87 Self knowledge Quotes

I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.

Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.

The most beautiful ape is ugly when compared to a human. The wisest human will seem like an ape when compared to a god with respect to wisdom, beauty, and everything else.

If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please.

What I have known with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration, and my contempt, of others.

My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious.

This is the real and the only reason for friendship: to provide a mirror so the other person can contemplate his image from the past, which, without the eternal blah-blah of memories between pals, would long ago have disappeared.

When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.

I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths where your life wells forth.

I, of whom I know nothing, I know my eyes are open, because of the tears that pour from them unceasingly.

To praise it would amount to praising myself. For the entire content of the work... coincides almost exactly with my own meditations which have occupied my mind for the past thirty or thirty-five years .

'Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.'

Knowledge can be acquired by a suitable and complete study, no matter what the starting point is. Only one must know how to 'learn.' What is nearest to us is man; and you are the nearest of all men to yourself. Begin with the study of yourself; remember the saying 'Know thyself.'

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.

Ful wys is he that kan hymselven knowe!

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

'A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to cheat than the rest of the world.'

Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.

Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.

His first conception must evidently be a frantic spasm, formless, insane, not to be classed as an articulate thought. Yet, if he develops the faculties of his mind, the more he knows of it the more he sees that its nature is identical with his own whenever comparision is possible. The True Will is thus both determined by its equations, and free because those equation are simply its own name, spelt out fully. His sense of being under bondage comes from his inability to read it; his sense that evil exists to thwart him arises when he begins to learn to read, reads wrong, and is obstinate that his error is an improvement.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile. Because in a split second, it's gone. These two extremes are feelings that you don't get every day. These are all things which contribute to -how can I say?- knowing yourself deeper and deeper. These are the things that keep me going.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life, and there is nothing better. (66)

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.

It seems to me like this. It's not a terrible thing - I mean, it may be terrible, but it's not damaging, it's not poisoning, to do without something one really wants. It's not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I'm capable of doing something bigger. Or I'm a person who needs love, and I'm doing without it. What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.

There do exist enquiring minds, which long for the truth of the heart, seek it, strive to solve the problems set by life, try to penetrate to the essence of things and phenomena and to penetrate into themselves. If a man reasons and thinks soundly, no matter which path he follows in solving these problems, he must inevitably arrive back at himself, and begin with the solution of the problem of what he is himself and what his place is in the world around him. For without this knowledge, he will have no focal point in his search. Socrates' words, 'Know thyself' remain for all those who seek true knowledge and being.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

I'm very mature for my age, but I'm also innocent in a lot of ways. I'm complicated.

In many ways connection has been disastrous. We have confused information (of which there has been too much of)with ideas (of which there are too few. I found out much more about the world and myself by being unconnected.

The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind.

Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are :[but] unless you realize the Self (atman), there is no freedom.

We shall never entirely comprehend ourselves, but we will and can do much more than comprehend ourselves.

El que no se hallare con animo de sufrir apele al retiro de si mismo, si es que aun a si mismo se ha de poder tolerar.

Como los ignorantes no se conocen, tampoco buscan lo que les falta. Serian sabios algunos si no creyessen que lo son.

If you want to know yourself, Just look how others do it; If you want to understand others, Look into your own heart.

As the Greeks sensibly believed, should you get to know yourself, you will have penetrated as much of the human mystery as anyone need ever know.

If I'm ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer.

It's hard enough to get to know yourself and as most of you have probably found, once you get to know two people in tandem it's even more difficult.

He knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.

While every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility, or admit the supposition that any opinion, of which they feel very certain, may be one of the examples of the error to which they acknowledge themselves to be liable. (p. 24)

The tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be spoken is not the eternal Name. The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth. The named is the mother of creation. Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery. By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real. Yet mystery and reality emerge from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness born from darkness. The beginning of all understanding.

Religion in its broadest sense means self-realization or knowledge of self.

Don't you hate it when somebody knows you better than you know yourself?

Only maybe he did get it. The joke wasn't men, the joke was people who didn't know what they wanted to give or get and so kept disappointing and being disappointed.

[He] didn't know what he wanted, but he did know what he didn't want. What he didn't want was any of the girls at school. He had lots of friends who were girls. He liked them. Nice girls. Just not for him.

Knowing Yourself ...We also seldom know what gifts we are not endowed with. We will have to learn where we belong, what we have to learn to get the full benefit from our strengths, where our weaknesses lie, what our values are. We also have to know ourselves temperamentally: 'Do I work well with people, or am I a loner? What am I committed to? And what is my contribution?' -- Managing Knowledge Means Managing Oneself Leader to Leader, No. 16 (Spring 2000)

Does one ever know oneself why one laughs?

'What right do you have to tell me things?' I can see this question in your apprehensive look. I hear this question from your impertinent mouth, Little Man. You are afraid to look at yourself, you are afraid of criticism, Little Man, just as you are afraid of the power they promise you. You would not know how to use this power. You dare not think that you ever might experience your self differently: free instead of cowed; open instead of tactical; loving openly instead of like a thief in the night. You despise yourself Little Man. You say: 'Who am I to have an opinion of my own, to determine my own life and to declare the world to be mine?' You are right: Who are you to make a claim to your life?

More skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure, As tempted more; more able to endure, As more exposed to suffering and distress.

Hate your enemies Save your friends Find your place Speak the truth.

I think he who knows himself will know accurately, not the opinion of others about him, but what he is in reality: he ought to discover within himself what is right for him to do and not learn it from without:

Self-knowledge can be painful, but not half so damaging as self-ignorance

I'm also vain. But I believe that true humility consists of recognizing the truth about yourself

I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.

A man's gotta know his limitations.

Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.

Zu unserer Besserung bedurfen wir eines Spiegels.

At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities - to clarify just who it is we really are?

Il ne faut pas s'offenser que les autres nous cachent la verite, puisque nous nous la cachons si souvent a nous-memes.

Tous ceux qui connaissent leur esprit ne connaissent pas leur coeur.

Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.

What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him - even concerning his own body - in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key.

We are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption; but how near or distant that is, nobody knows - not even God.

I did that,' says my memory. 'I could not have done that,' says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually - the memory yields.

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking, always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to.

Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away.

We that acquaint ourselves with every zone, And pass both tropics and behold the poles, When we come home, are to ourselves unknown, And unacquainted still with our own souls.

How strange when an illusion dies. It's as though you've lost a child.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

Only the shallow know themselves.

What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.

Even a monotonously undeviating path of self-examination does not necessarily lead to self-knowledge. I stumble towards my grave confused and hurt and hungry.

The halo around the heads of Plato and Socrates is now gone. He sees that they consistently are doing exactly that which they accuse the Sophists of doing... using emotionally persuasive language for the ulterior purpose of making the weaker argument, the case for dialectic, appear the stronger. We always condemn most in others, he thought, that which we most fear in ourselves.

Since it is the Other within us who is old, it is natural that the revelation of our age should come to us from outside - from others. We do not accept it willingly.

Why would I read one of mine? I know how they come out!

Know thyself.

Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it. Psychiatrists have told me that they give The Second Sex to their women patients to read, and not merely to intellectual women but to lower-middle-class women, to office workers and women working in factories. 'Your book was a great help to me. Your book saved me,' are the words I have read in letters from women of all ages and all walks of life. If my book has helped women, it is because it expressed them, and they in their turn gave it its truth. Thanks to them, it is no longer a matter for scandal and concern. During these last ten years the myths that men created have crumbled, and many women writers have gone beyond me and have been far more daring than I. Too many of them for my taste take sexuality as their only theme; but at least when they write about it they now present themselves as the eye-that-looks, as subject, consciousness, freedom.