Quotes About Self-knowledge

My own sense is that the acquisition of self knowledge has been made difficult by the modern world. More and more human beings live in vast urban environments, surrounded by other human beings and the creations of human beings. The natural world, the traditional source of self-awareness, is increasingly absent.

There's one problem with all psychological knowledge - nobody can apply it to themselves. People can be incredibly astute about the shortcomings of their friends, spouses, children. But they have no insight into themselves at all. The same people who are coldly clear-eyed about the world around them have nothing but fantasies about themselves. Psychological knowledge doesn't work if you look in a mirror. This bizarre fact is, as far as I know, unexplained.

There's one problem with all psychological knowledge—nobody can apply it to themselves. People can be incredibly astute about the shortcomings of their friends, spouses, children. But they have no insight into themselves at all. The same people who are coldly clear-eyed about the world around them have nothing but fantasies about themselves. Psychological knowledge doesn't work if you look in a mirror. This bizarre fact is, as far as I know, unexplained.

It is an animus, she decides, the representation of the Logos in the female, as the anima is the representation of Eros in the male. In its negative aspect it is opinionated, conventional, banal, self-righteous, argumentative . . . In its positive aspect, it conveys spirit, feistiness, the capacity for reflection and self-knowledge, the capacity to handle philosophical and religious ideas at the higher levels.

Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'.

We must each achieve greater individual consciousness and self-knowledge, and project mindful kindness toward everything and everyone.

Self knowledge begins with the neighbor, the mirror, and just the same with true self-love; that goes from the mirror to the matter.

His entire body waited on the brink of its own self-knowledge, fiercely and without reticence. As her trust had made him gentle with her, her worship had made him strong.

It is good to know what a man is, and also what the world takes him for. But you do not understand him until you have learnt how he understands himself.

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

Power within is defined by an ability to recognize differences and respect others, grounded in a strong foundation of self-worth and self-knowledge. When we operate from a place of power within, we feel comfortable challenging assumptions and long-held beliefs, pushing against the status quo, and asking if there aren't other ways to achieve the highest common good.

Power with is "based on mutual support, solidarity, collaboration and recognition and respect for differences." Power to is "based on the belief that each individual has the power to make a difference." Power within is defined by an ability to recognize differences and respect others, grounded in a strong foundation of self-worth and self-knowledge.

I remember a student presenting with great enthusiasm a summary of a book on Zen meditation while his own life experiences of restlessness, loneliness and desire for solitude and quietude remained an unknown book of knowledge to him. Just as words can become obstacles for communication, books can prevent self-knowledge.

Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.

?Through ignorance a common man considers his own religion to be the best and makes much useless claims, but when his mind is illuminated by Self-Knowledge, all sectarian quarrels disappear.

To live and know yourself, to strive, aware that life is short and one must die, to do what you can, to do what you must, this is man's life and his fulfillment.

If I had even the slightest grasp upon my own faculties, I would not make essays, I would make decisions.

Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut from several pieces and scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and uncertainty, and to my own governing method, ignorance.

does know himself never considers external things to be his;

The secret to success and enjoyment in so many parts of life is to know your capabilities and stay within them. Similarly, the key to success in investing is to know yourself and invest within your investing capabilities and within your emotional capacities.

The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star.

Whose interest does ignorance serve? If we humans bear, say, hereditary propensities toward the hatred of strangers, isn't self-knowledge the only antidote? If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

the carefully cultivated moral seriousness—strenuousness might be a better word—coexisted with a fantastical, mrs. jellyby–like absurdity. sontag's complicated and charismatic sexuality was part of this comic side of her life. the high-mindedness, the high-handedness, commingled with a love of gossip, drollery, and seductive acting out—and, when she was in a benign and unthreatened mood, a fair amount of ironic self-knowledge.

I've read Proust and Stendhal. That keeps you in your place.