Ego Defence Quotes

The very purpose of an ego defence such as reification (or indeed any ego defence) is, as the name implies, to protect and uphold a certain crystallized notion of self or 'I'. There is therefore an important sense in which the reifying self is itself reified. ~ Neel Burton

It is quite natural to think of the self as something concrete, but it is, in fact, nothing of the sort. Rather, it is an abstract product of our minds, a convenient concept or schema that enables us to relate our present self with our past, future, and conditional selves, and thereby to create an illusion of coherence and continuity from a big jumble of disparate experiences. Indeed, one could go so far as to argue that the self is nothing but the sum total of our ego defences, and that it is therefore tantamount to one gigantic ego defence, namely, the ego itself. The self is like a cracked mask that is in constant need of being pieced together. But behind the mask there is nobody at home. ~ Neel Burton

Ego means "I am this body mind" ...
Clarity realise "I am That"
Whereas in real Just awareness is ...
Be Happy and keep smiling ... ~ Satish Kumar

An Ego Mind is a destructive mind and a rational mind is a peaceful mind. ~ Charleston Parker

True self-confidence never needs to degrade the confidence of others in order to grow and survive. If it does, it's not confidence at all ... it's ego. ~ Charles F. Glassman

Attack wins you games, defence wins you titles. ~ Alex Ferguson

Hypocrisy - in other words, the practice of lying about lying - shields us from seeing ourselves as we are: a collocation of fragments that fit together as a biological unit but not as anything else, not as that ghost which has been called a self, a phantasm whose ecotoplasmic unreality we can never see through. By staying true to the lie of the self, the ego, we can hold onto the illusion that we will be who we are all our lives and not see our selves die a thousand times before our death. While some have dedicated themselves to getting to the bottom of how these parts create the illusion of a whole, this is not how pyramids are built. To get a pyramid off the ground takes a lot of ego - the base material of those stacks of stones that tourists visit while on vacation. Of course, a pyramid is actually a polyhedron, that is, a mathematical conception which pyramids in the physical world resemble . . . at least from a distance. The nearer one gets to a pyramid, the more it reveals itself to be what it is: a roughly pyramidal conglomeration of bricks, a composition of fragments that is not what it seems to be. This is also how it works with humans. The world around us encourages the build up of our egos - those pyramids of self-esteem - as if we needed such encouragement. Although everyone is affected by this pyramid scheme, some participate in it more than others: they are observably more full of themselves and tend to their egos as they would exotic plants in a hothouse. It h ~ Thomas Ligotti

Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity. ~ Karen Armstrong

Mr. Thornton stood by one of the windows, with his back to the door, apparently absorbed in watching something in the street. But, in truth, he was afraid of himself. His heart beat thick at the thought of her coming. He could not forget the touch of her arms around his neck, impatiently felt as it had been at the time; but now the recollection of her clinging defence of him, seemed to thrill him through and through, - to melt away every resolution, all power of self-control, as if it were wax before a fire. He dreaded lest he should go forwards to meet her, with his arms held out in mute entreaty that she would come and nestle there, as she had done, all unheeded, the day before, but never unheeded again. His heart throbbed loud and quick Strong man as he was, he trembled at the anticipation of what he had to say, and how it might be received. She might droop, and flush, and flutter to his arms, as to her natural home and resting-place. One moment, he glowed with impatience at the thought that she might do this, the next, he feared a passionate rejection, the very idea of which withered up his future with so deadly a blight that he refused to think of it. He was startled by the sense of the presence of some one else in the room. He turned round. She had come in so gently, that he had never heard her; the street noises had been more distinct to his inattentive ear than her slow movements, in her soft muslin gown. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Resistance is a result of our mind being attached to having things a certain way rather than the way they actually are. It is a mental habit of the ego that we need to become aware of in order to see the consequences. Only then can we see into our thought system and realize that nothing could be more of a waste of time than to resist and complain about what already is. ~ Lee L Jampolsky

The greatest enemy of any person is his own ego. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Being here really is just the invitation to rest as Being. There is nothing you have to do. It is not an invitation to become. You will not be scrutinized, your actions compared with those of others. Thats just unicorn food. Let your river flow as it pleases. Simply observe and recognise that all is unfolding spontaneously when that inner journalist- the ego, is exposed as a myth. ~ Mooji

Television just turns people into nightmares. The egos! I call it Omarosa syndrome. ~ Jackie Warner

The enemy of the spirit is the selfish ego, which thinks that happiness can be gained through causing unhappiness and disharmony to others. In many ancient languages, the word for enemy means "one who falls out of rhythm; one who is not working in harmony with the larger group." ~ Sharon Gannon

And I know when you're a teenager everybody feels different and alien to the other people around them but there seems to be an added dimension when you're queer. It's because for that period of time you're more isolated than anybody else and you truly think you are the only one of your kind. So you create fantastic barriers and defence strategies for yourself to survive. And when you get older and realise that you can take them down it's an internal and eternal struggle to do so. Fear is the best anti-motivator in the world. ~ Sean Kennedy

Simon: 'You know men. We have delicate egos.'
Clary: 'I wouldn't describe Jace's ego as delicate.'
Simon: 'No, Jace's is sort of the antiaircraft artillery tank of male egos. ~ Cassandra Clare

And Anne could have said much, and did long to say a little in defence of her friend's not very dissimilar claims to theirs, but her sense of personal respect to her father prevented her. She made no reply. She left it to himself to recollect, that Mrs Smith was not the only widow in Bath between thirty and forty, with little to live on, and no surname of dignity. ~ Jane Austen

Kissinger would probably be outraged even if he reread his own memoirs, on the grounds that they are not favorable enough. ~ Walter Isaacson

If you want to build an open source project, you can't let your ego stand in the way. You can't rewrite everybody's patches, you can't second-guess everybody, and you have to give people equal control. ~ Rasmus Lerdorf

You need a big ego to be an artist. ~ Damien Hirst

Take up anything that you see or feel, a book for instance; first concentrate the mind on it, then on the knowledge that is in the form of a book, and then on the Ego that sees the book, and so on. By that practice all the organs will be conquered. ~ Swami Vivekananda

It is very difficult to know exactly what good should come out of a particular situation. To attempt to manipulate circumstances so your idea of good can come about, is to let the ego play God-and that, as you know, can and does backfire. ~ Neem Karoli Baba

First, make sure you get into a relationship for the right reasons. (I'm using the word "right" here as a relative term. I mean "right" relative to the larger purpose you hold in your life.) As I have indicated before, most people still enter relationships for the "wrong" reasons - to end loneliness, fill a gap, bring themselves love, or someone to love - and those are some of the better reasons. Others do so to salve their ego, end their depressions, improve their sex life, recover from a previous relationship, or, believe it or not, to relieve boredom. None of these reasons will work, and unless something dramatic changes along the way, neither will the relationship. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

It's a struggle for me to remain open," she admits. "To not shut down because I'm defensive or scared or maybe my ego is getting in the way. And the other side of that is just believing that I belong where I am and deserve to take up space. I fight constantly between those two things, between not apologizing for what I want and staying vulnerable and creatively supple and not thinking I know better than everyone else. ~ Amy Poehler

God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything. ~ Bede Griffiths

Be careful with your gift. It can lead to your success or your destruction. ~ Eric Christopher Jackson

Political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. ~ George Orwell

You can be yourself without pursuing yourself. Have you ever seen a dog chase his own tail? He just runs in circles. ~ Criss Jami

To separate yourself from your weakness and look at it objectively is a very powerful thing. ~ Russell Simmons

You can never be free
as long as you have an ego to defend. ~ Anthony De Mello

It is a significant gamble to assume that troops in our U.K. Armed Forces would volunteer for a Scottish Defence Force. ~ Philip Hammond

But then you become closed. Then you start dying as far as your intelligence is concerned because intelligence needs the open sky, the wind, the air, the sun in order to grow, to expand, to flow. To remain alive it needs a constant flow; if it becomes stagnant it becomes slowly slowly a dead phenomenon. ~ Rajneesh

Cheney was among the best secretaries of defence the country has ever had. He was a very effective White House chief of staff. He did not make many enemies, and he had the ability to persuade people with that soft tone and very reasonable style of his. He's always been exceptionally good as the right-hand man. ~ Barton Gellman

DENIAL
Defense mechanism in which the existence of unpleasant realities is disavowed; refers to keeping out of conscious awareness any aspects of external reality that, if acknowledged, would produce anxiety. ~ Benjamin James Sadock

The United Nations charter gives every nation the right to self defence, therefore when the American embassies were bombed it was a matter of time before the Americans responded by going for what they suspected were the causes of the attack. ~ Benazir Bhutto

It's very clearly stated in the film: You make your own choices, and what you're always fighting is ego. ~ Taylor Hackford

You proceed from a false assumption: I have no ego to bruise. ~ Leonard Nimoy

Feed your self-esteem; not your ego! ~ Deborah Brodie