Quotes About Self-awareness

it is hard to agree with reality if you cannot agree with yourself.

Why be concerned with gossip? Because it is much easier, as well as far more enjoyable, to identify and label the mistakes of others than to recognize our own.

Her favorite position is beside herself, and her favorite sport is jumping to conclusions.

I don't spend a lot of time taking polls around the world to tell me what I think is the right way to act. I've just got to know how I feel" (George W. Bush, November 2002).

Lo mejor que podemos hacer es llegar a un compromiso: aprender a reconocer situaciones en las que los errores sean probables y esforzarnos en evitar errores importantes cuando están en juego cosas de primer orden. La premisa de este libro es que es más fácil reconocer los errores de otros que los nuestros.

it is much easier, as well as far more enjoyable, to identify and label the mistakes of others than to recognize our own.

your subjective experience consists largely of the story that your System 2 tells itself about what is going on.

Recognize the signs that you are in a cognitive minefield, slow down, and ask for reinforcement of system 2.

You have now been introduced to that stranger in you, which may be in control of much of what you do, although you rarely have a glimpse of it.

Questioning what we believe and want is difficult at the best of times

Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?

The notion that we have limited access to the workings of our minds is difficult to accept because, naturally, it is alien to our experience, but it is true: you know far less about yourself than you feel you do.

it is easier to recognize other people's mistakes than our own.

The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people's mistakes than our own.

Most of us view the world as more benign than it really is, our own attributes as more favorable than they truly are, and the goals we adopt as more achievable than they are likely to be.

you should know that correcting your intuitions may complicate your life.

shed new light on the planning fallacy

for System 1 in making routine decisions. The best we can do is a compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high. The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people's mistakes than our own.

many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions.

Ich habe diese Welt nicht anders vorgefunden als gehüllt in mein Bewusstsein; wie also kann ich gehen, ohne sie mitzunehmen? Und gesetzt selbst, dass sie alle, Berge, Häuser, Sonne (und ich bezweifle es) durch und für andere Wesen fortbestehen, - es werden andere sein, nicht diese Berge, diese Häuser, diese Sonne.

The eyes are not windows. There are nerve impulses, but no one reads them, counts them, translates them, and ruminates about them. Hunt for as long as you want, there's nobody home. The world is contained within you, and you're not there.

He looks around, he suddenly recognizes in his colleagues what others see in him: tax officials. And he is one of them. How could it have happened that he became a tax official? On the computer he looks at pictures from his school days. Back then he wasn't a tax official yet.

The unexamined life is surely worth living, but is the unlived life worth examining?" —ADAM PHILLIPS, BRITISH PSYCHOANALYST AND PHILOSOPHER (1954–), FREUDIAN EXISTENTIALIST

Greene: "It's not reasonable to expect actual humans to put aside nearly everything they love for the sake of the greater good. Speaking for myself, I spend money on my children that would be better spent on distant starving children, and I have no intention of stopping. After all, I'm only human! But I'd rather be a human who knows that he's a hypocrite, and who tries to be less so, than one who mistakes his species-typical moral limitations for ideal values.