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.
You notice things others don’t. You question what others blindly accept. And slowly, people begin to drift away. Psyphos podcast: Schopenhauer: Smart = Alone: Why Society Rejects the Trully Intelligent, Youtube 2025
Deep down you feel a stranger among your own kind. ibid.
What if society just is not built for people like you? ibid.
The more deeply you think, you more alienated you become. ibid.
Your loneliness might be the highest proof of your mind. ibid.
It’s social exile. Because when you can see through the game, you stop playing it. ibid.
Schopenhauer: He believed that life at core was suffering, and that the more conscious you are, the more you feel it. ibid.
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone. ibid.
You see the world for what it is: A dance of illusions powered by unconscious craving. ibid.
You are not broken. You are just awake. ibid.
Because their minds crave depth, muance, ideas, not gossip, repetition or emotional noise. ibid.
This sensitivity is not a super-power, it is a burden. ibid.
Solitude is not just an escape, it’s a reclamation of your mind, of your time, of your energy. ibid.
[Michel de Montaigne]: ‘The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to yourself.’ Psyphoria podcasts: The Art of Not Caring: When You Embrace Uncertainty, Life Becomes Easier, Youtube 2025
Have you ever stopped to think about how much of your anguish comes from your obsession with control? … Internal control: the suffocating need for certainties, to know what will happen tomorrow. ibid.
No more certainties, but a new relationship with what cannot be controlled. ibid.
Montaigne was not an ordinary philosopher … He wrote from within his own skin. ibid.
Montaigne embraced the opposite: he did not know. ibid.
In a time when everyone shouts, he whispers. ibid.
Anxiety is the fear of the unpredictable. ibid.
It’s the desire for life to be different from what it is. ibid.
[Carl Jung]: ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’ Psyphoria podcasts: You Must Let Go: Who to Let Go From Someone Who Hurts You
You say that you want to forget, to move on. But tell me, why do you still think about that person every day? ibid.
You miss what you projected on to them: the illusion of love. ibid.
Often what we call love is just our shadow clinging to someone. ibid.
As long as you continue to seek outside what is missing inside, you will be enternally imprisoned by the gaze of the other. ibid.
The unconscious search for validation and the price paid for betraying oneself. ibid.
If deep down you feel like you are living a lie, you will continue to feel empty. ibid.
The role of the shadow in repeating toxic patterns. ibid.
Carl Jung defined the shadow as ‘everything you do not want to be, but are’. ibid.
Burying is not eliminating. ibid.
You will have to face everything you have avoided. ibid.
[Schopenhauer]: ‘A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.’ Psyphoria podcasts: Pretend to be Dumb: You Will Never Want to be Smart Again: Schopenhauer
There is a price to intelligence … On the contrary, they suffer more. ibid.
The truth is not something people want to hear … because the truth is unsettling. ibid.
A brilliant mind is a curse because it destroys illusions. ibid.
Intelligence brings with it an increase in sensitivity. ibid.