Self-awareness Quotes

We have collected and put the best self-awareness quotes. Enjoy reading these insights and feel free to share this page on your social media to inspire others.

Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals. Self-awareness, though similar to sentience in concept, includes the experience of the self, and has been argued as implicit to the hard problem of consciousness.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it. – Walt Whitman

Self-awareness

What Is Self-awareness?

Self awareness doesn’t stop you from making mistakes, it allows you to learn from them. – Unknown

Self awareness is the ability to take an honest look at your life without any attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad. – Debbie Ford

Self-awareness gives you the capacity to learn from your mistakes as well as your successes. It enables you to keep growing. – Lawrence Bossidy

Self-awareness is a character trait that’s horrible to have if you’re a performer. I think that a lot of these performers that we see get up on stage and play music, there’s a sense of them truly not caring how they’re coming across. They are just themselves. I look up to a lot of people who are like that. – Tyler Joseph

Self-awareness is a trait – or maybe ‘practice’ is the more accurate way to put it – that everyone can always improve at. It is part emotional intelligence, part perceptiveness, part critical thinking. It means knowing your weaknesses, of course, but it also means knowing your strengths and what motivates you. – Neil Blumenthal

Self-awareness is not just relaxation and not just meditation. It must combine relaxation with activity and dynamism. Technology can aid that. – Deepak Chopra

Self-awareness is not self-centeredness, and spirituality is not narcissism. ‘Know thyself’ is not a narcissistic pursuit. – Marianne Williamson

Self-awareness is not self-centeredness, and spirituality is not narcissism. Know thyself is not a narcissistic pursuit. – Marianne Williamson

Self-awareness is not the same thing as self-approval, any more than imagination is the same thing as day-dreaming. – Francis Spufford

Self-awareness is one of the biggest enemies to creativity. – Ted Dwane

Self-awareness is one of the rarest of human commodities. I don’t mean self-consciousness where you’re limiting and evaluating yourself. I mean being aware of your own patterns. – Tony Robbins

Self-awareness is something that we actually actively avoid. – Ted Dwane

Self-awareness is the ability to take an honest look at your life without any attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad. – Debbie Ford

Self-awareness is value-free. It isn’t scary. It doesn’t imply that you will subject yourself to needless pain. – Deepak Chopra

“I think, therefore I am”.René Descartes

A degree of self-awareness is extremely valuable… I hope I have that going forward. – Nick McDonell

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master–gardener of his soul, the director of his life. – James Allen

A really useful quality to have as an actor is a lack of self-awareness. I try and get into the character’s thinking, and some of them just aren’t really that bothered about how they come across or aware of how they come across. – Monica Dolan

A traveler I am, and a navigator, and every day I discover a new region within my soul. – Khalil Gibran

A workplace that encourages self-awareness is an environment where the most productive, curious, and innovative people thrive. – Neil Blumenthal

Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance. – Eckhart Tolle

All adventures, especially into new territory, are scary. – Sally Ride

Aristotle was talking about happiness 2,000 years ago. Every area of our life has been disrupted and innovated apart from personal growth and self-awareness. – Jay Shetty

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. – Thomas Merton

As an artist, one of the ingredients to doing good work is self-awareness, and that’s something I cultivate. – Rodney Crowell

As my awareness increases, my control over my own being increases. – William Schutz

As you become more clear about who you really are, you’ll be better able to decide what is best for you, the first time around. – Oprah Winfrey

Before, I never knew how far I would go. Now I believe I have the answer. I will go as far as there is to go. I will go way too far. – Holly Black

Being on a spiritual path does not prevent you from facing times of darkness. But it teaches you how to use the darkness as a tool to grow. – Sadhak Anshit

Being spontaneous is being able to respond with confidence; calmly trusting that, whatever the outcome, you will have a positive if challenging experience that will lead to greater self-awareness and success. – Sylvia Clare

But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God’s love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin to be sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in his own illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfailing mercy of God. – Thomas Merton

But when day came, with a sprinkle of rain, and he looked about him and saw on every side unknown woods, wild heaths, and blue mountains, he thought how large and strange the world was and felt frightened and small. – C.S. Lewis

By becoming self-aware, you gain ownership of reality; in becoming real, you become the master of both inner and outer life. – Deepak Chopra

By definition, memoir demands a certain degree of introspection and self-disclosure: In order to fully engage a reader, the narrator has to make herself known, has to allow her own self-awareness to inform the events she describes. – Caroline Knapp

By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn’t doing it. – Lev Grossman

China is completely lacking in self-awareness and as someone who has stepped outside that society, I have a responsibility to write about it as I see it. – Ma Jian

Confidence is deciding you’re unstoppable — not that you’ll never fail. – Tom Bilyeu

Don’t compromise yourself. You’re all you’ve got. – Janis Joplin

Don’t let the noise of other opinions drown your own inner voice. – Steve Jobs

Every answer can be followed by another question. – Thomas Lloyd Qualls

Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it’s not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. – She touches my uninjured shoulder and smiles. But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can’t be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can’t be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them. – Veronica Roth

Every time I rap about being a big girl in a small world, it’s doing a couple things: it’s empowering my self-awareness, my body image, and it’s also making the statement that we are all bigger than this; we’re a part of something bigger than this, and we should live in each moment knowing that. – Lizzo

Everybody uses words to express themselves. Except me. And I bet most people don’t realize the real power of words. But I do. – Sharon M. Draper

Everyone is on a spiritual path; most people just don’t know it. – Marianne Williamson

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. – C.G. Jung

Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. – Henry David Thoreau

Fasting is, first and foremost, an exercise for identifying and managing adversity in all its forms. With faith, in full conscience, fasting calls women and men to an extra degree of self-awareness. – Tariq Ramadan

Find out who you are and do it on purpose. – Dolly Parton

From taking photographs of George and Charlotte, I have been struck by the wonderful lack of self-consciousness that you see in photographs of children, without the self-awareness that adults generally feel. – Kate Middleton

Growing into the worlds above us, realizing the higher realms of consciousness within us, requires that we outgrow the worlds beneath us. – Guy Finley

Having children, they’re not your property. They need to figure out their own views. I think my daughters have a pretty healthy self-awareness, but I can’t speak on their behalf. – Annie Lennox

He was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t guilty. – Walter Dean Myers

Humility is not about having a low self image or poor self esteem. Humility is about self-awareness. – Erwin McManus

I am hope. – Neil Gaiman

I am who I am; no more, no less. – Terry Goodkind

I delight in what I fear. – Shirley Jackson

I didn’t think it was my job to accept what everyone said I was and who I should be. – Benjamin Alire Saenz

I dislike the word ‘self-help.’ Self-awareness, yes, but not self-help. – Deepak Chopra

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself. – Arianna Huffington

I don’t fit into any stereotypes. And I like myself that way. – C. JoyBell C.

I don’t recall having any self-awareness about the intricacy of my stories. – A. E. van Vogt

I found a new love of the game, and a new confidence and self-awareness of what I can bring to the game. – Stephanie Labbe

I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact. – C. S. Lewis

I knew who I was this morning but I’ve changed a few times since then. – Lewis Carroll

I know that people can be better than they are. We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is. – James Baldwin

I like to have my characters talking in an up-to-date way, and I like their essentially modern self-awareness, which means we can have lots of irony and jokes. – Jonathan Stroud

I like to play the guy that has no self-awareness. – Fred Willard

I really explored self-awareness and emotions through ‘Green Lantern.’ It might sound goofy, but I do believe that emotions have power. We’re all driven by something, and most of that is emotional reaction. For me, it was about recognizing my self-awareness. – Geoff Johns

I spent many years seeking self-awareness and wondering what I should be doing on this planet. – Rosanna Arquette

I step to the side so I stand in front of the mirror. I see muscles that I couldn’t see before in my arms, legs, and stomach. I pinch my side, where a layer of fat used to hint at curves to come. Nothing. Dauntless initiation has stolen whatever softness my body had. Is that good, or bad? – Veronica Roth

I think he tries to be nice. But he has absolutely zero self-awareness. None. Zip. So we see the public Donald Trump, the candidate, as being different than the in-person Donald Trump. – Mark Cuban

I think my daughters have a pretty healthy self-awareness but I can’t speak on their behalf. – Annie Lennox

I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion. – Billie Jean King

I think that what I have been truly searching for as a person, as a writer, as a thinker, as a daughter, is freedom. That is my mission. A sense of liberty, the liberty that comes not only from self-awareness but also from letting go of many things. Many things that weigh us down. – Jhumpa Lahiri

I think that’s the real loss of innocence: the first time you glimpse the boundaries that will limit your potential. – Steve Toltz

I think… you still have no idea. The effect you can have. – Suzanne Collins

I try not to compare myself to the character. Mulan makes it happen – not through big drama, but through little decisions and bravery and self-awareness. – Liu Yifei

I wake up and play a different person every day. Playing all these different characters and trying to figure out who your true authentic self is at the core of that as you’re playing all these different roles, and man, that self-awareness starts to come into effect. And you start to see who you really are. – Eliza Dushku

I was in martial arts starting at the age of 14, and I got my black belt by the time I was 18. Soon after, I was teaching an entire school, with about 150 students. It was unbelievably intense because of the self-awareness part of becoming a black belt. – Brad D. Smith

I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me. – Thomas Merton

I’m not dieting anymore. I want to eat what my body is asking of me. Just listen to your body in general – it’s all self-awareness. – Mary Lambert

I’m passionate about speaking out against bullying and speaking up for self-awareness with young people and body-image issues and self-esteem issues. – Lily Collins

If an emotion can’t change the condition or the situation you’re dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one. But it’s what I feel. Right, no one said anything about not feeling it. – Ryan Holiday

If it is bread that you seek, you will have bread. If it is the soul you seek, you will find the soul. If you understand this secret, you know you are that which you seek. – Rumi

If you stick your head in the sand and ignore things that you have the power to change, you can’t blame anyone when they don’t turn out right! – T. D. Jakes

If you think about what you do, if you become self-conscious about it, you’ve got to be very careful. Because I really like to write without self-awareness of what I’m doing. – Peter Morgan

If you’re not perfectly conscious of yourself, that self can be tyrannical; in relationship to others, anyone can become a tyrant. That’s why no one can be a Superman. You have to go beyond yourself with a ‘third eye’ – self-awareness – because the one thing you cannot flee is yourself. – Gao Xingjian

If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far. – Daniel Goleman

In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part. – Nisargadatta Maharaj

Indecision may or may not be my problem. – Jimmy Buffett

Is it possible to have negative self-awareness? – T. J. Miller

It also is becoming obvious that those who avoid the painful encounter with the unseen are doomed to live a [prideful], boring, and superficial life. – Henri J. M. Nouwen

It does not matter how strong and well prepared you are if you have no direction. – Yulia Peralta

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. – Antione de Saint-exupery

It is when you lose sight of yourself, that you lose your way. To keep your truth in sight you must keep yourself in sight and the world to you should be a mirror to reflect to you your image; the world should be a mirror that you reflect upon. – C. JoyBell C.

It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement. – Abraham Harold Maslow

It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about. – Dale Carnegie

It’s disturbing when someone has no self-awareness. – Mike White

I’m slowly learning how to straddle the tension that comes with understanding that I am tough and tender, brave and afraid, strong and struggling – all of these things, all of the time. I’m working on letting go of having to be one or the other and embracing the wholeness of wholeheartedness. The roles in my life – partner, mother, teacher, researcher, leader, entrepreneur – all require me to bring my whole self to the table. We can’t be ‘all in’ if only parts of us show up. If we’re not living, loving, parenting, or leading with our whole, integrated hearts, where doing it halfheartedly. – Brené Brown

Just take this as a warning. Know that there’s always a price for not being yourself. – Benilde Little

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. – Aristotle

Look at the evidence and to be willing to question your own truths, and to be willing to scrutinize things that you hold dearly because that way, that transparency, that self-awareness, will protect you from ever becoming somebody that whose beliefs somehow make them have myopic vision about what could be. – Jason Silva

Look deeply into your disappointments, examine your heartache, interrogate your longing, probe your loneliness, meditate honestly on the elements of love of which you are still ignorant, and you will discover that the void within you is already filled with the desire for fulfillment. Your yearning itself is an internal guidance system that is moving you to become a lover. – Sam Keen

Mature striving is linked to long-range goals. Thus, the process of becoming is largely a matter of organizing transitory impulses into a pattern of striving and interest in which the element of self-awareness plays a large part. – Gordon W. Allport

Maybe I’m not so different from everyone else after all. – Sharon M. Draper

Maybe you’re just too pretty yourself to be able to see it elsewhere. – Arthur Golden

Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment. Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them – without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune in to what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future. – Brené Brown

Mortality is a totally different state of being. You become more aware of time. I was absolutely content as a naiad. I lived in an unchanging state for what must have been many millennia, never thinking of the future or the past, always looking for amusement, always finding it. Almost no self-awareness. – Brandon Mull

Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it’s addressed to someone else. – Ivern Ball

My Sundays are mostly spent in self-reflection – Prashant Niranjani

Never confuse your perception of yourself with the mystery that you really are accepted. – Brennan Manning

No matter what happens, always be yourself. – Dale Carnegie

No one can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge. – Khalil

No, I was wrong; I didn’t jump off the roof because I wanted to be like the Dauntless. I jumped off because I already was like them, and I wanted to show myself to them. I wanted to acknowledge a part of myself that Abnegation demanded that I hide. – Veronica Roth

Numbing the pain for a while will only make it worse when you finally feel it. – J.K. Rowling

Of all deceivers fear most yourself! – Søren Kierkegaard

One of the reasons I’m an interesting person to be married to is my intensely late-blooming self-awareness. – John Ortberg

One think that you notice about anyone that gets up on stage is that they don’t really have a lot of self-awareness. It’s kind of a trait that performers don’t have because you just kinda just have to let go and do whatever you want to do on stage. – Tyler Joseph

One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. Nobody else can. – Michael A. Singer

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. – Brene Brown

People need to know that they have all the tools within themselves. Self-awareness, which means awareness of their body, awareness of their mental space, awareness of their relationships – not only with each other, but with life and the ecosystem. – Deepak Chopra

People should accept being single, because those are the moments you can really focus on yourself, and learning who you are. Then when you get in a relationship, you will be stronger and have a little bit more self-awareness, self-love, and the other ingredients for a healthy relationship. – Lauren London

Practice self-awareness, self-evaluation, and self-improvement. If we are aware that our manners – language, behavior, and actions – are measured against our values and principles, we are able to more easily embody the philosophy, leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do. – Frances Hesselbein

Quiet reflection is often the mother of deep understanding. Maintain that peaceful nursery, enabling stillness to speak. – Tom Althouse

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one. – Eleanor Roosevelt

Remember this also: it’s always easy to look back and see what we were, yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are. If you can master that trick, you’ll get along. – Harper Lee

She said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.’ – Jonathan Safran Foer

So much comedy comes out of an earnest, deeply rooted need for one thing or another, trying to get it and caring so much that you lose your sense of self-awareness. – Jeremy Sisto

Some artists shrink from self-awareness, fearing that it will destroy their unique gifts and even their desire to create. The truth of the matter is quite opposite. – James Broughton

Spiritual growth requires the development of inner knowing and inner authority. It requires the heart, not the intellect. – Gary Zukav

Step out of the history that is holding you back. Step into the new story you are willing to create. – Oprah Winfrey

Strong people have a strong sense of self-worth and self-awareness; they don’t need the approval of others. – Roy T. Bennett

That’s the thing I hated most about Gatlin. The way everyone had something to say about everything you said or did or, in this case, wore. – Kami Garcia

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. . . . Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. – J. D. Salinger

The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure. – Joseph Campbell

The case for exploiting animals for food, clothing and entertainment often relies on our superior intelligence, language and self-awareness: the rights of the superior being trump those of the inferior. – Michael Shermer

The challenge is not to be perfect…it’s to be whole. – Jane Fonda

The characters I’ve played that I like the most are people that have a lot of obstacles. They have a lot of bad things going on. They’re seeking to do something good amidst all the detritus around them, and they’re aware of how badly they’ve screwed it up. That kind of self-awareness is tragic. – Paul Sparks

The closer you come to knowing that you alone create the world of your experience, the more vital it becomes for you to discover just who is doing the creating. – Eric Micha’el Leventhal

The destination isn’t in finding yourself. The destination is in the search. – Thomas Warfield

The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else. – E.E. Cummings

The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn’t require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next. – Matt Taibbi

The key to an ideal workplace, in one hyphenated word, is this: self-awareness. – Neil Blumenthal

The me I am is not the me I was. – Dear Evan Hansen

The mind’s first step to self-awareness must be through the body. – George A. Sheehan

The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself. – David Goggins

The Nation of Islam’s main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn’t want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people’s neighborhoods? – Muhammad Ali

The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself. – Ursula K. Le Guin

The only religious opinion I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together. – Robert A. Heinlein

The reason we’re such fertile ground for the dark forces of such lies and social manipulation is that we’re dissociated from the genuine light of self-awareness. – Marianne Williamson

The road back from degradation begins with self-awareness – and sometimes, as in ‘Phone Booth,’ change can begin with a single phone call. – Elvis Mitchell

The second you think that all your good fortune is a product of your virtue, you become highly judgmental, lacking empathy, totally without self-awareness, arrogant, stupid – I mean, all the stuff that our ruling class is. – Tucker Carlson

The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available. – Theodor W. Adorno

The successful entrepreneurs that I see have two characteristics: self-awareness and persistence. They’re able to see problems in their companies through their self-awareness and be persistent enough to solve them. – Alan Schaaf

The truth, of course, was that it was all my own self, and my own impiety had divided me against myself. My sin was all the more incurable because I did not think myself a sinner. – St. Augustine

The unexamined life is not worth living. – Socrates

The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life is the source from which self-respect springs. – Joan Didion

The woman who is truly self-aware knows that her self is a light from beyond this world, a spiritual essence that has nothing to do with the physical world. – Marianne Williamson

This fall I think you’re riding for—it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started. – J. D. Salinger

Time spent in self-reflection is never wasted – it is an intimate date with yourself. – Paul TP Wong

To deny that human beings are filled with anti-social passions betrays a denial of reality and a lack of self-awareness. One has to be taught nonsense for a great many formative years to believe it. – Dennis Prager

To know yourself, you must sacrifice the illusion that you already do. – Vironika Tugaleva

To me, great writing – and when you can really make something wonderful out of it as an actor – is when your character has a sense of self-awareness. It doesn’t necessarily have to arc. It doesn’t have to grow. – Bob Odenkirk

Tori was the only one in the tattoo place, so I felt safe getting the symbol of Abnegation—a pair of hands, palms up as if to help someone stand, bounded by a circle—on my right shoulder. I know it was a risk, especially after all that’s happened. But that symbol is a part of my identity, and it felt important to me that I wear it on my skin. – Veronica

Try to imagine that you’re the strongest, most noble, most thoughtful, most compassionate, intelligent person in the world, and pretend to be that. Speak from that place. It’s more than self-awareness; it’s the ability to access this super-intelligence. – Andrew W.K.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. – C.G. Jung

We admire elephants in part because they demonstrate what we consider the finest human traits: empathy, self-awareness, and social intelligence. But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behavior. – Graydon Carter

We are at our most powerful the moment we no longer need to be powerful. – Eric Micha’el Leventhal

We are our own worst enemies and as a coach you can help people recognise that, raise their self-awareness and then see if they change or do anything about it. – Graham Potter

We have self-centered minds which get us into plenty of trouble. If we do not come to understand the error in the way we think, our self-awareness, which is our greatest blessing, is also our downfall. – Joko Beck

We live in the Facebook era. I think everyone, not just celebrities, have an unprecedented level of self-awareness, of presenting yourself to the world. The truth is, it starts with how you look, and that goes into how you dress. – Allison Williams

We must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it. We cannot solve a problem by saying ‘It’s not my problem.’ We cannot solve a problem by hoping that someone else will solve it for us. I can solve a problem only when I say ‘ This is my problem and it’s up to me to solve it.’ – M. Scott Peck

We sat still and we held our breath. For our face and our body were beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of our brothers, for we felt no pity when looking upon it. Our body was not like the bodies of our brothers, for our limbs were straight and thin and hard and strong. And we thought that we could trust this being who looked upon us from the stream, and that we had nothing to fear with this being. – Ayn Rand

We’re involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying: Is that all? Is that all I want? Is something missing? – Mitch Albom

What I’m very concerned about is how do we bolster our self-awareness as humans, as biological organisms? – Mae Jemison

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever I have not yet learned to tolerate in myself inevitably will appear in my children. In this way, they, like Julia, guide me to a new level of self-awareness and everyone benefits. – Kenny Loggins

When I discover who I am, I’ll be free. – Ralph Ellison

When I first started making music, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just wanted to write songs. I didn’t have a concept. I didn’t think it through. I was just flailing around doing what comes naturally. It took me a really long time to step back and deal with what I was doing with any kind of perspective or self-awareness. – Juliana Hatfield

When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual. – Frank Herbert

When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope. – Henri J. M. Nouwen

When you embrace your difference, your DNA, your look or heritage or religion or your unusual name, that’s when you start to shine. – Bethenny Frankel

When you get into recovery, you have to relearn a lot of perceptions, attitudes, and self-awareness if you want to stay clean. You really do change. – Shawn Colvin

When your dad is your father, best friend and mentor, all in one, it’s hard to explain what he brings. He brings confidence and self-awareness through my game, on and off the court. I’m blessed to have him. – Jae Crowder

Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize? – Marcus Aurelius

Why fit in when you were born to stand out? – Dr. Seuss

Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one’s awareness of one’s ignorance. – Anthony de Mello

Without self-awareness we are as babies in the cradles. – Virginia Woolf

Working together on solving something requires a high level of humility and a high level of self-awareness. – Paul Polman

Yeah, it’s disturbing when someone has no self-awareness. – Mike White

You are your master. Only you have the master keys to open the inner locks. – Amit Ray

You can’t be a great comedian without having self-awareness about others or your own faults. You need a strong sense of self and view on the world. That’s what great actors have, too. – Billy Eichner

You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. – Ernest Hemingway

You know, you do have a self-awareness as an actor. – Cate Blanchett

You must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. It’s easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. Any and every narcissist can do that. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness. – Ryan Holiday

You need to remember that. If you’re to have decent lives, you have to know who you are and what lies ahead of you, every one of you. – Kazuo Ishiguro

You should wear what you want to wear and not worry about trying to paint yourself in a certain image because that self-awareness is what’s going to help you become a more independent and more interesting and healthier adult. – Alexandra Robbins

You’ve always been what you are. That’s not new. What you’ll get used to is knowing it. – Cassandra Clare

You, darkness, of whom I am born- I love you more than the flame that limits the world to the circle it illumines and excludes the rest. – Rainer Maria Rilke

Your mind is like a gold mine, if you dig deep you will find something golden. – Gift Gugu Mona

Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. – C.G. Jung

Awareness

Quotes From Wikiquote

Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.
- John Calvin, Book I Ch. 1 “The Knowledge of God and of Ourselves Mutually Connected – Nature of this Connection” as translated by Henry Beveridge.

How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, “Who in the world am I?” Ah, that’s the great puzzle!
- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (1865), chapter 2; reprinted in Philip C. Blackburn and Lionel White, ed.., Logical Nonsense: The Works of Lewis Carroll (1934), p. 177.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are. … The very people who are most self-dissatisfied and crave most for a new identity have the least self-awareness. They have turned away from an unwanted self and hence never had a good look at it.
- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind (New York: 1954), #151

Ruthless toward itself, the Enlightenment has eradicated the last remnant of its own self-awareness.
- Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, E. Jephcott, trans., p. 2

I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps, a little better.
- Thomas Jefferson, “Services of Jefferson” (1800?), reported in Paul L. Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1896), vol. 7, p. 475.

One self-approving hour whole years out-weighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas.
- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle IV, line 249.

The psyche is awareized energy, in a state of constant creativity; a psychic pattern of multidimensionally expressed; each point within it changing in relationship to all other points, and thus altering the entire pattern or model. Each self is immersed in the psyche, yet immersed in its own individuality simultaneously, experiencing reality in time and out of it at once.
- Jane Roberts, Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book, p. 166.

Speak no more:
Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 4, line 88.

Go to your bosom;
Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.
- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure (1603), Act II, scene 2, line 136.

When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in.
- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (1997)

Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence.
- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (1997)

Be present as the watcher of your mind.
- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (1997)

“I am bored.” Who knows this?

“I am angry, sad, afraid.” Who knows this?

You are the knowing, not the condition that is known.

Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks (2003)

When the ego is at war, know that it is no more than an illusion that is fighting to survive. That illusion thinks it is you. It is not easy at first to be there as the witnessing Presence, especially when the ego is in survival mode or some emotional pattern from the past has become activated, but once you have had a taste of it, you will grow in Presence power, and the ego will lose its grip on you. And so a power comes into your life that is far greater than the ego, greater than the mind. All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible. Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. This is why we may also call it Presence. The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose is to bring that power into this world. And this is also why becoming free of the ego cannot be made into a goal to be attained at some point in the future. Only Presence can free you of the ego, and you can only be present Now, not yesterday or tomorrow. only Presence can undo the past in you and thus transform your state of consciousness. p. 50
- Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, (2005)

There are many subtle but easily overlooked forms of ego that you may observe in other people and, more important, in yourself. Remember: The moment you become aware of the go in yourself, that emerging awareness is who you are beyond ego, the deeper “I.” The recognition of the false is already the arising of the real. For example, you are about to tell someone the news of what happened. “Guess what? You don’t know yet? Let me tell you.” If you are alert enough, present enough, you may be able to detect a momentary sense of satisfaction within yourself just before imparting the news, even if it is bad news. It is due to the fact that for a brief moment there is, in the eyes of the ego, an imbalance in your favor between you and the other person. For that brief moment, you know more than the other. The satisfaction that you feel is of the ego, and it is derived from feeling a stronger sense of self relative to the other person. p. 52
- Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, (2005)

There is a luxury in self-dispraise;
And inward self-disparagement affords
To meditative spleen a grateful feast.
- William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814), Book IV.

‘Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours;
And ask them what report they bore to heaven:
And how they might have borne more welcome news.
- Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night II, line 376.

Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

As I walk’d by myself, I talk’d to myself
And myself replied to me;
And the questions myself then put to myself,
With their answers I give to thee.
- Barnard Barton, Colloquy with Myself. Appeared in Youth’s Instructor (Dec., 1826).

Summe up at night what thou hast done by day;
And in the morning what thou hast to do.
Dresse and undresse thy soul; mark the decay
And growth of it; if, with thy watch, that too
Be down then winde up both; since we shall be
Most surely judg’d, make thy accounts agree.
- George Herbert, The Temple, The Church Porch, next to last stanza.

Let not soft slumber close your eyes,
Before you’ve collected thrice
The train of action through the day!
Where have my feet chose out their way?
What have I learnt, where’er I’ve been,
From all I’ve heard, from all I’ve seen?
What have I more that’s worth the knowing?
What have I done that’s worth the doing?
What have I sought that I should shun?
What duty have I left undone,
Or into what new follies run?
These self-inquiries are the road
That lead to virtue and to God.
- Isaac Watts, Self Examination.