Quotes About Ego

Great people have great egos; maybe that's what makes them great.

Life's all about 'me' anyway

Ignorance and ego, what a lethal combo.

Keep your identity small.

Closing a student's mind should be a criminal offense. If you let your ego get in the way of your teaching, you may become flustered or angry and lose sight of your goal to enlighten or give back.

Take the time to first figure out why you want to teach. Is it to bolster your ego to feel important and have people sit back in awe of your stunning presence? Or, does it look to be an easy road and steady paycheck? Either of these reasons does nothing for the teaching profession, let alone your ego.

Really there was no deadlier combination than bookworm and megalomaniac. It was, for example, the crazed condition of many novelists and travelers.

a man doesn't prove he's a man by getting an erection. He's only a real man if he can pleasure a woman. And if he can pleasure a prostitute, he'll think he's the best lover on the block -Nyah

Men take the oddest satisfaction in feeling superior without knowing that most of the time they are being utterly predictable.

Judging oneself to be inferior to other people was one of the worst acts of pride he knew, because it was the most destructive way of being different.

But the greatest wisdom could be blinded by the glare of vanity.

People always tend to help others just so that they can feel better than what they really are

The moment we place ourselves on the same level as some vile adversary, we will fighting in the dark, and the only winner will be the Lord of Darkness.

People tend to help others just so that they can feel are better than they really are.

We insist on being Someone, with a capital S. We get security from defining ourselves as worthless or worthy, superior or inferior. We waste precious time exaggerating or romanticizing or belittling ourselves with a complacent surety that yes, that's who we are. We mistake the openness of our being—the inherent wonder and surprise of each moment—for a solid, irrefutable self. Because of this misunderstanding, we suffer.

It's hard to know whether to laugh or to cry at the human predicament. Here we are with so much wisdom and tenderness, and—without even knowing it—we cover it over to protect ourselves from insecurity. Although we have the potential to experience the freedom of a butterfly, we mysteriously prefer the small and fearful cocoon of ego.

The ego wants resolution, wants to control impermanence, wants something secure and certain to hold on to. It freezes what is actually fluid, it grasps at what is in motion, it tries to escape the beautiful truth of the fully alive nature of everything. As a result, we feel dissatisfied, haunted, threatened. We spend much of our time in a cage created by our own fear of discomfort.

When you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha" means that when you see that you're grasping or clinging to anything, whether conventionally it's called good or bad, make friends with that. Look into it. Get to know it completely and utterly. In that way it will let go of itself.

If you acknowledge what's happening and refrain from acting, that opens up some space in your mind. Clinging to views and opinions, thinking you're always right and lording it over others, keeps you endlessly stuck.

The Buddha spoke a lot about the importance of working with one's ego. But what did he mean by "ego"? There are various ways to talk about this word, but one definition I particularly like is "that which resists what is." Ego struggles against reality, against the open-endedness and natural movement of life. It is very uncomfortable with vulnerability and ambiguity, with not being quite sure how to pin things down.

That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem. Self-importance is like a prison for us, limiting us to the world of our likes and dislikes. We end up bored to death with ourselves and our world. We end up very dissatisfied.

That which is threatening to ego is liberating to the heart.

When we're thinking that we're competent or that we're hopeless—what are we basing it on? On this fleeting moment? On yesterday's success or failure? We cling to a fixed idea of who we are and it cripples us.

As Buddhists, we might say, "My ego causes me so many problems." Then we might think, "Well, then, we're supposed to get rid of it, right? Then there'd be no problem." On the contrary, the idea isn't to get rid of ego but actually to begin to take an interest in ourselves, to investigate and be inquisitive about ourselves.