Self Consciousness Quotes

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The press has let the country down. It's taken a very amoral stand, in that essential issues are often portrayed as simply one side says this and the other side says that. I think that Fox News and the Republican right have intimidated the press into an incredible self-consciousness about appearing objective and backed them into a corner of sorts where they have ceded some of their responsibility and righteous power.

  Bruce Springsteen

  Country, Taken, Responsibility

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• I was thinking about the generation before us, like John Barth and all of those pomo dudes who had that idea of, instead of hiding the structure and making it look organic and natural, we're going to put the structure on the outside. But most of the time, at least for me, all I could attend to [in Swing Time] was that act of structural self-consciousness.

  Zadie Smith

  Thinking, Swings, Self

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator, our very self-consciousness, is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution.

  Annie Dillard

  Birthday, Self, Ironic

  1974 Of self-consciousness. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, ch.6.

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• A journal of the 'subjective' kind I have always thought foolish, as nurturing a morbid self -consciousness in the writer; and yet, alone so much as I am, it is well to have some sort of a ventilator from the interior.

  Lucy Larcom

  Self, Kind, Consciousness

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• Why is failure the first thing I think of when I find myself in this sort of situation? Why can't I just enjoy myself? But if you have to ask the question, then you know you're lost: self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy. Already I'm wondering whether she's as aware of my erection as I am.

  Nick Hornby

  Men, Thinking, Worst Enemy

  Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.131, Penguin

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• I enjoy performing, always, but when you're taping a gig, you've got to blank out this mass apparatus of self-consciousness that's surrounding you, this invitation to drown in self-consciousness. Otherwise you just won't be able to do anything.

  Dylan Moran

  Self, Gigs, Able

  "Half-cut? I'd be entirely cut, sliced and diced every which way". Interview with Hannah Pool, www.theguardian.com. December 06, 2006.

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• I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train.

  Walter Dean Myers

  Notebook, Exercise, Self

  "An Interview With Walter Dean Myers About The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins". Interview with Richard F. Abrahamson and Linda M. Pavonetti, www.scholastic.com.

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• We experience ourselves our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of 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.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Nature

  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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• Self-consciousness kills communication.

  Rick Steves

  Communication, Self, Consciousness

  Rick Steves (2015). “Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door 2016: The Travel Skills Handbook”, p.523, Avalon Travel

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• So I should be aware of the dangers of self-consciousness, but at the same time, I’ll be plowing through the fog of all these echoes, plowing through mixed metaphors, noise, and will try to show the core, which is still there, as a core, and is valid, despite the fog. The core is the core is the core. There is always the core, that can’t be articulated. Only caricatured.

  Dave Eggers

  Echoes, Fog, Self

  Dave Eggers (2013). “A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story”, p.274, Simon and Schuster

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