349 Ego Quotes

The jabroni beating, pie eating, trail blazing, eye brow raising, the best in the present, future and past, and if ya'll don't like me you can kiss the people's ass!

The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.

I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.

I was never very interested in boys - and there were plenty of them - vying with one another to see how many famous women they would get into the hay.

The Pumpkins love rock-and-roll, we absolutely love it, but we also think it's a flatulent, ego-serving kiddie playground. You can have your cake and eat it too.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

The aim of flattery is to soothe and encourage us by assuring us of the truth of an opinion we have already formed about ourselves.

What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

I couldn't regard myself as personally repulsive. No man can, or, if he ever comes to do so, that is the end of him.

My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.

The worst cliques are those which consist of one man.

The highest form of vanity is love of fame.

I still lack to a considerable degree that naturally superior kind of manner that I would dearly like to possess.

Egocentrics are attracted to the inept. It gives them one more excuse for patting themselves on the back.

Though wisdom is common, yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.

A charming fellow, and so clever: he models himself on me.

Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff. I have been called all of these. Of course, I am.

Writers are idolized not because they love their fellow men, which is never a recommendation and in extreme instances leads to crucifixion, but because their self-love is in tune with current fears and desires, and in giving it expression they are speaking for an inarticulate multitude.

When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you.

I'm not hard to get along with.

I'm the last guy in the world to feel overlooked by the Academy.

Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.

Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.

Mir Bahadur Ali is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art's temptations: that of being a genius.

One wonders that there can be found a man courageous enough to occupy the post. It is a matter of meditation. Having given it a few minutes I come to the conclusion in the serenity of my heart and the peace of my conscience that he must be either an extreme megalomaniac or an utterly unconscious being.

'A great many smashes by brilliant men can be traced directly to the swelled head - an expensive disease everywhere to everybody, but particularly in Wall Street to a speculator.'

If one can really come to that state of saying, 'I do not know,' it indicates an extraordinary sense of humility; there is no arrogance of knowledge; there is no self-assertive answer to make an impression. When you can actually say, 'I do not know,' which very few are capable of saying, then in that state all fear ceases because all sense of recognition, the search into memory, has come to an end; there is no longer inquiry into the field of the known.

'Well, I might be living in the wrong time but I don't go by comparisons. I go by the truthfulness of the whole thing. Forget about comparing, it's the biggest mistake trying to put your ego against the other person's.'

I am arrogant enough to wish I were modest as he and modest enough to know that this is arrogance.

Vanity. What's wrong with vanity? It doesn't satisfy.

In the popular political imagination we're familiar with the neocons as conniving militarists, masters of intrigue and cabals, graspers for the oil supplies of the world, and all the rest. But here we have them in what I suspect is the truest light: as college kid rubes who head out for a weekend in Vegas, get scammed out of their money by a two-bit hustler on the first night and then get played for fools by a couple hookers who leave them naked and handcuffed to their hotel beds.

Oh, Jesus Christ, he wasn't to know, Like a chicken with a fox, He couldn't win the war with ego. Give the kid the pick of pips, And give him all your stripes and ribbons. Now he's sitting in his hole, He might as well have buttons and bows.

My Soul gave me good counsel, teaching me that the lamp which I carry does not belong to me, and the song that I sing was not generated from within me. Even if I walk with light, I am not the light; and if I am a taut-stringed lute, I am not the lute player.

Making movies is a form of narcissism.

I know that most men - not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems - can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty - conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.

When you talk about yourself for 35 years, first of all, it gets repetitious. And then it seems a little bit excessive, at the least.

Which mindset is right? Mine, of course. People who disagree with me are by definition crazy. (Until I change my mind, when they can suddenly become upstanding citizens. I'm flexible, and not black-and-white.)

I'm always right. This time I'm just even more right than usual.

I heard what you were saying. You - you know nothing of my work. You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.

He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else.

Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis): 'I see your schwartz is as big as mine.'

Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis): 'What? You went over my helmet?'

Everyone's thinking they're the new W. Axl Rose, just running their mouths and living in this world where nothing is real. Like, it's really easy to write a couple of songs, but that doesn't mean you get to run your mouth. The only guy who can do that is Michael Jackson. He wrote Thriller, so he can say whatever the fuck he wants.

When God was giving out talent, He gave all of it to Michael Jackson.

Sometimes I thought I was the only one who understood, even though half the time I didn't know what it was that I was understanding. I withdrew and watched, and because I didn't have any personal ego on the line... I could see more clearly than any of them.

You are so intent that you believe only what you believe that you believe, that you remain utterly blind to what you rely believe without believing that you believe it.

Besides, you only like the asteroid because it was named Eros and that's as close to sex as you've ever gotten.

It isn't a question of what you need. It never is. It's a question of what he needs. He needs to feel superior to you.

Tuthmose heard this in silence. Because the idea comforted him? Or because he hated hearing from her, once again, that he was wrong?

I've done a good deed. I gave that little twit his soul back. Wasn't that generous?

All my instincts, they return and the grand facade, so soon will burn without a noise, without my pride I reach out from the inside.

Ne durat-il qu'un jour, ma gloire est sans seconde D'etre du moins un jour la maitresse du monde.

It is our desires that limit the scope of our self-realisation, hinder our extension of consciousness, and give rise to sin, which is the innermost barrier that keeps us apart from our God, setting up disunion and arrogance of exclusiveness. For sin is not one mere action, but it is an attitude of life which takes for granted that our goal is finite, that our self is the ultimate truth, and that we are not all essentially one but exist each for his own separate individual existence.

The man who aims at his own aggrandisement underrates everything else.

Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

It is an amiable illusion, which the shape of our planet prompts, that every man is at the top of the world.

Like most artists who have made an invention of some kind, he tends to overplay the significance of his own and goes on about it as though it were a Rosetta Stone, with whose help all representation can be rescued from one-eyed falsehood.

Of all the clever people round me here I most delight in Me - Mine is the only voice I care to hear, And mine the only face I like to see.

Roy Campbell was one of the very few great poets of our time. His poems are of great stature, and have a giant's strength and power of movement. They have, too, an extraordinary sensuous beauty. Everything is transformed to greatness.

Whenever one says 'I', be sure his 'I' is evil.

Know that the wicked quality of self-conceit emerges from self-love.

One cannot be selfworshiping and God worshiping at the same time.

Cultivate your egos, purge them. This world has a definite end for all of us, for me sooner, then for you.

Hamm: Can there be misery (he yawns) loftier than mine?

Sir, you have but two topicks, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

He had a sharp vision; no illusions lulled him to sleep except for an often exaggerated faith in his own ideas.

He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself.

We decided that my character had a pre-show tradition, like a ritual, which was to sing the lyrics to 'I Want You To Want Me' by Cheap Trick into the mirror. Because, more than anything else, as much as he says he's bringing the truth, he just wants to be liked.

I want to get a full body tattoo of myself, only bigger.

The sublimity of color in Hodgkin's pictures can be thought of as, first of all, expressive of gratitude - for the world that resists and survives the ego and its discontents.

Aesop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I do raise!

'...because I'm Vince McMahon, damn it!'

'Who the hell do you think you are?'

'Blessed be the name of Vincent Kennedy McMahon!'

Through the burgeoning university network, it was suddenly possible to think of oneself as a national poet, even if the nation turned out to consist entirely of English departments.

The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right.

The race was over. I was last, by ten yards. Without the slightest hesitation I protested and challenged the runners to another race, same distance, back. They refused to consider my proposal, which proved, I knew, that they were afraid to race me. I told them they knew very well I could beat them.

Countess: You are a great lover! Boris: I practice a lot when I'm alone.

I worked with Freud in Vienna. We broke over the concept of penis envy. He thought it should be limited to women.

I was supremely confident my flair for atmosphere and characterization would sparkle alongside the numbing mulch ground out by studio hacks. Certainly the space atop my mantel might be better festooned by a gold statuette than by the plastic dipping bird that now bobbed there ad infinitum.

I realized in and instant that I desired false gods because Jesus wouldn't jump through my hoops, and I realized that, like Tony, my faith was about image and ego, not about practicing spirituality.

I'm definitely the best king in England at the moment.

Teacher (Shaolin Master - Mr. Lee's Teacher): What is the highest technique you hope to achieve? Student (Character - Mr. Lee): To have no technique. Teacher: Very good. What are your thoughts when facing an opponent? Student: There is no opponent. Teacher: And, why is that? Student: Because the word 'I' does not exist. Teacher: So... continue Student: A good fight should be... like a small play - but played seriously. A good martial artist does not become tense - but ready. Not thinking - yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands - I contract. When he contracts - I expand. And when there is an opportunity... I do not hit. 'It' hits all by itself. [shows his fist] Teacher: Now, you must remember. The enemy has only images and illusions, behind which he hides his true motives. Destroy the image and you will break the enemy. The 'it' that you refer to is a powerful weapon, easily misused by the martial artist who deserts his vows.

I have no apprehension whatsoever. I've been through this so many times. And I found that one way or the other, your life doesn't change at all. Which is sad, in a way. Because the people love your film... nothing great happens. And people hate your film... nothing terrible happens. Many years ago, I would... I would... a film of mine would open, and it would get great reviews, and I would go down and look at the movie theater. There'd be a line around the block. And when a film is reviled, you open a film and people say 'Oh, it's the stupidest thing, it's the worst movie.' You think: oh, nobody's going to ever speak to you again. But, it doesn't happen. Nobody cares. You know, they read it and they say 'Oh, they hated your film.' You care, at the time. But they don't. Nobody else cares. They're not interested. They've got their own lives, and their own problems, and their own shadows on their lungs, and their x-rays. And, you know, they've got their own stuff they're dealing with.... So, I'm just never nervous about it.

'I really don't care about Kirk - he stole my job, but at least I got to bang his girlfriend before he took my job - how do I taste, Kirk?' -on Hammett