Self-sabotage is the smartest thing you can do if you’re sabotaging a self that is not really you. Armand DeMele
[blows bubbles] It’s an idiosyncrasy isn’t it? You cannot be a modern viable psychotic bastard unless you have an idiosyncrasy. You should watch more crap on the tele, Rab. Rab C Nesbitt s5e4: Lord of the Pies aka Pie, BBC 1996
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence. Frederick Douglass
Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect. George Sand, Indiana
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
George: Just be yourself.
Yosser: But what happens if you don’t like yourself? Alan Bleasdale, Boys From the Black Stuff: George’s Last Ride, BBC 1982
When you were twenty, you accepted yourself, flaws and all. Then disenchantment set in. By the time you were thirty your tolerance was wearing thin. You weren’t entirely trustworthy, and you knew you were prone to compromise. Already the future was receding, the bright dreams were slipping below the horizon. By now you’re a stage set, one push and the whole thing could collapse at your feet. At times you feel like you’re living someone else’s life, in a strange house you’ve rented by accident. The ‘you’ you’ve become isn’t your real self. J G Ballard, Millennium People
You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself. Leonardo da Vinci
He possesses dominion over himself, and is happy, who can every day say, I have lived. Horace
Self is the opaque veil that hides the Face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. A W Tozer
How can I govern others, who can’t even govern myself? Francois Rabelais
Everyone has an identity. One of their own, and one for show. Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls
With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both. ibid.
My name is Joy. I’m about five foot three, measurements 36-24-36 and English. My little baby’s name’s Johnnie. Poor Cow 1967 starring Carol White & Terence Stamp & John Bindon & Queenie Watts & Kate Williams & Laurie Asprey & James Beckett & Ray Barron & Hilda Barry & Kenneth Campbell & Ron Clarke et al, director Ken Loach
Which self shall I be today? Darkest Hour ***** 2017 starring Gary Oldman & Kristin Scott Thomas & Lily James & Ben Mendelsohn & Stephen Dillane & Ronald Pickup & Nicholas James & Samuel West & David Schofield & Richard Lumsden & Malcolm Storry et al, director Joe Wright, Winston
Carolyn: We can’t help who we are.
Eve: Yes we can. Killing Eve s1e6: Take Me to the Hole! BBC 2018
‘You’, your joys and sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul 1994
Erich Fromm wondered why most people did not become insane in the face of the existential contradiction between a symbolic self, that seems to give man infinite worth in a timeless scheme of things, and a body that is worth about 98¢. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self. Napoleon Hill
The only conquests which are permanent and leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves. Napoleon Bonaparte
A master surgeon with no medical training. A Hollywood producer whose most outrageous story turned out to be the one about himself. And a jazz musician whose greatest performance was the one that was given offstage. What makes a person want to become someone else? The UnXplained with William Shatner s1e22: Leading Double Lives
Let’s face it, at one time or another most of us have fantasised about trying on a new identity. ibid.