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Self Quotes

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Self Quotes

“Philosophers are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic...; while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration" most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact.”

IfsHeartKindHas BeensMadeRealSelfReasonEnoughPhilosophyFactsProblemInspirationDesireOpinionHonestColdDevelopmentPureBottomPhilosopherNoiseAbstractAssumptionTouchedVirtuousSelf DevelopmentTruthfulnessHunchesDialecticsUnconcernedNot Honest
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“Our passions are the chief means of self-preservation; to try to destroy them is therefore as absurd as it is useless; this would be to overcome nature, to reshape God's handiwork. If God bade man annihilate the passions he has given him, God would bid him be and not be; He would contradict himself. He has never given such a foolish commandment, there is nothing like it written on the heart of man, and what God will have a man do, He does not leave to the words of another man. He speaks Himself; His words are written in the secret heart.”

IfsMenTryingHeartMeanDoeSelfWould BePassionSpeakGivenSecretWrittenOvercomingFoolishGods WillAbsurdChiefsUselessCommandmentsPreservationAnother ManSelf PreservationHandiwork
Book:Emile: Or, On Education
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“Man, the more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness with man and nature and the more he becomes an "individual," has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self.”

MenWorldKindSelfChoicesIndividualSecurityIntegrityGainsOriginalsOnenessTiesProductiveEmergingSpontaneityMan And NatureProductive Work
Book:Escape from Freedom
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“The de-eroticization of the world, a companion to its disenchantment ... seems to result from a combination of causes our democratic regime and its tendencies toward leveling and self-protection, a reductionist-materialist science that inevitably interprets eros as sex, and the atmosphere generated by "the death of God" and of the subordinate god, Eros.”

WorldSelfSeemsSexCausesResultsDemocraticProtectionTendenciesCombinationAtmosphereCompanionRegimesSubordinatesErosSelf ProtectionDisenchantment
Book:Love and Friendship
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“The self must be a tense bow. It must struggle with opposites rather than harmonize them, rather than turn the tension over to the great instruments of last manhood the skilled bow unbenders and Jesuits of our days, the psychiatrists, who, in the same spirit and as part of the same conspiracy of modernity as the peace virtuosos, reduce conflict.”

SelfLastsSpiritTurnsStruggleConflictOppositesInstrumentsTensionConspiracyBowsManhoodTenseModernityPsychiatristJesuit
Book:Closing of the American Mind
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“Locke had illegitimately selected those parts of man he needed for his social contract and suppressed all the rest, a theoretically unsatisfactory procedure and a practically costly one. The bourgeois is the measure of the price paid, he who most of all cannot afford to look to his real self, who denies the existence of the thinly boarded-over basement in him, who is most made over for the purposes of a society that does not even promise him perfection or salvation but merely buys him off.”

MenLooksDoeMadeRealSelfPurposeSocialExistenceNeededPromisePerfectionPaidSalvationDenyContractsProceduresBourgeoisSelectedBasementsReal SelfSocial Contract
Book:Closing of the American Mind
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“This was 1990, the year that communism died in Europe and it seemed strange to me that in all the words that were written about the fall of the iron curtain, nobody anywhere lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that communism never worked and I would have disliked living under it myself but none the less it seems that there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self interest and greed.”

KnowsYearsKindEndsSelfSeemsFallInterestWrittenSadnessEconomicStrangeEuropeDiedGreedNobleExperimentsCommunismIronCurtainsSelf InterestEconomic SystemsIron Curtain
Author:Bill Bryson
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“Losing ... really does say something about who you are. Among other things it measures are: do you blame others, or do you own the loss? Do you analyze your failure, or just complain about bad luck? If you're willing to examine failure, and to look not just at your outward physical performance, but your internal workings, too, losing can be valuable. How you behave in those moments can perhaps be more self-defining than winning could ever be. Sometimes losing shows you for who you really are.”

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Author:Lance Armstrong
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“In the background lurks the scourge of international terrorism. There are people exercising power in a few countries and leading political factions in others who seem to be moved by narrow, brutal and irrational impulses. Their view of their own self-interest is so blinkered as to leave no space for purely human values, for peaceful negotiation or for economic advancement. They are bent on the destruction of the established order and of civilised ways of doing business. They must never be allowed to succeed.”

PeopleWayHumansSelfCountrySeemsPoliticalValuesOrderInterestSpaceViewsEconomicExerciseSucceedDestructionMovedInternationalTerrorismBackgroundsPeacefulImpulseBrutalIrrationalBentNegotiationAdvancementSelf InterestFactionsHuman ValuesScourgeCivilisedInternational Terrorism
Author:Margaret Thatcher
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“Never trample on any soul though it may be lying in the veriest mire; for that last spark of self-respect is its only hope, its only chance; the last seed of a new and better life: the voice of God that whispers to it: "You are not what you ought to be, and you are not what you can be. You are still God's child, still an immortal soul. You may rise yet. and fight a good fight yet, and be a man once more, after the likeness of God who made you, and Christ who died for you!”

MenMayChildrenMadeStillsSoulSelfLastsLyingFightingVoiceChristChanceOughtDiedSeedsSelf RespectImmortalSparksBe YouBetter LifeBe A ManVoice Of GodGood FightImmortal Soul
Book:The Good News of God: Easyread Large Bold Edition
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“Each of us has the power and responsibility to heal ourselves, to be our own medicine man or woman. Awakening our innate powers of being, loving, knowing, seeing, and healing involves ongoing work at all levels and in all dimensions of our self. Exploring the range of rhythms and emotions, achieving insights into our conditioning and ego, moving through the energy levels of spirit – these are all activities to be integrated into our daily lives.”

MenSelfMovingSpiritEnergyLevelsEmotionHealingResponsibilityKnowingSeeingAchieveActivityEgoMedicineInsightAwakeningHealRhythmRangeDimensionsDaily LifeExploringInnateOngoingConditioningIntegratedEnergy LevelsPower And Responsibility
Book:Maps to Ecstasy: The Healing Power of Movement
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“Life is sacred. Life is art. Life is sacred art. The art of sacred living means being a holy actor, acting from the soul rather than the ego. The soul is out of space and time and hence always available, an ever-present potential of our being. It is up to each of us to celebrate and to actualize our being and to turn each meal, conversation, outfit, letter, and so on, into art. Every mundane activity is an opportunity for full authentic self-expression. The soul is our artistic self, our capacity for transforming every dimension of our lives into art and theater.”

MeanArtSoulSelfLife IsTurnsActorsOpportunitySpaceActingOur LivesExpressionHolyActivityConversationEgoCapacityLettersTheaterSacredAvailableCelebrateArtisticMealsDimensionsTime And SpaceTransformingMundaneSelf ExpressionAuthentic SelfArt LifeSacred Art
Author:Gabrielle Roth
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“A glad welcome to this affirmation by a group of psychologists that the self does not stop at the skin nor even with the circle of human relationships but is interwoven with the lives of trees and animals and soil; that caring for the deepest needs of persons and caring for our threatened planet are not in conflict.”

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Author:Mary Catherine Bateson
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“These are thy glorious works Parent of Good, Almighty, thine this universal Frame, Thus wondrous fair; thy self how wondrous then! Unspeakable, who sitst above these Heavens To us invisible or dimly seen In these thy lowest works, yet these declare Thy goodness beyond thought, and Power Divine: Speak ye who best can tell, ye Sons of light, Angels, for ye behold him, and with songs And choral symphonies, Day without Night, Circle his Throne rejoicing, ye in Heav'n, On Earth join all ye Creatures to extoll Him first, him last, him midst, and without end.”

FirstsEndsSelfGodLightEarthLastsNightSongSpeakHeavenParentDivineSonCreaturesGoodnessAngelFairsUniversalCirclesInvisibleGloriousMidstRejoiceAlmightyThronesLowestSymphonyWondrousUnspeakable
Author:John Milton
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“The confusion of spirit and body is quite understandable in a culture where spirit is concretized in magnificent skyscrapers, where cathedrals have become museums for tourists, where woman-flesh-devil are associated, and nature is raped for any deplorable excuse. Dieting with fierce will-power is the masculine route; dieting with love of her own nature is the feminine. Her only real hope is to care for her own body and experience it as the vessel through which her Self may be born.”

MayRealSelfBodyCareSpiritCultureBornDevilExcuseFleshConfusionFeminineMuseumsFierceMagnificentRoutesMasculineVesselTouristsWill PowerCathedralsDietingSkyscraper
Author:Marion Woodman
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“Mature love is not a surrender of the self but a surrender to the self. The ego surrenders its hegemony of the personality to the heart, but in this surrender it is not annihilated. Rather it is strengthened because its roots in the body are nourished by the joy that the body feels.”

FeelsHeartSelfBodyJoyLove IsPersonalityEgoRootsSurrenderMatureHegemonyMature Love
Book:Joy: The Surrender to the Body and to Life
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“In a man like Friedrich von Schlegel the courage to be as an individual self produced complete neglect of participation, but it also produced, in reaction to the emptiness of this self-affirmation, the desire to return to a collective. Schlegel, and with him many extreme individualists in the last hundred years, became Roman Catholics. The courage to be as oneself broke down, and one turned to an institutional embodiment of the courage to be as a part.”

MenYearsSelfLastsDesireIndividualReturnHundredDown AndCatholicOneselfExtremesReactionsBrokeEmptinessCollectivesNeglectAffirmationParticipationEmbodimentRoman CatholicSelf Affirmation
Author:Paul Tillich
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