Quotes & Sayings About Affirmation

Having expressed the rage against the laws and conditions that oppressed them - maybe even excess anger in the beginning was directed at men they came in contact with, because it had been pent up too long - women now come from a new position of easier, more comfortable self-affirmation and empowerment. Women are given to tolerance and are more able to love. I hope it happens also to men. — Betty Friedan

That gospel message should both humble and lift the believer up at the same time. It teaches us that we are indeed self-centered sinners. It perforates our illusions about our goodness and superiority. But the gospel also fills us with more love and affirmation than we could ever imagine. It means we don't need to earn our self-worth through incessant service and work. It means also that we don't mind so much when we are deprived of some comfort, compliment, or reward. We don't have to keep records and accounts anymore. We can freely give and freely receive. — Timothy Keller

Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence - either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous 'embarkation' and heroic conquest, or else to annihilate the persona and transcend the ego in an obscure rapture of sensuality, a frenzy of romantic passion, more creditably, in the mutual charity of the perfect marriage. — Aldous Huxley

For instance, some evangelicals have turned Proverbs 31 into a woman's job description instead of what it actually is: the blessing and affirmation of valor for the lives of women, memorized by Jewish husbands for the purpose of honoring their wives at the family table. It is meant as a celebration for the everyday moments of valor for everyday women, not as an impossible exhausting standard. — Sarah Bessey

Ours is a precarious language, as every writer knows, in which the merest shadow line often separates affirmation from negation, sense from nonsense, and one sex from the other — James Thurber

Atheism is without God. It does not assert no God. The atheist does not say that there is no God, but he says 'I know not what you mean by God. I am without the idea of God. The word God to me is a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no conception, and the conception of which by its affirmer is so imperfect that he is unable to define it for me. — Charles Bradlaugh

At anytime you can decide to live a life that says " I love myself — Renae A. Sauter

You are amazing! That is your secret. — Debasish Mridha

There's a widespread belief that if you have solid self-esteem you don't need outside affirmation and praise. This is patently untrue, by the way. — Harriet Lerner

The girl was not specifically religious; [...] yet although her faith was nameless her way of living was somehow an affirmation of life rather than a negation of it. — R.D. Laing

The great point in Christianity is the search for an independent content for spiritual life which, according to the insights of its founder, could be elevated, not by the forces of a world external to the soul of man, but by the revelation of a new world within his soul. Islam fully agrees with this insight and supplements it by the further insight that the illumination of the new world thus revealed is not something foreign to the world of matter but permeates it through and through.
Thus the affirmation of spirit sought by Christianity would come not by the renunciation of external forces which are already permeated by the illumination of spirit, but by a proper adjustment of man's relation to these forces in view of the light received from the world within. — Muhammad Iqbal

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, intact for over 200 years, guaranteed that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath of affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. After September 11th, 2001, those were just words on an old piece of paper, no longer a restriction of the Government's overreaching power to shake down its subjects. — Kenneth Eade

In an age when the difference between prince and peasant was thought to be in the stars, Mr Tzara, art was naturally an affirmation for the one and a consolation to the other; but we live in an age when the social order is seen to be the work of material forces and we have been given an entirely new kind of responsibility, the responsibility of changing society. — Tom Stoppard

If a man lives for the glory of God, he stops looking for affirmation from other human beings after every good deed, a pat on the head every time he does his duty. Instead, he throws himself into his role unselfishly. He contents himself with knowing he is fulfilling his purpose in this world and pleasing the God who made him. — Stephen Mansfield

Few things build a person up like affirmation. According to Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition (Simon and Schuster, 1991),
the word affirm comes from ad firmare, which means "to make firm." So when you affirm people, you make firm within them the things you see about them. Do that often enough, and the belief that solidifies within them will become stronger than the doubts they have about themselves. — John C. Maxwell

To change your world, you must change your words. It's the rudder (James 3:4-5) of your life. — Rick Warren

Affirmation: I am complete and all is here in this ONE. I adore the Holy Spirit that I am.

Everlasting priceless love and God bless all mankind, We R 1. — Katina Marshell Cotton-Sliwa

For action has no sense. It merely binds one to existence. All existence, however, has no sense. Evil is interpreted as that which leads to irrationalism: to the affirmation of means whose end is denied. A road to nonentity is the desideratum, hence all emotional impulses are regarded with horror. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Affirmation: I am a thinker, I am knowingness, and I am a doer. — Katina Marshell Cotton-Sliwa

Power is required for communication. To stand before an indifferent or hostile group and have one's say, or to speak honestly to a friend truths that go deep and hurt these require self-affirmation, self-assertion, and even at times aggression ... My experience in psychotherapy convinces me that the act which requires the most courage is the simple communication, unpropelled by rage or anger, of one's deepest thoughts to another. — Rollo May

Affirmation statements are going beyond the reality of the present into the creation of the future through the words you use in the now. — Louise Hay

We can help a person to be himself by our own willingness to steep ourselves temporarily in his world, in his private feelings and experiences. By our affirmation of the person as he is, we give him support and strength to take the next step in his own growth. — Clark Moustakas

Persons are judged to be great because of the positive qualities they possess, not because of the absence of faults. — John F. Kennedy

Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world. — Bell Hooks

One must always rebel against fear and hate and affirm life. — Marty Rubin

Every day is a good day. There is something to learn, care and celebrate. — Amit Ray

Christianity and Judaism are united above all in their common affirmation and implementation of the moral teaching of the Hebrew Bible, or 'Old Testament,' and the traditions of interpretation of that teaching. — David Novak

A baby nursing at a mother's breast ... is an undeniable affirmation of our rootedness in nature. — David Suzuki

When someone you love dies, people ask you how you're doing, but they don't really want to know. They seek affirmation that you're okay, that you appreciate their concern, that life goes on and so can they. Secretly they wonder when the statute of limitations on asking expires (its three months, by the way. Written or unwritten, that's about all the time it takes for people to forget the one thing that you never will). — Sarah Ockler

I was a horrible student! It just sort of evolved as I started playing. I guess I became a master of it when I declared myself a wordsmith or a ... word-play guy. As soon as I declared it and started that affirmation, I just became it. — Jason Mraz

I accept my body and its defects.
I accept my character
and its weaknesses.
I love myself as a perfect part
of a perfect Whole. — Human Angels

Acceptance is an affirmation that you're good enough. — Bill Konigsberg

Abby pulled me closer to her. Each movement she made was further affirmation of her answer. She felt the same. She cared about me. She wanted me. I wanted to run around the block screaming in celebration, and at the same time, didn't want to move my mouth from hers. — Jamie McGuire

These repetitive words and phrases are merely methods of convincing the subconscious mind. — Claude M. Bristol

The bike does this; it is an apotheosis of self-sufficiency, in which a well-loved machine will unhesitatingly and quietly mediate intentional being into momentum. As you ride a bike and start to ride it well, there are moments when it becomes an affirmation of life devoid of separation and distinction; you ride through the earth unthinkingly rather than across it. There is no need to account for who you are in others' terms, in language, even. Your characteristics give way to your being. The effort put into the bike can take you out of your socialized, represented self into what Heidegger called 'disclosing self', where you simply are ever-shifting endeavour. — Robin Holt

The foundation of religion is not the affirmation that God is, but that God is concerned with man and the world; that, having created the world, he has not abandoned it, leaving it to its own devices; that he cares for his creation. — Eliezer Berkovits

Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements. — Wynton Marsalis

Patience and perseverance are necessary in autosuggestion, as well as in everything else. — Emile Coue

All they wanted of me was one belch of affirmation and I'd bellow it out loud. Yes! Yes! YES! That was all anyone wanted of us, that we should be heard and not seen, and then heard only in one big optimistic chorus of yassuh, yassuh, yassuh! — Ralph Ellison

Affirmation: My Father/Mother God is embracing me and holding me so tightly that nothing can stop nor touch me. — Katina Marshell Cotton-Sliwa

May the love in your heart overshadow any sorrows, and may you always know with a deep inner certainty, how loved you truly are. — Jodi Livon

The actual existence of the subject of the proposition is therefore only apparently, not really, implied in the predication, if an essential one: we may say, A ghost is a disembodied spirit, without believing in ghosts. But an accidental, or non-essential, affirmation, does imply the real existence of the subject, because in the case of a non-existent subject there is nothing for the proposition to assert. — John Stuart Mill

Nabokov calls every great novel a fairy tale, I said. Well, I would agree. First, let me remind you that fairy tales abound with frightening witches who eat children and wicked stepmothers who poison their beautiful stepdaughters and weak fathers who leave their children behind in forests. But the magic comes from the power of good, that force which tells us we need not give in to the limitations and restrictions imposed on us by McFate, as Nabokov called it.
Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies. In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. — Azar Nafisi

Perhaps the new way of evangelizing is not so much through confrontation and argument, but through conversation, dialogue, and affirmation — Charles M. Murphy

An affirmation is almost like a mantra. It does not really matter if what you are affirming is not totally true as yet. By repeating an affirmation over and over again, it becomes embedded in the subconscious mind, and eventually it becomes your reality. — Stuart Wilde

It's so free to know that I do not have to compensate or make excuses for being treated poorly in relationships. I can simply move forward knowing I deserve better — Renae A. Sauter

The correct prayer is therefore never a prayer of supplication, but a prayer of gratitude. When you thank God in advance for that which you choose to experience in your reality, you in effect, acknowledge that it is there ... in effect. Thankfulness is thus the most powerful statement to God - an affirmation that even before you ask, I have answered. Therefore never supplicate ... Appreciate. — Neale Donald Walsch

Every child has a special way of perceiving love. There are five ways children (indeed, all people) speak and understand emotional love. They are physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, and acts of service. — Gary Chapman

When you get to the place where you would worry, Stop and pray. — Edgar Cayce

A glad welcome to this affirmation by a group of psychologists that the self does not stop at the skin nor even with the circle of human relationships but is interwoven with the lives of trees and animals and soil; that caring for the deepest needs of persons and caring for our threatened planet are not in conflict. — Mary Catherine Bateson

I can worship Nature, and that fulfills my need for miracles and beauty. Art gives a spiritual depth to existence
I can find worlds bigger and deeper than my own in music, paintings, and books. And from my friends and family I receive the highest benediction, emotional contact, and personal affirmation. I can bow before the works of Man, from buildings to babies, and that fulfills my need for wonder. I can believe in the sanctity of Life, and that becomes the Revealed Word, to live my life as I believe it should be, not as I'm told to by self-appointed guides. — Neil Peart

I totally allow myself
to feel every emotion,
whatever it is
and I observe it
from my inner space
of love and silence. — Human Angels

I don't pray for anything, but I have used affirmations in the past a few times. They are really a bit more like realizations in that on some level they have already happened. — Eckhart Tolle

In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter. — Azar Nafisi

Repeating an affirmation several times a day keeps you focused on your goal, strengthens your motivation, and programs your subconscious by sending an order to your crew to do whatever it takes to make that goal happen. — Jack Canfield

I give myself permission to be all that I can be, and I deserve the very best in life. — Louise Hay

My dancing is not an attempt to interpret life in the literary sense. It is an affirmation of life through movement. — Martha Graham

The essence of spirituality does not consist in a specialised or narrow interest in some imagined part of life, but in a certain enlightened attitude to all the various situations which obtain in life. It covers and includes the whole of life. All the material things of this world can be made subservient to the divine game, and when they are thus subordained they become auxiliary to the self-affirmation of the spirit. — Meher Baba

There's really only one good writing habit: You must write constantly. — Rob Bignell, Editor

Bhutan is the land of la. The monosyllabic word serves as all-purpose affirmation, honorific, and verbal tic. Mostly, it is a softener, appended to almost everything. La means "sir" but also "ya know." I like the way it sounds and, during my weeks in Bhutan, use it myself, but always self-consciously, never finding the right rhythm. — Eric Weiner

Every time you do something that comes from your needs for acceptance, affirmation, or affection, and every time you do something that makes these needs grow, you know that you are not with God. These needs will never be satisfied; they will only increase when you yield to them. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Rebuilding us. Isn't that what the spirit requires, when we climb over the wreckage of our lives, sometimes, we go on to make our lives our own affirmation? We are perfect expressions of perfect Love, here and now. There is no permanent injury. — Richard Bach

Using affirmations on a daily basis is one of the easiest things we can do to change our lives. — Robert Anthony

There is a certain mysticism in the Christian's affirmation of the physical universe. There is a confidence that whatever is discovered conforms with Jesus Christ and is a manifestation of His will. — Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Man can change his conditions by changing his words. — Florence Scovel Shinn

Self-sacrifice is a passion so overwhelming that beside it even lust and hunger are trifling. It whirls its victim to destruction in the highest affirmation of his personality. The object doesn't matter; it may be worthwhile or it may be worthless. No wine is so intoxicating, no love so shattering, no vice so compelling. When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? At best he can only sacrifice his only begotten son. — W. Somerset Maugham

Affirmation: I am aware of my unlimited power. — Katina Marshell Cotton-Sliwa

Reading is actually plunging into one's own identity and, one hopes, emerging stronger than before. You see, unconsciously, we are seeking to find an affirmation to our own world perception and set of values. — Amalia Kahana-Carmon

Genesis supplements "created in God's image" with the affirmation that God thus made humanity "male and female." Women and men together comprise this image. The statement is an extraordinary one in this opening chapter of Genesis, written in a patriarchal culture. One might wonder whether the author of Genesis saw the implications of this declaration. Certainly generation after generation of Christians have not seen it. We have often talked and behaved as if the male was the normal and full form of a human being, with the female a deviant and slightly inferior form. But both male and female belong to the image. You have the image of God represented in humanity only when you have both men and women there. When women are not present and involved in God's work in the world (and in the church), the image of God is not present. — John E. Goldingay

Every thought and every word you speak is an affirmation. So why not choose to use only positive affirmations to create an exceptional life? I know you can do it! — Louise Hay

THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES Words of Affirmation Quality Time Receiving Gifts Acts of Service Physical Touch — Gary Chapman

Enter every moment as if it's already a success. It's already done. Your affirmation isn't trying to get anything; rather it's an opening that lets something OUT. That's the real power of the law of emergence. — Derek Rydall

It belongs to the very substance of nonviolence never to destroy or damage another person's feeling of self worth, even an opponent's. We all need, constantly, an advance of trust and affirmation. — Bernhard Haring

Life is sometimes to be watched as a retarded bird, uninspired by it. It may indeed be threaded, not as a precision course but as an affirmation of its own undoing. — Dew Platt

There is nothing more profoundly serious than real comedy, which is an affirmation of human communion, redemption and grace. — Michael Malone

Practice rather than preach. Make of your life an affirmation, defined by your ideals, not the negation of others. Dare to the level of your capability then go beyond to a higher level. — Alexander Haig

Real greatness is often hidden, humble, simple, and unobtrusive. It is not easy to trust ourselves and our actions without public affirmation. We must have strong self-confidence combined with deep humility. — Henri Nouwen

I know what it's like to feel that fear and the need of affirmation and appreciation. To build confidence in yourself is the toughest thing. — Shakira

Courage is not the absence of fear and pain, but the affirmation of life despite fear and pain. — Earl A Grollman

To me, the work I do is a means of interpreting unsettling truths, of bearing witness, and of sounding an alarm. The beauty of formal representation both carries an affirmation of life and subversively brings us face to face with news from our besieged world. — Richard Misrach

An affirmation to say everyday:
The healing power of God is working in me right now. Eveyr day I get better and better in every way. — Joyce Meyer

The advice that you must change your environment - for example, by eliminating negative people and news - is an admission that there may in fact be a "real world" out there that is utterly unaffected by our wishes. In the face of this terrifying possibility, the only "positive" response is to withdraw into one's own carefully constructed world of constant approval and affirmation, nice news, and smiling people. — Barbara Ehrenreich

A leader must lead. Where others see obstacles, he must see opportunities. When others see problems, he must see possibilities ... Civilization is not built on a negation but on an affirmation- an affirmation of the bright and promising possibilities that the future holds for those who are enterprising enough to pursue them. — David J. Vaughan

the spectacle is an affirmation of appearances and an identification of all human social life with appearances. But a critique that grasps the spectacle's essential character reveals it to be a visible negation of life - a negation that has taken on a visible form. — Guy Debord

We tend to become what the most important person in our life thinks we will become. Think the best, believe the best, and express the best in others. Your affirmation will not only make you more attractive to them, but you will help play an important part in their personal development. — John C. Maxwell

Faith is active affirmation. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Life is our greatest possession and love its greatest affirmation. — Leo Buscaglia

Art is affirmation. — N. Scott Momaday

To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful. — Brennan Manning

If you feel ashamed about your need for love & support, it's because you were made to feel this way as a child. It's not a sign of weakness to want affirmation, reassurance or someone to count on; these are natural, appropriate needs. Just make sure to be there for yourself first. — Marcia Sirota

If you live consciously, if you try to bring consciousness to every act that you go through, you will be living in a silent, blissful state, in serenity, in joy, in love. Your life will have the flavour of a festival. That is the meaning of heaven: your life will have many flowers in it, much fragrance will be released through you. You will have an aura of delight. Your life will be a song of life-affirmation, it will be a sacred yes to all that existence is. You will be in communion with existence - in communion with stars, with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains, with people, with animals. This whole life and this whole existence will have a totally different meaning for you. From every nook and corner, rivers of bliss will be flowing towards you. Heaven is just a name for that state of mind. Hell means you are living so unconsciously, so absurdly, in such contradiction, that you go on creating more and more misery for yourself. — Osho

Mystical identification transcends the aristocratic virtue of courageous self-sacrifice. It is self- surrender in a higher, more complete, and more complete and more radical form. It is the perfect form of self-affirmation. — Paul Tillich

Positive affirmation, positive lifestyle. — Lailah Gifty Akita

When you shoot, that is opportunity number one to make a statement. When you edit, you have opportunity number two to make your statement. It could be an affirmation of your first choice or could go off in another direction. — Jay Maisel

I'm so proud of you that it makes me proud of me. I hope you know that. — John Green

Saying someone is religious is heard in most of America as a compliment, a reassuring affirmation that someone will be moral, ethical, and after a few glasses of wine, a freak in the bedroom. — Bill Maher

A good affirmation has five basic ingredients: it's personal, it's positive, it's present tense, it's visual, and it's emotional. — Stephen Covey

By means of supernatural horror we may evade, if momentarily, the horrific reprisals of affirmation. Every one of us, having been stolen from nonexistence, opens his eyes on the world and looks down the road at a few convulsions and a final obliteration. What a weird scenario. So why affirm anything, why make a pathetic virtue of a terrible necessity? We are destined to a fool's fate that deserves to be mocked. And since there is no one else around to do the mocking, we will take on the job. So let us delight in the Cosmic Macabre. At least we may send up a few bitter laughs into the cobwebbed corners of this crusty old universe. — Thomas Ligotti

Your mind believes what you tell it. — Paul J. Meyer

I'm telling you this for one reason and one reason only: No matter how sure you are of someone's love, it's always nice to hear it. — Mike Gayle