Quotes about Self-knowledge

When we have many things within ourselves which are neither known nor accepted, then such things complicate our lives horrifyingly, and in fact provoke all sorts of situations which could be avoided through knowledge of ourselves.

There are very many unpleasant states that occur within each person; without knowledge one can never be free of them.

The light of self-knowledge alone illumines all experiences. It shines by its own light. This inner light appears to be outside and to illumine external objects.

We should know what our convictions are, and stand for them. Upon one's own philosophy, conscious or unconscious, depends one's ultimate interpretation of the facts. Therefore it is wise to be as clear as possible about one's subjective principles. As the man is, so will be his ultimate truth.

Before we can become who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person who we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.

The process of writing can be a powerful tool for self-discovery. Writing demands self-knowledge; it forces the writer to become a student of human nature, to pay attention to his experience, to understand the nature of experience itself. By delving into raw experience and distilling it into a work of art, the writer is engaging in the heart and soul of philosophy - making sense out of life.

Somewhere along the journey of remembering who we really are, we may find ourselves in a very uncomfortable space, a void in which we realize that we haven't totally let go of our old beliefs, and on the other hand we have yet to fully plug into the new truths we have discovered. This awkward "place of mind" can bring on an internal crisis of uncertainty, instability, confusion, frustration, and a most unspeakable despair as the "dark night" sets in and makes its presence felt.

It's vital to remember who you really are. It's very important. It isn't a good idea to rely on other people to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.

I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing - a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process - an integral function of the universe

Self-knowledge or knowledge of truth is not had by resorting to a guru (preceptor) nor by the study of scripture, nor by good works: it is attained only by means of inquiry inspired by the company of wise and holy men. One's inner light alone is the means, naught else. When this inner light is kept alive, it is not affected by the darkness of inertia.

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.

So young a child ought to know which way she's going, even if she doesn't know her own name!

Be what you would seem to be - or if you'd like it put more simply - Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.

It is strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you alone. Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits. A world lives within you. No one else can bring you news of this inner world.

Every man should be his own guru; every woman her own gurette.

If your everyday life seems poor, do not blame it; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place.

Such a person has nothing to acquire, nor anything to shun. He is untainted by the defects of life, untouched by its sorrow.

He does not come into being nor go out, though he appears to come and go in the eyes of the beholder.

Even religious duties are found to be unnecessary. …His mind has given up its restlessness, and he rests in the bliss that is his essential nature. Such bliss is possible only by self-knowledge, not by any other means. Hence, one should apply oneself constantly to self-knowledge–this alone is one's duty.

In complete control,
Pretending control,
With dignified authority,
We are charlatans…

(Or maybe just a goat's-hair brush in a painter's hand.)
We have no idea what we are.

In order to understand what is truly essential in another person that ought to be loved in him or her, one has to be able to dismiss authoritatively and wisely all that that person himself or herself in delusion IMAGINES to be essential to him or her. As rare as any form of sobriety may be in politics or society, it is of course rarest of all in love-relations. "Love" that has no such counterforce against the delusions of Self and World will merely get drawn into the pathos of the unenlightened, by retail methods if not by wholesale. Sharing in others' pathos is not at all the same thing as love; it is merely one finite and obtuse psyche getting digested into the churning life of another finite and obtuse psyche.

I went to the woods because I wished to live dliberately... and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I do not hesitate to maintain, that what we are conscious of is constructed out of what we are not conscious of,-that our whole knowledge, in fact, is made up of the unknown and the incognisable.

I need no warrant for being and no sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.

Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there. If I only know who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am.
What in fact I am, if only Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two.
In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soup. Because his aspiration to perpetuate only the "yes" in every pair of opposites can never, in the nature of things, be realized, the insulated Manichee I think I am condemns himself to endlessly repeated frustration, endlessly repeated conflicts with other sspiring and frustrated Manichees.
Conflicts and frustrations--the theme of all history and almost all biography. "I show you sorrow," said the Buddha realistically. But he also showed the ending of sorrow--self-knowledge, total acceptance, the blessed experience of Not-Two

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.

To know all, it is necessary to know very little; but to know that very little, one must first know pretty much.

"If we truly want to create a life that is grounded in basic well-being, we must decide to commit ourselves to learning what it takes to thrive instead of merely survive."

At the root of human wisdom is an understanding that we are, at once, both gods and primates.

Go to your bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself.  It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.

Without self-knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.