Quotes About Self-awareness

All people see the world, not as it is, but as they are

Whatever he had learned of himself was of no avail. He was an unknown quantity.

I've pursued things long after they were over. Always I wanted someone to stop me.

so many people walk up to me and tell me they're dead, though they're just describing their afternoons.

I'm fat because I'm greedy, and if my mind is fat it's because I'm curious.

Part of life is learning what to be ashamed of and what to be proud of.

I expected the illegible and the deeply buried in me to be read as if carved on my forehead, just as I expected the obvious and the ill-concealed to be hidden from view.

Remember, cautioned the centaur. Modesty. Observance of the gods. In a fight do not do what you want to do, but what you judge you're enemy least wants you to. You cannot control others if you cannot control yourself. Those who most understand their own limitations have the fewest.

I'm not even tone deaf, that's the arse-mothering, fuck-nosed, bugger-sucking wank of the thing. I'M NOT EVEN TONE FUCKING DEAF. I'm tone DUMB.

I was happy there. Which is to say I was not unhappy there. Unhappiness and happiness I have always been able to carry about with me, irrespective of place and people, because I have never joined in.

My real dissatisfaction is with my dissatisfaction. How dare I be so discontent? How dare I? Or being discontent why cannot I shut up about it?

Perhaps narcissism is best defined as a need to look on other people as mirrored surfaces who satisfy us only when they reflect back a loving or admiring image of ourselves. When we look into another's eyes, in other words, we are not looking to see who they are, but how we are reflected in their eyes. By this definition, which of us can honestly disown our share of narcissism?

The fool doth think he is wise, yet it is the wise man that knows himself to be the fool As You Like It, Act 5, Scene 1

Over the years however, my nose grew and grew and it became apparent by the time I was fourteen that, like its owner, it was not growing straight.

Pomposity and indignation grow in old age, like nostril hairs and earlobes.

None of this is important in itself, but I feel somewhere that it has a lot to do with why I have always felt separate, why I have always felt unable to join in, to let go, to become part of the tribe, why I have always sniped or joked from the sidelines, why I have never, ever, lost my overwhelmingly self-conscious self-consciousness.

Well, we all know how satisfying it is to recite the shortcomings and hollowness of others - especially those who have money and recognition where we have none. It is certainly more pleasurable than inspecting our own shortcomings.

I always feel a fool when in the company of people who work for a living. It brings out my startling lack of common sense.

So perhaps we are all hypocrites. We damn others for what we fear as faults in ourselves. We rehearse the shortcomings of 'people' as a means of warding off the evil spirits that threaten us. It is certainly observable that those who most notice another's excessive drinking, for instance, are those most worried about their own habit.

I'm all right, I told her. This is a lie, when you're twelve. And all the other years, too.

Personally, I get uneasy when people, especially theoretical physicists, talk about consciousness. Consciousness is not a quality that one can measure from the outside. If a little green man were to appear on our doorstep tomorrow, we do not have a way of telling if he was conscious and self-aware or was just a robot.

Eine große Offenbarung des Weltraumzeitalters bestand darin, dass es der Menschheit die Sicht auf sich selbst ermöglichte. Betrachten wir die Erde vom All aus, sehen wir uns selbst als Ganzes. Wir nehmen die Einheit wahr und nicht das Trennende. Ein einfaches Bild mit einer unwiderlegbaren Botschaft: ein Planet, eine Menschheit.

Gustavo Solivellas dice: Si siempre estás enfadado y triste verás como la gente no te dedica ni tiempo ni atención (Stephen Hawking)

Gustavo Solivellas dice: Las personas que se jactan de su coeficiente intelectual son unos perdedores (Stephen Hawking)