Quotes from Nathaniel Branden

As equipment and machinery have become more sophisticated, the knowledge and skill required to operate them has risen accordingly.

We perceive consciousness as the highest manifestation of life. The higher the form of consciousness, the more advanced the form of life.

It is the conditional nature of life that gives rise to the concept of need. If a being were indestructible—if it were not confronted with the alternative of life or death—it would have no needs. The concept could not be applicable to it. Without the concept of life, the concept of need would not be possible.

It would be hard to name a more certain sign of poor self-esteem than the need to perceive some other group as inferior.

Self-reliance and self-responsibility were seen as supremely appropriate in this new order of things, in contrast to the conformity and obedience more valued in earlier, tribal societies. Independence became an economically adaptive virtue.

Life, for a human being, is a constant process of thought, of motion, of purpose, of achievement; it is not the state of merely not being dead.

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

This chaos serves, however, to emphasize the fact that the nature of man's needs has to be discovered. Needs are not self-evident. Alleged needs must be proven by relating them to the requirements of man's survival.

The fact that we live among other human beings should not obscure the intimately personal nature of our need for a code of ethics. Our self-esteem requires it, our happiness requires it, our life requires it.

Thus, psychology, as it pertains to man, is properly conceived and defined as the science that studies the attributes and characteristics which man possesses by virtue of his rational faculty.

The psychologist, seeking to understand the principles of human behavior, observes (a) that man, as a biological entity, possesses various needs, and (b) that man characteristically acts to achieve various ends or goals.

Independence is reliance upon our own mind and judgment, the acceptance of intellectual responsibility for our own existence.

If a proper education has to include an understanding of thinking, it also has to include an understanding of feelings.

Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness.

This love is the beginning of virtue. It is the launching pad for our highest and noblest aspirations. It is the motive power that drives the six pillars. It is the seventh pillar of self-esteem.

Emotionally remote and inhibited parents tend to produce emotionally remote and inhibited children.

To live consciously, I need to be sensitive to these distinctions. What I perceive, what I interpret it to mean, and how I feel about it are three separate questions. If I do not distinguish among them, my grounding in reality becomes the first casualty.

There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity. People who do not experience self-love have little or no capacity to love others.

For "I" to become "we" and yet remain "I," is one of the great challenges of marriage.

There is no value-judgment more important to a man--no factor more decisive in his psychological development and motivation--than the estimate he passes on himself.

The United States was the first country in the history of the world to be consciously created out of an idea - and the idea was liberty.

Self-respecting men and women think about the consequences of their actions-and are willing to take responsibility for them.

A woman in love will do almost anything for a man, except give up the desire to improve him.

Moved by a passion they do not understand for a goal they seldom reach, men and women are haunted by the vision of a distant possibility that refuses to be extinguished.