Authenticity Quotes

What I think we as the church lack, though, is a place to talk about how things really are right now. In our desire to be an inspiration to one another we often veil what is true, because what is true is not always inspirational. It's not easy to watch or personally experience a marriage on the verge of divorce, or a child battling cancer, or a betrayal of the worst kind, or dreams lost in the dust, or overwhelming feelings of despair or emptiness. But these things are real. And hurting believers whose lives are in tatters need real help. If we were able to put aside our need for approval long enough to be authentic, then, surely, we would be living as the church.

~ Sheila Walsh

Therefore, God elected the people of Israel to reveal authentic worship and the pursuit of ultimate wisdom so he could reinstate order to a chaotic world.

~ James Mikołajczyk

Strong brands are built on unshakable values and authenticity.

~ Simone Smith

Ego is not an enemy to be broken or demolished, as is often portrayed in spiritual literature. We don't want to get rid of the ego, we want to soften it, make it porous and receptive, so information, thoughts, and compassion flow in and out. A healthy ego allows us to have the strength of our convictions yet be open to others. Psychological literature often refers to ego strength - a sureness about ourselves that rests calmly inside, the will to actualize our dreams, or stand fast to our beliefs without worrying about the consequences.By contrast, the rigid or inflated ego is concrete and dualistic - right-wrong, good-bad, friend-foe...It believes the stories we've made up are reality and doesn't realize that they are only the cover over our essence...To deflect fear, the inflated ego dons a mask and becomes artificial in relationships...This leaves us a stranger to ourself and the person we are meeting. In fact, there has been no authentic connection; it's only our personas that have met.

~ Charlotte Kasl

Distraction leaches the authenticity out of our communications. When we are not emotionally present, we are gliding over the surface of our interactions and we never tangle in the depths where the nuances of our skills are tested and refined. A medical professor describes the easy familiarity with which her digital-native resident students master medical electronic records—but is troubled by the fact that they enter data with their eyes focused on their digital devices, not on the patient in the room with them. Preoccupation with technology acts as a screen between the student and the patient’s real emotion, real fear, and real concern. It may also prevent these residents from noticing physical symptoms that the patient fails to mention. The easy busyness of medical record entry is a way to sidestep the more challenging dynamics of human connection. But experienced physicians know that interpersonal skills are essential to mastering the art and science of medical diagnosis.

~ Marian Deegan

It is so easy to practice a creditable degree of so seeming virtue, and so difficult to purify and direct the affections of the heart, that I feel myself in continual danger of appearing better than I am; and I verily believe it is possible to make one’s whole life a display of splendid virtue and agreeable qualities, without ever setting foot towards the narrow path, or even one’s face towards the strait gate.” – Hannah More

~ Karen Swallow Prior

You’ll know that you and the vision are one when your actions flow out of a knowing that’s greater than your fears. Sure, you might be stunned by an obstacle, but it doesn’t determine your ultimate response. Your ultimate response comes from your true, authentic, pure voice.

~ Suzette R. Hinton

The author describes Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn as seldom at ease without a gavel in his hand.

~ Robert A. Caro

We sacrifice our potential because we do not know that we are pure potential.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

Every piece of clutter you dissolve back into clear light allows your higher inner blueprint, your soul’s destiny, to translate fluidly and accurately into the form of your life. The clearer you become, the easier it is to evolve along with the planet—with no snags, stuckness, or suffering. This is the act of becoming transparent.

~ Penney Peirce

When you see through a defense mechanism, you don’t stop at the intimidating behavior but go right on into the underlying misperception about life and through that to the path back to harmony. When you see through people’s fear-based actions, motives, and secrets, you’re really aiming for their sweet vulnerability, inner beauty, and magnificence—and you find their soul.

~ Penney Peirce

The greatest challenge in life is to be our own person and accept that being different is a blessing and not a curse. A person who knows who they are lives a simple life by eliminating from their orbit anything that does not align with his or her overriding purpose and values. A person must be selective with their time and energy because both elements of life are limited.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Authenticity is not a metaphysically distinctive way of being human, it is just a way of taking responsibility for what one has already been given.

~ Peter E. Gordon

I know that no one is my judge. I live according to my own conscience and value discernments which are governed by Holy Spirit. I know my intentions and I walk my path with a clear conscience. Be careful not to make assumptions. I don't even allow my left hand to know what my right hand does. What makes you think I should explain my every unction and action to you?

~ Mishi Mccoy

A person who does not know himself... can not commit to another person. Without being genuine to yourself you are unable to be genuine to anyone else.

~ Rebekah Elizabeth Gamble

It wasn't work. I played myself.

~ Dick Van Dyke

It is a pity that we cannot persuade all ministers to be men, for it is hard to see how other was they can be truly men of God.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

There is no need to become unique. We already are unique. There is no need to become equal. We already are equal. The greatest tragedies of humankind have come from people trying to force sameness on the level we are different, and trying to become different on the level we are the same. Peace is a matter of recognizing what is already there, not creating something new.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

Being your authentic self is the ultimate secret to happiness in life.

~ Sheri Fink

Truly being authentic is knowing what matters to you, on the deepest level of who you are, and committing always to act from that authentic center.

~ Richie Norton

The reader who is only superficially familiar with Caribbean affairs may find the materials of this volume strange. The extent to which violence, both open and covert, is a constant factor in the life of the region may cause surprise. The incongruous and rather unreal quality of many events, whether fanciful or farcical in appearance, may also prove unexpected. If the reader is inclined to doubt the authenticity of certain events, viewing them as too implausible to be true, he may be assured that many things even more strange, which are possibly and even probably true, have been omitted because their accuracy could not be satisfactorily established. Nothing is included here that does not come from sources considered sound. Nothing is included that has not been subjected to every possible verification.

~ Robert D. Crassweller

Don’t walk through life stifling your authenticity, suppressing your uniqueness, hiding your truth out of fear of what others may think. Being someone other than you are only hampers your wellbeing and also wastes a whole lot of your energy.

~ Renee Cefalu

The struggle to live up to an “ideal image” of who we should be in order to feel safe misdirects and depletes our energy.

~ Henna Inam

There are, literally, thousands of people all around the world who need nothing more than to meet someone just like you. To spend your time pretending to be someone else is just as senseless and fear-driven as spending your time speaking to people who don’t understand you. Find your tribe. Let yourself be seen. You are already someone’s hero.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

We cannot let the haters of this world define us. Or frighten us into no longer being ourselves.

~ Mary E. Demuth

As far as I was concerned, a little danger of head-shrinking is a small price to pay in return for a people who have remained true to an ancient code.

~ Tahir Shah

The relational leader operates not by being known by everyone, but by authentically creating positive relationships with people around her.

~ Scott K. Edinger

If you want to trust yourself, make decisions that aregrounded in your authentic principles. Don’t lie. Don’tcheat. Don’t push others down to obtain success.

~ Richie Norton

Have you ever taken yourself a bit too seriously, thinking that who you are is actually defined by what you look like, how much talent you have (or don't have), how well known you are (or aren't), or how much money you have (or don't have)? Those are all garments and labels you wear during the course of your stay here on this planet, but it's not who you are. At the end of the day, when it's all said and done, you will turn all of that back in just like a car you had on lease.

~ Dennis Merritt Jones

If there's fighting to be done, you just to have to stand and fight. That has always been true. It was that way throughout the war. You have to be true to yourself- you can never be something you are not, and you can't fool yourself.

~ Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper

The best life is a simple harmony between who you are and where you're going.

~ Garry Fitchett

Exercising your talents, passion, sense of judgment, and making a difference while doing something you love is the essence of life.

~ Garry Fitchett

The very point that you are not likened by somebody in proof of your authenticity and uniqueness.

~ Ramana Pemmaraju

One of the telltale signs of one who has completely embraced their authentic self is that they are, with great consistency, the same person in public as they are behind closed doors. Until you learn how to access your authentic voice, the uniqueness of who you truly are will never be fully realized. What makes you special (just like everyone else) is that you were placed here on this planet to express the one-of-a-kind being only you can be.

~ Dennis Merritt Jones

To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.

~ Oscar Wilde

I can be a better me than anyone can.

~ Diana Ross

Amidst the rush and confusion of modern life something old and wise is trying to catch up with us. Whereas simple knowledge tends to divide things, genuine wisdom tends to make meaningful unity possible.

~ Michael Meade

Trying to be white? What the hell does that mean? I've never understood that. How could anyone be white when they aren't white? Seems like a simple enough thing to prove, right? Hold out your arm next to someone else's arm and do a simple swatch test. Of course, what people mean when they say that is that there's some kind of authentic black experience that the accused isn't properly expressing. But what is the authentic experience? Clothes that wannabe gangbangers wear on the street? Hood style? What's authentic about that? For that matter, is fashion even a good marker of authenticity or race, anyway? Aren't clothes a second skin you wear over your real skin to obscure who you really are? Can they also express who you really are?

~ Ahmir Questlove Thompson

When you are accepting something as truth, make sure that it feels good for you. Otherwise, you are accepting someone else's truth and it doesn't fit into your vibration. If you stay true to your vibrations you're making the correct choice for you.

~ Nanette Mathews

Anyhow, whether undergraduate or shop boy, man or woman, it must come as a shock about the age of twenty—the world of the elderly—thrown up in such black outline upon what we are; upon the reality; the moors and Byron; the sea and the lighthouse; the sheep’s jaw with the yellow teeth in it; upon the obstinate irrepressible conviction which makes youth so intolerably disagreeable—“I am what I am, and intend to be it,” for which there will be no form in the world unless Jacob makes one for himself. The Plumers will try to prevent him from making it. Wells and Shaw and the serious sixpenny weeklies will sit on its head.

~ Virginia Woolf