49 Quotes About Self & Identity
"Know thyself" was carved over the oracle at Delphi for a reason. These quotes are about the lifelong, uncomfortable, liberating work of meeting who you actually are.
“To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.”
“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.”
“As a person sheds worn-out clothes and puts on new ones, so does the embodied self shed worn-out bodies and take on new ones.”
“Lift yourself by yourself; do not let yourself sink. For the self alone is the friend of the self, and the self alone is the enemy of the self.”
“Three are the gates of hell, destructive of the self — lust, anger, and greed. Therefore, abandon these three.”
“Burnout is not just being tired. It is the chronic erosion of the self caused by mismatched expectations and depleting work — measured along three specific dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation (cynicism), and reduced personal…”
“The cure for burnout is not self-care. The cure is care that comes from outside — the structural conditions changing, the relationships repairing, the work itself being made human again.”
“You cannot self-care your way out of a system that was built to extract every last hour of you. Self-care can keep you alive inside the system; it cannot fix the system.”
“The mythical 80-hour workweek does not exist. Time-use studies of self-reported workaholics show the actual number is closer to 55. The 80-hour version exists in stories, not in calendars.”
“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
“When you are inspired by some great purpose, all your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”
“You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.”
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
“The most important conversations you will ever have are the ones you have with yourself.”
“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments.”
“The body is always with us, but the self disappears in flow.”
“The brain in flow drops the prefrontal cortex offline. That is why the self disappears.”
“The only place you can change anything is inside yourself. The outside world is the printout.”
“Pono is right relationship — between self and self, self and family, self and land, self and the unseen. Everything restored to its proper place.”
“The ego loves to blame. Hoʻoponopono takes the blame away from everyone — including yourself — by saying: this is a memory playing. We clean the memory.”
“You are made of three selves. The Unihipili is the child within — your subconscious, your body, your memories. The Uhane is the mother — your conscious mind, your decisions. The Aumakua is the father — your higher self, the One.”
“To be pono with yourself is the first responsibility. Without it, you cannot be pono with anyone else.”
“Aloha au ia ʻoe. I love you. The shortest hoʻoponopono. Said to the self in the mirror, the body, the work, the child, the ancestor — it works in every direction.”
“Fasting is the most powerful longevity intervention we know — older than medicine, free, and within reach of everyone.”
“If you find yourself in a position of authority, be courteous. The mouth of a wise man counsels and ennobles.”
“The Accountability Mirror is not pretty. It is not motivational. It is a mirror you stand in front of every morning and tell yourself the unflattering truth about who you have been pretending not to be.”
“A growth mindset is the belief that abilities can be developed. A fixed mindset is the belief they are given. The difference is whether you treat hard things as evidence of who you are, or as the path to who you are becoming.”
“Becoming is better than being.”
“Today, victory over yourself. Yesterday, victory over a lesser opponent. Tomorrow, victory over a greater one.”
“You become what you tolerate. If you tolerate the inner voice that says quit, that voice becomes the operating system.”
“When you say yes to others, make sure you are not saying no to yourself.”
“Self-care is giving the world the best of you, not what's left of you.”
“Boundaries are a part of self-care. They are healthy, normal, and necessary.”
“Saying no can be the most self-loving, self-respecting thing you do all week.”
“Let today mark a new beginning for you. Give yourself permission to say no without feeling guilty.”
“Confine yourself to the present.”
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
“You become what you give your attention to.”
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
“Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?”
“Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.”
“When you are content to be simply yourself and do not compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”
“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”
“All the suffering in the world comes from seeking pleasure for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from seeking pleasure for others.”
“Maitri begins with the simple, radical act of being kind to yourself.”
“Tonglen reverses the usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure. In the process, we become liberated from a very ancient prison of selfishness.”
“A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good. They have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing they belong in a greater whole.”
“Wabi-sabi is exactly about the great, getting-old universe and our tiny, temporary place within it.”
“If an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi.”