Quotes About Self-awareness

We see our troubles through the filter of our own imperfection...

I'm not great at talking to people. I have all these thoughts bunching up inside my head and then they come out like a dam bursting or something. I'm sorry.

Like I said, "You don't get to pick your name or your parents." Joshua Wood is what he is. I couldn't change him or the fact that he was my father. All I could do is try not to become him.

Why is my skull covered with hair? To make it look like my genitals?

He was perfectly conscious of the absurdity of his behavior, but he was incapable of changing it. This absurdity was an essential part of him. It was probably the most basic element of his personality.

Already, he was not entirely Trelkovsky any more. But what was Trelkovsky? How could he learn the answer to that? He had to discover himself, so that he could be sure he would not wander from the right path. But how?

Other people aren't like me in the slightest, I find. I admit though I prefer to know they are happy, just to be on the safe side. If not, they can be dangerous. I don't like seeing their blood, not at all, nor their guts, all that disgusts me. And if anyone deserves pity, it's me. The others will have to manage by themselves. They weren't any worse off before I was born, and they won't be any better off after I'm dead.

Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. (p. 100)

One of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety is that we are forced to become aware of ourselves.

when men at last accept the fact that they cannot successfully lie to themselves, and at last learn to take themselves seriously, they discover previously unknown and often remarkable recuperative powers within themselves.

Loneliness is such an omnipotent and painful threat to many persons that they have little conception of the positive values of solitude, and even at times are very frightened at the prospect of being alone. Many people suffer from "the fear of finding oneself alone," remarks André Gide, "and so they don't find themselves at all.

Much self-condemnation is a cloak for arrogance. Those who think they overcome pride by condemning themselves could well ponder Spinoza's remark "One who despises himself is the nearest to a proud man.

If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.

Much self-condemnation, thus, is a cloak for arrogance. Those who think they overcome pride by condemning themselves could well ponder Spinoza's remark, 'One who despises himself is the nearest to a proud man'. In ancient Athens, when a politician was trying to get the votes of the working class by appearing very humble in a tattered coat with big holes in it, Socrates unmasked his hypocrisy by exclaiming, 'Your vanity shows forth from every whole in your coat'.

But, as is obvious to any observer, many people are thrown into anxiety by situations which are not objectively threatening either in kind or degree. The person may very often state himself that the occasion of his anxiety is a relatively minor event, that his apprehension is 'silly,' and he may be angry with himself for letting such a minor thing bother him; but he still feels it.

He had a good dream, to come out number one." But the other son accurately sees the contradiction which such an upheaval of values leads to, "He never knew who he was."*

But they do not talk long before they make it clear that they expect the marriage partner, real or hoped-for, to fill some lack, some vacancy within themselves; and they are anxious and angry because he or she doesn't.

it soon becomes evident that their underlying problem is that they have no definite experience of their own desires or wants. Thus they feel swayed this way and that, with painful feelings of powerlessness, because they feel vacuous, empty.

the person with neurotic anxiety endeavors to run away from some elements within herself or himself. This can be accomplished only by dissociating these elements, which sets up inner contradictions.

This is what anxiety does to the human being: it disorients him, wiping out temporarily his clear knowledge of what and who he is, and blurring his view of reality around him.

Our task, then, is to strengthen our consciousness of ourselves, to find centers of strength within ourselves which will enable us to stand despite the confusion and bewilderment around us.

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