Quotes About Self-awareness

There's one problem with all psychological knowledge - nobody can apply it to themselves. People can be incredibly astute about the shortcomings of their friends, spouses, children. But they have no insight into themselves at all. The same people who are coldly clear-eyed about the world around them have nothing but fantasies about themselves. Psychological knowledge doesn't work if you look in a mirror. This bizarre fact is, as far as I know, unexplained.

We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.

In general, people who aren't in touch with their emotions tend to think their emotions are unimportant.

The same people who are coldly clear-eyed about the world around them have nothing but fantasies about themselves.

There's one problem with all psychological knowledge—nobody can apply it to themselves. People can be incredibly astute about the shortcomings of their friends, spouses, children. But they have no insight into themselves at all. The same people who are coldly clear-eyed about the world around them have nothing but fantasies about themselves. Psychological knowledge doesn't work if you look in a mirror. This bizarre fact is, as far as I know, unexplained.

And when Arthur was twice asked to sort photographs of people and photographs of chimps, he sorted them correctly except that both times he put his own picture in the stack with the people. He obviously did not consider himself a chimpanzee

I'm talking about a little truth-in-packaging here. To be perfectly frank, you don't quite look like yourself. And if you walk around looking like someone other than who you are, you could end up getting the wrong job, the wrong friends, who knows what-all. You could end up with somebody else's life. I shrugged again, and smiled. This is my life, I said. It doesn't seem like the wrong one.

and when somebody comes up to me with big hair and gobs of makeup on and says, 'Can I help you,' it's all I can do not to scream, 'Bitch, you can't even help yourself.

You want to give him the book of his own life, the book that will locate him, parent him, arm him for the changes.

Accept that, like many men, you have a streak of the homoerotic in you. Why would you, why would anyone, want to be that straight?

Fearlessness in the face of your own ineptitude is a useful tool to have.

God save us from people who think they're smarter than they actually are.

Do you imagine, Peter, that your Carpe Diem boots would look any less deluded to them than that guy's Tony Lamas do to you? There's a comeuppance for everyone, wherever you are, and the farther you go from your own fiefdom, the more ludicrous are your haircut, your clothes, your opinions, your life. Within easy walking distance of home are neighborhoods that might as well be in Saigon.

If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark. And that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too.

Most people think they're not most people.

There is no such thing as undesirable work," he continued. "There are only people who see certain kinds of work as undesirable. People who use every excuse in the world to justify why they have to do work they hate to do. People who look upon their work as a punishment for who they are and where they stand in the world, rather than as an opportunity to see themselves as they really are.

I believe that our business can provide us with a mirror to see ourselves as we are, to see what we truly know and what we don't know, to see ourselves honestly, directly, and immediately.

El problema consiste en que pensamos que estamos despiertos. Pensamos que ya somos objetivos. Pensamos que ya somos individuos. Pensamos que ya somos libres. ¡Pensamos que pensamos!

When a person is only half an ass like me, and not a complete one, she senses certain things.

Up until then he had always wanted to be someone other than he was, but he didn't want to change.

Te voy a dar un consejo: No te tomes tan en serio a ti mismo. En el fondo, tú no importas.

because up until then he had always wanted to be someone other than he was, but he didn't want to change.

Usted me considera estúpido, ¿verdad? Tal vez tenga razón. Pero me parece que de alguna manera hay que ser estúpido si se quiere hacer algo. Y a mi, princesa, me interesa más hacer algo que justificarme por ello.

Odd, though, all these dealings of mine with myself. First I've agreed a principle with myself, now I'm making out a case to myself, and debating my own feelings and intentions with myself. Who is this self, this phantom internal partner, with whom I'm entering into all these arrangements? (I ask myself.)