Quotes About Self-awareness

When I was in high school in the early 1960s, I wanted to be an animator and even took art classes. But by the time I was in college, I realized I couldn't draw well enough.

I have just gotten to know my body well enough now to know when I need a little bit of help.

I don't think I think things through like regular people would. I could be a real hateful person, and I also don't really care about my own well-being, I guess. I just kind of have that knack about me. I just don't care.

Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness. Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things.

My interest in well-being evolved from my interest in decision making - from raising the question of whether people know what they will want in the future and whether the things that people want for themselves will make them happy.

Well-being is how I feel in my skin, not about how other people are looking at me and what they see... it's what I feel like.

I thought divorce was for people that threw plates at each other, and I'd have to be an alcoholic or having affairs. But the truth is, sometimes a very sweet, well-meaning person just doesn't do it for you, and you need to get out of there.

When you ask your white friends what their cultural heritage is, they don't just say white. They give you a math equation. 'Well, I'm a third German and a fourth Irish and one-sixteenth Welsh and one-fortieth Native American for college applications.'

Growing up in Wales, there was a lot of fervour about being Welsh. But the more that I travelled, I realised that people aren't always interested in where you're from, but who you are.

I've made peace with the fact that the things that I thought were weaknesses or flaws were just me. I like them.

I would hear stories about Steve Jobs and feel like he was at 100 percent exactly what he wanted to do, but I'm sure even a Steve Jobs has compromised. Even a Rick Owens has compromised. You know, even a Kanye West has compromised. Sometimes you don't even know when you're being compromised till after the fact, and that's what you regret.

In a way, it's taken me 25 years to acknowledge that I am from the West Coast. I was always sort of pretending I was bicoastal or that I really belonged on the East Coast.

I remember the moment when it hit me. I was walking down Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side, and it felt like I was literally walking out of a jail cell that I had been in. At that moment, I realized I could shave if I wanted. It was up to me and no one else.

Many scientists have been drawn to Buddhism out of a sense that the Western tradition has delivered an impoverished conception of basic, human sanity. In the West, if you speak to yourself out loud all day long, you are considered crazy. But speaking to yourself silently - thinking incessantly - is considered perfectly normal.

A powerful person is equally cool with their flaws and things that aren't powerful about them at all.

Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless.

Me being able to beat up Austin Powers? I mean, how great can that be?

I always tell writers that it's good to have an area of expertise. It's a really practical answer, I know, but know about science or about sports or about medicine, so you can work as a science writer or a sports writer. Don't just know about yourself.

I think I might have exaggerated some abilities in the past. Practical abilities for acting jobs you sometimes have on your CV - I have definitely exaggerated in meetings to get a job and then not been up to scratch on the day.

I'm certainly not a practicing Jew. I would never claim, 'I'm Jewish.' That's not the first and foremost thing in my mind, as far as who I am as a person.

I need to see where I am physically and practicing with NHL players is the best way to find that out.

Remain true to yourself while practicing this business of being an actor. And it is a business.

I have a fairly pragmatic view on all those bullies that came before, because everybody makes you who you are now.

I think you have to be pragmatic to the approach of life and brutally honest with yourself. We all are here to do something, and it is important to understand our potential first.