Great Throughts Treasury

"Romantic love can be terrifying. We experience another human being as enormously important to us. So there is surrender - not a surrender to the other person so much as to our feeling for the other person. What is the obstacle? The possibility of loss."

"Self-esteem is a powerful force within each of us... Self-esteem is the experience that we are appropriate to life and to the requirements of life."

"Self-esteem is an experience. It is a particular way of experiencing the self. It is a good deal more than a mere feeling ? this must be stressed. It involves emotional, evaluative, and cognitive components. It also entails certain action dispositions: to move toward life rather than away from it; to move toward consciousness rather than away from it; to treat facts with respect rather than denial; to operate self-responsibly rather than the opposite."

"Self-acceptance is realism -- what is, is. What I feel, I feel, what I think. What I have done, I have done."

"Self-esteem is not the euphoria or buoyancy that may temporarily be induced by a drug, a compliment, or a love affair. It is not an illusion or hallucination. If it is not grounded in reality, if it is not built over time through the appropriate operation of mind, it is not self-esteem."

"Self-esteem reflects our deepest vision of our competence and worth. Sometimes this vision is our most closely guarded secret, even from ourselves, as when we try to compensate for our deficiencies with what I call pseudo-self-esteem ? a pretense at a self-confidence and self-respect we do not actually feel. Nothing is more common than the effort to protect self-esteem not with consciousness but with unconsciousness ? with denial and evasion ? which only results in a further deterioration of self-esteem. Indeed a good deal of the behavior we call ?neurotic? can be best understood as a misguided effort to protect self-esteem by means which in fact are undermining."

"Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves."

"Some people admire men and women of integrity; others are made nervous-they experience an unspoken sense of reproach, not knowing it lies within themselves"

"Teachers who embrace the idea that self-esteem is important without adequately grasping its roots may announce (to quote one such teacher) that ?self-esteem comes primarily from one?s peers.? Or (quoting many others): ?Children should not be graded for mastery of a subject because it may be hurtful to their self-esteem.? Or (quoting still others): ?Self-esteem is best nurtured by selfless(!) service to the community.? In the ?recovery movement? and from so-called spiritual leaders in general one may receive a different message: ?Stop struggling to achieve self-esteem. Turn your problems over to God. Realize that you are a child of God ? and that is all you need to have self-esteem.? Consider what this implies if taken literally. We don?t need to live consciously. We don?t need to act self-responsibly. We don?t need to have integrity. All we have to do is surrender responsibility to God and effortless self-esteem is guaranteed to us. This is not a helpful message to convey to people. Nor is it true."

"The bad thing about admitting my fear is... I'll have to face it. If I were to be honest about myself about my anger... I would realize I still get angry more than I want to. I would think that it is deeply imprinted in my brain circuitry."

"Tell me how a person judges his or her self-esteem, and I will tell you how that person operates at work, in love, in sex, in parenting, in every important aspect of existence - and how high he or she is likely to rise. The reputation you have with yourself - your self-esteem - is the single most important factor for a fulfilling life."

"The choice to be conscious is the ultimate act of self-assertion. The decision to be true to the judgments of your own mind is an act of self-assertion. The choice to see is an act of self-assertion. Humility and insecurity are associated with downcast eyes, are they not? Throughout the world today the most punishable crime in any dictatorship is self-assertion -- the exercise of independent judgment and independent sight in defiance of authority. It is an act of self-assertion to challenge any dogma, whether it be in religion, science, government, or the teaching of your parents. It is an act of self-assertion to ask "why" and to refuse to accept a gun, a club or a frown as an answer."

"The practice of living purposefully: identifying our short-term and long-term goals or purposes and the actions needed to attain them (formulating an action-plan); organizing behavior in the service of those goals; monitoring action to be sure we stay on track; and paying attention to outcome so as to recognize if and when we need to go back to the drawing-board."

"The essence of self-assertion is to respect your own values and to live by your own judgment. In this way you experience integrity."

"The opposite of self-assertiveness is self-abnegation--abandoning or submerging your personal values, judgment, and interests. Some people tell themselves this is a virtue. It is a virtue that corrodes self-esteem."

"The essence of self-awareness is learning to notice; learning to pay attention"

"The practice of living consciously: respect for facts; being present to what we are doing while are doing it; seeking and being eagerly open to any information, knowledge, or feedback that bears on our interests, values, goals, and projects; seeking to understand not only the world external to self but also our inner world, so that we do not out of self-blindness."

"The practice of personal integrity: living with congruence between what we know, what we profess, and what we do; telling the truth, honoring our commitments, exemplifying in action the values we profess to admire."

"The natural inclination of a child is to take pleasure in the use of the mind no less than of more"

"The practice of self-acceptance: the willingness to own, experience, and take responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, and actions, without evasion, denial, or disowning ? and also without self-repudiation; giving oneself permission to think one?s thoughts, experience one?s emotions, and look at one?s actions without necessarily liking, endorsing, or condoning them; the virtue of realism applied to the self."

"The practice of self-assertiveness: being authentic in our dealings with others; treating our values and persons with decent respect in social contexts; refusing to fake the reality of who we are or what we esteem in order to avoid disapproval; the willingness to stand up for ourselves and our ideas in appropriate ways in appropriate contexts."

"The practice of self-responsibility: realizing that we are the author of our choices and actions; that each one us is responsible for life and well-being and for the attainment of our goals; that if we need the cooperation of other people to achieve our goals, we must offer values in exchange; and that question is not ?Who?s to blame?? but always ?What needs to be done??"

"The short answer is - more often than not, jealousy IS a reflection of inadequate self-esteem - but not always or necessarily - There are circumstances in which jealousy can be felt by women and men who are relatively free of self-doubt."

"The root of our need for self-esteem is the need for a consciousness to learn to trust itself. And the root of the need to learn such trust is the fact that consciousness is volitional: we have the choice to think or not to think. We control the switch that turns consciousness brighter or dimmer. We are not rational ? that is, reality-focused ? automatically. This means that whether we learn to operate our mind in such a way as to make ourselves appropriate to life is ultimately a function of our choices. Do we strive for consciousness or for its opposite? For rationality or its opposite? For coherence and clarity or their opposite? For truth or its opposite?"

"The United States was the first country in the history of the world to be consciously created out of an idea - and the idea was liberty."

"They stimulate insights, they help us gain access to implicit or tacit knowledge, and they can also be a stimulant to make new connections."

"To be real is to be integrated - body, thoughts, feelings, expressions."

"To live consciously means to seek to be aware of everything that bears on our actions, purposes, values, and goals?to the best of our ability, whatever that ability may be?and to behave in accordance with that which we see and know."

"To love a person is to know and love the person. But we can pick up an enormous amount about another human being just by exchanging a couple of sentences. It's not yet knowledge; it's an intuition that motivates you to want to find out more."

"To many children, school represents a 'second chance' -- an opportunity to acquire a better sense of self and a better vision of life than was offered in their home."

"To attain "success" without attaining positive self-esteem is to be condemned to feeling like an imposter anxiously awaiting exposure."

"To love is to see myself in you and to wish to celebrate myself with you. What I love is the embodiment of my values in another person. Love is an act of self-assertion, self-expression and a celebration of being alive."

"To the boy who had dreams of doing something great, of changing the world, his father, instead of encouraging him, would say, "Don't take yourself so seriously, don't be a dreamer. Go mow the lawn if you want to do something great.""

"Unfortunately many people who want to change begin by repudiating what they are and looking forward to what they want to become, but it doesn't work that way."

"We can't move successfully towards our goals by disowning what we are now. You cannot leave a place you have never been. You cannot leave an anger you have never accepted. You cannot let go of a pain you have never experienced."

"We humans have a need to feel we understand the world in which we live. We have a need to make sense out of our experience. We have a need for some intelligible portrait of who we are as human beings and what our lives are or should be about. In short, we have a need for a philosophical vision of reality."

"We become off center when we try to fight ourselves. When we flow with what is, we re-gain balance and control."

"We can accept our feelings without being obligated to be run by them."

"We live a lie when we misrepresent the reality of our experience or the truth of our being."

"We do not hear the term "compassionate" applied to business executives or entrepreneurs, certainly not when they are engaged in their normal work. Yet in terms of results in the measurable form of jobs created, lives enriched, communities built, living standards raised, and poverty healed, a handful of capitalists has done infinitely more for mankind than all the self-serving politicians, academics, social workers, and religionists who march under the banner of "compassion"."

"We must be guided by our conscious mind, Rand insisted; we must not follow our emotions blindly. Following our emotions blindly is undesirable and dangerous: Who can argue with that? Applying the advice to be guided by our mind isn't always as simple as it sounds. Such counsel does not adequately deal with the possibility that in a particular situation feelings might reflect a more correct assessment of reality than conscious beliefs or, to say the same thing another way, that the subconscious mind might be right while the conscious mind was mistaken. I can think of many occasions in my own life when I refused to listen to my feelings and followed instead my conscious beliefs -- which happened to be wrong -- with disastrous results. If I had listened to my emotions more carefully, and not been so willing to ignore and repress them, my thinking -- and my life -- would have advanced far more satisfactorily."

"We want answers, we want to feel we understand what is going on. If philosophers are telling us, "Don't even ask, it's naive to imagine that answers are possible," and if someone at last says to us, "Look no further, I have the answers, I can tell you, I bring clarity, peace, and serenity," it can be very tempting, very appealing and sometimes some of us end up in bed with the strangest people -- all because of the hunger for answers, the hunger for intelligibility."

"What, in essence, does objectivism teach? What are the fundamentals of the Ayn Rand philosophy? Objectivism teaches: That reality is what it is, that things are what they are, independent of anyone's beliefs, feelings, judgments or opinions -- that existence exists, that A is A; That reason, the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by the various senses, is fully competent, in principle, to understand the facts of reality; That any form of irrationalism, supernaturalism, or mysticism, any claim to a non-sensory, non-rational form of knowledge, is to be rejected; That a rational code of ethics is possible and is derivable from an appropriate assessment of the nature of human beings as well as the nature of reality; That the standard of the good is not God or the alleged needs of society but rather "Man's life," that which is objectively required for man's or woman's life, survival, and well-being; That a human being is an end in him- or herself, that each one of us has the right to exist for our own sake, neither sacrificing others to self nor self to others; That the principles of justice and respect for individuality autonomy, and personal rights must replace the principle of sacrifice in human relationships; That no individual -- and no group -- has the moral right to initiate the use of force against others; That force is permissible only in retaliation and only against those who have initiated its use; That the organizing principle of a moral society is respect for individual rights and that the sole appropriate function of government is to act as guardian and protector of individual rights. So, Rand was a champion and advocate of reason, self-interest individual rights, and political and economic freedom. She advocated a total separation of state and economics, just as -- and for the same reason as -- we now have the separation of state and church. She took the position, and it is a position I certainly share, that just as the government has no proper voice in the religious beliefs or practices of people, provided no one else's rights are violated, so there should be freedom or production and trade between and among consenting adults."

"When he is talking about raising our self-awareness and self-accept as well as freeing ourselves, he says ...the most important need is to say what we want, rather than to gain approval."

"When we fight ourselves we keep ourselves in a state of conflict and tension."

"When I was a child, I felt at times that I had been born into an insane asylum, that much of human life appeared to be an insane asylum. It was bewildering."

"When I think of how I try to protect myself by denying my feelings and emotions..."

"When we seek to align ourselves with reality as best we understand it, we nurture and support our self-esteem. When, either out of fear or desire, we seek escape from reality, we undermine our self-esteem. No other issue is more important or basic than our cognitive relationship to reality ? meaning: to that which exists."

"When you repress thoughts or feelings you are avoiding something connected with pain."

"When you repress feelings you deny yourself access to key data."