Best 12844 quotes in «self quotes» category

If I had it to do again, I would less often judge myself and more often ask for a jury.

If I had had to write only about imaginary people, I would have had to close up my typewriter. I wrote about my life in less and less disguise as I grew older, and finally with no disguise - except the disguise we create for ourselves, which is self-deception.

If I had one wish, it would be for self-drying pants. Wait -- no! Unlimited wishes! How do I return these stupid pants?!

If I had the money I'd pay people to have them read accurate books or posts about our own religion. It is very important not only for their self-image, but also for the future of Europe - as a biological term.

If I learned one thing, it is that self-doubt is one of the most destructive forces. It makes you defensive instead of open, reactive instead of active. Self-doubt is consuming and cruel. And my hope today is that we can all collectively agree to ban it. . . . Think to the moments of your life when you forgot to doubt yourself. When you were so inspired that you were just living and creating and working. Pay attention to those moments because they're trying to reach you through those lenses of doubt and trying to show you your potential.

If I'm being forced to do something I don't want to do, my real self comes out. But whether or not I'm aware of it, no matter what happens, I'm always going to have a fake self and I'm not going to judge my fake self.

If I love the other person, I feel one with him or her, but with him as he is, not as I need him to be as an object for my use. Respect thus implies the absence of exploitation: it allows the other to be, to change and to develop 'in his own ways.' This requires a commitment to know the other as a separate being, and not merely as a reflection of my own ego. According to Velleman this loving willingness and ability to see the other as they really are is foregrounded in our willingness to risk self-exposure.

If in a discussion of many matters ... we are not able to give perfectly exact and self-consistent accounts, do not be surprised: rather we would be content if we provide accounts that are second to none in probability.

I find actors a little bit too self-conscious.

I find drug use disrespectful, self destructive and weak. I want no part of it. I believe in complete respect for myself and others.

I find I always throw limbs here and there in my lyrics. I kind of put my physical self into the songs.

I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.

I find it ironic that Republicans have such disdain for the lazy, and yet their solution to every problem is do nothing. Their answer to wealth inequality, do nothing. Health care? Do nothing. Climate change? Nothing. Racism? Doesn’t exist. For a group of people so head over heels in love with self-reliance, they sure do recommend a lot of sitting on their ass.

I find myself both as man and as myself something more determined and distinctive, at pitch, more distinctive and higher pitched than anything else I see.

I find that in the course of the day when I'm writing, after three or four hours of intense work, I have a splitting headache, and I have to stop. Because the involvement, which is both creative and self-critical, is so intense that I've got to stop doing it.

I find most famous Christians to be full of themselves and of prejudice and self-loathing, masquerading as devout religious belief. I find all fundamentalism to be terrifying and very destructive.

I find still photographs make me quite self-conscious.

I find myself fascinating.

If I should go before the rest of you Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone, Nor when I'm gone speak in a Sunday voice But be the usual selves that I have known. Weep if you must, Parting is hell, But life goes on, So sing as well.

I first became interested in Ho Chi Minh in 1964-1965 while I was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in South Vietnam as a foreign service officer with the Department of State. The government in Saigon was at the point of collapse and the [Lyndon] Johnson administration was preparing to send U.S. combat troops to prevent a communist victory there. I became convinced that the U.S. effort would not succeed because of the lack of conviction in the Saigon government compared to the discipline and sense of self-sacrifice among the Viet Cong.

If I spent my time worrying about what other people would think of my work, I would be too self-conscious to write.

If it had taught them nothing else, twenty years of living past high school had taught them self-preservation. ... No one was going to risk putting his ego on the line; they would come prepared with dates, flattering clothes, and a well-rehearsed, carefully edited biography. They would all be kind to each other. High school was enough torture for one lifetime.

If it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful rite of passage from one phase of life, one state of mind, to another. A novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest.

If it is love that makes the world go round, it is self-induction that makes electromagnetic waves go round the world.

If it were true that conservatives were racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist, stupid, inflexible, angry, and self-righteous, shouldn't their arguments be easy to deconstruct? Someone who is making a point out of anger, ideology, inflexibility, or resentment would presumably construct a flimsy argument. So why can't the argument itself be dismembered rather than the speaker's personal style or hidden motives? Why the evasions?

If it takes you seven years to write each novel, you need a patron. And I would rather have my corporate self as my patron than any arts council or bestower of grants.

If it weren't the problem of politics for me, it would be another. And yet, sometimes it's so difficult. And I feel sorry for myself. And then hate myself for this feeling of self-pity.

If I were a bad black comic I would name my special, Yo mama, and other stories of a lack of self awareness.

If I was having a bad day, eating was like self-medicating. But if you abuse food, you still have to use that substance that you abuse every day. You have to learn to use it responsibly.

If I were to start taking care of my grooming, I would no longer be my own self... so the hell with it... I will continue to be unconcerned about it, which surely has the advantage that I'm left in peace by many a fop who would otherwise come to see me.

If I were to start taking care of my grooming, I would no longer be my own self.

I flattered myself that I was rather empathetic, that I had rather good imaginative empathy. I've realized now that that was a complete self-delusion and that I didn't really have any comprehension of what it was like to see your entire life go catastrophically wrong in a matter of moments.

If man do not find in himself the required (or wished, or wanted, - "voulue", Fr.) force to accomplish his moral aspirations, he can try to purt himself in the conditions suitable to assist (or promote, or further, -"favoriser", Fr.) his self-control.

If mankind is to escape its programmed self-extinction the God who saves us will not descend from the machine: he will rise up again in the human soul.

If love closes, the self contracts and hardens: the mind having nothing else to occupy its attention and give it that change and renewal it requires, busies itself more and more with self-feeling, which takes on narrow and disgusting forms, like avarice, arrogance and fatuity.

If literature has engaged me as a project, first as a reader, then as a writer, it is as an extension of my sympathies to other selves, other domains, other dreams, other territories.

If missions languish, it is because the whole life of godliness is feeble. The command to go everywhere and preach to everybody is not obeyed until the will is lost by self-surrender in the will of God. Living, praying, giving and going will always be found together.

If Natur has gifted a man with powers of argeyment, a man has a right to make the best of 'em, and has not a right to stand on false delicacy, and deny that he is so gifted; for that is a turning of his back on Natur, a flouting of her, a slighting of her precious caskets, and a proving of one's self to be a swine that isn't worth her scattering pearls before.

If my attention is wandering, there is somewhere it wants to go, so obviously it does not want to be where I am holding it in the name of some self-styled obligation.

If Nietzsche is correct, that to shame a man is to kill him, then any honest attempt at autobiography will be an act of self-destruction.

If none of your role models provide the answer, then it is time to go within and ask yourself, "What would make me happy?" In other words, let your feelings guide you. This doesn't work well if you focus narrowly on your personal needs. I am not talking about selfishness or self-interest. When I ask, What will make you happy?, I mean, What way of loving others feels right for you? Choose a way of loving that makes you happy, and your efforts will be play rather than work.

If one denies that, when the meaning is true, then the meant is what is so, one rejects propositional truth. If the rejection is universal, then it is the self-destructive proposition that there are no true propositions. If the rejection is limited to the dogmas, then it is just a roundabout way of saying that all the dogmas are false.

If one is true to one's inner self, and follows its wisdom, who is without a teacher?

If one is writing in a way that is questioning, or even raising questions about how we are supposed to negotiate the world - even if it is about the self, or love, or how human beings relate - I do think that has a certain subversiveness to it. Even if it's not on a geopolitical level.

If one considers how much reason every person has for anxiety and timid self-concealment, and how three-quarters of his energy and goodwill can be paralyzed and made unfruitful by it, one has to be very grateful to fashion

If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers.

If others surpass you in knowledge, in charm, in strength, in fortune, you have other causes to blame for it; but if you yield tothem in stoutness of heart you have only yourself to blame.

If one's sense of self is obtained through the eyes of another it is always subject to being lost.

If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains.

If only I had more money is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision-making necessary to create a life of enjoyment - now and not later.