Centeredness Quotes

• The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.

  Stephen Spender

  Memories, Creativity, Self

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• Self-centeredness will bring on the destruction of our world. National pride separates people. All people need the same thing. When you really get down to it, you'll find that all people need good food, clean water, clean air, and a decent environment, meaning education as to how to relate to one another and to avoid conflict, how to accept the differences where different people draw different conclusions.

  Jacque Fresco

  Education, Food, Pride

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• We must get away from this limited *I did this and I did that* and the self-centeredness, that dominates our society Today. It must be a privilege to serve members of society. Not that we want rewards or medals or honor for what we do, because it is just an honor to do it, if you cannot work for that, than you missed the boat. You don’t understand the teachings of the wisest men ever lived.

  Jacque Fresco

  Teaching, Men, Wisest Man

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• When you center life around yourself, not only do you miss out on God's best, but you rob other people of the joy and blessings that God wants to give them through you.

  Joel Osteen

  Inspirational, Life, God

  Joel Osteen (2015). “Daily Readings from You Can, You Will: 90 Devotions to Becoming a Winner”, p.161, Hachette UK

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• Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.

  Elie Wiesel

  Inspirational, Life, Women

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.170, Schocken

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• We ought to be people of compassion. And being people of compassion means we deny ourselves, and our self centeredness.

  Mike Huckabee

  Mean, Compassion, Self

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• Most people tell themselves these excuses - I've always been this way, this is my nature, I can't help it - that are just memes. They're belief systems that keep you from being able to become all that you are intended to become. They're impediments to reaching God-realization, or Tao-centeredness. People lose track of their purpose, because they are so back there - living in their past. Byron Katie speaks about this: Who would you be without your story? Carlos Castaneda used to say if you don't have a story, you don't have to live up to it. So get rid of your story.

  Wayne Dyer

  Past, People, Track

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• Immensity is always there, but we so often become numb to it, or deceive ourselves into thinking our own lives and selves are what's large. Step into the ocean or walk on Mount Tamalpais, and that kind of amnesia and self-centeredness isn't possible. Enter the natural world at all, you see existence emerge, ripen, fall and continue, and you can't help but feel more tender towards self and others. That summoning into the large and the shared is what poems exist also to do.

  Jane Hirshfield

  Ocean, Fall, Thinking

  Source: www.sfgate.com

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• Human cultures are all experiments in trying to find a form that will fit the matter of our immediacy; but it is absolutely not the case that all such experiments are of equal merit or value. Some cultures - and modernity is patently one - have managed to transmute consciousness into the "disease" that Nietzsche called it, the self-affliction of a self-centeredness that has purged itself of all vestiges of wisdom and value.

  Kenny Smith

  Self, Words Of Wisdom, Trying

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• When I awaken in the morning, I am thankful for a new day. I am thankful for everything that I have materially. I am thankful for everything I have spiritually. I thank God for allowing me to experience these things, even the experiences that may not seem so positive, such as developing an illness. I may not understand why I have the illness, but I sense that it is there for a purpose, and so I thank God for it. I ask Him to allow me to expand beyond my narrow-mindedness and self-centeredness so that I can see the good that comes from everything.

  Betty Eadie

  Morning, Self, New Day

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• So much of the world's suffering results from the sinful action or inaction of ourselves and others. For example, people look at a famine and wonder where God is, but the world produces enough food for each person to have 3,000 calories a day. It's our own irresponsibility and self-centeredness that prevents people from getting fed.

  Lee Strobel

  Self, People, Suffering

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• The essence of sin is a shift from God centeredness to a self-centeredness. The essence of salvation is a denial of self, not an affirming of self.

  Henry Blackaby

  Self, Essence, Denial

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• Peace is a condition of the heart. It's a state of mind, of tranquility, of calmness, and of centeredness. It's an understanding of the reciprocal nature of love, a presence, a journey. It's all of our aspirations. Peace is not a luxury or merely the absence of war, it's a kind of grace - which we're all entitled to as people who are alive. Peace is an active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness.

  Dennis Kucinich

  Peace, War, Heart

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• An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspiring, Self, People

  "Conquering Self-centeredness". Sermon Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, August 11, 1957.

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• Raising or caring for children requires sacrifice and service, which, I believe, heals us from the destructive forces of self-centeredness.

  Richard Paul Evans

  Children, Believe, Sacrifice

  Interview with Simon&Schuster, www.simonandschuster.co.uk.

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• Let us face at the outset how many Christians are not victorious, but defeated. Defeated by circumstances, defeated by other peoples? natures and wrong-doings, defeated by the down-drag of the flesh, defeated by loss, by pain, by suffering, by worry. Instead of saying with confidence, ?This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith?, they have to say in honesty, ?This is the defeat that has been caused by the world, even our self-centeredness.? That is the opposite of faith. Unbelief is not the opposite of faith; self-centeredness is ? being centered in self rather than in God.

  Sam Shoemaker

  Faith, Christian, Honesty

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• If love is the soul of Christian existence, it must be at the heart of every other Christian virtue. Thus, for example, justice without love is legalism; faith without love is ideology; hope without love is self-centeredness; forgiveness without love is self-abasement; fortitude without love is recklessness; generosity without love is extravagance; care without love is mere duty; fidelity without love is servitude. Every virtue is an expression of love. No virtue is really a virtue unless it is permeated, or informed, by love.

  Richard Rohr

  Love, Christian, Heart

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• To be politically activated is to dare to care about the happiness of others and that is just about the most important activity anyone can be involved in at this time, because it changes a person - it lifts them from normal self-centeredness to a state of other centeredness. That is a good thing because it expands our perception of self. This expansion of consciousness leads to enlightenment, which is the meaning of yoga.

  Sharon Gannon

  Yoga, Self, Perception

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• It takes both spouses to say, "My self-centeredness is the main problem in my marriage" to have a great marriage.

  Timothy Keller

  Self, Problem, Great Marriage

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• Insecure leaders think everything is about them, and as a result, every action, every piece of information, every decision is put through their filter of self-centeredness.

  John C. Maxwell

  Insecure, Thinking, Self

  John C. Maxwell (2011). “The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization”, p.34, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• The whole story of the Father's Christ-exalting plan of redeeming love, from eternity to eternity, must be told, or the radical reorientation of life for which the gospel calls will not be understood, and the required total shift from man-centeredness to God-centeredness, and more specifically from self-centeredness to Christ-centeredness, will not take place.

  J. I. Packer

  Father, Men, Self

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• Immaturity means self-centeredness, inability to compromise, to rise above hurt feelings, to postpone immediate pleasures in favor of future benefits, or to do unpleasant chores when they need to be done.

  Arnold J. Toynbee

  Hurt, Mean, Self

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• The testimony of the greatest humans who have ever lived is that the way to make the most of ourselves is by transcending ourselves. We must learn to move beyond self-centeredness to make room within ourselves for others. When you transcend yourself, the fact will be confirmed by the quality of your life. We will attain - even if only momentarily - a transparency and a radiance of being which results from living both within and beyond yourself. This is the promise and the excitement of self-understanding.

  Don Richard Riso

  Moving, Self, Understanding

  Don Richard Riso, Russ Hudson (2000). “Understanding the Enneagram: The Practical Guide to Personality Types”, p.370, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I love to play, I love to dance, I love to party . . . I'm a liver. I think what I need to learn is how to find the calmness, the centeredness.

  Donna Karan

  Party, Thinking, Play

  Interview with Calvin Klein, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 27, 2009.

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• We've lost our way, we have lost our centeredness. We don't have the time, literally, to think during the day. To listen to ourselves think. To think about where we are going, who we are, what's important. I would bet most people don't have thirty minutes in a day where they can just sit down and think. Or maybe they don't have to be sitting, they can be walking.

  Alan Lightman

  Thinking, People, Important

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. November 16, 2000.

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