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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• 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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  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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• ...self-consciousness is a man's worst enemy.

  Nick Hornby

  Men, Worst Enemy, Self

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

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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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• With Shakespeare and poetry, a new world was born. New dreams, new desires, a self consciousness was born. I desired to know to know myself in terms of the new standards set by these books.

  Peter Abrahams

  Dream, Book, Self

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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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• ... 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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• You are preparing yourself for a scene, and the most important thing is to remain emotionally available and remain in the moment with your scene partner. You don't want to let your own self-consciousness block the flow of creativity that's coming out so that you can act and react, and play what the scene is all about.

  Gale Harold

  Block, Creativity, Self

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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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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• Great acting can be almost a psychotic mix of self-consciousness and unself-consciousness. And thats the terrible conflict. You have to be free to jump off into that volcano and you have to be pathologically self-conscious.

  Alec Baldwin

  Volcanoes, Self, Acting

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• I think that we are starting to get much more conscious about, you know, the importance of the spiritual path, and we are fulfilling it by paying attention to ourselves.

  Paulo Coelho

  Spiritual, Thinking, Attention

  "My dream was, and still is, to be a writer: Paulo Coelho". Interview with Tanu Talwar, zeenews.india.com. July 6, 2009.

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• I suggest that just as self-consciousness is the goal for all the subhuman forms of life, and as group consciousness, or the consciousness of the Heavenly Man, is the goal for the human being, so for him, also, there may be a goal, and for him the achievement may be the development of God consciousness.

  Alice Bailey

  Men, Self, Goal

  Alice A Bailey (2010). “The Consciousness of the Atom”, p.36, Lucis Publishing Companies

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• The student should bear in mind that the very essence of consciousness is constantly to identify itself with the Not-Self, and as constantly to re-assert itself by rejecting the Not-Self. Consciousness, in fact, consists of this alternating assertion and negation - "I am this" - "I am not this." Hence consciousness is, and causes in matter, the attracting and repelling that we call a vibration.

  Arthur E. Powell

  Spiritual, Self, Essence

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