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The great corrupter of public man is the ego... Looking at the mirror distracts one's attention from the problem. (Dean G. Acheson)
I get mail; therefore I am. (Scott Adams)
A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side. (Joseph Addison)
In many people it is already an impertinence to say ' I.' (Theodor W. Adorno)
It's hard to be humble when you are as great as I am. (Muhammad Ali)
The last time I saw him he was walking down lover's lane holding his own hand. (Fred Allen)
Trash and treasure are two sides of the same coin. Low self-esteem produces one, and public adulation the other. (Dave Ames)
Well-ordered self-love is right and natural. (St. Thomas Aquinas)
Action painting has to do with self-creation or self-definition or self-transcendence; but this dissociates it from self-expression, which assumes the acceptance of the ego as it is, with its wound and its magic. (Hannah Arendt)
Resolve to be thyself and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery. (Matthew Arnold)
Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his [mankind's] ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation. (Hans Jean Arp)
One difference between artists and ordinary people is that artists have big egos. In some cases, it's the only difference. (Charles Atlas)
All that we are not stares back at what we are. (W. H. Auden)
The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me. (W. H. Auden)
-The Perfect Master by Charles Purdom
When you paint, you forget everything except your object. When you are too much engrossed in it, you are lost in it. And when you are lost in it, your ego diminishes. And when the ego diminishes, love infinite appears. (Meher Baba)
Give up all bad qualities in you, banish the ego and develop the spirit of surrender. You will then experience Bliss. (Sri Sathya Sai Baba)
You are not one person, but three: The one you think you are; The one others think you are; The one you really are. (Sri Sathya Sai Baba)
Portrait painters' mission is to portray people and the beauty of Creation. They should stay clear of ego... (Igor Babailov)
I've often felt my ego was like a layer cake – layers of high ego and low ego alternating endlessly... I need approbation for both layers of the cake. (Janet Badger)
When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it. (Bernard Bailey)
Conceit is God's gift to little men. (Bruce Barton)
Nothing we do is separate from the functioning entity we call our selves. (Nicoletta Baumeister)
The artist has to be exactly the opposite [of people singing the song, I've gotta be Me,] and transcend himself as he makes judgements. (Romare Bearden)
Prince, what you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am of myself. There are and there will be thousands of princes. There is only one Beethoven. (Ludwig van Beethoven)
All I am is what I create. It's my blessing to share with the world. (Michael Bell)
No me, or egoless living, is pure happiness and creative joy and the only way out of spiritual poverty. (Philippe Benichou)
-sign at House of Coffee and Tea, Tucson, Arizona...
At the feast of ego, everyone leaves hungry. (Bentley's)
I am very much aware of my own double self... The well-known one is very under control; everything is planned and very secure. The unknown one can be very unpleasant. I think this side is responsible for all the creative work - he is in touch with the child. (Ingmar Bergman)
Ego, just a three-letter word and yet so interesting. If we did not have an ego, we would be lost. Feeding it too much we would also be lost. (Lida van Bers)
Self-esteem is the foundation of empathy and self-confidence. And the foundation of creative empowerment - the home of sensitive and accomplished artists, tyros and all. (Dianne Bersea)
-The Cynic's Word Book, 1906
egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me. (Ambrose Bierce)
self-evident, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else. (Ambrose Bierce)
self-esteem, n. An erroneous appraisal. (Ambrose Bierce)
me, pro. The objectionable case of I. The personal pronoun in English has three cases, the dominative, the objectionable and the oppressive. Each is all three. (Ambrose Bierce)
-MoviesOnline, on voicing a character in the film he directed, Ratatouille...
Oh, I'm just Ego's assistant. It's not anything big. (Brad Bird)
When I paint well, I am so egotistical I begin to think the word ego should be spelled with an I. (John W. Bond)
I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands. (Louise Bourgeois)
It's unnecessary and destructive to think of oneself at all. People ask me, 'What do you think of yourself as?' My answer is, 'Nothing.' (Paul Bowles)
It is hard to resist a flatterer who gets it right. (Robert Brault)
He is a self-made man and worships his creator. (John Bright)
Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves. (Emily Bronte)
Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us. (Van Wyck Brooks)
If I weren't too proud, I'd boast of my exaggerated opinion of myself. (Benson Bruno)
What has to be given up is not the I, as most mystics suppose: this I is indispensable for any relationship, including the highest, which always presupposes an I and You. (Martin Buber)
I know it's very egocentric to believe that someone is put on Earth for a reason. In my case, I like to think I was. (Art Buchwald)
You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserves your love and affection. (Siddhartha Gautama, Buddha)
A man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man's natural tendency is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all creation was formed for him. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
His head is made of stars, but not yet arranged into constellations. (Elias Canetti)
Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries. (Thomas Carlyle)
Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself. (Dale Carnegie)
All my compatriots are asses compared to me. (Paul Cezanne)
-to his mother...
I am beginning to consider myself stronger than all those around me, and you know that the good opinion I have of myself has only been reached after mature consideration. (Paul Cezanne)
You are the sky. Everything else - it's just the weather. (Pema Chodron)
Ego is something that you come to know - something that you befriend by not acting out or by repressing all the feelings that you feel. (Pema Chodron)
I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos. (Sir Kenneth Clark)
Now, I don't want to give you the impression that I'm a great musicologist, but I'm a lot better than what I was described as for a long, long time; you know, people said I only knew three chords when I knew five. (Leonard Cohen)
Your real self - the 'I am I' - is master of this land, the ruler of this empire. You rightfully have power and dominion over it, all its inhabitants, and all contained in its realm. (Robert Collier)
The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us. (Quentin Crisp)
Creativity in general may require a certain disarmament of the ego. (Warren Criswell)
Gentlemen, start your egos. (Billy Crystal)
When I paint, the ocean roars. Others merely paddle in their bath. (Salvador Dali)
The Ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it - just don't get lost in it. (Ram Dass)
Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player. (Miles Davis)
I gotta be me. (Sammy Davis, Jr.)
When I am me, I can see me in my space... I am writing. I am talking from a heart of love. I am reviewing my notes, or editing, or walking, or something outside. I am connecting with nature and people. (Jan Denise)
-b.412 BC d.323 BC...
Boasting, like gilded armour, is very different inside from outside. (Diogenes of Sinope)
Ego is responsible for clouding the mind on the conscious level. It is far more difficult to access that part of oneself where the creative thought begins when one is attached to a certain outcome, a certain standard. (Carolynn Doan)
To see, one must deny the ego and humble himself in front of mother nature. (Charles Duback)
Self-worth comes from one thing – thinking that you are worthy. (Dr. Wayne Dyer)
He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. (George Eliot)
The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief. (George Eliot)
The conscious ego cannot tell the unconscious what to do? (Milton H. Erickson)
Through our search for the highest, purest state of being we must go through a process of attaining a heightened state of self-awareness, confidence, concentration, total commandment of all facilities and a deep connection and commitment to the world around us, while at the same time completely letting go of ego, self and all external attachments, wide open to whatever direction nature decides to take us. (Ian Factor)
A most deeply personal experience... and now with no ego, utterly open and naked, we are judged. (Ian Factor)
I'm an artist, I'm different, I'm making something I think is beautiful and that's a gift. I give it away, I sell it sometimes but most of all it's the heart and soul of me. (Nick Farbacher)
I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe. (Richard Feynman)
Do not ask me who I am and do not ask me to remain the same. (Michel Foucault)
The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others. (Sonya Friedman)
If I am what I have and if I lose what I have, who then am I? (Erich Fromm)
The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness, because it affords a stronger temptation to the ego. (Northrop Frye)
I am deeply superficial. (Ava Gardner)
I am I plus my surroundings and if I do not preserve the latter, I do not preserve myself. (Jose Ortega Y Gasset)
-to high school grads...
The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself. (Bill Gates)
I am a man for whom the outside world exists. (Theophile Gautier)
I've been told I have the biggest ego in the world and that it manifests itself when you come to me and say, 'I don't like this' or 'I want a change'... and that I relish that because my ego's so big I think I can solve whatever you throw at me and make it even better. I enjoy the interaction and the challenge. (Frank Gehry)
Regarding ego force, we don't always like people who have it. If you have it, and need to be liked, you ought to consider letting most of it come out the end of your brush. (Robert Genn)
Show me someone not full of herself and I'll show you a hungry person. (Nikki Giovanni)
For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
I'm willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong. (Samuel Goldwyn)
The things we hate about ourselves are not more real than things we like about ourselves. (Ellen Goodman)
Our real nature is not our imaginary, limited ego. Our true nature is vast, all-comprehensive, and intangible as empty space. (Lama Govinda)
-The Wind in the Willows...
'O, my!' he gasped, as he panted along, 'what an ass I am! What a conceited and heedless ass! Swaggering again! Shouting and singing songs again! Sitting still and gassing again! O my! O my! O my!' (Kenneth Grahame)
Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant. (Cary Grant)
You are the light and love of your life. Never forget it. (Mary A. Gravelle)
-in a letter to Horace Walpole, February 25, 1768...
I shall be but a shrimp of an author. (Thomas Gray)
In my day, we didn't have self-esteem, we had self-respect, and no more of it than we had earned. (Jane Haddam)
The higher you place yourself in the clouds, the colder and lonelier you will be, and the farther you'll have to fall. (Hap Hagood)
The signature is a distraction to the piece itself and spoils its integrity. It is a matter of vanity that the artist must distract the viewer from the work with their own ego. (Sandra Halpin)
What is a sophisticate? He is a man who thinks he can swim better than he can and sometimes he drowns. (Oscar Hammerstein)
The world of the ego is like a house of mirrors through which the ego wanders, lost and confused, as it chases the images in one mirror after another... At times... the world of mirrors becomes a house of horrors that gets worse and worse. (David R. Hawkins)
It is part of a poor spirit to undervalue himself and blush. (George Herbert)
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye, and you will be drawn toward it. (Napoleon Hill)
I just hope that I can be kind of like the Beatles. I really like that kind of model. I like the way that without losing integrity they could change through fashion and not look back at the '60s and vomit when they saw what they'd done. (Damien Hirst)
Your ego is an avid interpreter. It is so quick to interpret events as 'bad' or 'good,' 'wrong' or 'right.' It never fails to see 'the little picture.' (Robert Holden)
We are when we are not; we are not when we are. (Tom Johnsen)
Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it's unbelievable! (Angelina Jolie)
Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got. (Janis Joplin)
In my case, Pilgrim's Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am. (Carl Gustav Jung)
Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance? (Abdul Kalam)
I, in the end, make art for myself. (Anish Kapoor)
-b.1849 d.1926...
The emancipation of women is practically the greatest egoistic movement of the nineteenth century, and the most intense affirmation of the right of the self that history has yet seen. (Ellen Key)
We've got to convince our egos and our minds that if we want to live happy lives, love is more important than anything else! (Ken S. Keyes Jr.)
I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries. (Stephen King)
Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves. (Rudyard Kipling)
There is nothing that special to see when looking at me. (Gustav Klimt)
Nothing can touch me now – I'm Jeff Koons and my art can defend me! (Jeff Koons)
Isn't the origin of conflict ego? If there is no ego there is no becoming. (Jiddu Krishnamurti)
I don't want to sell myself at any price. I have too much respect for myself. (Gilles Labranche)
Under the bright sun, many of us are gathered together with different languages, different styles of dress, even different faiths. However, all of us are the same in being humans, and we all uniquely have the thought of 'I' and we're all the same in wanting happiness and in wanting to avoid suffering. (Dalai Lama)
Not to identify oneself with something, or to associate things with the 'me,' and to see that the idea that there is a 'me,' which is distinct from things, is a delusion... (Dalai Lama)
You're only as good as your last haircut. (Fran Lebowitz)
If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it. (John Lennon)
I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me. (Roy Lichtenstein)
When we're not one with the process we think too much, talk too much, and we brag. Everyone around us gags. (Jeanne Long)
The average person thinks he isn't. (Father Larry Lorenzoni)
An ego should be like a warm breeze, never seen, just mildly sensed. (David Louis)
The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love. (Niccolo Machiavelli)
-on her Drawing 101 teacher...
I left my ego at the door of his classroom when I entered, and left with a portfolio of drawings I still can't believe I produced. (Mary Madsen)
I hate everything which is not in myself. (Norman Mailer)
I am a human being and an artist: I really, simply, surely am. (Eric Maisel)
An artist who is too self-centered is liable to exhibit faults he abhors: carelessness, callousness, and even downright cruelty. (Eric Maisel)
The size of your accomplishments, the quality of your achievement, will depend very largely on how big a man you see in yourself, what sort of image you get of your possible self, yourself at your best. (Orison Swett Marden)
I have been no more than a medium, as it were. (Henri Matisse)
I live for myself and answer to nobody. (Steve McQueen)
To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell. (Thomas Merton)
Is it enough to just love every brush stroke... paint for the love of it and not for the viewer or the dollar to be earned. It is so difficult to keep the ego out of it. (Tricia Migdoll)
The value of the actual work appears to reflect the ego and eccentricities of its creator. Only when the ego recedes can the work be evaluated by the outside world. (Lorelle A. Miller)
I wanted to see what other people see when they see me. People seem to like me, so I wanted to see if I could like me. (Rocco Mirro)
Take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me; leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity, my constancy, and my plain dealing; 'Tis all I have to recommend me to the esteem either of others or myself. (Mary Wortley Montagu)
Actually, being what you are is the simplest. What is difficult is to stop being what you are not. (Mooji)
Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting. (Christopher Morley)
I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps 'Oh look at that!' Then, whoosh and I'm gone... and they'll never see anything like it ever again, and they won't be able to forget me - ever. (Jim Morrison)
I always stayed in tune with my own ambitions and attitudes and I'm still my intractable old self, for better or worse. (LeRoy Neiman)
For those who demonstrate, a very big price is paid in educational benefits if personal style, running commentary and facile brushwork feeds an ego while closing doors to unique discoveries. (Richard (Dick) Nelson)
Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego.' (Friedrich Nietzsche)
The higher we soar, the smaller we seem to those who cannot fly. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
The simple fact of yourself... there it is... just you... no excitement about it... a very simple fact... the only thing you have... keep it as clear as you can. (Georgia O'Keeffe)
Yet the fact had no consciousness of itself except through me. (Joyce Carol Oates)
Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the poet and the dancer. So is the case with everybody. (Osho)
-on exhibiting his work...
I can beat myself on the chest, rise up proudly; this is me, me, me. (Egbert Oudendag)
-New York Times...
Artists are... stubborn egomaniacs who are mysteriously - and sometimes correctly - certain that the world needs to know all about the figments of their imaginations and who gear their lives to getting those figments into circulation. (Jon Pareles)
I am what I photograph. (Martin Parr)
Drop the idea that you are Atlas carrying the world on your shoulders. The world would go on even without you. Don't take yourself so seriously. (Norman Vincent Peale)
Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. (Fritz Perls)
Where talent is a dwarf, self-esteem is a giant. (J. Petit-Senn)
I never calculate. That is why those who do, calculate so much less accurately than I. (Pablo Picasso)
Art is coming face to face with yourself. (Jackson Pollock)
Self-love seems so often unrequited. (Anthony Powell)
-The War of Art
The instinct that pulls us toward art is the impulse to evolve, to learn, to heighten and elevate our consciousness. The Ego hates this. Because the more awake we become, the less we need the Ego. (Steven Pressfield)
Science and psychology have isolated the one prime cause for success or failure in life. It is the hidden self-image you have of yourself. (Bob Proctor)
Above the cloud with its shadow is the star with its light. Above all things reverence thyself. (Pythagoras)
The waves belong to the water. Does the water belong to the waves? (Ramakrishna)
I am. I think. I will. (Ayn Rand)
Don't equate criticism of your artwork to self-worth! (CJ Rider)
I really cannot bear the whole ego thing with artists... and I will not work with people who act in bizarre egotistical ways. (Robin Rimbaud)
We will act consistently with our view of who we truly are, whether that view is accurate or not. (Tony Robbins)
I'm an utterly average, total geek. (Julia Roberts)
I'm angry at how school produces submissive students with battered egos. Most students have no idea of the true joys of learning, and of how much they can actually achieve on their own. (Adam Robinson)
The man who thinks he can do without the world is indeed mistaken; but the man who thinks the world cannot do without him is mistaken even worse. (Francois de La Rochefoucauld)
Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far. (Will Rogers)
We have to be honest when dealing with our ego, but we must temper that honesty... Reward is good, criticism is good, all in moderation. (Rick Rotante)
You can measure the impeccability of your word by your level of self-love. How much you love yourself and how you feel about yourself are directly proportionate to the quality and integrity of your word. (Don Miguel Ruiz)
If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me. For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens. (Rumi)
The idol of your self is the mother of all idols. To regard the self as easy to subdue is a mistake. (Rumi)
When a man is wrapped up in himself he makes a pretty small package. (John Ruskin)
We are star-stuff. (Carl Sagan)
My work is a 'concrete' of that which preceded language and which language is all about... to make a 'talisman,' to render myself proof from whatever I feel could interfere with the continuation of my personality and volition. (Michael Sandle)
The average estimate themselves by what they do, the above average by what they are. (Johann Friedrich von Schiller)
Many people love in themselves what they hate in others. (Ernst F. Schumacher)
Self-esteem cannot be directly injected. It needs to result from doing well, from being warranted. (Martin Seligman)
There used to be a me behind the mask, but I had it surgically removed. (Peter Sellers)
You don't want to see things as they are because your ego would have to admit that things outside yourself are necessary for the self to be. You still have fun, as most people do, from manipulating things. (Eli Siegel)
I am wedded to who I am. (Burton Silverman)
Always fall in love with yourself, but keep falling. (William Carmen Soyak III)
You proceed from a false assumption: I have no ego to bruise. (Spock)
Flattery is all right so long as you don't inhale. (Adlai Stevenson)
Ego is the memory and the use of information and the cultivating of will – no real creativity is possible within its boundaries. The passion and the compassion is unbelievably deeper than what our subconscious id could ever hold. (Joseph Tany)
A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator the smaller the fraction. (Leo Tolstoy)
A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction. (Leo Tolstoy)
As well as making friends with yourself, fundamentally one should be cynical and critical. This doesn't mean that you should punish yourself, but you just attack the areas of ego's indulgence. At the same time, you continue the friendship with yourself. (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche)
Professed authors who overestimate their vocation are too full of themselves to be agreeable companions. The demands of their egotism are inveterate. (Henry Theodore Tuckerman)
We must be able to turn our egos off and on. (Chris Tyrell)
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. (Lao Tzu)
The folly of mistaking oneself for an oracle is built right into us. (Paul Valery)
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. (Gore Vidal)
When I get my hands on painting materials, I don't give a damn about other people's painting: life and me, me and life. In art, every generation must start again afresh. (Maurice de Vlaminck)
This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it. (Voltaire)
There's only one me, and I'm stuck with him. (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)
Relentless, repetitive self-talk is what changes our self-image. (Denis Waitley)
To establish true self-esteem we must concentrate on our successes and forget about the failures and the negatives in our lives. (Denis Waitley)
Art can be close to the bone, but we are not our work. Try not to identify your core ego with your art. (Kay WalkingStick)
If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it. (Andy Warhol)
The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention. (Alan Watts)
The saint is a man who disciplines his ego. The sage is a man who rids himself of his ego. (Wei Wu Wei)
We do not possess an ego.We are possessed by the idea of one. (Wei Wu Wei)
You're only as good as your last picture. (Johnny Weissmuller)
I have an unfortunate personality. (Orson Welles)
As far as painting is concerned there is only Degas and myself. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
I celebrate myself, and sing myself. (Walt Whitman)
I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly. (Oscar Wilde)
I have nothing to declare except my genius. (Oscar Wilde)
be the mountain / be the ocean / be the tree / be happy / be the light / be the shadow / be the rain / be you / be (Ray Wilkins)
Vanity, fear, desire, competition - all such distortions within our own egos - condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. (Tennessee Williams)
Most people are compromised by the manipulations of their own egos. Who dares reveal what's behind our charades? Only those who recognize it as the innocence that it is. (David Wayne Wilson)
You have to put yourself to one side and get away from the 'Victorian poet' model where you are the universe. You have to do everything you can to take your ego out of the equation. (Peter Wolf)
We are now in the Me Decade - seeing the upward roll of the third great religious wave in American history. (Tom Wolfe)
What is pride? A rocket that emulates the stars. (William Wordsworth)
All men think all men mortal, but themselves. (Edward Young)
How, on our necessary islands of ego, do we find challenging and yet comforting companionship? The child in us can find it. (Mona Youssef)
Pride and excess bring disaster for man. (Xun Zi)
You cannot perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself. (Zig Ziglar)
We should stop pandering to our sensitive egos and be strong men and women whose only desire is to make ever better, more beautiful art, knowing full well that we all fall short of the glory of God. (Gertjan Zwiggelaar)
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