Quotations: Self-Esteem Is Ego

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Quotations Self-Esteem: Many Perspectives

  • Ego will help you to recognize, remove, and replace your ego: a.k.a. self-esteem.

Quotations Self-Esteem: from many sources, is a disorder & a problem to be removed, like any disease that causes harm to those who have it.


“Self-esteem is an ego trap.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice


Quotations Self-Esteem

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Quotations Self-Esteem


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Quotations Self-Esteem:

Quotations Self-Esteem: Various Sources

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“A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks, he becomes.” —Mahatma Gandhi

“A man is literally what he thinks.” —James Allen

“After all, conflict arises, does it not, through the desire to be something, to be other than what is.” —J. Krishnamurti, The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Volume Vp. 349

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” —Edgar Allan Poe

“And it is impossible to treat human beings as human beings if you label them, if you term them if you give them a name as Hindus, Russians, or what you will. It is so much easier to label people, for then you can pass by and kick them, drop a bomb on India or Japan.” —J. Krishnamurti, The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Volume Vp. 66

“Are we extensions of our cars, or are they extensions of our self-esteem?” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“[REBT] Attempts to help humans eliminate all self-ratings and views self-esteem as a self-defeating concept that encourages them to make conditional evaluations of self. Instead, it teaches people unconditional self-acceptance.” —Albert Ellis, The Practice of Rational Emotive Therapy, p. 61

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” —Dr. Seuss

“Buddha said that life is suffering. However, life is not suffering; ego is suffering.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“But inwardly we are as corrupt as the person who sits in an office and plans war—because we want to be somebody in the family, in a group, in society, in the nation.” —J. Krishnamurti, The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Volume Vp. 339

“But precisely this—not to be conscious of oneself as spirit—is despair.” —Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, p. 44

“Do not try to please everybody. Try to please God, the angels, and the saints. They are your public.” —Saint John Vianney

“Don’t regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours.” —Epictetus, Enchiridion

“Don’t be imprisoned by name or title, for social conventions can lead you away from the natural order of things.” —Lie Yukou

“Don’t try to improve yourself because you can’t do it. You can improve specific things about you, but your whole self is far too complex to be improved.” —Windy Dryden

“Ego is self-talk using self-constructions.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Evaluation of an individual tends to bolster the Establishment and to block social change. Since most societies are run by a limited number of ‘upper-level’ people who have a strong, vested interest in keeping them the way they are, self-evaluation usually encourages the individual to go along with social rules, no matter how arbitrary or foolish they are, and especially to woo the approval of the powers-that-be.” —Albert Ellis

“Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.” —William James

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.” —Niccolò Machiavelli

“Excessive vanity proves the undoing of many experts.” —S. W. Erdnase, The Expert at the Card Table

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he:” —Proverbs 23:7

“For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,” —II Timothy 3:2

“Further, the ‘self’, as defined, can be no thing but a bundle of perceptions, not a new simple ‘thing.’ In this, I think any thoroughgoing empiricist must agree with Hume.” —Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy

“Give not over thy mind to heaviness, and afflict not thyself in thine own counsel.” —Ecclesiasticus 30:21

“God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another.” —Shakespeare, Hamlet

“God has given you your own person, but you pretend to be someone else.” —Rewording of Shakespeare quotation

“Guilt is really the reverse side of the coin of pride. Guilt aims at self-destruction, and pride aims at the destruction of others.” —Bill W., As Bill Sees It, p. 140

“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They do not mean to do harm. They are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” —T. S. Eliot

“Happy is he who has overcome his ego.” —Buddha

“Have patience with all things but first with yourself. Never confuse your mistakes with your value as a human being. You are perfectly valuable, creative, worthwhile person simply because you exist. And no amount of triumphs or tribulations can ever change that.” —Saint Frances de Sales

“He who despises himself still nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.” —Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.” —Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel

“I am a being, not a concept or an image.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“I am a being, not a remembering.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“I am a being, not a thinking.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.” —Marcus Aurelius

“I never change, I simply become more myself.” —Joyce Carol Oates

“I never wanted to be the next Bruce Lee. I just wanted to be the first Jackie Chan.” —Jackie Chan

“I often marvel how it is that though each man loves himself beyond all else, he should yet value his own opinion of himself less than that of others.” —Marcus Aurelius, 121-180 A.D.

“Identification makes general sanity and complete adjustment impossible. Training in non-identity plays a therapeutic role with adults.” —Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Fourth Edition, p. lxxix

“Identity is invariably false to facts.” —Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity, p. 196

“If I am honored because of another person’s opinion, then I can also be dismissed because of someone’s opinion.” —Lie Yukou

“If value is potential, then all humans are always good for all humans always have the potential for good.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” —Max Ehrmann

“If you do not measure your self-hood, you tend to spend your days asking yourself, ‘Now what would I really like to do, in my relatively brief span of existence, to gain maximum satisfaction and minimum pain?’ If you do measure your self-hood, you tend to keep asking, ‘What do I have to do to prove that I am a worthwhile person?.’” —Albert Ellis

“Imagination builds the image of the self and thought then functions within its shadows. From this self-concept grows the conflict between what is and what should be, the conflict in duality.” —J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living, Second Series, p. 209

“Imitation is suicide.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In fact, most of what we call anxiety is overconcern about what someone thinks of you.” —Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper, A Guide to Rational Living, Third Edition, p. 163.

“Is self-esteem a sickness? That’s according to the way you define it. In the usual way it is defined by people and by psychologists, I’d say that it is probably the greatest emotional disturbance known to man and woman.” —Albert Ellis, The Myth of Self-Esteem: How Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Can Change Your Life Forever, p. 13

“It is my contention that the promotion of ‘self-esteem’ has done demonstrably more harm than good and that the prudent individual will resist the arrogant and childish temptation to ‘esteem himself.’ “—David Mills, Overcoming “Self-Esteem” Why Our Compulsive Drive for “Self-Esteem” Is Anxiety-Provoking, Socially Inhibiting, and Self-Sabotaging

“It takes trickery to cultivate approval. You have to make yourself like them. If I see you much acclaimed by everyone, how can I help pitying you? For I know what road one must have taken to gain such popularity.” —Seneca

“It’s better to be a person for a day than to be a shadow for 1,000 days.” —Chinese proverb

“Just remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” —Margaret Mead

“Label peanuts, not people.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Low self-esteem is a form of pride as it consists of devout self-centeredness that puts you at the center of all events.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Low self-esteem is a paradox. On the one hand, I think I am worthless. And on the other hand, I think I am worth thinking and feeling about all the time.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him.” —Golo Mann

“Man is what he believes.” —Anton Chekhov

“No one can control, create, change, or recreate yourself but God.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“No one has ever changed or improved their self. Most people can improve their habits, knowledge, and skills; however, none of that constitutes the self.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“No one has told any story but his own.” —C. S. Lewis

“No room for form with love this strong.” —Rumi

“None are so empty as those who are full of themselves.” —Benjamin Whichcote

“Nothing can be that which it is not, and you are not self-esteem or self-stories.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Nothing is ever about you because nothing can about you be since you are not things or thoughts. Things and thoughts can be about your ego, self-concepts, and self-images. However, even then, it is your choice to make things and thoughts about your self-esteem or not to take them personally or seriously.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Once you label me, you negate me.” —Søren Kierkegaard

“One does not hate so long as one continues to rate low, but only when one has come to rate equal or higher.” —Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“Ordinary eyes categorize human beings.” —Rumi

“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“People learn overgeneralized self-deprecating from their family, peers and teachers. ‘You are a bad boy because you do bad things!’” —Albert Ellis

“People stress over their games instead of having fun while playing because everything is considered by self-esteem to make you into something.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Perfection does not consist in macerating or killing the body, but in killing our perverse self-will.” —Catherine of Siena

“RET Abolishes Most of the Human Ego” by Albert Ellis, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 13:4, 343-348, 1976

“Riches I need not, nor man’s empty praise.” —translated from an ancient Gaelic poem

“Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.” —Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

“Self-esteem is always at risk, but the self is never at risk.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Self-esteem is an ego game.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Self-esteem is an ego trap.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Self-esteem is built on a house of cards—self-constructions posing for the camera.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Self-esteem is death by a thousand cuts.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Self-esteem is like a bow, arrow, and target. Your life force is the taught bow. You are the arrow. The target is dead self-concepts and self-images.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Self-esteem is slow suicide.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it’s conditional.” —Albert Ellis, Ph.D., the most famous and influential living psychologist in the world, Psychology Today, February 2001, p. 72, in the interview, “The Prince of Reason,” with the famous psychologist Robert Epstein, Ph.D.

“Self-esteem is the root of human stupidity.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Self-esteem is when you compare your insides to somebody else’s outsides.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Self-esteem steals souls.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble.” —John Madden

“Søren Kierkegaard wrote, ‘Once you label me, you negate me.’ When the individual must live up to the label, the self ceases to exist. The same is true of self-labels. You could be negating yourself by identifying with your trademarks rather than your own potential for growth.” —Wayne W. Dyer, Your Erroneous Zones

“Swallow your pride occasionally, it’s nonfattening!” —Anonymous

“Teach your children not to strive for high self-esteem. This is nothing less than teaching them arrogance, conceit and superiority feelings.” —Paul A. Hauck, Overcoming The Rating Game: Beyond Self-Love—Beyond Self-Esteem, p. 46

“The assumption being that if high-risk children could be made to ‘feel good about themselves,’ these epidemics could be mitigated. … This prescription, unfortunately, has proven to be yet another in a long list of nouveau homilies that haven’t lived up to their promises.” —John Rosemond, Plan To Build Self-Esteem Backfires, August 1996 syndicated newspaper column regarding research done at Case Western Reserve University and the University of Virginia

“The attitude of unconditional self-acceptance is probably the most important variable in their long-term recovery.” ―Albert Ellis, Rational-Emotive Therapy with Alcoholics and Substance Abusers, p. 71

“The cause of all sins in every case lies in the person’s excessive love of self.” —Plato, Laws

“The devil knows your name but calls you by your sin. God knows your sin but calls you by your name.” —Ricardo Sanchez

“The first step man takes in self-confidence removes him so far from the confidence he ought to have in God.” —Marguerite of Navarre

“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.” —Socrates

“The idea, the pattern, is self-projected; it is a form of self-worship, of self-perpetuation, and hence gratifying.” —J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living, First Series, p. 86

“The individual is taught that there is nothing that he as a total person is to feel ashamed of or self-hating for.” —Albert Ellis, Ph.D., Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy, Revised

“The man who renounces himself comes to himself.” —Emerson

“The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.” —Paul Graham, Keep Your Identity Small

“The national ego is the father of the personal.” —Aaron David Gordon

“The One true God never exists as self-constructions. All the fake and false gods always exist as self-constructions.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“The people who matter will recognize who you are.” —Alan Cohen

“The present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of ‘identity.’” —Alfred Korzybski, 1879-1950: Polish-born American philosopher, Science and Sanity, p. 10 (the italics are Korzybski’s)

“The ridiculous ones are those who try to cultivate quietude—as long as body and mind are unstable, it is madness to go into the mountains.” ―Liu Yiming

“The self of which you speak, whether it is the great self or the small self, is only a concept that does not correspond to any reality.” —Buddha, Zen Keys by Thich Nhat Hanh, p. 38

“The societal pursuit of high self-esteem for everyone may literally end up doing considerable harm.” —Roy F. Baumeister, Joseph M. Boden, and Laura Smart, Psychological Review, February 1996

“There are more than enough voices in this world incorrectly suggesting that something is wrong with you. Don’t let yours be one of them. Watch how you talk to yourself.” —Scott Stabile

“There is little reason to believe self-esteem leads to academic achievement or is even necessary for academic success. It is therefore crucial to delegitimize the education establishment’s mindless glorification of self-esteem.” —Nina H. Shokraii, “The Self-Esteem Fraud: Feel-Good Education Does not Lead to Academic Success,” USA Today Magazine, January 1998

“There is no impression of self, and therefore no idea of self.” —David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature, Book I, part iv, sec. vi.

“These ‘philosophers’, etc., seem unaware, to give a specific example, that by teaching and preaching ‘identity’, which is empirically non-existent in this actual world, they are neurologically training future generations in the pathological identifications found in the ‘mentally’ ill or maladjusted.” —Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics, Fourth Edition, p. xxix

“This, perhaps, goes to show that conditional self-esteem, as I have said for many years, is an insidious, real sickness, so much so that even Buddhists carelessly sneak it in and sometimes encourage their clients to achieve it.” —Albert Ellis, Buddhism and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

“Titles are like a magicians wand which circumscribe human facility and prevent us from living the lives of man.” —Thomas Paine

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.” —E.E. Cummings

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” —Dr. Seuss

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.” —Alan Watts

“Unconditional Self-Acceptance (USA) instead of Conditional Self-Esteem (CSE). You rate and evaluate your thoughts, feelings, and actions in relation to your main Goals of remaining alive and reasonably happy to see whether they aid these Goals. When they aid them, you rate that as “good” or “effective,” and when they sabotage your Goals, you rate that as ‘bad’ or ‘ineffective.’ But you always—yes, always—accept and respect yourself, your personhood, your being, whether or not you perform well and whether or not other people approve of you and your behaviors.” ―Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“Unconditional self-acceptance is the basic antidote to much of your depressed self-downing feelings.” – Albert Ellis

“Unconditional self-acceptance is the basic antidote to much of your depressed self-downing feelings. Self-appraisal almost inevitably leads to one-upmanship and one-downmanship. If you rate yourself as being ‘good,’ you will usually rate others as being ‘bad’ or ‘less good.’ If you rate yourself as being ‘bad,’ others will be seen as ‘less bad’ or ‘good.’ Thereby you practically force yourself to compete with others in ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ and constantly feel envious, jealous, or superior. Persistent individual, group, and international conflicts easily stem from this kind of thinking and feeling.” —Albert Ellis

“Unconditional Self-Accepting means you refuse to give your self, your personality, your being—any global rating.” —Albert Ellis

“We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.” —Marcus Aurelius

“We all place ourselves at various levels, and we are constantly falling from these heights. It is the falls we are ashamed of. Self-esteem is the cause of our shame, of our fall. It is this self-esteem that must be understood, and not the fall.” —J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living, First Series, p. 146

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little lives are rounded with a sleep.” —William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us.” —Virginia Satir

“We ought not to receive as reasoning any of the observations we make concerning identity, and the relations of time and place; since in none of them the mind can go beyond what is immediately present to the senses.” —David Hume

“We should raise anew the question of the meaning of being.” —Martin Heidegger

“What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves.” —Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 4 B.C. ? to 65 A.D.

“What we do in dreams we also do when we are awake: we invent and fabricate the person with whom we associate—and immediately forget we have done so.” —Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“What you say to yourself about you, is far more important than what anyone else says to you about you.” —Wayne Winsley (Brave Enough to Fail)

“When one has an image about oneself one is surely insane; one lives in a world of illusion.” —J. Krishnamurti, The Flight of the Eagle, p. 57

“When someone is properly grounded in life, they shouldn’t have to look outside themselves for approval.” —Epictetus

“You are never your thoughts; however, your ego is always your thoughts.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“You are not your body or your hairstyle, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful so too will you be.” —Epictetus

“You can be either a thinking or a being.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“You can either be a host to God or a hostage to your ego. It’s your call.” —Wayne Dyer

“You cannot perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself.” —Zig Ziglar

“You never exist quite so much as when you are not thinking.” —Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900, German philosopher

“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” —Stephen Paul “Steve” Jobs, American entrepreneur and inventor, 1955-2011

“Your totality is too complex and too changing to measure. Repeatedly acknowledge that.” —Albert Ellis


Quotations Self-Esteem

3D: Daily Dose of Discernment: 2023

Self-Esteem Is Self-Haunting: 01-26-2023

  1. “Self-esteem is when you haunt yourself with self-constructions.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
  2. “Self-esteem is when you have a name of a name claiming to be what a name can only represent.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
  3. “Self-esteem is when you have an image of an image claiming to be what an image can only represent.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
  4. “Self-esteem is when you have a concept of a concept claiming to be what a concept can only represent.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
  5. “The human self is an image of living Energy, so not knowable with any concept or image.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

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