Quotes About Self-awareness

Our excesses are the best clue we have to our own poverty, and our best way of concealing it from ourselves.

People are histrionic to get people thinking about them. We are excessive when something about ourselves needs to be recognized and we need other people to help us work out what it is.

In Freud's story our possibilities for satisfaction depend upon our capacity for frustration; if we can't let ourselves feel our frustration – and, surprisingly, this is a surprisingly difficult thing to do – we can't get a sense of what it is we might be wanting, and missing, of what might really give us pleasure.

To grow up is to discover what one is unequal to.

Finding hate-objects may be every bit as essential as finding love-objects, but if one can tolerate some of one's badness -- meaning recognize it as yours -- then one can take some fear out of the world.

The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.

I'm smiling because I know perfectly well what I am and I honestly don't give a damn what you think of me

Alles, was der Mensch tut, unvollkommen ist. Aber wer will sich schon seine Unvollkommenheit eingestehen?

21Finally, don't pay attention to everything that is said, so that you may not hear your slave reviling you; 22for well you remember* the many times that you yourself have reviled others.

Not till the bad feelings come out can the good ones come in.

telling. I thought I knew this

I'm in the reservation of my mind.

The heroism Kranz displayed in that situation wasn't physical heroism, military heroism or political heroism, but organisational heroism, which is arguably every bit as important but which often gets short shrift. Compounded of tenacity, imagination, shrewd judgement, self-awareness and sheer willpower, it's a form of heroism that's desperately needed today and that is in especially short supply in most failed launch attempts.

When you point a finger at someone, always remember that three fingers are pointing back at you.

So try this nightmare exercise: Imagine disaster. Ask why you failed; list all the possible reasons. Then do your best to counter those mistakes before they have a chance to occur. Most launches die from self-inflicted wounds. It means that if you're willing to take a clear-eyed look at the forces seemingly conspiring to derail your next launch, you'll probably find that the most powerful factors are actually under your control.

But I also found my depression tedious—tedious to live through, tedious to explain, tedious to be around. I was bored by my own relentless loop and felt sure I was boring everyone around me.

Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness

A thinking woman sleeps with monsters

I have a notion that genius knows itself; that Dickinson chose her seclusion, knowing she was exceptional and knowing what she needed.

Every infant born is testimony to the intricacy and breadth of possibilities inherent in humanity. Yet from birth* in most homes and social groups, we teach children that only certain possibilities within them are livable; we teach them to hear only certain voices inside themselves, to feel only what we believe they ought to feel, to recognize only certain others as human.

Those years you never looked at any of us. Staring into your own eyelids. Like you saw a light there. Can you see me now?

The avoidance of pain - physical or psychic - is a dangerous mechanism, which can cause us to lose touch not just with our painful sensations but with ourselves.

She died a famous woman denying her wounds denying her wounds came from the same source as her power.

I refuse to become a seeker for cures. Everything that has ever helped me has come through what already lay stored in me. Old things, diffuse, unnamed, lie strong across my heart. This is from where my strength comes, even when I miss my strength even when it turns on me like a violent master.