Quotes About Self-awareness

I often find that getting head issues out of the way first makes the heart stuff easier to work on later.

She is like a broken pot that's not afraid of shattering, and I'm like a dead pig who no longer minds that the water's coming to a boil

Because the fact of not being understood by other people had become my only real source of pride, I was never confronted by any impulse to express things and to make others understand something that I knew.

The other guys did not feel the need to understand themselves that in me was so compelling: they could carry out their personality with the greatest naturalness, while I had to play a part, and this required a considerable acumen and study

To be half-clever was the worst I could have done.

At such times I felt as though I was drenched up to my neck in the existence that was myself.

Because the fact of not being understood by other people had become my only real source of pride, I was never confronted by any impusle to express things and to make others understand something that I knew. I thought that those things which could be seen by others were not ordained for me. My solitude grew more and more obese, just like a pig.

A little thought will make this clear. The sense of existence of a man with a massive physique must, in itself, be of the kind that embraces the whole world; for that man, considered as a object of knowledge, every-thing outside himself (including me) must necessarily be transferred onto the objective outside world experienced by his senses

cultivation of his anxiety.

Nobody even imagines how well one can lie about the state of one's own heart.

I have, actually. I'm under pressure, but I'm also observing myself under pressure from the standpoint of an onlooker. Once I create this other self within my mind I can proceed calmly, at my own pace.

Knowledge should mean a full grasp of knowledge: Knowledge means to know yourself, heart and soul. If you have failed to understand yourself, Then all of your reading has missed its call.

Unless we know ourselves and our history, and other people and their history, there is really no way that we can really have positive kinds of interaction where there is real understanding.

I am this space my body believes in.

Technology isn't bad. If you know what you want in life, technology can help you get it. But if you don't know what you want in life, it will be all too easy for technology to shape your aims for you and take control of your life. Especially as technology gets better at understanding humans, you might increasingly find yourself serving it, instead of it serving you.

what people might really need are the tools to connect to their own experiences.

Some people fear that today we are again in mortal danger of massive volcanic eruptions or colliding asteroids. Hollywood producers make billions out of these anxieties. Yes, a big asteroid will probably hit our planet sometime in the next 100 million years, but it is very unlikely to happen next Tuesday. Instead of fearing asteroids, we should fear ourselves.

the real question facing us is not 'What do we want to become?', but 'What do we want to want?' Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought.

Humans of all creeds would do well to take humility more seriously.

But [the algirithm] won't have to be perfect. It will just need to be better on average than us humans. And that is not so difficult, because most people don't know themelves very well, and most people often make terrible mistakes in the most important decisions of their lives

Maybe it isn't so important whether people's expectations are fulfilled and whether they enjoy pleasant feelings. The main question is whether people know the truth about themselves. What evidence do we have that people today understand this truth any better than ancient foragers or medieval peasants?

Yet what people might really need are the tools to connect to their own experiences.

the world manipulates you, in the end you realize that your core identity is a complex illusion created by neural networks.

If] you really want to understand yourself, you should not identify with your Facebook account or with the inner story of the self. Instead, you should observe the actual flow of body and mind [...]. People ask 'Who am I?' and expect to be told a story. The first thing you need to know about yourself, is that you are not a story.