Defining Self Quotes & Sayings

In fact, some psychologists are defining self-esteem as the degree to which you believe that you are likeable to others[1] — Roger Covin

For those who suffer disposal, the cost is their very lives. For those of us who survive, there is a creeping indifference to anything other than one's own survival, which results in increased selfishness, hardness of heart, denial - which in the long range will bring about the devaluation of self. To counter this devaluation, therefore, one flees into pride of accomplishment. Isn't what we do the defining measure of selfhood in our society? — Michael D. O'Brien

I think the difference between being miserable and finding happiness is just a matter of perspective. If you live your life defining yourself by what other people think of you, it's a form of self-torture. — Sarah Silverman

Fashioning the body, defining the self. — Unknown

It is not self defining but by You — Jean-Marie De La Trinite

The question of what we are can only be answered by ourselves. We each decide what we are by the life choices we make. How we were made, who are parents are, where we are from, the color of our skin, who we choose to love, all those things do not define us. Our actions define us, and will keep defining us until even after death. — P.C. Cast

A recurrent theme in Kissinger's early writing is the historical ignorance of the typical American decision-maker. Lawyers, he remarked in 1968, are the "single most important group in Government, but they do have this drawback - a deficiency in history." For Kissinger, history was doubly important: as a source of illuminating analogies and as the defining factor in national self-understanding. Americans might doubt history's importance, but, as Kissinger wrote, "Europeans, living on a continent covered with ruins testifying to the fallibility of human foresight, feel in their bones that history is more complicated than systems analysis."
-Foreign Affairs, The Meaning of Kissinger: A Realist Reconsidered, By Niall Ferguson — Niall Ferguson

Video Games Rewards of the self are a defining component in video games, as players seek to master the skills needed to pursue their quest. Leveling up, unlocking special powers, and other game mechanics fulfill a player's desire for competency by showing progression and completion. — Nir Eyal

The act of writing involves documenting and studiously examining interactions of all aspects of the self, the environment, and culture. Writing is an illustrious act of self-expression. Writing resembles a 'coming of the age' story because the ongoing process of defining a person's personality and character is representative of the synergistic product of the continuous and cumulative interaction of an organic self with the world, the constant process of developing psychological, social, cognitive and ethical self. — Kilroy J. Oldster

All genuine epiphanies seem to follow this model: their defining quality is the relinquishment of delusion. The initial fear is that one has lost something. A cherished self-conception must be given up, and one feels diminished by it. This is mistaken, however. A person discovers that he has been made stronger by the jettisoning of this sham and disadvantageous baggage. In fact, he has become more "himself," by aligning his self-concept more closely with fact. — Steven Pressfield

When we judge others, the only one that we are truly defining is our self. — Maximus Freeman

Defining your own truth and then living according to it ... changes your sense of self and sets you free; it makes you fearless -- or at least more courageous -- with every significant person in your life. When you're not so insecure, there are things -- offhand cruelties, insensitivities large and small -- you don't tolerate, things you don't have to deny.... Once you are the one who determines the meaning of your life, nobody can gainsay it. This act of self-assertive defiance immunizes you -- at least to a certain extent -- from ever allowing someone else to control your destiny ever again. — Jeanne Safer

From childhood forward, our hair is one of the most critical, defining aspects of our embodied selves as black women: how we get it done ... how we have to focus on it ... the questions we have to answer about it ... and so forth. — Melissa Harris-Perry

The world is so obsessed with defining sexuality for everyone and attaching labels to it. Any time any person openly leaves the sexual norm, their sexuality becomes, more often than not, the absolute defining characteristic of that person. It becomes the first thing people think about and often the first thing they mention. Every other part of that person all but disappears. — Dan Pearce

The self is constituted within a variety of arenas and in relation to multiple traditions. Self-hood, on this understanding, is both provisional and open-ended, and critically depends on the configuration of relationships between one's own groups and those cultures and values that are deemed 'other'. The regulation of alterity becomes a defining attribute of self-hood, as my sense of who I am is crucially mediated by an understanding of that which I am not (paraphrasing William Connolly). — Michael Kenny

I met people on college campuses who were defining themselves as genderqueer to express revolutionary feelings, or to communicate their individuality; they were gender fluid without being gender dysphoric. This phenomenon may be culturally significant, but it has only a little bit in common with the people who feel they can have no authentic self in their birth gender. — Andrew Solomon

No, it's cool," Mills replied. "I don't have a boyfriend. I'm single." It was the first time he had ever defined himself as single, which felt like defining himself as American in a foreign country. It sounded advanced and self-reliant and lonely. — Christopher Bollen

Character primarily is honesty with God, ones-self, and others."

~R. Alan Woods [2013] — R. Alan Woods

We insist on being Someone, with a capital S. We get security from defining ourselves as worthless or worthy, superior or inferior. We waste precious time exaggerating or romanticizing or belittling ourselves with a complacent surety that yes, that's who we are. We mistake the openness of our being - the inherent wonder and surprise of each moment - for a solid, irrefutable self. Because of this misunderstanding, we suffer. — Pema Chodron

While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone. — Colm Toibin

Successful change can only come in the context of a clear understanding of what may never change, what the organization stands for. This is what Peter Drucker calls the organization's culture. Culture, as he uses the term, is that which cannot, will not, and must not change. We talk a lot about changing corporate culture, as though it were just another parameter of the organization, like an SIC code or address. But Drucker would have us look at culture entirely differently, as the bedrock upon which any constructive change will have to rest. If nothing is declared unchangeable, then the organization will resist all change. When there is no defining vision, the only way the organization can define itself is its stasis. Like the human creature that fights wildly to resist changing whatever it considers its identity, the corporate organism without vision will hold on to stasis as its only meaningful definition of self. — Tom DeMarco

We are condemned to be free people, liberated people who must make life-defining decisions. Freedom requires choices and all choices entail value decisions. — Kilroy J. Oldster

If you cannot read Shakespeare, or Melville, or Toni Morrison because it will trigger something traumatic in you, and you'll be harmed by the read of the text because you are still defining yourself through your self-victimization, then you need to see a doctor. — Bret Easton Ellis

We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression. — Charles Taylor

If there is a defining aspect of UNC women's soccer, and its success, it is what we call the competitive cauldron. It is the pinnacle of our program. The great part about the cauldron is that it fosters a quality we can all possess. It isn't a talent we are born with. Competitive drive is not governed by innate ability, but by self-discipline and desire — Anson Dorrance

It's only when we are able to exceed our rigid interpretations, and we start defining love in it's totality, that we realize that love is everywhere — Julian Pencilliah

The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino. - Joe Fox — Nora Ephron

How ludicrous were all attempts at defining the self — Krys Lee

Prices impose the most effective kind of rationing - self-rationing. Why is rationing necessary? Because what everybody wants always adds up to more than there is ... Resources are limited but desires are not. That is the basic and defining problem of economics. — Thomas Sowell

All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well based - or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug - it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault. — Carl Sagan

Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth ... Will this happen before our technological civilization disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it forever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos. — Martin Rees

The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human. — Abraham Maslow

My point is that it's incorrect to say that the Iraq policy isn't working. It is working. It is doing what they want. They have got control of the oil and they are exporting it, and they have stripped a government that was 90% state owned and they are privatizing it ... They have taken a country that was self defining and self developing and is now an impoverished prostrate devastated country where people will line up to work for slave wages or become members of the police or army because it's the only job they can get and serve as adjuncts to U.S. imperialism. — Michael Parenti

Comfort foods they may have been, but helpful foods they most definitely were not. By merging my identity with certain foods and thinking of them as old friends, I found myself in the food equivalent of a co-dependent, destructive relationship. I was allowing food to have the power of defining me as a person. And those foods had defined me, all right; they'd defined me as fat, miserable, out of breath, lacking in energy and self-worth, and looking terrible in sweat pants. If I was going to insist on relating to food as a friend, then clearly I needed new friends. — Jane Olson

Self-deception is a defining part of our human nature. By recognizing its various forms in ourselves and reflecting upon them, we may be able to disarm them and even, in some cases, to employ and enjoy them. This self-knowledge opens up a whole new world before us, rich in beauty and subtlety, and frees us not only to take the best out of it, but also to give it back the best of ourselves, and, in so doing, to fulfil our potential as human beings. I don't really think it's a choice. — Neel Burton

The more people participate in the process of their own education, and the more people participate in defining what kind of production to produce, and for what and why, the more people participate in the development of their selves. The more people become themselves, the better the democracy. — Paulo Freire

It doesn't matter if you work at a fast food joint or if you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Your job title does not define your purpose. The size of your paycheck does not make you worthy. What makes you valuable is your contribution to the world and the legacy that you leave behind. Stop defining yourself by what you do, and start defining yourself by who you are! — John Geiger

Bill supposed that for every child there was a defining age, a fixed reference point in relation to which his parents would always view him; whereas the child's own truest self would always be the present one. — Ann Packer

There is a fine line deep within the mind that makes self-belief and confidence, the defining elements of success and failure in any circumstance. How we learn to activate them without running the risk of lying to ourselves is the key that unlocks the superhuman lying dormant within us. — David Amerland

Mindfulness means being present to whatever is happening here and now - when mindfulness is strong, there is no room left in the mind for wanting something else. With less liking and disliking of what arises, there is less pushing and pulling on the world, less defining of the threshold between self and other, resulting in a reduced construction of self. As the influence of self diminishes, suffering diminishes in proportion. — Andrew Olendzki

The Jetsons had them in the 1960s. They were the defining element of 'Knight Rider' in the 1980s: cars that drive themselves. Self-driving cars appear in countless science fiction movies. By Hollywood standards, they are so normal we don't even notice them. But in real life, they still don't exist. What if you could buy one today? — Sebastian Thrun

According to Callero, "Freedom of choice and self-determination are virtuous principles, but when selfish individual interests threaten to destroy the common good, the limits of individualism are exposed."4 Unfortunately but predictably, Callero is vague when it comes to defining "the common good" - a catchphrase with many variations that has been used by murderous dictators throughout history. May we therefore say that the "common good," when pushed to extremes, results in the likes of Stalin and Hitler? — George H. Smith

Multiculturalism is a campaign to lower America's moral status by defining the American experience is terms of myriad repressionsand their victims. By rewriting history, and by using name calling ("Racist! Sexist! Homophobe!") to inhibit debate, multiculturalists cultivate grievances, self pity and claims to entitlements arising from victimization. — George Will

Obesity is the result of a loss of self-control. Indeed, loss of self-control might be said to be the defining social (or anti-social) characteristic of our age: public drunkenness, excessive gambling, promiscuity and common-or-garden rudeness are all examples of our collective loss of self-control. — Theodore Dalrymple

Girls face two major sexual issues in America in the 1990s: One is an old issue of coming to terms with their own sexuality, defining a sexual self, making sexual choices and learning to enjoy sex. The other issue concerns the dangers girls face of being sexually assaulted. By late adolescence, most girls today either have been traumatized or know girls who have. They are fearful of males even as they are trying to develop intimate relations with them. — Mary Pipher

I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist ... Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky. — Dmitri Shostakovich

Legendary innovators like Franklin, Snow, and Darwin all possess some common intellectual qualities - a certain quickness of mind, unbounded curiosity - but they also share one other defining attribute. They have a lot of hobbies. — Steven Johnson

Choose to be pro-active, assertive and self-defining. — Bryant McGill

Whenever you have a proclamation of being chosen, it's always a self-defining process. It's always the people who are chosen who say they are chosen. They never say that about the other. If you're going to say, "I'm chosen," it loads you with a very heavy burden. — Anne Provoost

For most entertainers, there is a single experience, one defining moment, when confidence replaces the self-doubt that most of us wrestle with. — Charley Pride

If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency. — Bell Hooks

Even more than the depression, it was my anxiety and agitation that became the defining symptoms of my illness. Like epileptic seizures, a series of frenzied anxiety attacks would descend upon me without warning. My body was possessed by a chaotic, demonic force which led to my shaking, pacing and violently hitting myself across the chest or in the head. This self-flagellation seemed to provide a physical outlet for my invisible torment, as if I were letting steam out of a pressure cooker. — Douglas Bloch

Self-esteem is the basis for feminism because self-esteem is based on defining yourself and believing in that definition. Self-esteem is regarding yourself as a grown-up. — Susan Faludi

Love is one of the most motivating and self-defining forces in our lives, whether we turn from it or allow ourselves to be drawn to it. If you allow romantic possibilities with others to consume all your time and energy, they will distract you from the things of interest that fill your life with passion and purpose. — A.J. Darkholme

Of all the nouns we use to disguise the hollowness of the human condition, none is more influential than "myself". It consists of a collage of still images - name, gender, nationality, profession, enthusiasms, relationships - which are renovated from time to time, but otherwise are each a relic from one particular experience or another. The defining teaching of the Buddhist tradition, that of non-self, is merely pointing out the limitations of this reflexive view we hold of ourselves. It's not that the self does not exist, but that it is as cobbled together and transient as everything else. [With] the practice of meditation, ... we can begin to see how each artifact of the mind is raised and lowered to view, like so many flashcards. But we can also glimpse, once in a while, the sleight-of-hand shuffling the card and pulling them off the deck. Behind the objects lies a process. Self is a process. Self is a verb. — Andrew Olendzki

Not all cloud-native platforms are the same. Some are self-built and pieced together from various components; others are black boxed and completely proprietary. The Cloud Foundry cloud-native platform has three defining characteristics: it is structured, opinionated, and open. — Duncan C. E. Winn

When a worldview exchanges the Creator for something in creation, it will also exchange a high view of humans made in God's image for a lower view of humans made in the image of something in creation. Humans are not self-existent, self-sufficient, or self-defining. They did not create themselves. They are finite, dependent, contingent beings. As a result, they will always look outside themselves for their ultimate identity and meaning. They will define human nature by its relationship to the divine - however they define divinity. Those who do not get their identity from a transcendent Creator will get it from something in creation. — Nancy Pearcey

Because the meaning of a story does not lie on its surface, visible and self-defining, does not mean that meaning does not exist. Indeed, the ambiguity of meaning, its inner private quality, may well be part of the writer's vision. — Joyce Carol Oates

Still on speaking terms with the Toilet Paper People, they consented to a box full of Legos that overnight manifested itself into a recording studio. I quickly remembered the power of my hands, my imagination, my will, and my conscience. These were tools I would never let myself get bored with. I would find myself in Blue Ocean Strategy and in other defining ways. — Cherry Tigris

Perhaps defining a self begins with simply making the first choice, simply rising up and deciding what you desire, and then methodically, like writing, putting one word after the other until you have created a whole self and a whole life in the process. — Michele Rosenthal

Defining yourself in terms of how you rank is always dangerous and ultimately immature. It doesn't matter whether the rank has to do with your grades, your weight or where you finished in the 800 meter race. Becoming a mature adult means, among other things, that you define yourself relative to your own potential, not relative somebody else's standard. — Leonard Sax

Big Idea
Your days are your life in miniature. As you live your hours, so you create your years. As you live your days, so you craft your life. What you do today is actually creating your future. The words you speak, the thoughts you think, the food you eat and the actions you take are defining your destiny - shaping who you are becoming and what your life will stand for. Small choices lead to giant consequences over time. There's no such thing as an unimportant day. — Robin S. Sharma

When you win, you don't examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You easily, and wrongly, assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But winning only measures how hard you've worked and how physically talented you are; it doesn't particularly define you beyond those characteristics.
Losing on the other hand, really does say something about who you are. Among other things it measures are: do you blame others, or do you own the loss? Do you analyze your failure, or just complain about bad luck?
If you're willing to examine failure, and to look not just at your outward physical performance, but your internal workings, too, losing can be valuable. How you behave in those moments can perhaps be more self-defining than winning could ever be. Sometimes losing shows you for who you really are. — Lance Armstrong