Egocentrism Quotes

A fight is like the perfect storm. It is risky and dangerous. But, as the African proverb goes, Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. Fights are often learning opportunities - if we're willing to dig deep enough past our own egos. ~ Lauren Klarfeld

If I assume the 'truth' to be negotiable based on whether or not it serves my agenda, then my agenda has become my 'truth.' And the 'truth' of the matter is, when I do this I've chosen to take a treacherous path through some very deep woods where neither path nor woods exist. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Plath suffered the airless egocentrism of one in love with an ideal self. ~ Pinsky

An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before. ~ Idries Shah

Childish egocentrism is, in its essence, an inability to differentiate between the ego and the social environment. ~ Jean Piaget

When work is viewed only as a source of economic gain the centrality of work becomes self-indulgence, selfishness and egocentrism. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Most parents are so convinced of their little darling's innocence that, by proxy, in rallying for junior's purity they come to believe in their own innocence - as if duplicating oneself will make a right! ~ Anthony Marais

Our understandable wish to preserve the planet must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence - that is to wish to preserve all of its humble house - holds and neighbourhoods. ~ Wendell Berry

Every person should embrace those [dogmas] that he, being the best judge of himself, feels will do most to strengthen in him love of justice. ~ Baruch Spinoza

Removed from its more restrictive sense, masturbation has become an expression for everything that has proved, for lack of human contact, to be void of meaning. We have communication problems, suffer from egocentrism and narcissism, are frustrated by information glut and loss of environment; we stagnate despite the rising GNP. ~ Gunter Grass

Gape long enough into a looking glass and you'll eventually see beauty. The same can be said of self-analysis, and as soon as one apes oneself, a second monkey is born. ~ Anthony Marais

I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism. ~ Milan Kundera

I hold visions to be wisdom, and would deny them only to ambition, which exists only by the destruction of visions of everybody else ~ Horace Walpole

As Harvard developmental psychologist Howard Gardner reminds us, The young child is totally egocentric - meaning not that he thinks selfishly only about himself, but to the contrary, that he is incapable of thinking about himself. The egocentric child is unable to differentiate himself from the rest of the world; he has not separated himself out from others or from objects. Thus he feels that others share his pain or his pleasure, that his mumblings will inevitably be understood, that his perspective is shared by all persons, that even animals and plants partake of his consciousness. In playing hide-and-seek he will "hide" in broad view of other persons, because his egocentrism prevents him from recognizing that others are aware of his location. The whole course of human development can be viewed as a continuing decline in egocentrism.2 ~ Ken Wilber