Top 100 Quotes About Self Understanding
#1. To see was not to control, that self-understanding was far short of self-mastery. He was afraid of himself.
Richard Wright
#2. My hope and my prayer for people would be to find and gather themselves such that their self-understanding, their willingness to act in the face of fear, [imbibes and imbues them] with enough faith [that] is bigger than their fear.
Rod Stryker
#3. When you define yourself based on things you have done, in order to maintain that self-image you must constantly look away from the present moment, as you search for a means of self-understanding through past experiences.
Chris Matakas
#4. Self-change can only come after self-understanding.
Rob R. Morris
#5. Human self-understanding changes with time, and so also human consciousness deepens.
Pope Francis
#6. It is facile to imply that smoking, alcoholism, overeating, or other ingrained patters can be upended without real effort. Genuine change requires work and self-understanding of the cravings driving behaviours.
Charles Duhigg
#7. For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
Robert Penn Warren
#8. Writing about personal thoughts and observations, subjective feelings and objective reality is a gateway experience that intensifies a person's level of consciousness. Every degree of increased consciousness can lead to increased knowledge of the world and self-understanding.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#9. It is that the individual has within him or herself vast resources for self-understanding, for altering the self-concept basic attitudes, and his or her self-directed behavior - and that these resources can be tapped if only a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided
Carl Rogers
#10. Science can only be comprehended epistemologically , which means as one category of possible knowledge , as long as knowledge is not equated either effusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly with scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research.
Jurgen Habermas
#11. If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations.
Edward O. Wilson
#12. Science fiction, because it ventures into no man's lands, tends to meet some of the requirements posed by Jung in his explorations of archetypes, myth structures and self-understanding. It may be that the primary attraction of science fiction is that it helps us understand what it means to be human.
Frank Herbert
#13. Honest self-understanding liberates us from our stuck emotions.
C. Terry Warner
#14. Self-understanding rather than self-condemnation is the way to inner peace and mature conscience.
Joshua L. Liebman
#15. When you act on your impulses to play, when you are open to the possibilities in each moment, you replace your fears with self-understanding, self-esteem, and personal strength.
Sandra Magsamen
#16. Religious traditions are in a constant state of development and renewed self-understanding.
David Novak
#17. The new enlightened self-understanding reminds us that there is no final destination to our journey. The process itself is the destination. There is nowhere we need to arrive to.
Raphael Zernoff
#18. Self-understanding is mediated Christologically.
Brian Gregor
#19. We employ our personality, what we know, think, and believe, in order to interpret the world, making self-understanding a critical act because it establishes the baseline for our philosophical and intellectual approach towards life.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#20. Therapy really did prepare me to become an empathic songwriter. As far as advice goes, it's a matter of self understanding first.
William Fitzsimmons
#21. Modern Man is the victim of the very instruments he values most. Every gain in power, every mastery of natural forces, every scientific addition to knowledge, has proved potentially dangerous, because it has not been accompanied by equal gains in self-understanding and self-discipline.
Lewis Mumford
#22. As a teacher I realize that what one learns in school doesn't serve for very much at all, that the only thing one can really learn is self-understanding, and this is something that can't be taught.
Laura Esquivel
#23. Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish. Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I'm still learning.
Irvin D. Yalom
#24. Most perfect self-understanding is the capability to directly (immediately) transcend dilemma, all problems, all seeking.
Adi Da
#25. We humans are a hungry lot. We are driven by a craving to know who we are. Yet who we are is embedded in the heart of a holy God. Unless we seek for ourselves in the epicenter of God's grace, we will be forever condemned to walk the arid edges of self-understanding.
Calvin Miller
#26. Conviction is having the mindset to never doubt your self-understanding
Gino Norris
#27. To deny our pasts is to burn the bridge we must cross to self-understanding. Alan Christoffersen's diary
Richard Paul Evans
#28. Rogers believed that we have within ourselves enormous potential for self-understanding and for altering our self-concept and for our behaviour. He believed that this potential can be tapped if a climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can be provided, which person-centred therapy aims to do
Jacqui Stedmon
#29. Unless you really understand others, you can hardly attain your own self-understanding.
Miyamoto Musashi
#30. A person can only see their shadow if they awaken their eclectic soul. Self-understanding commences by admitting to the shadowy presence of the primordial unconsciousness. The unconscious mind is a magical concoction of logical and irrational thoughts and feelings.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#31. It could be simply an accident of fate that our brains are too weak to understand themselves. Think of the lowly giraffe, for instance, whose brain is obviously far below the level required for self-understanding - yet it is remarkably similar to our brain.
Ray Kurzweil
#32. Lean into the sharp points and fully experience them. The essence of bravery is being without self-deception. Wisdom is inherent in (understanding) emotions.
Pema Chodron
#33. I am very interested in Ayurvedic medicine and hope to explore it more someday. I only have a very superficial understanding of the whole thing right now. But learning what my body type is has shifted my whole self-care regime a bit, and I feel better because of it.
Taylor Schilling
#34. I regret it when I suppress my feelings too long and they burst forth in ways that are distorted or attacking or hurtful.
Carl R. Rogers
#35. It becomes increasingly clear that we won't be free of self-destructive patterns unless we develop a compassionate understanding of what they are.
Pema Chodron
#37. In a human development sense, our understanding of leadership has essentially "grown up" and moved past personal ego and a self-centered view of things.
Linda Fisher Thornton
#38. Many of the most profound discoveries were reported to have come through intuition rather than sequential analysis processed by linguistic understanding.
Ilchi Lee
#39. Self-pity is essentially humorless, devoid of that lightness of touch which gives understanding of life.
Anthony Powell
#40. Try seeing, feeling, and tasting the water you swim in the way a land animal might perceive it. You may find the experience fascinating -- and mind-expanding.
Erin Meyer
#41. Understanding your importance does not minimize those around you, it brings fulfillment to everyone.
E'yen A. Gardner
#42. In understanding and developing your true identity, you can stand on solid ground because you are a person of God's unique creation
Sunday Adelaja
#43. We can never see what we never question, for we who escapes, blinds us
Farley Maglaya
#44. Some scholars argue that although the brain might contain neural subsystems, or modules, specialized for tasks like recognizing faces and understanding language, it also contains a part that constitutes a person, a self: the chief executive of all the subsystems.
Paul Bloom
#45. To understand yourself: Is that a discovery or a creation?
Pascal Mercier
#46. It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.
Joseph Conrad
#47. Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.
Maurice Merleau Ponty
#48. Faith is not the belief that everything will be all right tomorrow, but the belief that I possess the strength to make everything all right today.
Charles F. Glassman
#49. The mental game of business is understanding this Paradox: the better you think you are doing, the greater should be your cause for concern: the more self-satisfied you are with your accomplishments, your past achievements, your 'right moves', the less you should be.
Mark McCormack
#50. God created you for His high purpose, discovering and understanding that that purpose is important
Sunday Adelaja
#51. A healthy self and an empty self are not contradictory; it just appears so because we use the same language to describe two different things. The whole path of meditation is about understanding that the self as an unchanging entity is a fiction, an illusory mental construct.
Joseph Goldstein
#52. It is a great delusion in those whose understanding has been darkened by self-love, to think that there is any obedience in the subject who tries to draw the superior to what he wishes.
Saint Ignatius
#53. You should never apologize for existing, Lev. Not even to all those people out there who wish you didn't.
Neal Shusterman
#54. I like to be perfectly open and sincere, and yet it is impossible to be sincere to all of one's self at once, so for the deepest understanding one must seek those with whom one can be most truly one's self and never be blind to the ineffable drollery of it all.
Everett Ruess
#55. In life, when one gets to the point of a deeper sense of understanding about himself and his purpose, he least explains himself much to people who fail to understand him and his purpose. That must not be interpreted as neither pride nor an uncaring attitude but a great respect for purposefulness
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#56. A conscious understanding of the kind of cloth we wear, each moment of time, makes us be aware of what we must do or what we should never think of doing because of the cloth we wear!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#57. You need to invest time in understanding and discovering yourself
Sunday Adelaja
#58. Love opens the eyes of our understanding and enables us to see more of the truth than can those who are blinded by self-love. Those who love most, see most.
Hannah Hurnard
#59. Competing is exciting and winning is exhilarating, but the true prize will always be the self-knowledge and understanding that you have gained along the way.
Sebastian Coe
#60. The understanding is universal, pantheistic, the love of the universe; but the grand characteristic of religion, and of the Christian religion especially, is that it is thoroughly anthropotheistic, the exclusive love of man for himself, the exclusive self-affirmation of the human nature.
Ludwig Feuerbach
#61. A hater is a person with a complete understanding of your destiny but assigns him or her self as a representative to work tirelessly on your misery.
Johnnie Dent Jr.
#62. Too often fear is fiction madly running amuck, all the while madly tracking 'muck' across the floor of fact.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#63. To live without love for others is to live in aridity, to be self-serving and fruitless. To live without understanding is to live without sense or purpose. To live without awareness is to live as the deaf, blind and dumb in a world of vibrant light and sound.
Belsebuub
#64. One of the most important phases of maturing is that of growth from self-centering to an understanding relationship to others. A person is not mature until he has both an ability and a willingness to see himself as one among others and to do unto those others as he would have them do to him.
Harry Allen Overstreet
#65. Time spent worrying - about anything - provides no emotional or physical benefit to us; such things only weaken us for the fights we must endure in our lives.
A.J. Darkholme
#66. Self-awareness - the commendable ability to be yourself without being a nuisance to someone else.
Criss Jami
#67. To be depressed or neurotic is passive. It has happened to all of us; we are its victims, are we have no control over it.
William Glasser
#68. To fall down is to face the weakness of my humanity, test the mettle of my character, and push the limits of my strength. Therefore, falling down will tell me who I am far more clearly than most things I might learn when I'm standing up.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#69. People must come to the understanding that they do not have a fixed identity. They have the power to identify and alter features of their personalities that they find negative or unpleasant.
Lisa Firestone
#70. To understand the world one must not be worrying about one's self.
Albert Einstein
#71. You must always focus on and pursue the good, but when that darkness surges up from within, you need to know how to handle it, use it, and release it wisely, not just deny its presence or acceptability as you suppress it within you.
A.J. Darkholme
#72. Love is omni-inclusive, progressively exquisite, understanding and compassionately attuned to other than self.
R. Buckminster Fuller
#73. He who becomes his most truthful self, becomes the leader for everyone else.
Nikki Rowe
#74. It is man's foremost duty to awaken the understanding of the inner self and to know his own real inner greatness. Once he knows his true worth, he can know the worth of others.
Swami Muktananda
#75. The only personal branding consultant who can ever hope to have a clear understanding of you and your value can be found in the mirror.
Ryan Lilly
#76. Joining a band of brothers together, a group with one common interest or mission, whether as a company, a team, or a motorcycle club, requires not only a commitment to loyalty but an understanding of self-preservati on as well..
Sonny Barger
#77. As in everything else, I must start with myself. That is: in all circumstances try to be decent, just, tolerant, and understanding, and at the same time try to resist corruption and deception. In other words, I must do my utmost to act in harmony with my conscience and my better self.
Vaclav Havel
#78. It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.
Abraham H. Maslow
#79. Sometimes you have to put yourself in other people's shoes to really understand the hardships of their souls.
Kellie Elmore
#80. There must be love, and understanding, to betray. Most men haven't the wit or the honor for betrayal: not to know it when they see it; not the stomach to apprehend it as they do it. Most men, blind and dumb in their self-centeredness, don't betray: they merely disappoint.
Janet Morris
#81. Education (the institution) has now adopted values, attitudes, and practices that make any rigorous understanding of the human self and life impossible.
Dallas Willard
#82. If a man realizes who he is, he understands that if he must, he can start from the beginning and achieve success again
Sunday Adelaja
#83. We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression.
Charles Taylor
#84. It's when you feel low about yourself, others actions and opinions will affect you. When you look at yourself as a confident person, it's then; you'll find the most peace and understanding, that it's your world you have to live with not theirs.
Ron Baratono
#86. As a youth, I hated myself for not being good enough. All my inadequacies and failures, not being kind enough, generous or understanding enough, would assail me at night. It became a habit to be guilty and self castigating, not liking myself because I was unworthy ... I really tortured myself.
Mira Sorvino
#87. Whatever you is, Onion," he said, "be it full.
James McBride
#88. In my own deepening understanding of myself I find my capacity to serve others is deepened as well. The better I am at self-care the more genuinely nurturing of others I am able to be.
Mary Anne Radmacher
#89. Caution is crediting, and reserve in speaking, and in revealing one's self to but very few, are the best securities both of a good understanding with the world, and of the inward peace of our own minds.
Thomas A Kempis
#90. We must live a genuine life in order to discover personal happiness and self-fulfillment. Understanding that a person is living a lie is the first step into realizing what is possible. No matter how frightful such a proposition is, we must dare to be an original self.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#91. It is very hard to separate one's self from a character. Sometimes the people closest to me have to be very understanding.
Halle Berry
#92. I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a great factory, to keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking along the Nevsky Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean - wherever my imagination ranges.
Anton Chekhov
#93. A high self-esteem having artist works hard to be understood. A low self-esteem having artist works hard to be agreed with.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#94. [W]hen you practise right meditation, you 'cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self.
Steve Hagen
#95. You create your life through the inner power of your being, whose source is within you and yet beyond the selves that you know. Use those creative abilities with understanding abandon. Honor yourselves and move through the godliness of your being.
Jane Roberts
#96. Continuous understanding goes with love, courage, respect, discovery and acceptance of mistakes.
Auliq Ice
#97. To continue to condemn only brings condemnation, then, for self. This does not mean that self's activity should be passive, but rather being constant in prayer
knowing and taking, knowing and understanding that he that is faithful is not given a burden beyond that he is able to bear ...
Edgar Cayce
#98. Individualism is the growth-stunting, maturity-inhibiting habit of understanding growth as an isolated self-project. Individualism is self-ism with a swagger. The individualist is the person who is convinced that he or she can serve God without dealing with God.
Eugene H. Peterson
#99. Join me in my quest for a greater understanding of our existence. Join me in my desire for a greater self. Join me as I seek the humility to love and understand my fellow man.
Bryant H. McGill
#100. What I love about believing in a living God is that I believe God is constantly revealing God's self to us over time, and with each succeeding generation, we come a little closer to understanding the mind of God.
Gene Robinson
