestimated, and part of what makes one a prophet is that he doesn't really mind it.

~ Criss Jami

In general, when a novel manipulates its material to conform to the pieties of the day, or alternatively to attack those pieties for no other reason than the visibility such an attack will generate, when its literary tropes are all too familiar, its clever prose reminiscent of other clever prose, then the compass needle is slipping away from true north . . . When, on the other hand, the author renounces some easy twist, some expected payoff, to take us into territory we didn’t expect but that nevertheless fits with the drift of the story, then the novel gains force and conviction. And when he or she does it again, telling quite a different story that is nevertheless driven by the same urgent tensions, then we are likely moving into the zone of authenticity.

~ Tim Parks

It's not what you lift, it's where you carry it.

~ David Foster Wallace

If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.

~ Brené Brown

He felt the inability to grieve as a terrible flaw.

~ Frank Herbert

Confused? Confusion is good. It’s an excellent place to learn something new from.

~ Henna Inam

Keep your heart clearAnd transparent,And you willNever be bound.A single disturbed thoughtCreates ten thousand distractions.

~ Ryōkan

Meditation is about mindfulness and learning to strip away the illusion, revealing your authentic self and connectedness to everything and everyone.

~ Nanette Mathews

You don't have to go on a quest to find silence-it's a matter of uncovering it right where you are. Think about it: if all external and internal sounds were eliminated, only silence would remain. The question is, how much silence can you bear? How deep are you willing to go below surface living to reconnect with who you truly are?

~ Dennis Merritt Jones

We can't pack down hurt, nor can we off-load it to someone else while maintaining our authenticity and integrity. Most of us have been on the receiving end of one of these outbursts. Even if we have the insight to know that our boss, friend, colleague, or partner blew up at us because something tender was triggered and it's not actually about us, it still shatters trust and respect. Living, growing up, working, or worshipping on eggshells creates huge cracks in our sense of safety and self-worth. Over time, it can be experienced as trauma.

~ Brené Brown

Trust that, when you are not holding yourself together so tightly, you will not fall apart. Trust that it is more important to fulfill your authentic desires than listen to your fears. Trust that your intuition is leading you somewhere. Trust that the flow of life contains you, is bigger than you, and will take care of you — if you let it.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

You make me feel at home in my own skin, and that is one of the greatest gifts anyone has ever given me.

~ John Mark Green

If it’s convenient to love you, you’re lying to someone about who you are or what you need.

~ Agnostic Zetetic

Hypocrisy versus authenticity among men is not always so black and white, and as is righteousness, humility is often self-proclaimed. The Church is most definitely supposed to be a hospital for the spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically sick, hurting, and broken individual, yet ironically, many of its critics are those who ran away and permanently denounced its members after they visited and felt that they were sneezed on.

~ Criss Jami

YOU are a signature to be dealt with and inspire, only when you move in to your authenticity.

~ Angie Karan

It’s no secret that we all live within a damning illusion called denial. We are doomed by our own far-reaching imaginations and beliefs that extend into a glorified version of eternity. How are we to live sanely on the earth, with our heads in the clouds, when we are so far from being giants? How are we to claim higher ideals, when God is absent from the conversations in our minds? There can be no going back, once we’ve believed in perfection. We are slain by the stories we were taught as children, stories about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and a God who cares. We pass these heirlooms to our children with the same fervor with which they were delivered, never allowing ourselves to doubt their authenticity or value. I wondered what the view held outside the proverbial slaughterhouse. For a spiritually awakened person, a good God seems the only reasonable answer. If there’s no eternal good, then what would be the use of life? Man lays the tracks of good and evil before the train of his evolution, moving onward into places he barely understands

~ Christopher Hawke

Being authentic, and being perceived as such by your audience, relies on your ability to ensure that every decision you make when it comes to your business is rooted in being true to yourself.

~ Gary Vaynerchuk

All selling should spring from service

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

Practice holding labels lightly as leaders so you have greater range in your behaviors and are more adaptable and effective in a greater range of situations.

~ Henna Inam

I believe the most difficult situation to be in, is one of mind-game-playing. Interestingly enough, it can be observed that it’s those from the most prosperous countries that tend to play the most mind-games with other people. They even write things about it. Why is it very difficult to be honest and transparent about what one thinks and feels? Why must one resort to manipulations and mind-mockery and mimicry? It is such a sad situation or state for any person to be in. Living in cubicle within cubicle within cubicle of themselves. Victims and perpetrators of mind games, interestingly, are the most paranoid about it happening to them— because they do it, they think everyone else does it too. Or because it’s been done to them, they think everyone will do it to them. Why cannot people say what they think, think what they say, say what they mean and mean what they say? The world would be happier if we were all just living out in a big plain in Africa! Roaming with animals, walking barefoot, being simple, transparent, real...

~ C. Joybell C.

Christmas embodies everything that I need. However, everything that I need is often made up of a lot of stuff I don’t want.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Your truest spiritual path will lead you to yourself for it is devoted to becoming.

~ Mollie Marti

Arrange your life in such a way that you don't make choices based on fear of God, instead of love of God.

~ Shannon L. Alder

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.

~ Anne Lamott

Don’t try to please others at the expense of your values and your integrity. At the end of the day, you want to like yourself when you look in a mirror.

~ Millen Livis

It felt important to be able to pick up and go whenever this endless stirring and inevitable craving for a change of scenery would bubble over because I didn’t want to die someday yearning for something else when it was only “something else” worth living.

~ Jackie Haze

Then he had looked on his spirit as his I; now, it was his healthy strong animal I that he looked upon as himself. And all this terrible change has come about because he had ceased to believe himself and had taken to believing others. This he had done because it was too difficult to live believing one's self: believing one's self, one had to decide every question, not in favour of one's animal I, which was always seeking for easy gratification, but in almost every case against it. Believing others, there was nothing to decide; everything had been decided already, and always in favor of the animal I and against the spiritual. Nor was this all. Believing in his own self, he was always exposing himself to the censure of those around him; believing others, he had their approval.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Within, you hold a tiny piece of eternity, a fraction of life, a mirror of the universe.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

By no longer relying on approval from others for (false) reassurance or acceptance, you access a Divine channel of freedom.

~ Maria Flynn

Keep going even when the going is slow and uncertain.Make your dream your prayer and your service.Don’t wait for recognition. Let it find you working. Romanticize authenticity instead of perfection.

~ G.g. Renee Hill

One of the things about Ike that makes him so indisputably a hero is that he doesn't leave his own contradictions to the effete disputations of armchair scholars. He grapples with them himself, in his own lifetime.

~ Mark Leyner

We should be authentic: the ‘real deal’. Neither a clone nor mimic be.

~ Fennel Hudson

Ego is borne of the need to ‘prove’ oneself instead of making the choice to ‘be’ oneself. And so maybe we need to begin curbing the birthrate.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

one of the central themes associated with developing a sense of authenticity involves inventing plausible narratives of self. For instance, Charles Taylor (1992) argues that the modern desire for authenticity is often prompted by a feeling that our life is shattered and it is difficult, if not impossible, to piece our life together in a meaningful way. He suggests that reclaiming authenticity would entail the provision of a space where we can once again craft coherent narratives that bind our life together.

~ André Spicer

I'd rather be authentic than true.

~ Kevin Mcpherson Eckhoff

We throw away real people searching for the perfect person the same way that we throw ourselves away searching for our perfect self.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

I figure the more people think I'm just mildly weird, the less likely they are to know how weird I really am.

~ Melanie Hooyenga