Self Knowledge Quotes

Knowledge of self ought to be the great project of our lives. Knowing ourselves we will know others. Only by knowing ourselves can we begin to undo the madness we unleash on the world in our wars, our destruction of the environment, our divisions, our desire to dominate others, the poverty we create and exploit. Only through self-knowledge can we reverse the damage we do with all the worldly knowledge we have, which has been only a higher ignorance. ~ Ben Okri

Education is at present concerned with outward efficiency, and it utterly disregards, or deliberately perverts, the inward nature of man; it develops only one part of him and leaves the rest to drag along as best it can.

Our inner confusion, antagonism and fear ever overcome the outer structure of society, however nobly conceived and cunningly built. When there is not the right kind of education we destroy one another, and physical security for every individual is denied.

To educate the student rightly is to help him to understand the total process of himself; for it is only when there is integration of the mind and heart in everyday action that there can be intelligence and inward transformation.

While offering information and technical training, education should above all encourage an integrated outlook on life; it should help the student to recognize and break down in himself all social distinctions and prejudices, and discourage the acquisitive pursuit of power and domination. It should encourage the right kind of self-observation and the experiencing of life as a whole, which is not to give significance to the part, to the "me" and the "mine", but to help the mind to go above and beyond itself to discover the real.

Freedom comes into being only through self-knowledge in one's daily occupations, that is, in one's relationship with people, with things, with ideas and with nature. If the educator is helping the student to be integ ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

You are in prison. If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison. If you think you are free, you can't escape. ~ G.I. Gurdjieff

If we are to know ourselves, philosophy needs to maintain an ongoing dialogue with the sciences of mind. ~ George Lakoff

You are surprised at your imperfections,
why? I should infer from that, that your self-knowledge is small. Surely you might rather be astonished that you do not fall into more frequent and more grievous faults, and thank God for His upholding grace. ~ Jean Grou

Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change,
he courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

It is only the mind which does not belong that can be alone. And aloneness is not something to be cultivated. You see this? When you see all this, you are out, and no governor or president is going to invite you to dinner. Out of that aloneness there is humility. It is this aloneness that knows love - not power. The ambitious man, religious or ordinary, will never know what love is. So, if one sees all this, then one has this quality of total living and therefore total action. This comes through self-knowledge. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Competing is exciting and winning is exhilarating, but the true prize will always be the self-knowledge and understanding that you have gained along the way. ~ Sebastian Coe

People are much more likely to act on their self-percepts of efficacy inferred from many sources of information rather than rely primarily on visceral cues. This is not surprising because self knowledge based on information about one's coping skills, past accomplishments, and social comparison is considerably more indicative of capability than the indefinite stirrings of the viscera ~ Albert Bandura

Applicants for wisdom
do what I have done:
inquire within ~ Heraclitus

There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master's master, the genius of the age. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

We must beware of whatever insights we have into ourselves. Our self-knowledge annoys and paralyzes our daimon-this is where we should look for the reason Socrates wrote nothing. ~ Emil Cioran

How easily we accept the fact that this is a varied world, with many races, cultures, and mores. In America we rejoice in this diversity, this pluralism, which makes up the rich pattern of our national being. We should learn to accept this pluralism in ourselves, to rejoice in the truth that we human being consist of a variety of moods, impulses, traits, and emotions ... If we become pluralistic in thinking about ourselves, we shall learn to take the depressed mood or the cruel mood or the uncooperative mood for what is, one of many, fleeting, not permanent. As pluralists we take ourselves for worse as well as for better, cease demanding a brittle perfection which can lead only to inner despair. There are facets of failure in every person's makeup and there are elements of success. Both must be accepted while we try to emphasize the latter through self-knowledge. ~ Joshua Loth Liebman

We readily rebel against our knowledge than our ignorance. ~ Kangoma Kindembo

Was this the triumph of self-knowledge: to suffer more lucidly? ~ Edward St. Aubyn

If ... deceit is fundamental to animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray - by the subtle signs of self-knowledge - the deception being practiced.' Thus, 'the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution. ~ Robert Trivers

Yoga is for internal cleansing, not external exercising. Yoga means true self-knowledge. ~ K. Pattabhi Jois

To know one's self requires a fierce and courageous willingness to explore the many layers of one's inner landscape. ~ Pamela McLean

What I think is true is that at a certain stage in his life, he deliberately ceased to take any interest in himself except for a kind of spiritual alumnus taking his moral finals...Self-knowledge for him had come to mean recognition of his own weakness and shortcomings and nothing more. Anything beyond that he sharply suspected, both in himself and in others, as a symptom of spiritual megalomania. At best, there was so much else, in letters and in life, that he found much more interesting than himself. ~ Jocelyn Gibb

True mastery transcends any particular art. It stems from mastery of oneself--the ability, developed through self-discipline, to be calm, fully aware, and completely in tune with oneself and the surroundings. Then, and only then, can a person know himself. ~ Bruce Lee

Wouldn't have no knowledge of wealth, without no knowledge of self. ~ Nelly

Eventually, I developed my own image of teh "befriending" impulse behind my depression. Imagine that from early in my life, a friendly figure, standing a block away, was trying to get my attention by shouting my name, wanting to teach me some hard but healing truths about myself. But I-- fearful of what I might hear or arrogantly trying to live wihtout help or simply too busy with my ideas and ego and ethics to bother-- ignored teh shouts and walked away.

So this figure, still with friendly intent, came closer and shouted more loudly, but AI kept walking. Ever closer it came, close enough to tap me on the shoulder, but I walked on. Frustrated by my unresponsiveness, the figure threw stones at my back, then struck me with a stick, still wanting simply to get my attention. But despite teh pain, I kept walking away.

Over teh years, teh befriending intent of this figure never disapppeared but became obscured by the frustration cuased by my refusal to turn around. Since shouts and taps, stones and sticks had failed to do the trick, there was only one thing left: drop the nuclear bomb called depression on me, not with the intent to kill but as a last-ditch effort to get me to turn and ask the simple question, "What do you want?" When I was finally able to make the turn-- and start to absorb and act on the self-knowledge that then became available to me-- I began to get well.

The figure calling to me all those years was, I believe, what Thomas Merto ~ Parker J. Palmer

Because people's desire to be comfortable supersedes their desire for self knowledge and well being, they avoid any form of discomfort. This is the impulse that drives us to repress undesired emotions, thoughts, and past trauma. ~ Ben Stewart

Passion and drive are not the same at all. Passion pulls you toward something you cannot resist. Drive pushes you toward something you feel compelled or obligated to do. If you know nothing about yourself, you can't tell the difference. Once you gain a modicum of self-knowledge, you can express your passion ... It's not about jumping through someone else's hoops. That's drive. ~ Randy Komisar

The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind. ~ F.H. Bradley

Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for woman more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society. ~ Adrienne Rich

My wealth is in my knowledge of self, love, and spirituality. ~ Muhammad Ali

The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end - you don't come to an achievement, you don't come to a conclusion. It is an endless river. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

A dragon is a confusion at the heart of things, a law unto himself. He embraces good, evil, and indifference; in his own nature he makes them indivisible and absolute. He knows who he is. Surely you see that... Put it this way. Dragons all love life's finer things- music, art, treasure- the works of the spirit; yet in their personal habits they're foul and bestial- they burn down cathedrals, for instance, and eat maidens- and they see in their whimsical activities no faintest contradiction... Dragons never grow, never change... Believe me, nothing in this world is more despicable than a dragon. They're a walking- or flying- condemnation of all we stand for, all we pray for our children, nay, for ourselves. We struggle to improve ourselves, we tortuously balance on the delicate line between our duties to society and our duties within- our duties to God and our own nature. ~ John Gardner

All I would claim is that those who in the search for truth start from consciousness as a seat of self-knowledge with interests and responsibilities not confined to the material plane, are just as much facing the hard facts of experience as those who start from consciousness as a device for reading the indications of spectroscopes and micrometers. ~ Arthur Stanley Eddington

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be. ~ Jane Austen

It's profoundly counter-intuitive for us to think of ourselves as mad. We seem so normal and mostly so good – to ourselves. It's everyone else who is out of step… And yet maturity begins with the capacity to sense and, in good time and without defensiveness, admit to our own craziness. If we are not regularly deeply embarrassed by who we are, the journey to self-knowledge hasn't begun. ~ Alain De Botton

So, if we really want to create a different world, a different relationship between human beings, a different attitude toward life, it is essential that we should first understand ourselves, is it not? This does not mean self-centered concentration, which leads to utter misery. What I am suggesting is that without self-knowledge, without deeply knowing oneself, all inquiry, all thought, all conclusions, opinions, and values have very little meaning. Most of us are conditioned - conditioned as Christians, as Muslims, or what you will, and within that narrow area we have our being. Our minds are conditioned by society, by education, by the culture about us, and without understanding the total process of that conditioning, our search, our knowledge, our inquiry can only lead to further mischief, to greater misery, which is what is actually happening. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

But in order to be strong, you have to love yourself, and in order to love yourself, you need thorough self-knowledge, you need to know everything about yourself, including your most hidden secrets, the ones most difficult to accept. ~ Susanna Tamaro

And yet self-knowledge is thought by some not so easy. Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened. ~ Herman Melville

Self-understanding is a lifetime endeavour. It is not a weekend seminar. It does not come in capsule form. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

When the mind sees itself in the mirror of relationship, from that perception there is self-knowledge. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Under the weight of my growing self-knowledge, my self-image was sinking fast. ~ Dan Millman

Dreams are an insight into our psychology: they are what we are, but stripped of the conventions and norms of psychology, and the rules of the physical world… ~ Belsebuub

Moral epochs have their course as well as the seasons. We can no more hold them fast than we can hold sun, moon, and stars. Our faults perpetually return upon us; and herein lies the subtlest difficulty of self-knowledge. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

He who can see his own mistake can become absolute supreme Self (Parmatma)! ~ Dada Bhagwan

What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself. ~ Seneca.

Ask not of things to shed their veils. Unveil yourselves, and things will be unveiled. ~ Mikhail Naimy

I am not going to be everyone's cup of tea... but I really don't want to be everyone's cup of tea! Who wants to be a cheap ass cup of tea that literally everyone can get? I'm the handmade macha tea that you can only find in that 3,000- year-old tea shop at the top of the enchanted 3-tiered waterfall on that sacred hill in Kyoto. You need to understand culture to find that. You need to appreciate value to have that. You need to be on the path of magic to even know that this tea shop is there! I'm your once-in-a-lifetime cup of tea. I'm surely not everybody's cup of tea but that's the last thing on Earth I'd ever want to be. ~ C. JoyBell C.

I know who I am without anyone there to tell me. ~ Leigh Bardugo

When you discover your own self, you will see that same infinite potential in your lover's eyes. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

I've reached the age of self-knowledge, so I don't know anything. People who claim that they know something are responsible for most of the fuss in the world. ~ Wislawa Szymborska

There is not unmitigated ill in the sharpest of this world's sorrows; I touch not the sore of thy guilt; but of human griefs I counsel thee, Cast off the weakness of regret, and gird thee to redeem thy loss: Thou has gained, in the furnace of affliction, self-knowledge, patience and humility, And these be as precious ore, that waiteth the skill of the coiner: Despise not the blessings of adversity, nor the gain thou hast earned so hardly, And now thou hast drained the bitter, take heed that thou lose not the sweet. ~ Martin Farquhar Tupper

If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go. ~ James Baldwin

Is it true that one travels in order to know mankind? It is easier to get to know other people at home, but abroad one gets to know oneself. ~ Franz Grillparzer

Knowledge of what you love somehow comes to you; you don't have to read nor analyze nor study. If you love a thing enough, knowledge of it seeps into you, with particulars more real than any chart can furnish. ~ Jessamyn West

Freedom comes with self-knowledge, when the mind goes above and beyond the hindrances it has created for itself. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

her essential goodness, telling her that "self-knowledge is the foundation of Religion," not self-hatred. ~ Megan Marshall

The true cure for self-righteousness is self-knowledge. ~ J.C. Ryle

The process of writing can be a powerful tool for self-discovery. Writing demands self-knowledge; it forces the writer to become a student of human nature, to pay attention to his experience, to understand the nature of experience itself. By delving into raw experience and distilling it into a work of art, the writer is engaging in the heart and soul of philosophy - making sense out of life. ~ Georg Buhler

Wisdom is not in a book, it has no secret source. You will find the real very near; it is in yourself. But to discover it there must be the activity of constant alertness. When thought is passively aware, watching and following, then the map of self-knowledge unfolds itself. Self-knowledge is not by the study of the self in isolation, for there is no isolation. To live is to be related, and isolation is merely escape. If thought is alertly passive, watching its own movements and flutters, then when sleep comes the conscious mind is capable of receiving the hints and intimations of the hidden consciousness. He who desires to discover the real, the eternal, must put aside every book, every system, every guru, for that which is can be uncovered only through self-knowledge.
From: Fifth Talk in Madras ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more
also because the status quo depends on it; but love depends on self-knowledge and self-knowledge depends on being able to bear the truth. ~ Andrea Dworkin

There is a certain degree of pain to be experienced in the search for self-knowledge, as there is a certain amount of joy. You just do it because you find yourself doing it. There just doesn't seem to be much else worthwhile. ~ Frederick Lenz

Happiness comes from self-knowledge. Self-knowledge means that you have understood your mind. Your mind is the whole universe. ~ Frederick Lenz

The interdependent couple is the new setting and their knowledge of Self is an ancient treasure.-Serena Jade ~ Serena Jade

You are not who you think you are. You are not your fears, your thoughts, or your body. You are not your insecurities, your career, or your memories. You're not what you're criticized for and you're not what you're praised for. You are a boundless wealth of potential. You are everything that's ever been. Don't sell yourself short. Every sunset, every mountain, every river, every passionate crowd, every concert, every drop of rain - that's you. So go find yourself. Go find your strength, find your beauty, find your purpose. Stop crafting your mask. Stop hiding. Stop lying to yourself and letting people lie to you. You're not lacking in anything except awareness. Everything you've ever wanted is already there, awaiting your attention, awaiting your time. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

We must not be defined by what we do, but we must be what and who we are, then only happen to do what we do! ~ C. JoyBell C.

The thing about traveling alone, is that you run into your insecurities and fears times ten the normal! You run into all the good things and all the bad things about yourself on a daily basis, and are allowed the opportunity to truly become your own friend. Traveling alone is a learning process; some people travel for leisure, I travel to run into myself! ~ C. JoyBell C.

Knowing yourself means being aware of your potential and trusting that you are always growing into it. ~ Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

For those who have obtained unobstructed knowledge of Self, the world is seen merely as a bondage causing imagination. ~ Ramana Maharshi

Krishna warns Arjuna that a life of work, even successful work, cannot be fulfilling without Self-knowledge. Ultimately, the true Self within him is not affected by what he does, whether good or bad. Only knowledge of the Self, which rises like the sun at dawn, can fulfill the purpose of his life and lead him beyond rebirth. This ~ Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

Only two kinds of people can attain self-knowledge: those who are not encumbered at all with learning, that is to say, whose minds are not over-crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all the scriptures and sciences, have come to realise that they know nothing. ~ Ramakrishna

A person can only see their shadow if they awaken their eclectic soul. Self-understanding commences by admitting to the shadowy presence of the primordial unconsciousness. The unconscious mind is a magical concoction of logical and irrational thoughts and feelings. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

He self-knowledge that I am talking about is concrete, verifiable and is tangible like science itself and completely understandable in rational terms. ~ Nirmala Srivastava

If, on the contrary, they hear from you about themselves, they will be in no position to say, "The Lord is lying." Is hearing the truth about oneself from you anything different from knowing oneself? And can anyone have this self-knowledge and still protest, "It is not true," unless he himself is lying? ~ Augustine Of Hippo

You have to learn to recognize your own depths. ~ Joseph Campbell

We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire. ~ Alain De Botton

When unity of the mind, speech and body occurs, God has called that the 'foremost' religion. If they do not remain in unison, you should maintain the intent of 'I want to keep them in unison'; then some day it will come into fruition if this resolve is there. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge. ~ Alice Walker

Acting requires a lot of discipline to go with the obsession. It's a path of knowledge, and of self-knowledge. Sometimes you get lost on the path. And then you find yourself again. ~ Toni Servillo

The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's. ~ Mason Cooley

The most profound personal growth does not happen while reading a book or meditating. It happens in the throes of conflict, when you are angry, afraid, frustrated. It happens when you are doing the same old thing and you suddenly realize that you have a choice. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

The helper [Eve, Genesis 2:18] is not a helper to til the soil or name the animals. The helper is the helper in the terms of the man's very identity. Man does not identify with the other living beings in an essential way. This non-identification reveals that his search goes farther than consciousness, self-awareness, self-knowledge or self-determination. The body reveals meaning and identity and includes the search outside himself in openness to another in relation. (p. 91) ~ J. Brian Bransfield

To 'us', nothing except the Soul (Atma) is beautiful, and there is indeed no such thing as bad in this world. Bad is to deviate from one's own 'boundary' (to not remain as the Self). ~ Dada Bhagwan

He knows the universe and does not know himself. ~ Jean De La Fontaine

Self knowledge is the stepping stop to self mastery. ~ Robin Sharma

Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'. ~ Michael J. Sandel

A man who's discontents were barely known to himself, awakening in middle age to the horror of self-reflection. ~ Philip Roth

You can never represent yourself totally ... to seek self -knowledge is to embark on a journey which ... will always be incomplete, cannot be charted on a map, will never halt, cannot be described. ~ Douglas Hofstadter

The essence of knowledge is self-knowledge, ~ Plato

If Christ were born in Bethlehem a thousand times and not in thee thyself; then art thou lost eternally. ~ Angelus Silesius

There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Self-knowledge will bring you calm. With calm, you'll do the right thing. Sometimes, by doing the right thing, you'll push some people. Do it anyway. ~ Maxime Lagacé

Self knowledge is the beginning of self improvement. ~ Baltasar Gracian

The unconscious is the true accumulation of your history.
It can be accepted or rejected but it can't fundamentally be altered. ~ Stefan Molyneux

We must have the self-knowledge of our destiny and the purpose of our birth on earth ~ Sunday Adelaja

The Spirit is like the steady axis of a wheel. If our attention reaches the immovable firm axis at the very centre of the wheel of our existence (which is constantly moving), we become enlightened by the Spirit, the source of inner peace, and reach a state of complete calm and self-knowledge. ~ Nirmala Srivastava

Throughout his life a case study underachiever, Sully - people still remarked - was nobody's fool, a phrase that Sully no doubt appreciated without ever sensing its literal application - that at sixty, he was divorced from his own wife, carrying on halfheartedly with another man's, estranged from his son, devoid of self-knowledge, badly crippled and virtually unemployable - all of which he stubbornly confused with independence. ~ Richard Russo

At times we find certain solutions to problems that inspire strong faith even in us; perhaps henceforth we call them our "convictions." Later on - we see in them only the footsteps of our self-knowledge, signposts to the problem that we are. ~ F.W. Nietzsche

As self-knowledge develops, we begin to care more about what we think and less about what others ask of us. We ~ Charles Hayes

It is not until you learn to look at yourself, through the truth of who you are, that you can look at someone else. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself. ~ Samuel Johnson

Someone responding to intuition, to chance and fortune, often can't explain himself well. ~ Alec Wilkinson

Self-knowledge reveals to the soul that its natural motion is not, if uninterrupted, in a straight line, but circular, as around some inner object, about a center, the point to which it owes its origin. ~ Plotinus

The real reason for quest is always self-knowledge. ~ Thomas C. Foster