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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise, it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity.

  Immanuel Kant

  Spiritual, Self, Personality

  Immanuel Kant (2016). “Delphi Collected Works of Immanuel Kant (Illustrated)”, p.165, Delphi Classics

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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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• One thing that blocks flow is self-consciousness.

  Ariel Gore

  Block, Self, Flow

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• As industrialization provided social uses for the operations of the photographer, so the reaction against these uses reinforced the self-consciousness of photography-as-art.

  Susan Sontag

  Photography, Art, Self

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.9, Macmillan

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• The years between 1800 and 1825 were distinguished, so far as our domestic development was concerned, by the growth of the Western pioneer Democracy in power and self-consciousness.

  Herbert Croly

  Years, Self, Growth

  Herbert Croly (2005). “The Promise of American Life”, p.52, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Reason is the true creative power, for it produces itself as Infinite Self-consciousness, and its ongoing creation is...world history. As the only power that exists, Spirit can therefore be determined by nothing other than itself, that is, its essence is Freedom...Freedom is the infinite power of Spirit...Freedom, the only End of Spirit, is also the only End of History, and history is nothing other than Spirit's becoming *conscious* of its Freedom, or the becoming of Real, Free, Infinite Self-consciousness.

  Bruno Bauer

  Real, Self, Essence

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• Our thesis is that symbols and myths are an expression of man's unique self-consciousness, his capacity to transcend the immediate concrete situation and see his life in terms of 'the possible,' and that this capacity is one aspect of his experiencing himself as a being having a world.

  Rollo May

  Unique, Men, Self

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• Regardless of what kind of film, the number one rule of comedy is to never take yourself too seriously and then the next rule is you can't have any self-consciousness, otherwise it kills the laugh, and that will never change.

  Ari Graynor

  Numbers, Self, Laughing

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• We are just a little tiny flicker of a much larger flame that is Life itself, Consciousness itself, Being itself, Love itself, God’s very self.

  Richard Rohr

  Self, Flames, Littles

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• Constant reading will pull you into a place - a mind-set, if you like the phrase - where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness.

  Stephen King

  Reading, Writing, Self

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.145, Simon and Schuster

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