Self Knowledge Quotes

Liberty is no less a blessing because oppression has so long darkened the mind that it can not appreciate it.

~ Lucretia Mott

To know someone, we must experience him, and that knowing will not exceed our self-knowledge—we cannot know someone else to a greater depth than we know ourselves.

~ Shepherd Hoodwin

Human nature was structured through the eons.What our environment of persistent scarcity has done to us during all that time is undeniable, it has transformed a particular behavior that insures collective survival in situations of scarcity into our “default” or basic code of behavior in all situations.

~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

What we call “Higher” behavior is elaborated by our abstract mind to ensure survival by an efficient cohesion of our clan.What we call “lower” behavior is to ensure survival at the expense of a rival, or to prevent the survival of a rival to be at our expense.So,Be they our “higher” and “lower” behavior/selves, our humanity and inhumanity, our “Divine” and “diabolic” trends, or any aspect of our Human Nature,All are created by our abstract mind to ensure survival in an environment of scarcity.But of course you can always choose to adopt “revelations” which present human nature as: A messed up image of a messed up supernatural coexistence between two messed up opposite supernatural entities with a messed up relation.Ultimately, we all think we choose by what we think we know.

~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

All life-forms are innocent, but man is the greatest innocent life-form that the universe has ever produced. Man is never created bad, as some primitive “revelations” claim. Man is both all-capable, and innocent; Man cannot have better attributes than the ones he already has. Once we defeat scarcity, the factor that has forced all our negative attributes into existence will be no more. Man’s nature is forged by scarcity. Man is a child of scarcity. Some men may currently live in abundance, even obscene abundance, but they still are the children of scarcity. We all are.

~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

You are sure you mean bliss?''Yes, an island or some place where we could all live or go to easily whenever we pleased and do all the things we wish to do without thought of the narrow-mindedness of others.''You are asking too much. Oh, for the Isle of Crete! You are wishing a return to the good old Pagan times when all honor was paid even to prostitutes.''No, not asking too much, just asking for a natural morality, a thing which varies with each bird, beast, and human and for which due allowance is not made in lawmaking.

~ Robert Scully

If we are to know ourselves, philosophy needs to maintain an ongoing dialogue with the sciences of mind.

~ George Lakoff

Repentance means turning from as much as you know of your sin to give as much as you know of yourself to as much as you know of your God, and as our knowledge grows at these three points so our practice of repentance has to be enlarged.

~ J.i. Packer

My simple explanation of why we human beings, the most advanced species on earth, cannot find happiness, is this: as we evolve up the ladder of being, we find three things: the first, that the tension between the range of opposites in our lives and society widens dramatically and often painfully as we evolve; the second, that the better informed and more intelligent we are, the more humble we have to become about our ability to live meaningful lives and to change anything, even ourselves; and consequently, thirdly, that the cost of gaining the simplicity the other side of complexity can rise very steeply if we do not align ourselves and our lives well.

~ Dr Robin Lincoln Wood

In the perspective of our species, life has favored humanity as a whole by promoting as much wealth of variety and options as possible, and has distributed everything using the four winds. Life has given mankind everything it has, without segregation and without consideration of which characteristic or quality best suits the situations or the periods. Only by having the totality of human characteristics and options can we hope to deal with all periods to come.Our collective is our key to survival and well-being.

~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

A person au fait with the millenarian edict of knowing oneself does not need a tattoo, pierced ear, or gaudy neck chains to declare who they are. Eccentricity for its own sake is simply a boring fashion statement and not a thoughtful statement of what comprises a wholesome self. A self-poised person does not need to own a luxury car to determine their degree of self-worth. Nor does a self-determined person need to idolize celebrities, hate other people whom they do not wish to exemplify, or live vicariously through other people’s admirable deeds. A person with unique and contented self-identify does not flip through fashion magazines or scan the headlines of gossip magazines when loitering in the supermarket checkout stand. A person who contemplates the meaningfulness of their existence is not fixated with posing in other people’s raiment or observing other people’s nakedness. A person who knows who they are and realizes how to accomplish all of their life goals does not dally by people watching or become distracted by envying other people.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Being happy where you are does not mean that you must unquestioningly accept parts of your environment that don't serve you. Where you are is inside of this amazing body, this beautiful moment, this capable mind. Where you are is inside of an eternal opportunity. And sometimes you need to change your environment to remember that.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

Needing attention is a p-p-powerful force in the world, isn't it?Absolutely. Most people would think of it as a very natural need. Almost a right.By 'natural' you mean 'm-m-morally neutral'?Touché.Without God, people find it very hard to know who they are or why they exist. But if others pay attention to them, praise them, write about them, discuss them, they think they've found the answers to both questions.If they don't believe in God, you can't blame them.True, dear. But it still makes for an empty, unhappy person....Are you saying, Father Joe, that in the matter of motives, or even morally, there's not ultimately much difference between me and my targets?I'm afraid not, dear. If the result is that you only have a personality other people shape. If you really exist only in other people's minds.I think you've just described celebrity.I've just described pride, dear.

~ Tony Hendra

Cognitive science has something of enormous importance to contribute to human freedom: the ability to learn what our unconscious conceptual systems are like and how our cognitive unconscious functions. If we do not realize that most of our thought is unconscious and that we think metaphorically, we will indeed be slaves to the cognitive unconscious. Paradoxically, the assumption that we have a radically autonomous rationality as traditionally conceived actually limits our rational autonomy. It condemns us to cognitive slavery - to an unaware and uncritical dependence on our unconscious metaphors. To maximize what conceptual freedom we can have, we must be able to see through and move beyond philosophies that deny the existence of an embodied cognitive unconscious that governs most of our mental lives.

~ George Lakoff

...Reason should take on anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely, that of self-knowledge, and to institute a court of justice, by which reason may secure its rightful claims while dismissing all its groundless pretensions, and this not by mere decrees but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws; and this court is none other than the critique of pure reason itself.

~ Immanuel Kant

The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself, because the self is the product and a part of the total process of human existence. To transform oneself, self-knowledge is essential; without knowing what you are, there is no basis for right thought, and without knowing yourself there cannot be transformation. One must know oneself as on is, not as on wishes to be, which is merely an ideal and there for fictitious, unreal; it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be. To know oneself as one is requires and extraordinary alertness of mind, because what is, is constantly undergoing transformation, change; and to follow it swiftly the mind must not be tethered to any particular dogma or belief, to any particular pattern of action. If you would follow anything, it is no good being tethered. To know yourself, there must be the awareness, the alertness of mind in which there is freedom from all beliefs, from all idealization, because beliefs and ideals only give you a color, perverting true perception. If you want to know what you are, you cannot imagine or have belief in something which you are not. If I am greedy, envious, violent, merely having an ideal of non-violence, of non-greed, is of little value. The understanding of what you are, whatever it be – ugly or beautiful, wicked or mischievous – the understanding of what you are, without distortion, is the beginning of virtue. Virtue is essential, for it gives freedom.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The goal of intellectual life should be to see and understand what is true, not merely to adhere to a prevailing orthodoxy.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

Unerring solitude forces a person to confront their morality and aloneness. Solitude makes personal confession possible.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

When we allow ourselves to show some patience and take time to listen to the others, we may learn a lot about ourselves. Patience does not endure instant gratification, though, and self-knowledge may take a lifetime. (“I am on my own side, but I can listen “ )

~ Erik Pevernagie

Violence is formed by the scarcity of nature, and will stay with us as long as we live in scarcity.

~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control.

~ George Eliot

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

I think it's good for a person to spend time alone. It gives them an opportunity to discover who they are and to figure out why they are always alone.

~ Amy Sedaris

The essence of the charge made against the modern high-status ideal is that it is guilty of effecting a gigantic distortion of priorities, of elevating to the highest level of achievement a process of material accumulation that should instead be only one of many factors determining the direction of our lives under a more truthful, more broadly defined conception of ourselves.

~ Alain De Botton

The act of writing involves documenting and studiously examining interactions of all aspects of the self, the environment, and culture. Writing is an illustrious act of self-expression. Writing resembles a ‘coming of the age’ story because the ongoing process of defining a person’s personality and character is representative of the synergistic product of the continuous and cumulative interaction of an organic self with the world, the constant process of developing psychological, social, cognitive and ethical self.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

An artist has got to get acquainted with himself just as much as he can. It is no easy job, for it is not a present-day habit of humanity.

~ Chaim Potok

The minority (the considered one percent of the one percent of the one percent of the one percent of humanity…) that has “worked hard” its way to obscene riches and power depriving human beings of vital necessities like water and food is a part of us, not an alien enemy.They are not the devil, nor satan.Just men (like us)Men who are taught what they know (like us)What to think (like us)Men who are lied to (like us)Manipulated (like us)Processed (like us)Indoctrinated (…. ..)

~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

They say that to know oneself is to know all there is that is human. But of course no one can ever know himself. Nothing human is fully calculable, even to ourselves we are strange.

~ Gore Vidal

At thirty a man suspects himself a fool;Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;At fifty chides his infamous delay,Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;In all the magnanimity of thoughtResolves; and re-resolves; then dies the same.

~ Edward Young

There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.

~ L.m. Montgomery

Understand yourself, accept yourself, but do not be yourself.

~ Luke Rhinehart

Whether he was acting ill or well he did not know, and far from laying down the law about it, he now avoided talking or thinking about it. Thinking about it led him into doubts and prevented him from seeing what he should and should not do. But when he did not think, but just lived, he unceasingly felt in his soul the presence of an infallible judge deciding which of two actions was the better and which the worse; and as soon as he did what he should not have done he immediately felt this. In this way he lived, not knowing or seeing any possibility of knowing what he was or why he lived in the world.

~ Leo Tolstoy

What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?''Cats don't have names,' it said.'No?' said Coraline.'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.

~ Neil Gaiman

Science can now help us to understand ourselves in this way by giving factual information about brain structure and function, and how the mind works. Then there is an art of self knowledge, which each person has to develop for himself. This art must lead one to be sensitive to how his basically false approach to life is always tending to generate conflict and confusion. The role of art here is therefore not to provide a symbolism, but rather to teach the artistic spirit of sensitive perception of the individual and particular phenomena of one's own psyche. This spirit is needed if one is to understand the relevance of general scientific knowledge to his own special problems, as well as to give effect to the scientific spirit of seeing the fact about one's self as it is, whether on elikes it or not, and thus helping to end conflict.Such an approach is not possible, however, unless one has the spirit that meets life wholly and totally. We still need the religious spirit, but today we no longer need the religious mythology, which is now introducing an irrelevant and confusing element into the whole question.Itwould seem, then, that in some ways the modern person must manage to create a total approach to life which accomplishes what was done in earlier days by science, art and religion, but in a new way that is appropriate to the modern conditions of life. An important part of such an action is to see what the relationshipbetween science and art now actually is, and to understand the direction in which this relationship might develop.

~ David Bohm

If you know who you are, it makes you immune to criticism

~ Sunday Adelaja

– The life of the worlds is a roaring river, but Earth’s is a pond and a backwater.– The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick against the pin-pricks?– But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution.– Know yourselves – be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.

~ Peter Wessel Zapffe

The greatest tragedy that can befall a man is never to know who he really is.

~ James Carlos Blake

It is wisdom to know who you are, but not to the point of excluding who you might become.

~ James Rozoff

Someone responding to intuition, to chance and fortune, often can't explain himself well.

~ Alec Wilkinson

Intuition: the feeling you know something when you know nothing.

~ Marty Rubin