Quotes About Self-awareness

There is another use of the term 'human', one proposed by Joseph Fletcher, a major figure in the development of bioethics. Fletcher compiled a list of what he called 'Indicators of Humanhood' that includes the following: self-awareness, self-control, a sense of the future, a sense of the past, the capacity to relate to others, concern for others, communication and curiosity.

Narcissus, gazing at his image in the pool, wept. A friend passing by saw him and asked, "Narcissus, why do you weep?" "Because my face has changed," Narcissus said. "Do you cry because you grow older?" "No. I see that I am no longer innocent. I have been gazing at myself long and long, and so doing have worn out my innocence.

Wise men contemplate the world," he thinks, "knowing full well that they are contemplating themselves.

Observe the things your mind is telling you, without immediately obeying its commands or spending time arguing with it. ?Recognize when your mind is viewing the world as a darker, scarier place than it really is. ?Stop confusing the memories attached to your household items with the items themselves. ?Stop envisioning catastrophe in your future. ?Celebrate your successes rather than focusing on your shortcomings.

Uncover what you long for and you will discover who you are.

Three aspects of Zen have been critical to me as a leader: 1. GIVING UP CONTROL Suzuki writes, "If you want to obtain perfect calmness in your zazen, you should not be bothered by the various images you find in your mind. Let them come and let them go. Then they will be under control.

Self-obsession is not self-realization but self-destruction.

It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense

If the last to know he's an addict is the addict, then maybe the last to know when a man means what he says is the man himself, he reflected.

It takes a certain amount of courage, he thought, to face yourself and say with candor, I'm rotten. I've done evil and I will again. It was no accident; it emanated from the true, authentic me.

I don't judge, not even myself.

The most dangerous kind of person... is one who is afraid of his own shadow.

Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well. A portion of him turns against him and acts like another person, defeating him from inside. A man inside a man. Which is no man at all.

Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally.

The tyranny of an object, he thought. It doesn't know I exist.

We peep out, but what do we see, really? Mirror reflections of our own selves, our bloodless, feeble countenances, devoted to nothing in particular, insofar as I can fathom it. Death is very close, he thought. When you think in this manner. I can feel it, he decided. How near I am. Nothing is killing me; I have no enemy, no antagonist; I am merely expiring, like a magazine subscription: month by month.

I'll tell you what fouls us up, Roy; it's our goddamn superior intelligence!" She glared at her husband, her small, high breasts rising and falling rapidly. "We're so smart ––Roy, you're doing it right now; goddamn you, you're doing it now !

To my surprise I realized that I had stopped shaking. It was as if I had been shaking all my life, from a chronic undercurrent of fear.

And who am I? The wrong person; I can tell you that.

The linking and relinking of objects by the Brain is actually a language, but not a language like ours (since it is addressing itself and not someone or something outside itself.)

That's because you're a highly moral person. I'm not. I don't judge, not even myself.

I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.

I had a lot of fears that the universe would discover just how different I was from it.

You will manually feel this object with your left hand," he said to himself, "and at the same time you will look at it with your right. And then in your own words you will tell us—" He could not think out any more nonsense. Not without their help.