561 Quotes About Self-knowledge

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am -- not stuck in the middle, but hovering above the entire farcical spectrum, weeping as I behold my fellow man's devotion to political illusion and self-destruction.

When we teach people that suspending moral judgments is a virtue, the necessary outcome is moral horror.

One of the greatest of human follies is that we think we know ourselves so well, that we know how we would act under any conditions, that we would under any circumstance 'do the right thing.' Well, as many have discovered, you don't really know what you'll do in the dark till the lights go out.

Mariel shook her head. “No, it’s just . . . Every time I think I’ve figured you out, you do something unexpected.” Eris laughed. “Good luck with that,” she said. “Even I haven’t figured me out, and I’ve been trying for eighteen years.

A restless human heart always seeks to increase personal understanding and works to attain excellence.

I don't want to inhabit the human world under false pretenses.

I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.

One of the greatest challenges is to rise above the desire to reinvent who we are and boldly embrace the far loftier challenge of cultivating who we are. For reinventing is to construct what we will never be, while cultivating is to expand who we always were.

Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.