Defining Ourselves Quotes

• It's never been true, not anywhere at anytime, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale.

  Geneen Roth

  Numbers, Soul, Fudge

  Geneen Roth (2011). “Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything”, p.145, Simon and Schuster

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• It's never been true, not anywhere at any time, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale. We are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water who need these physical vehicles to get around. When we start defining ourselves by that which can be measured or weighed, something deep within us rebels. We don't want to EAT hot fudge sundaes as much as we want our lives to BE hot fudge sundaes. We want to come home to ourselves.

  Geneen Roth

  Inspiring, Home, Journey

  FaceBook post by Geneen Roth from May 12, 2014

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• We insist on being Someone, with a capital S. We get security from defining ourselves as worthless or worthy, superior or inferior. We waste precious time exaggerating or romanticizing or belittling ourselves with a complacent surety that yes, that’s who we are. We mistake the openness of our being—the inherent wonder and surprise of each moment—for a solid, irrefutable self. Because of this misunderstanding, we suffer.

  Pema Chodron

  Mistake, Self, Suffering

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• Decisions are a way of defining ourselves. There comes a time in life when there is nothing else to do but go your own way. Where you are headed there are no trails, no paths, just your own instincts.

  Sergio Bambaren

  Life, Encouraging, Time

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• If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by who we are we can all be freer. And this is what HeforShe is about. It’s about freedom.

  Emma Watson

  Who We Are, Defining, Ifs

  United Nations Address on Gender Equality, delivered 20 September 2014

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• Right and wrong are concepts that only have meaning in this world, so by sorting existence on those characteristics, we are defining ourselves to exist only in this world.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Balance, World

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• In America, the stories we tell ourselves and we tell each other in fiction have to do with individualism. Every person here is the center of his or her own story. And our job as people and as characters is to find our own motivations and desires, to overcome conflicts and obstacles toward defining ourselves so that we grow and change.

  Adam Johnson

  Jobs, Motivation, Character

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