Quotes from Nathaniel Branden

Live with integrity, respect the rights of other people, and follow your own bliss.

Not a great deal is known about the factors in childhood that doubtless underlie a person's choice of career - I'm talking now about a career to which one is passionately committed, in contradistinction to a career chosen merely as a means of earning a living.

A depression is a large-scale decline in production and trade...there is nothing in the nature of a free-market economy to cause such an event.

Capitalism, by its nature, entails a constant process of motion, growth and progress.

Force, governmental coercion, is the instrument by which the ethics of altruism - the belief that the individual exists to serve others - is translated into political reality.

The highest compliment one can be paid by another human being is to be told: 'Because of what you are, you are essential to my happiness.'

To trust one's mind and to know that one is worthy of happiness is the essence of self-esteem.

Productive achievement is a consequence and an expression of health and self-esteem, not its cause.

We tend to feel most comfortable, "most at home", with people whose self esteem level resembles our own.

The real basic power of an individual isn't what he or she knows; it's the ability to think and learn and face new challenges.

Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.

Loving consciously does not mean subjecting your relationship to endless analysis. It means something much simpler: paying attention. Noticing. This requires presence.

Where we see self esteem, we see self acceptance. High self esteem individual tend to avoid falling into an adversarial relationship with themselves.

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

The first love affair you must consummate is the love affair with yourself. Only then are you ready for a romantic relationship.

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

We are anxious when there is a dissonance between our "knowledge" and the perceivable facts. Since our "knowledge" is not to be doubted or questioned, it is the facts that have to be altered.

In a world in which the total of human knowledge is doubling about every ten years, our security can rest only on our ability to learn

If you overcome your fear to ask someone for a date, a raise, or help with a project, that is an act of self-assertiveness. You are moving out into life rather than contracting and withdrawing.

If you face life without confidence in your own powers, you succumb too easily to setbacks and adversity; you lack the will to persevere.

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

Every day, it's important to ask and answer these questions: "What's good in my life?" and "What needs to be done?"

The reputation you have with yourself - your self-esteem - is the single most important factor for a fulfilling life.

Romantic love can be terrifying. We experience another human being as enormously important to us. So there is surrender - not a surrender to the other person so much as to our feeling for the other person. What is the obstacle? The possibility of loss.