Quotes from Nathaniel Branden

No one is coming to save me; no one is coming to make life right for me; no one is coming to solve my problems. If I don't do something, nothing is going to get better.

Someone who loves us passionately is motivated to know and understand us to a greater depth than someone with whom our relationship is more casual.

It is a mistake to look at someone who is self-assured and say, "It's easy for her to be self-assertive, she has good self-esteem." One of the ways we build self-esteem is by being self-assertive when it is not easy to do so. There are always times when self-assertiveness calls on our courage.

Doing more of what doesn't work doesn't work.

I can be loved by my family, my mate, and my friends, and yet not love myself. I can be admired by my associates and yet regard myself as worthless.

While healthy self-assertiveness requires the ability to say no, it is ultimately tested not by what we are against but by what we are for.

The idea of original sin--of guilt with no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives--inherently militates against self-esteem. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality. Sin is not original, it is originated--like virtue.

If we are willing to take responsibility for that which is within our power, I think that frees us to see clearly that which is not, and to understand, therefore, the limits of our accountability. But if we too often fail to take such responsibility and feel vaguely guilty over our avoidance, the paradox is that in our confusion we often end up blaming ourselves for events beyond our control.

If his or her upbringing is successful, the young man or woman will have evolved out of that dependency into a self-respecting and self-responsible human being who is able to respond to the challenges of life competently and enthusiastically.

If, in spite of his best efforts, a man fails in a particular undertaking, he does not experience the same emotion of pride that he would feel if he had succeeded; but, if he is rational, his self-esteem is unaffected and unimpaired. His self-esteem is not—or should not be—dependent on particular successes or failures, since these are not necessarily in a man's direct, volitional control and/or not in his exclusive control.

Of all the judgements we pass, none is as important as the one we pass on ourselves.

Sometimes people who feel fear in the human realm drop to a very low level of consciousness in their relationships and seek the safety and security of competence in the impersonal word of machines, mathematics, or abstract thought.

When we behave in ways that conflict with our judgment of what is appropriate, we lose face in our own eyes.

So far as we can ascertain, in primitive cultures the idea of romantic love did not exist at all.

Our liabilities pose the problem of inadequacy; our our assets, the challenge of responsibility. Our strengths or virtues can make us feel alone, alienated, cut off from the common herd, a target for envy and hostility, and our desire to belong can overcome any desire to actualise our highest potential.

Self-esteem is a particular way of experiencing the self. Its two components are self-efficacy and self-respect. Self-efficacy is the experience of competence in thinking, learning, making appropriate decisions, and responding effectively to the challenges of life. Self-respect is the experience of success, achievement, love, joy, fulfilment - in a word, happiness - are natural and appropriate to us.

Someone who loves us passionately is motivated to know and understand us to a greater depth than someone with whom our relationship is more casual. What does one often hear from people who are in love? "He (she) understands me as I have never felt understood before.

The concept of romantic love as a widely accepted cultural value and as the ideal basis of marriage was a product of the nineteenth century.

What we make an effort to learn and what we achieve is based, at least in part, on what we think is possible and appropriate to us.

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

No solo hay que estar dispuesto a soportar el dolor y el sufrimiento sino que tambièn hay que asumir la soledad, la cruda realidad de que la niña pequeña que una vez fue, no tuvo -y no tendrà jamàs- los padres que necesitaba y hubiera deseado.

Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness—that is, the absence of supportive feedback from their social environment.

Everyone who has any familiarity with psychology knows about the danger of disowning the murderer within. Far fewer people understand the tragedy of disowning the hero within.

Sentence Completions to Facilitate the Art of Living Consciously