Self Quotes

It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict our world.

Every extreme attitude is a fight from the self.

Where unity and self-sacrifice are indispensable for the normal functioning of society, everyday life is likely to be either religiofied (common tasks turned into holy causes) or militarized.

There's already a lot of self-exculpatory history being written. Right across the board. And it's my task to make sure that such self-exculpatory histories cannot be written.

A dreary censorship, and self-censorship, has been imposed on books by the centralization of the book industry.

I don't want to be in my 'interview zone' mode. I've been doing a lot of interviews and I'm very self-aware of how I'm coming across.

I was just starting out, trying to become a screenwriter, and I became the Austin slam champion three times. For a nerdy, kind of a socially awkward guy, that did wonders for my self esteem.

I do not believe in self-proclaimed parties.

I got my first guitar in October of 1968. I'm self-taught.

The nature of business and government has been to build a surplus and self-perpetuate, but the Internet fosters and rewards smaller, more fluid organizations.

It is my dominant intent to be good to me.

You are not here to prove worthiness. You are here to extend the creation, creator, creating that you are.

A stunning meditation on the power of escape, and on the cat-and-mouse contest the self plays to deflect its own guilt.

The greatest possession is Self-possession.

The self-made man is often proud of a poor job.

It is extremely natural for us to desire to see such our thoughts put into the dress of words, without which indeed we can scarce have a clear and distinct idea of them our selves.

Hollywood wouldn't suit me. In L.A. it's all about work - studio people have their five minutes with you and they go, 'Oh mah Gahd, I love your movie.' You just feel very self-conscious there.

Is there anything more self-defeating than using technology to free up your time - so that you can learn how to do an even better job at it?

Sometimes it'll happen to people, that their self will stop coming through. And people will just cease to understand them.

When you birth a child, it's like a bloody giving of self to the creation of a life.

I speak of honor-your honor to God-your honor to country-your honor to self. I sincerely believe it to be the cure to most of our ills, both on a national or individual basis.

It was strange to have no self-to be like a little boy left alone in a big house, who knew that now he could do anything he wanted to do, but found that there was nothing that he wanted to do.

So there was not an "I" anymore - not a basis on which I could organize my self-respect - save my limitless capacity for toil that it seemed I possessed no more.

Even the art of quoting is a conservative art most of the time, in order to propel the same ideas and the same self-congratulatory importance.

There is no real escape from autobiography into biography. The self has to be faced, or we die.

Those moments when you don't feel self-conscious, when you escape that, are when you produce something meaningful.

The key to successful business is self belief and application.

True literature should rouse the reader, unsettle him, change his view of the world, give him a resolute push over the cliff of self-knowledge

I have amazing collaborators as well, but I want to learn more and be a self-contained unit.

The less self-conscious you are about what you are about, the better in a way, that is to say technically. You have to get it in your blood, not in the head.

No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made.

The liberty to live for self alone becomes in time a weary bondage.

... justice is mercy's highest self.

It would be unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.

All authority must be out of a man's self, turned . . . either upon an art, or upon a man.

We have to learn how to control our minds. We have to learn self-control.

This could all end at any moment...Therefore, be self-controlled.

Faith is not a contract. Faith is surrender. If no other relationship in our experience is one of self-surrender, if it's all contractual, people won't know how to believe.

Immortal life is something to be earned, By slow self-conquest, comradeship with Pain, And patient seeking after higher truths.

More things are left undone through neglect of duty than through neglect of self-interest.

Whatever pretended causes we may blame our afflictions upon, it is often nothing but self-interest and vanity that produce them.

The breeding we give young people is ordinarily but an additional self-love, by which we make them have a better opinion of themselves.

Self-interest speaks all manner of tongues and plays all manner of parts, even that of disinterestedness.

Self-love is more cunning than the most cunning man in the world.

We do not like to praise, and seldom praise anyone without self-interest.

Jealousy is always born with love, but does not die with it. In jealousy there is more of self-love than of love to another.

It is difficult to like those whom we do not esteem; but it is no less so to like those whom we esteem more than ourselves.

It is easier to deceive yourself, and to do so unperceived, than to deceive another.

Loyalty is in most people only a ruse used by self-interest to attract confidence.

Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices; it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.