Self Knowledge Quotes

To know a species, look at its fears. To know yourself, look at your fears. Fear in itself is not important, but fear stands there and points you in the direction of things that are important. Don't be afraid of your fears, they're not there to scare you; they're there to let you know that something is worth it.

I found power in accepting the truth of who I am. It may not be a truth that others can accept, but I cannot live any other way. How would it be to live a lie every minute of your life.

I don’t dwell on the fact that I may have ridden on planes. That which I can’t remember having needed, I simply accept. It is the most preferable kind of self-insight: one that does not require any accompanying change in behavior.

My ignorance is essential. I do not write what I know but what I need to know.

I am my own biggest critic. Before anyone else has criticized me, I have already criticized myself. But for the rest of my life, I am going to be with me and I don't want to spend my life with someone who is always critical. So I am going to stop being my own critic. It's high time that I accept all the great things about me.

We must not be defined by what we do, but we must be what and who we are, then only happen to do what we do!

Language is something you inherit, it's never just you doing the talking, which helps when you're pretending.

Perfection itself is not the ultimate goal
but the ultimate condition of life.

Baseless victimhood is usually the last stage before outright aggression.

Excuses are a promise of repetition.

What we do not confront, we inhabit.
What we do not reject, we accept.
What we do not fight, we become.

The tombstone over the grave of the conscience always reads: "Human Nature".

There is no external solution to the problem of insecurity.

Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself.

I believe in knowing who you are but without limiting yourself to your own expectation of who you are.

Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust.

I had the right to remain silent... but I didn't have the ability.

The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I'm not going to let myself pull me down anymore.

Learning

To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.

You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme, hoping that one day the world will read you like the poem you want to be.