Nathaniel Branden Quotes & Sayings

One of the characteristics of love relationships that flower is a relatively high degree of mutual self-disclosure — Nathaniel Branden

For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality. — Nathaniel Branden

We are parts of one universe, true enough. We stand within an almost infinite network of relationships. Yet each of us is a single point of consciousness, a unique event, a private, unrepeatable world. This is the essence of our aloneness. — Nathaniel Branden

There is only one reality - the reality knowable to reason. And if man does not choose to perceive it, there is nothing else for him to perceive; if it is not of this world that he is conscious, then he is not conscious at all — Nathaniel Branden

The idea of Original Sin - of guilt where there is no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives available - is anti-self-esteem by its very nature. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality. — Nathaniel Branden

But if I lack respect for and enjoyment of who I am, I have very little to give - except my unfilled needs. In my emotional impoverishment, I tend to see other people essentially as sources of approval or disapproval. I do not appreciate them for who they are in their own right. I see only what they can or cannot do for me. I am not looking for people whom I can admire and with whom I can share the excitement and adventure of life. I am looking for people who will not condemn me - and perhaps will be impressed by my persona, the face I present to the world. My ability to love remains undeveloped. This is one of the reasons why attempts at relationships so often fail - not because the vision of passionate or romantic love is intrinsically irrational, but because the self-esteem needed to support it is absent. — Nathaniel Branden

I am responsible for my personal happiness. One of the characteristics of immaturity is the belief that it is someone else's job to make me happy - much as it was once my parents' job to keep me alive. If only someone would love me, then I would love myself. If only someone would take care of me, then I would be contented. If only someone would spare me the necessity of making decisions, then I would be carefree. If only someone would make me happy. Here's a simple but powerful stem to wake one up to reality: If I take full responsibility for my personal happiness - . Taking responsibility for my happiness is empowering. It places my life back in my own hands. Ahead of taking this responsibility, I may imagine it will be a burden. What I discover is that it sets me free. — Nathaniel Branden

Consciousness that is not translated into appropriate action is a betrayal of consciousness ... Living consciously is living responsibly toward reality. We do not necessarily have to like what we see but we recognize that wishes or fears or denials do not alter facts. — Nathaniel Branden

Your choices have psychological consequences. The way you choose to deal with reality, truth, facts - your choice to honor or dishonor your own perceptions - registers in your mind, for good or for bad, and either confirms and strengthens your self-esteem or undermines and weakens it. — Nathaniel Branden

Sometimes pain is easier to bear alone than happiness. — Nathaniel Branden

One of the most significant characteristics of healthy self esteem is that it is the state of one who is not at war either with himself or with others. — Nathaniel Branden

It is not only negative feelings that become blocked. The repression extends to more and more of his emotional capacity.When one is given an anesthetic in preparation for surgery, it is not merely the capacity to experience pain that is suspended; the capacity to experience pleasure goes also - because what is blocked is the capacity to experience *feeling*. The same principle applies to the repression of emotions.
Chapter 1: Discovering the Unknown Self, pg. 9, Bantam Edition, 1984 — Nathaniel Branden

Freedom is still the most radical idea of all. — Nathaniel Branden

The world belongs to those who persevere. — Nathaniel Branden

Our liabilities pose the problem of inadequacy; our our assets, the challenge of responsibility. Our strengths or virtues can make us feel alone, alienated, cut off from the common herd, a target for envy and hostility, and our desire to belong can overcome any desire to actualise our highest potential. — Nathaniel Branden

In addition, if a person makes the error of identifying self with his work (rather than with the internal virtues that make the work possible), if self-esteem is tied primarily to accomplishments, success, income, or being a good family provider, the danger is that economic circumstances beyond the individual's control may lead to the failure of the business or the loss of a job, flinging him into depression or acute demoralization. — Nathaniel Branden

If you bring five percent more awareness to your work tomorrow, or to your most important relationship, what might you do differently? Are you willing to find out? — Nathaniel Branden

It is very difficult to accept in others emotions you cannot accept in yourself. — Nathaniel Branden

Focused on your image in the mirror a few moments longer, and say to yourself, "Whatever my defects or imperfections, I accept myself unreservedly and completely." Stay focused, breathe deeply, and say this over and over again for a minute or two without rushing the process. Allow yourself to experience fully the meaning of your words. — Nathaniel Branden

The higher our self-esteem, the more likely we are to be creative in our work, which means the more successful we are likely to be. The higher our self-esteem, the more ambitious we tend to be, not necessarily in a career or financial sense, but in terms of what we hope to experience in life - emotionally, creatively and spiritually. — Nathaniel Branden

The first act of honoring the self is the assertion of consciousness: the choice to think, to be aware, to send the searchlight of consciousness outward toward the world and inward toward our own being. To default on this effort is to default on the self at the most basic level. — Nathaniel Branden

When people are not accepting toward themselves they
are often obsessed with acceptance by others. — Nathaniel Branden

Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else. — Nathaniel Branden

There is no value-judgment more important to a man
no factor more decisive in his psychological development and motivation
than the estimate he passes on himself. — Nathaniel Branden

Loving consciously does not mean subjecting your relationship to endless analysis. It means something much simpler: paying attention. Noticing. This requires presence. — Nathaniel Branden

In the nature of our existence, we must act to achieve values. And in order to act appropriately, we need to value the beneficiary of our actions. In order to seek values, we must consider ourselves worthy of enjoying them. In order to fight for our happiness, we must consider ourselves worthy of happiness. — Nathaniel Branden

When your principles seem to be demanding suicide, clearly it's time to check your premises — Nathaniel Branden

Out of fear, out of the desire for approval, out of misguided notions of duty, people surrender themselves
their convictions and their aspirations
every day. There is nothing noble about it. It takes far more courage to fight for your values than to relinquish them. — Nathaniel Branden

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. — Nathaniel Branden

What is required for many of us, paradoxical though it may sound, is the courage to tolerate happiness without self-sabotage. — Nathaniel Branden

Suffering is just about the easiest of all human activities; being happy is just about the hardest. And happiness requires, not surrender to guilt, but emancipation from guilt. — Nathaniel Branden

The lies most devastating to our self-esteem are not so much the lies we tell as the lies we live. — Nathaniel Branden

A goal without an action plan is a daydream. — Nathaniel Branden

In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions. — Nathaniel Branden

We must become what we wish to teach. — Nathaniel Branden

Between the ages of 24 and 27, I read Freud's complete works, everything that had been translated into English. It was very stimulating intellectually. But I did not accept his view of neurosis or of human nature. — Nathaniel Branden

When you are frightened, you typically pull energy in to your center, seeing less, hearing less-shrinking consciousness precisely when you need to expand it. — Nathaniel Branden

We tend to feel most comfortable, "most at home", with people whose self esteem level resembles our own. — Nathaniel Branden

To exist without purpose is to be at the mercy of the chance encounter, the chance invitation, the chance phone call, the chance event- always being controlled by forces external to oneself. — Nathaniel Branden

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

Positive self-esteem operates as, in effect, the immune system of the consciousness, providing resistance, strength, and a capacity for regeneration. When self-esteem is low, our resilience in the face of life's adversities is diminished. We crumble before vicissitudes that a healthier sense of self could vanquish. We tend to be more influenced by the desire to avoid pain than to experience joy. Negatives have more power over us than positives. — Nathaniel Branden

High self esteem people can surely be knocked down by an excess of troubles, but they are quickerto pick themselves up again. — Nathaniel Branden

Respect starts with ourselves. — Nathaniel Branden

Chances are, when you were young, you were told, in effect, "Listen, kid, here is the news: life is not about you. Life is not about what you want. What you want is not important. Life is about doing what others expect of you." If you accepted this idea, later on you wondered what had happened to your fire. Where had your enthusiasm for living gone? — Nathaniel Branden

Integrity means congruence. Words and behavior match. — Nathaniel Branden

The thing I want you to understand," Ayn was saying, "is that no matter how hard the battle, it can be won. You can break through. — Nathaniel Branden

Whether in the workplace or in personal relationships, success belongs to those who are willing to take responsibility for attaining their desires-those who respond to life actively rather than passively. — Nathaniel Branden

The willingness to experience and accept our feelings carries no implication that emotions are to have the last word on what we do. I may not be in the mood to work today; I can acknowledge my feelings, experience them, accept them - and then go to work. I will work with a clearer mind because I have not begun the day with self-deception. — Nathaniel Branden

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. — Nathaniel Branden

When we doubt our minds, we tend to discount its products. If we fear intellectual self-assertiveness, perhaps associating it with loss of love, we mute our intelligence. We dread being visible; so we make ourselves invisible, then suffer because no one sees us. — Nathaniel Branden

Integrity is the integration of ideals, convictions, standards, beliefs-and behavior. When our behavior is congruent with our professed values, when ideals and practice match up, we have integrity. — Nathaniel Branden

For the optimal realization of our possibilities, we need to trust ourselves and we need to admire ourselves, and the trust and admiration need to be grounded in reality, not generated out of fantasy and self-delusion. — Nathaniel Branden

Individualism is at once an ethical-psychological concept and an ethical-political one. As an ethical-psychological concept, individualism holds that a human being should think and judge independently, respecting nothing more than the sovereignty of his or her mind; thus, it is intimately connected with the concept of autonomy. As an ethical-political concept, individualism upholds the supremacy of individual rights — Nathaniel Branden

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. — Nathaniel Branden

Some people stand and move as if they have no right to the space they occupy. They wonder why others often fail to treat them with respect
not realizing that they have signalled others that it is not necessary to treat them with respect. — Nathaniel Branden

Suppose you feel you cannot accept some fact about yourself. Then own your refusal to accept. Own the block. Embrace it fully. And watch it begin to disappear. The principal is this: Begin where you are-accept that. Then change and growth become possible. — Nathaniel Branden

Thinking, even when thinking is difficult, versus nonthinking Awareness, even when awareness is challenging, versus unawareness Clarity, whether or not it comes easily, versus obscurity or vagueness Respect for reality, whether pleasant or painful, versus avoidance of reality Respect for truth versus rejection of truth Independence versus dependence Active orientation versus passive orientation Willingness to take appropriate risks, even in the face of fear, versus unwillingness Honesty with self versus dishonesty Living in and being responsible to the present versus retreating into fantasy Self-confrontation versus self-avoidance Willingness to see and correct mistakes versus perseverance in error Reason versus irrationalism — Nathaniel Branden

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. — Nathaniel Branden

There is an irrational, cultish tendency in many intellectual movements, and Objectivism, alas, is no exception. Ayn Rand's personal obsession with loyalty did little to discourage this trend ... Rand had often protested, 'Protect me from my followers!' — Nathaniel Branden

Of all the judgments you make in life, none is as important as the one you make about yourself. The difference between low self-esteem and high self-esteem is the difference between passivity and action, between failure and success. — Nathaniel Branden

The more you surrender to the fear of someone's disapproval, the more you lose face in your own eyes, and the more desperate you become for someone's approval. Within you is a void that should have been filled by self-esteem. When you attempt to fill it with the approval of others instead, the void grows deeper and the hunger for acceptance and approval grows stronger. The only solution is to summon the courage to honor your own judgment, frightening though that may be in the beginning. — Nathaniel Branden

I think that we approach the problem of romantic love all wrong when we start with the questions: why do so many relationships fail? I think that the interesting question is why do some succeed? Because if you consider how most of us were raised, how most of us were brought up, how few of us had decent role models in terms of our fathers or mothers, how inadequately we were prepared or educated for love as adults; it seems to me that the great miracle is that some people through their own independence, or their own perseverance, or their own creativity, make it. — Nathaniel Branden

Thus, I can recognize that I have been unfair and hurtful to my child (or my spouse or my friend) and need to make amends. But I don't want to admit I made a mistake, so I procrastinate, claiming that I am still "thinking" about the situation. This is the opposite of living consciously. At a fundamental level, it is an avoidance of consciousness - avoidance of the meaning of what I am doing; avoidance of my motives; avoidance of my continuing cruelty. — Nathaniel Branden

When self-esteem is low, we are often manipulated by fear ... We live more to avoid pain than to experience joy. — Nathaniel Branden

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. — Nathaniel Branden

The desire for self-esteem without integrity is like the desire for wealth without effort-a longing for the unearned. — Nathaniel Branden

When we are moved primarily by fear, sooner or later we precipitate the very calamity we dread. If we fear condemnation, we behave in ways that ultimately elicit disapproval. If we fear anger, eventually we make people angry. — Nathaniel Branden

Whether your focus is on preserving and strengthening family ties in a world of increasingly unstable relationships, gaining access to a decent job, growing and evolving as a person, or guiding a company through the stormy seas of a fiercely competitive global marketplace-whether your goals are material, emotional, or spiritual-the price of success is the same: thinking, learning. To be asleep at the wheel-to rely only on the known, familiar, and automatized-is to invite disaster. — Nathaniel Branden

Regardless of what we think we're teaching, we teach what we are. — Nathaniel Branden

The feeling that "I am enough" does not mean that I have nothing to learn, nothing further to achieve, and nowhere to grow to. It means that I accept myself, that I am not on trial in my own eyes, that I value and respect myself. This is not an act of indulgence but of courage. — Nathaniel Branden

Take responsibility for finding it. It is only by grace of the second type — Nathaniel Branden

One of the most important forms of heroism is the heroism of conciousness, the heroism of thought: the willingness to tolerate aloneness. — Nathaniel Branden

Sometimes self-assertiveness is manifested through volunteering an idea or paying a compliment; sometimes through a polite silence that signals nonagreement; sometimes by refusing to smile at a tasteless joke. — Nathaniel Branden

Where we see self esteem, we see self acceptance. High self esteem individual tend to avoid falling into an adversarial relationship with themselves. — Nathaniel Branden

Reason and emotion are not antagonists. What seems like a struggle between two opposing ideas or values, one of which, automatic and unconscious, manifests itself in the form of a feeling. — Nathaniel Branden

It is true that people are sometimes hit by adversities beyond their control. But those so affected are better helped when they are awakened to the resources they do possess than when they are told they don't have any. — Nathaniel Branden

Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are more willing to follow their own vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community. Unexplored places do not frighten them- or not, at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them. This is one of the secrets of their power. That which we call genius has a great deal to do with courage and daring, a great deal to do with nerve. — Nathaniel Branden

Sometimes the subconscious mind manifests a wisdom several steps or even years ahead of the conscious mind, and has its own way of leading us toward our destiny. — Nathaniel Branden

Most of us are capable of more than we believe. — Nathaniel Branden

No one is coming to save you ... — Nathaniel Branden

When we have unconflicted self-esteem, joy is our motor, not fear. It is happiness that we wish to experience, not suffering that we wish to avoid. Our purpose is self-expression, not self-avoidance or self-justification. Our motive is not to "prove" our worth but to live our possibilities. — Nathaniel Branden

For "I" to become "we" and yet remain "I," is one of the great challenges of marriage. — Nathaniel Branden

Most of us are taught from an early age to pay far more attention to signals coming from other people than from within. We are encouraged to ignore our own needs and wants and to concentrate on living up to others expectations. — Nathaniel Branden

It would be hard to name a more certain sign of poor self-esteem than the need to perceive some other group as inferior. — Nathaniel Branden

If you are an adult, you are responsible for your life and well-being. No one owes you the fulfillment of your needs or wants; no one is here on earth to serve you. If you respect the principle of self-ownership, you understand that no one else owns you and that you do not own anyone else. Only on this understanding can there be peace on earth and good will among human beings. — Nathaniel Branden

If you overcome your fear to ask someone for a date, a raise, or help with a project, that is an act of self-assertiveness. You are moving out into life rather than contracting and withdrawing. — Nathaniel Branden

Everyone who has any familiarity with psychology knows about the danger of disowning the murderer within. Far fewer people understand the tragedy of disowning the hero within. — Nathaniel Branden

Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself. — Nathaniel Branden

As you grow in self-esteem, your face, manner, way of talking and moving will tend naturally to project the pleasure you take in being alive. — Nathaniel Branden

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. — Nathaniel Branden

Never marry a person who is not a friend of your excitement. — Nathaniel Branden

While self-esteem touches virtually every aspect of our existence, there are two aspects to which it is related in very distinct and powerful ways: work and love. Through work and through love, we act out the level of our confidence and our sense of personal worth. The drama of our life is the external reflection of our internal vision of ourselves. The higher the level of our self-esteem, the more likely it is that we will find a work and a love through which we can express ourselves in satisfying and enriching ways. — Nathaniel Branden

I am responsible for my own existence and happiness. — Nathaniel Branden

In the inner courtroom of my mind, mine is the only judgment that counts. — Nathaniel Branden

To be flexible is to be able to respond to change without inappropriate attachments binding one to the past. A clinging to the past in the face of new and changing circumstances is itself a product of insecurity, a lack of self-trust. Rigidity is what animals sometimes manifest when they are frightened: they freeze. — Nathaniel Branden

I have to respect other's opinions even if I don't agree with them. — Nathaniel Branden

Capitalism, by its nature, entails a constant process of motion, growth and progress. — Nathaniel Branden

To preserve an unclouded capacity for the enjoyment of life is an unusual moral and psychological achievement. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the prerogative of mindlessness, but the exact opposite: It is the reward of self-esteem. — Nathaniel Branden

Most of the time, I regard the judgment of people as a waste of time. I regard the judgment of behavior as imperative. — Nathaniel Branden

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. — Nathaniel Branden