561 Quotes About Self-knowledge

Acting with egos and ignorance gives rise to irresponsible actions that break cosmic principles, which result in living under more laws and having greater suffering. But the more individuals in a society live in accordance with cosmic principles, the fewer laws that society needs, and the more elevated and free it becomes.

If you know who you are, no one can convince you to be who you are not.

When one attains self-knowledge, distinctions of race and religion vanish.

The goal of intellectual life should be to see and understand what is true, not merely to adhere to a prevailing orthodoxy.

Know thyself. Then know that you are a human being, a member of the species of mankind. So know first and foremost that you do not know, and what you claim to know is almost certainly a means of distracting yourself from what you really know.

Man is born in ignorance of the self, but death does not take place in self-knowledge.

When we allow ourselves to show some patience and take time to listen to the others, we may learn a lot about ourselves. Patience does not endure instant gratification, though, and self-knowledge may take a lifetime. (“I am on my own side, but I can listen “ )

The essence of the charge made against the modern high-status ideal is that it is guilty of effecting a gigantic distortion of priorities, of elevating to the highest level of achievement a process of material accumulation that should instead be only one of many factors determining the direction of our lives under a more truthful, more broadly defined conception of ourselves.

Was this the triumph of self-knowledge: to suffer more lucidly?