Quotes About Ego

The most dangerous people were those who knew they were always right.

We realize--often quite suddenly--that our sense of self, which has been formed and constructed out of our ideas, beliefs and images, is not really who we are. It doesn't define us, it has no center.

We end up putting so much attention onto our image that we remain in a continuous state of protecting or improving our image in order to control how others see us.

Whatever you think you are, that's not it.

Ego is neither positive nor negative. Those are simply concepts that create more boundaries. Ego is just ego, and the disaster of it all is that you, as a spiritual seeker, have been conditioned to think of the ego as bad, as an enemy, as something to be destroyed. This simply strengthens the ego. In fact, such conclusions arise from the ego itself. Pay no attention to them. Don't go to war with yourself; simply inquire into who you are.

By identifying with a particular name that belongs to a particular body and mind, the self begins the process of creating a separate identity. Add in a complex jumble of ideas, beliefs, and opinions, along with some selective and often painful memories with which to create a past to identify with, as well as the raw emotional energy to hold it all together, and before you know it, you've got a very convincing - though divided - self.

Ego is nothing more than the beliefs, ideas, and images we have about ourselves—and so it is actually

Everyone around us sees themselves as essentially different from others, and from life in general. So we move in a world where almost everyone we meet will be reflecting back to us this egoic sense of consciousness. To find liberation, we must wake up from this dream that our mind creates, that we're something separate than everything around us.

you don't die; the illusion of a separate self dies. Still, it may feel like you are going to die. Only when you are willing to die for the sake of truth can that grasping truly and authentically let go.

What we call ego is simply the mechanism our mind uses to resist life as it is.

One of the most common of these traps is a sense of meaninglessness. From our new view of reality, we are free from the egoic desire to find meaning. We see that the ego's desire to find meaning in life is actually a substitute for the perception of being life itself. The search for meaning in life is a surrogate for the knowledge that we are life. Only someone who is disconnected from life itself will seek meaning. Only someone disconnected from life will look for purpose.

in a true awakening, it is realized very clearly that even the awakening itself is not personal. It is universal Spirit or universal consciousness that wakes up to itself. Rather than the "me" waking up, what we are wakes up from the "me". What we are wakes up from the seeker. What we are wakes up from the seeking.

Relinquishment is what spiritual teachers mean when they say, "die before you die.

The very last phase of spiritual awakening is what I call "the transmutation." Transmutation is what transfiguration and relinquishment make possible. In it, your orientation to life is entirely selfless. It's not that you want to be selfless or you're practicing being selfless: rather you're selfless in the sense of no self.

in a true awakenin, it is realized very clearly that even the awakening itself is not personal. It is universal Spirit or universal consciousness that wakes up to itself. Rather than the "me" waking up, what we are wakes up from the "me". What we are wakes up from the seeker. What we are wakes up from the seeking.

Self-conceit may lead to self-destruction.

Every man for himself.

Pride goes before destruction.

The smaller the mind, the greater the conceit.

Everyone likes talking about himself. - Hercule Poirot

Never worry about what you say to a man. They're so conceited that they never believe you mean it if it's unflattering.

I often find these self-made men are inconsiderate. Very possibly that is why they amass such large fortunes.

He talked a lot about the little grey cells of the brain, and of their functions. His own, he says, are of the first quality.' 'He would say so,' I remarked bitterly. 'Modesty is certainly not his middle name.

Even the most sober of us is liable to have his head turned by success.