Self Consciousness Quotes

• Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Names, Self, Ego

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.147

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• Excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Self, Names, Consciousness

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.147

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• Thus in Christianity the alienation had become total, and it was this total alienation that was the biggest obstacle to the progress of self-consciousness.

  Bruno Bauer

  Self, Progress, Obstacles

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  Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Life, Beauty

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.15, St. Martin's Press

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  A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Beauty, Spiritual

  Letter of 1950, as quoted in "The New York Times", March 29, 1972.

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• Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness - I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

  Aaron Copland

  Inspirational, Art, Self

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• In Socrates' thought the two marks of individual self-consciousness appear; it is practical and it is social.

  James Mark Baldwin

  Self, Two, Consciousness

  James Mark Baldwin (1913). “History of Psychology: A Sketch and an Interpretation”

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• Today self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is nothing.

  Theodor Adorno

  Mean, Reflection, Self

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.50, Verso

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• It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.

  Stephen Fry

  Beauty, Depression, Laughter

  Stephen Fry (2011). “Moab Is My Washpot”, p.93, Random House

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• Actors cannot choose the manner in which they are born. Consequently, it is the one gesture in their lives completely devoid of self-consciousness.

  Helen Hayes

  Self, Theatre, Actors

  Helen Hayes (2014). “On Reflection: An Autobiography”, p.13, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Faith, Religious, Thinking

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• The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Self, Morbid, Cures

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.147

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• People are crying up the rich and variegated plumage of the peacock, and he is himself blushing at the sight of his ugly feet.

  Saadi

  Confidence, Loving Yourself, Sight

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• We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.

  Thomas Merton

  Greatness, Achieve, Interest

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.128, Shambhala Publications

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• Rebellions tend to be negative, to denounce and expose the enemy without providing a positive vision of a new future...A revolution is not just for the purpose of correcting past injustices, a revolution involves a projection of man/woman into the future...It begins with projecting the notion of a more human human being, i.e. a human being who is more advanced in the specific qualities which only human beings have - creativity, consciousness and self-consciousness, a sense of political and social responsibility.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Creativity, Responsibility, Past

  "Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century". Book by Grace Lee Boggs, James Boggs, billmoyers.com. 1974.

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• You don't meditate to experiment with altered states of consciousness or whatever else. You meditate only to perceive by yourself that everything is within us, every atom of the universe, and that we already possess everything we would wish to find outside of ourselves.

  Daniel Odier

  Wish, Atoms, Altered States Of Consciousness

  Daniel Odier (1997). “Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love”, p.73, Simon and Schuster

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• The main thing I don't like about myself is an absurd level of self-consciousness that makes any sort of social encounter an ordeal for me.

  Jarvis Cocker

  Self, Encounters, Levels

  "You can snort as much cocaine as you want and have as many beautiful women as you want ... but it doesn't make you happy" by Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. November 23, 2008.

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• [I] put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!

  John Stuart Mill

  Self, Joy, Opinion

  John Stuart Mill (2007). “Autobiography of John Stuart Mill”, p.94, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies.

  Annie Dillard

  Self, Cities, Consciousness

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.82, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• The weirdest time is when I'm having to explain myself all day to journalists, and then I don't perform, so there's no release, just a lot of self-consciousness. Then what do you do with that at the end of the day? How do you release your brain from talking about yourself all day?

  Andrew Bird

  Talking, Self, Brain

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The voice of the Constitution is the inescapably solemn self-consciousness of the people giving the law unto themselves.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Self, Law, Voice

  E.L. Doctorow (2011). “Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution:: Selected Essays, 1977-1992”, p.124, Random House

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• The time is probably not far distant when music will stand revealed perchance as the mightiest of the arts, and certainly as the one art peculiarly representative of our modern world, with its intense life, complex civilization, and feverish self-consciousness.

  Hugh Reginald Haweis

  Music, Art, Self

  Hugh Reginald Haweis (1873). “Music and Morals”, p.10, London : Strahan

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• In connection with death, or birth, or love, modesty is only a rather puerile self-consciousness.

  Margaret Deland

  Self, Connections, Modesty

  Margaret Deland (2015). “The Iron Woman”, p.236, The Floating Press

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• ... my today's self perpetually slips out of any hold of it that I may try to take.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Self, Trying, May

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• The unlived life is not worth examining. ... Self-awareness, self-examination, self-consciousness are for the quiet moments. In the arena they are paralyzing. The self must not be held out of the arena until living skills have been learned.

  Jo Coudert

  Confidence, Quiet Moments, Self

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