269 Quotes by Nathaniel Branden

If you are terrified of making mistakes, you will be reluctant to acknowledge them when you do make them-and therefore you will not correct them.

Your choices have psychological consequences. The way you choose to deal with reality, truth, facts - your choice to honor or dishonor your own perceptions - registers in your mind, for good or for bad, and either confirms and strengthens your self-esteem or undermines and weakens it.

Taking on responsibilities that properly belong to someone else means behaving irresponsibly toward yourself. You need to know where you end and someone else begins. You need to understand boundaries. You need to know what is and is not up to you, what is and is not in your control, what is and is not your responsibility.

How do we nurture the soul? By revering our own life. By learning to love it all, not only the joys and the victories, but also the pain and the struggles.

For "I" to become "we" and yet remain "I," is one of the great challenges of marriage.

We are anxious when there is a dissonance between our “knowledge” and the perceivable facts. Since our “knowledge” is not to be doubted or questioned, it is the facts that have to be altered...

The idea of Original Sin – of guilt where there is no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives available – is anti-self-esteem by its very nature. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality.

If my aim is to prove I am ‘enough,’ the project goes on to infinity-because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable.

I can be loved by my family, my mate, and my friends, and yet not love myself. I can be admired by my associates and yet regard myself as worthless.