Self Knowledge Quotes

I never really grew up until I had kids.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Our “selves”, our “being”, our “ego”, our “soul”, our individuality, our personality, … is only our mind continuously adapting to its environment to insure survival and well-being, working with whatever inherited predispositions (formed by previous generations of minds adapting to their environment) it has to work with.If we could only make our beautiful mind come in contact with the facts, ALL the facts… , we could trust it with the rest, ALL the rest.Our beautiful mind will always do the right thing.Always.The thing is to find the facts. ALL the facts. Not one less.

~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

The human mind – a product of the brain – controls our ability to adapt to a hostile or friendly environment. Human beings are composed of fields of energy, some of which forces are positive, and other force fields are negative. We can use constructive reason to penetrate only a limited segment of the human mind, which projects discernible logical thought process. A person’s mind also houses dark areas of reality, the mysterious apparatus that eludes the grasp of human reason. We can never express the truth of a person with a precise lucid principle. A person must travel beyond realism in order to explore every facet of his or her being and live his or her most cherished dreams.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The most profound personal growth does not happen while reading a book or meditating. It happens in the throes of conflict, when you are angry, afraid, frustrated. It happens when you are doing the same old thing and you suddenly realize that you have a choice.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

The metaphysical poetry of our innovative life springs from the aesthetic, scenic, and systematic processes of inventiveness, the creative impulse of an active mind generating aesthetical intuition.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Each individual possesses a conscience which to a greater or lesser degree serves to restrain the unimpeded flow of impulses destructive to others. But when he merges his person into an organizational structure, a new creature replaces autonomous man, unhindered by the limitations of individual morality, freed of humane inhibition, mindful only of the sanctions of authority.

~ Stanley Milgram

I always have my reasons, even when I don't know what they are.

~ Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Self-knowledge is power.

~ David Cohen

Nothing we ever imagined is beyond our powers, only beyond our present self-knowledge.

~ Theodore Roszak

Don’t ever feel bad for making a decision about your own life that upsets other people. You are not responsible for their happiness. You’re responsible for your own happiness. Anyone who wants you to live in misery for their happiness should not be in your life anyway.

~ Isaiah Hankel

One minute with a silent spirit of self-knowledge is enough to align you to put smiles on the face of the boring world. The world needs you! Yes it does!

~ Israelmore Ayivor

The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.

~ Gabor Maté

Our lives teach us who we are. I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own ... then you might as well be dead.

~ Salman Rushdie

Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.

~ Camille Paglia

It seems like such an amazing predicament to me, how one does not become a better person by seeking out in the world those who are lesser than himself and then saying, I will be better than you because you're not as good as me. You don't become better by looking at others and trying to be better than them. You become a better person by looking at yourself in the mirror, and, seeking to overcome and to overthrow all the flaws within yourself, you overcome the weaker you, the lesser you; you become the better You, the stronger You, the higher You. That's how it goes.

~ C. Joybell C.

Funny how in a material world full of pundits and economists obsessed with assets and liabilities -personally, economically and globally - few speak about the greatest of all these…YOU.

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

I've learned far too much to know everything.

~ J.s.b. Morse

You are in prison. If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison. If you think you are free, you can't escape.

~ G.i. Gurdjieff

The vast majority of people are unthinking prejudice machines.

~ Stefan Molyneux

The manic relief that comes from the fantasy that we can with one savage slash cut the chains of the past and rise like a phoenix, free of all history, is generally a tipping point into insanity, akin to believing that we can escape the endless constraints of gravity, and fly off a tall building. “I’m freeeee… SPLAT!”.

~ Stefan Molyneux

In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth?

~ Carl R. Rogers

Integrity is congruence between what you know, what you profess, and what you do.

~ Nathaniel Branden

Self-esteem is not a luxury, it is a profound spiritual need.

~ Nathaniel Branden

Genuine self esteem – please understand this – genuine self esteem is not competitive or comparative. Genuine self esteem isn’t expressed by self-glorification at the expense of others, or by trying to make yourself superior to everyone else, or diminishing others in order to elevate yourself. Arrogance, boastfulness, the overestimation of your abilities, reflect low self esteem, even though we’re often encouraged to believe the opposite. In human beings, joy in the simple fact of existence is a core meaning of healthy self esteem. Thus understood, how can you possibly have too much of it?

~ Nathaniel Branden

One of the best ways of repressing emotions is artificial certainty.

~ Stefan Molyneux

It is a mistake to look at someone who is self assertive and say, It's easy for her, she has good self-esteem. One of the ways you build self-esteem is by being self-assertive when it is not easy to do so. There are always times when self-assertiveness requires courage, no matter how high your self-esteem.

~ Nathaniel Branden

The idea that you have to be protected from any kind of uncomfortable emotion is what I absolutely do not subscribe to.

~ John Cleese

The essential quality of a market system, contrary to popular thinking, is not that it promotes greed; but rather, that it renders greed harmless.

~ Israel M. Kirzner

The processing of universals is the job of the unconscious. If we feed it the opposite it breaks, when it breaks we break and the people around us break.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Lies don't make you happy. They just make you lie about being happy.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Vengeance against predators is meals on wheels.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Suffering is just about the easiest of all human activities; being happy is just about the hardest. And happiness requires, not surrender to guilt, but emancipation from guilt.

~ Nathaniel Branden

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying — to others and to yourself.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When people encounter the free market and they recoil or react negatively to it, they're merely confessing that voluntaryism, trade and negotiation are foreign and threatening to them, which tells you everything about how tragically they were raised.

~ Stefan Molyneux

One of the great self-deceptions--and one of the great foolishnesses--is to tell yourself, Only I will know. Only you will know that you are a liar; only you will know you deal unethically with people who trust you; only you will know you have no intention of honoring your promise. Whose knowledge or judgment do you imagine is more important? It is precisely your own ego from which there is no escape.

~ Nathaniel Branden

Most people do not erode their self-esteem over big issues but over small ones, little acts of betrayal and hypocrisy forgotten (repressed) very quickly. But the computer in your subconscious mind forgets nothing. It records your spiritual profit and loss. The balance sheet reflects your present level of self-esteem--and sends you the information via your emotions.

~ Nathaniel Branden

The idea of original sin--of guilt with no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives--inherently militates against self-esteem. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality. Sin is not original, it is originated--like virtue.

~ Nathaniel Branden

Excuses are a promise of repetition.

~ Stefan Molyneux

There's no weakness as great as false strength.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Anyone who engages in the practice of psychotherapy confronts every day the devastation wrought by the teachings of religion.

~ Nathaniel Branden