Top 100 The Ego Quotes
#1. What one commonly takes as 'the reality,' including the reality of one's own individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous-that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of the ego.
Albert Hofmann
#2. When you are in a condition of light everything is ecstatic, everything is joyous, everything is beautiful. Your attention field is subtle. The ego is quiet. The mind is still. Your heart is happy.
Frederick Lenz
#3. That is the ego which rises and sinks periodically. But you exist always. That which lies beyond the ego is consciousness - the Self.
Ramana Maharshi
#4. It is easy to see that the ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world.
Sigmund Freud
#5. That which is threatening to the ego is liberating to the heart.
Ajahn Amaro
#6. Instead of fighting the ego, I align with the evolutionary impulse and I ask myself: What does the evolutionary impulse wants to say or do through me?
Marc Gafni
#7. You cannot drop the ego. Once you start trying to drop the ego you will get in a very deep mess; you will become more and more worried and puzzled. And this is not the way to get rid of the ego. The only way to get rid of the ego is to look at it.
Rajneesh
#8. Misery nourishes your ego - that's why you see so many miserable people in the world. The basic, central point is the ego.
Rajneesh
#9. The Soul is hiding under an Earthly mask-the Ego. Do you have the courage to lift the cover and be in Awe of the Eternal mystery?-Author Serena Jade
Serena Jade
#10. Songs can be Trojan horses, taking charged ideas and sneaking past the ego's defenses and into the open mind.
John Mayer
#11. The ego is not harmonious with happiness and spiritual development. In the process of spiritual transformation we refine it. In the fire of love we melt the ego down.
Frederick Lenz
#12. The ego is nothing but condensed unawareness. When you become aware by and by that condensed unawareness we call 'ego' disappears. Just as if you bring a lamp into the room - and the darkness disappears. Awareness is the lamp, the lamp we were talking about the first day. Be a lamp unto yourself.
Rajneesh
#13. From childish fear springs the desire to externalise the ego.
Bertrand Russell
#14. It is our nature to be strong and independent. Yet, there is no room for the ego in suffering. This stripping of my ego opens the doors to authentic relating to others. As I am drawn closer to others, I am experiencing God in the here and now.
Timothy J. Keller
#15. Upon discovering truth, the natural love one has for oneself expands until it encompasses the whole world. This Love removes the ego.
Mooji
#16. Do you ever lose the ego?" Westford asks me.
"Yeah." When his daughter kisses me, my ego flies out the window.
Simone Elkeles
#17. I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.
W. H. Auden
#20. It takes pride and a tiger's drive to build up the confidence, the ego, the power to defeat an opponent in the ring. It
Muhammad Ali
#21. The pain of sexual frustration, of repressed tenderness, of denied curiosity, of isolation in the ego, of greed, suppressed rebellion, of hatred poisoning all love and generosity, permeates our sexuality. What we love we destroy.
Germaine Greer
#22. How can you tell whether the ego is there or not? You will know when someone insults you. If someone insults you, swallow (accept) it with understanding.
Dada Bhagwan
#23. Until the ego dissolves or evolves to become one with our true self, we remain slaves of our own egos.
Assegid Habtewold
#24. But the disappearance of the effort to let go is precisely the disappearance of the separate thinker, of the ego trying to watch the mind without interfering.
Alan Watts
#25. The ego camouflages itself like a fox born and raised in a hen house. Its only worry is that you fail to notice its presence every so often and start acting without fear
Dean Cavanagh
#26. The ego has been a fatality both for the human self and for God. 1
[1 - This was once revealed to me in a dream.]
Nicolas Berdyaev
#27. We are always boosting or trying to prop up the ego by fulfilling some desire or other, and always craving affirmation from the outside.
Pankaj Mishra
#28. The need is not to amputate the ego ... but to transcend it.
Norman Cousins
#29. The goal of individuation is wholeness, as much as we can accomplish, not the triumph of the ego.
James Hollis
#30. The Jungian therapist taught me the difference between the ego and the shadow. I realized I'd been so busy being a good girl that I'd completely detached from my shadow. It's something we all have, and it's where all the creative juices are.
Sue Grafton
#31. The experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego.
Carl Jung
#33. One of the great dangers of transformational work is that the ego attempts to sidestep deep psychological work by leaping into the transcendent too soon. This is because the ego always fancies itself much more 'advanced' than it actually is.
Don Richard Riso
#34. If you have a strong ego [and] something good happens to an acquaintance of yours, [it] makes you feel bad. It's called envy ... The ego thinks something has been taken away from you because somebody else has received something good. It's a complete illusion, but that's the madness of the ego.
Eckhart Tolle
#35. And it's a question of how far we're willing to go in order to let the ego shine, in order to let that beacon penetrate not only the local scene but the world.
Taylor Hackford
#36. Most of us are convinced that we are our egos, which is who we think we are. The ego is part of our incarnation. It dies with the body, which is why we are so afraid of death. Death scares the hell out of who you think you are, especially if you think you are this body.
Ram Dass
#37. Perhaps middle-age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
#38. I think most human beings are dualistic thinkers. It gets them through the day. It gives them a sense of superiority and security - that's what the ego wants.
Richard Rohr
#39. One last thing on objectives - I like to make things, create things, so that's probably been the primary objective all along, even before the ego objective - to make. To record. But why record ... [that] gets back to the ego, a little. Oh, well. Making is good. I like to make things.
Jonathan Ames
#41. Most importantly: Don't adjust your results to build up the ego of the chief strategist. Especially if the strategist is you.
Charles Caleb Colton
#42. The big realization when we go beyond the ego is simply seeing that we've always been ok.
Loch Kelly
#43. Bear the pain of longing silently, my heart
for this is the cure.
The ultimate sacrifice is to curb your desires
and surrender the ego.
Rumi
#44. Synchronicity, it is like a collaboration with fate. All of that becomes the norm when the EGO (edge God out) is no longer the driving force in your life.
Wayne W. Dyer
#45. The warrior guided by the spirit serves humanity, the warrior without, serves the ego
Soke Behzad Ahmadi
#46. Did any of you ever think that along about thet ime the notion of a soul gave out, Freud popped up with the ego to take its place?
Mary Ann Shaffer
#47. The Ego, however, is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear.
Deepak Chopra
#49. When you realize that the ego is making you miserable you don't identify with it. You identify with your soul's humility and the ego dissolves.
Frederick Lenz
#50. In the East a man becomes divine only when he is no longer jealous, a man is thought to be enlightened only when he is no longer jealous. Jealousy is a by-product of the ego and when the ego disappears jealousy disappears. You cannot offend a buddha. Whatsoever you do you cannot offend him.
Rajneesh
#51. Complaining is one of the ego's favorite strategies for strengthening itself.
Eckhart Tolle
#52. The first right on earth is the right of the ego. Man's first duty is to himself. His moral law is never to place his prime goal within the persons of others. His moral obligation is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men.
Ayn Rand
#53. What keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn't work. The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more and keep buying and consuming.
Eckhart Tolle
#54. That's the ego talking. But it's not the real you. You are a good and wonderful person. You are kind. You have a compassionate nature.
Gelek Rimpoche
#55. I have a big ego, but I don't buy into it. I can't live off the ego. It's an honor that I get to be that guy onstage. It's not something I earned.
Steven Tyler
#56. Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing.
Theodor Adorno
#57. A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever.
Eckhart Tolle
#58. By constantly keep one's attention on the Source, the ego is dissolved in that Source like a salt-doll in the sea.
Ramana Maharshi
#59. The point is that you free the ego. The ego is only a pronoun. It's a Greek first person pronoun, ergo. When you're in Greece you say, Ergo wants to take a bus, and you don't mean your ego wants to take a bus, like some big entity, you only mean I want to take a bus.
Robert Thurman
#60. Enlightenment is not about building a false sense of spirituality or blindly following religious doctrine, it is about carefully cultivating practices that relieve one of the ego and transcend the illusory perceptions of the world.
Joseph P. Kauffman
#61. Meditation doesn't lead to enlightenment because in meditation the ego is trying to destroy the ego.
Donald O'Donovan
#62. Only by renunciation of the desire to manipulate and control will the ego melt into the Universal Self of Infinite, Eternal Love.
Maharishi Sadasiva Isham
#63. The ego romanticizes the past to avoid the true romance of the present.
Alan Cohen
#64. Love is happy when it is able to give something. The ego is happy when it is able to take something.
Rajneesh
#65. When I see an object there is no will; when its sensations are carried to the brain, there comes the reaction, which says "Do this", or "Do not do this", and this state of the ego-substance is what is called will
Swami Vivekananda
#66. When you transcend the transcendent states, you get past the ego structure, and at that point you don't need laws, you have "morality!" You have inborn, natural ethics, because it is built on Love.
Edgar Mitchell
#67. You can be in a crowd full of friends and be miserable because you're alienated. The ego alienates.
Frederick Lenz
#68. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.
Eckhart Tolle
#69. Ego is based on judgment. Stop judging and you will be free from the ego: in the Oneness there is no judgment, only Unconditional Love.
Human Angels
#70. How you are seen by others becomes the mirror that tells you what you are like and who you are. The ego's sense of self-worth is in most cases bound up with the worth you have in the eyes of others.
Eckhart Tolle
#71. The ego constantly competes with the spirit for control over your inner voice.
Darren Johnson
#72. When you paint, you forget everything except your object. When you are too much engrossed in it, you are lost in it. And when you are lost in it, your ego diminishes. And when the ego diminishes, love infinite appears.
Meher Baba
#73. Today the order of life allows no room for the ego to draw spiritual or intellectual conclusions. The thought which leads to knowledge is neutralized and used as a mere qualification on specific labor markets and to heighten to commodity value of the personality.
Theodor W. Adorno
#74. Only a life lived in a certain spirit is worth living. It is a remarkable fact that a life lived entirely from the ego is dull not only for the person himself but for all concerned.
Carl Jung
#76. The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it's a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work.
Janet Frame
#77. The ego is a false perception of self. It's an idea, a transitory identity that we've picked up.
Frederick Lenz
#78. The reason that ego and love are not compatible comes down to this: you cannot take your ego into the unknown, where love wants to lead. If you follow love, your life will become uncertain, and the ego craves certainty.
Deepak Chopra
#79. As the ego cogito, subjectivity is the consciousness that represents something, relates this representation back to itself, and so gathers with itself.
Martin Heidegger
#80. The nature of the ego is to misuse whatever authority one has.
Dada Bhagwan
#81. If the ego rises, all else will also rise; if it subsides, all else will also subside.
Ramana Maharshi
#82. The problem in our society is the ego psychology and conventional wisdom about "look out for #1." That conventional wisdom thinks that "love your enemy" is to some a principle no one can ever live by.
Robert Thurman
#83. Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.
Eckhart Tolle
#84. Relate to a life situation in the deepest sense: not from the standpoint of the ego that bemoans its fate and rebels against it, but from... the greater inner law that has left behind its small birth, the narrow realm of personal outlook, for the sake of renewal and rebirth.
Max Zeller
#85. The ego always looks toward the next moment for some kind of fulfillment.
Eckhart Tolle
#86. Piety is a discipline of the will through respect. It admits the right to exist of things larger than the ego, of things different from the ego.
Richard M. Weaver
#87. It is only the ego that steps from moment to moment, as a man who walks from puddle to puddle. It is only the ego who drowns in time.
Jane Roberts
#88. When the ego dominates in organizations, even spiritual organizations, there is usually a big drama or upheaval of some kind, and self-destruction begins.
Eckhart Tolle
#89. Take up anything that you see or feel, a book for instance; first concentrate the mind on it, then on the knowledge that is in the form of a book, and then on the Ego that sees the book, and so on. By that practice all the organs will be conquered.
Swami Vivekananda
#90. Love must feel the ego of the beloved person as important as one's own ego, and must realize the other's feelings and wishes as though they were one's own.
Bertrand Russell
#91. Pain and happiness are simply conditions of the ego. Forget the ego.
Laozi
#92. The personality and the ego scream, while the soul whispers.
Elmore Leonard
#93. When it happens that a person has to give up a sexual object, there quite often ensues an alteration of his ego which can only be described as a setting up of the object inside the ego, as it occurs in melancholia; the exact nature of this substitution is as yet unknown to us.
Sigmund Freud
#94. Canada has a passive-aggressive culture, with a lot of sarcasm and righteousness. That went with my weird messianic complex. The ego is a fascinating monster. I was taught from a young age that I had to serve, so that turned into me thinking I had to save the planet.
Alanis Morissette
#95. The ego is a tool. You don't separate it. It's a tool for the spirit.
Ram Dass
#96. Me, me, me! Mine, mine, mine! I'm right, I'm right, I'm right. What's in it for me? How do I use this? How do I take advantage of it? This is the way of the ego. Own this within yourself and you will begin to release yourself from it.
Leonard Jacobson
#97. You need your ego to survive in the three-dimensional world, but you need only that part of the ego which processes information. The rest - pride, arrogance, defensiveness, fear - is worse than useless. The rest of the ego separates you from wisdom, joy, and God.
Brian Weiss
#98. ...passions, poetry and the ego have been seen as perpetual explosions? But if that's true, then so its its opposite; ever since that August when athe mushroom rose over cities reduced to a layer of ash, an age was born in which the explosion is symbolic only of absolute negation.
Italo Calvino
#99. But once the ego is born into this world, it has to shoulder morality. You would do well to remember that.
Haruki Murakami
#100. Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
W. H. Auden
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