Knowing Oneself Quotes

• To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

  Albert Camus

  Motivational, Inspiring, Should

  Albert Camus (1963). “Carnets: 1935-1942”

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• Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Business

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• It is wisdom to know others. It is enlightenment to know oneself.

  Laozi

  Teacher, Discovery, Enlightenment

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• 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.

  Blaise Pascal

  Inspirational, Being Yourself, Discovery

  Blaise Pascal (2013). “Pensées”, p.15, Courier Corporation

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  Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• The greatest wisdom is to get to know oneself.

  Galileo Galilei

  Greatest Wisdom, Oneself, Knows

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• Life is like a sandwich!
  Birth as one slice,
  and death as the other.
  What you put in-between
  the slices is up to you.
  Is your sandwich tasty or sour?

  Alan Rufus

  Life, Up To You, Sandwiches

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• Know the enemy and know yourself.

  Sun Tzu

  Fear, Military, War

  The Art of War ch. 3 (translation by Yuan Shibang)

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• Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.

  Albert Camus

  Thinking, Psychology, Action

  Albert Camus (1963). “Carnets: 1935-1942”

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• To know oneself is to study oneself in action, which is relationship.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Spiritual, Awakening, Mastery

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2013). “The first and last freedom”, p.48, Rajpal & Sons

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• To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

  Bruce Lee

  Relationship, Motivation, Acting

  Bruce Lee (2015). “Bruce Lee Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living”, p.181, Tuttle Publishing

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• One is always in the dark about one's own personality. One needs others to get to know oneself.

  Carl Jung

  Dark, Personality, Needs

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• Self-knowledge involves relationship. To know oneself is to study one self in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self evaluation and self revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself - to be is to be related.

  Bruce Lee

  Mirrors, Self, Evaluation

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• It is difficult to know oneself, but it isn't easy to paint oneself either.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Easy, Paint, Difficult

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• To know oneself is to disbelieve utopia.

  Michael Novak

  Utopia, Oneself, Knows

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• In truth, to know oneself seems to be the hardest of all things. Not only our eye, which observes external objects, does not use the sense of sight upon itself, but even our mind, which contemplates intently another's sin, is slow in the recognition of its own defects.

  Saint Basil

  Eye, Sight, Mind

  Saint Basil (2010). “Exegetic Homilies (The Fathers of the Church, Volume 46)”, p.147, CUA Press

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• Marriage is not comfortable and harmonious. Rather it is a place of individuation where a person rubs up against oneself and against the partner, bumps up against the person in love and in rejection, and in this fashion learns to know oneself, the world, good and evil, the heights and the depths.

  Adolph Guggenbuhl-Craig

  Love, Fashion, Evil

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• Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.

  Bruce Lee

  Truth, Giving, Choices

  "Tao of Jeet Kune Do". Book by Bruce Lee, 1975.

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• There's this idea that artists are free and that means that we can do whatever we want to do. And it's very important to engage with this idea, just as human beings, that we are free to do what we wanna do. So the real question becomes, then, what do we wanna do? And as one gets to know oneself, one finds that there are things that return again and again that you wanna do.

  Chris Martin

  Real, Mean, Artist

  Interview with Ross Simonini, www.believermag.com. November 2013.

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• Individuals inherit a particular space within an interlocking set of social relationships; lacking that space, they are nobody, or at best a stranger or an outcast. To know oneself as such a social person is however not to occupy a static and fixed position. It is to find oneself placed at a certain point on a journey with set goals; to move through life is to make progress - or to fail to make progress - toward a given end.

  Alasdair MacIntyre

  Life, Moving, Journey

  Alasdair MacIntyre (2013). “After Virtue”, p.39, A&C Black

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• I ought to respect myself for my friends' sake, and my children's. It is time, at fifty-six, to begin, at least, to know oneself, - and I do know what I am not, and your regard for me has at least awakened me to believe in the possibility that I may yet make some impression with my "light" - my "dews" - my "breezes" - my bloom and freshness, - no one of which qualities has yet been perfected on the canvas of any painter in the world.

  John Constable

  Children, Believe, Light

  Letter to C.R. Leslie (March 1833), from "The Letters of John Constable, R.A. to C. R. Leslie, R.A. 1826-1837", p. 104, 1931.

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• Consciousness is not the ineluctable starting point for self-understanding because there is a difference between being conscious and understanding oneself as a conscious being. The difference is between being in a certain state and knowing oneself to be in a certain state.

  Ray Brassier

  Understanding, Consciousness, Oneself

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• To know oneself means, among other things, to know oneself qua non-sage: that is, not as a sophos, but as a philo-sophos, someone on the way toward wisdom.

  Pierre Hadot

  Mean, Sage, Way

  "La Philosophie comme manière de vivre: Entretiens avec Jeannie Carlier et Arnold I. Davidson" by Pierre Hadot, Jeannie Carlier, Arnold I. Davidson, Paris: Albin Michel, translated by Michael Chase, (p. 90), 2001.

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• To know oneself is not necessarily to improve oneself

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Knows, Oneself

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• 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

  Travel, Home, Knowledge

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