Quotes & Sayings About Getting Over Your Ego

I work really hard at trying to see the big picture and not getting stuck in ego. I believe we're all put on this planet for a purpose, and we all have a different purpose ... When you connect with that love and that compassion, that's when everything unfolds. — Ellen DeGeneres

There are good ways and bad ways to get my attention. Whacking on my ego with a crowbar will get my attention, sure, but it's not going to leave me well disposed to the messenger. — Charles Stross

It would be an endless battle if it were all up to ego
because it does not destroy and is not destroyed by itself
It is like a wave
it makes itself up, it rushes forward getting nowhere really
it crashes, withdraws and makes itself up again
pulls itself together with pride
towers with pride
rushes forward into imaginary conquest
crashes in frustration
withdraws with remorse and repentance
pulls itself together with new resolution — Agnes Martin

Perhaps the most overrated virtue in our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving. Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver. Nearly always, giving is a selfish pleasure, and in many cases it is a downright destructive and evil thing. One has only to remember some of our wolfish financiers who spend two-thirds of their lives clawing fortunes out of the guts of society and the latter third pushing it back. It is not enough to suppose that their philanthropy is a kind of frightened restitution, or that their natures change when they have enough. Such a nature never has enough and natures do not change that readily. I think that the impulse is the same in both cases. For giving can bring the same sense of superiority as getting does, and philanthropy may be another kind of spiritual avarice. — John Steinbeck

Getting ready is that point in the day when the rivalry between the two needs is likely to peak, because we are making transition from being at home and pleasing ourselves (ego) to going out and having to conform to a series of norms an conventions (superego). We become less ego and more superego with each button we fasten — Robert Rowland Smith

Getting your ego out of the way has an even deeper organizational impact. — Ken Jennings

You'll have a hard time getting any Alchemist to admit that. But I can say you're okay for an irreverent party boy with occasional moments of brilliance."
"Brilliant? You think I'm Brilliant?" He threw his hands skyward. "You hear that world? Sage says I'm brilliant."
"That's not what I said!"
He dropped the cigarette and stamped it out, giving me a devil-may-care grin. "Thanks for the ego boost. I'm going to go and tell Clarence and Lee all about your high opinion."
"Hey, I didn't-"
But he was already gone. — Richelle Mead

The biggest ego trip going is getting rid of your ego — Alan Watts

Call it arrogance or male chauvinism, the male ego just doesn't allow a woman to participate in key issues in family. Men seldom realize that it's the housewife who has the most difficult job in the world: waking up early, preparing breakfast, getting the children ready for school, preparing lunch, cleaning up the mess at home and so much more. Even before they can some rest, the doorbell would ring and the children are back from school. Then, the routine again, and by the end of the day, they were tired. Women in the family are the last to sleep and the first to wake up. Sometimes, even during a crisis in the family or when there is a dispute, it's the lady of the house that stands rock solid to calm things down and face challenges head on. — Jagdish Joghee

People say you have to know when to retire, which is a dumb thing to say. If you want to go out on top, yeah, it becomes important when you quit. But I wasn't afraid of that. And I wasn't worried about getting fired. I knew the risk. To me, it's not an ego thing. I enjoy coaching. I enjoy helping people achieve something. — Tom Landry

Any chance of getting something sweet to go with my coffee?" [Finn] asked in a hopeful voice.
I arched an eyebrow at him. "You mean all those pieces of strawberry pie that you ate for lunch weren't enough?"
"I'm a growing boy," Finn said in a sincere tone. "I need my vitamins."
Bria snorted. "The only thing that's growing on you, Lane, is your ego."
Finn sidled up to my sister and gave her a dazzling smile. "Well, other things of mine also tend to swell up in your presence, detective. — Jennifer Estep

Artists are ... stubborn egomaniacs who are mysteriously - and sometimes correctly - certain that the world needs to know all about the figments of their imaginations and who gear their lives to getting those figments into circulation. — Jon Pareles

Men wanted to be strong. One way to be strong was to be knowledgeable. In so many areas, it was not possible to be knowledgeable without getting a Ph.D. and doing a postdoc. Guns and hunting provided an out for men who wanted to be know-it-alls but who couldn't afford to spend the first three decades of their lives getting up to speed on quantum mechanics or oncology. — Neal Stephenson

The hallucination of separateness prevents one from seeing that to cherish the ego is to cherish misery. We do not realize that our so-called love and concern for the individual is simply the other face of our own fear of death or rejection. In his exaggerated valuation of separate identity, the personal ego is sawing off the branch on which he is sitting, and then getting more and more anxious about the coming crash! — Alan Watts

Sometimes I have a tough time getting along with myself. When I was a child, I needed a lot of attention ... and I don't have a small ego. For me, appearing on a stage or presenting a cake is the same thing. You need a crowd around you to do it. — Ron Ben-Israel

Do you like my working persona?" Saiman asked softly. "An aesthetically pleasing combination of intelligence and elegance, wouldn't you say?"
Aren't we pleased with ourselves. "Are you Chinese, Japanese, half-white? I can't tell, your features are neither here nor there."
"I'm inscrutable, mysterious and intellectual."
He forgot conceited. "Did you have any trouble getting that ego through the door?"
Saiman didn't even blink. "Not in the least. — Ilona Andrews

That ego of yours getting in the way."
"Of what?"
"The perfect package."
He snorted. "Let me tell you, I have the perfect-"
"Don't be gross."
"You have such a dirty mind. I was going to say I'm perfect in all the ways that count. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

In the West, it is the opposite, like you are using these practices [meditation and yoga ] to further your ego by being more productive, being more this, and getting more out of your work and earning more money. In the East, the whole idea is that you are dissolving your essence through these practices. — Karan Bajaj

How long are you planning on us sitting up here, kid?" Brendan asked.
I looked over at him. He sat still, with his head leant back against the rooftop wall, his eyes closed, his hands resting on his lap.
"Sorry, is being here getting in the way of your beauty sleep?"
"I don't need beauty sleep, kid. I'm naturally this good-looking."
I snorted.
"Whatever makes you feel good, Shifter." No point boosting his ego. — Elizabeth Morgan

The feelings that we equate with love-feeling sick, feeling insecure, not eating-that's just lust getting in the way. It's your ego saying, 'I want to get laid' and 'I hope she likes me more than I like her.' Love is something that should be there in 20 years' time. — Simon Cowell

Getting sucked into other people's ego dysfunction & darkness robs you of your own light. — Oprah Winfrey

According to Hugh Thomas, author of 'A History of the World', the greatest medical advance in history has been garbage collection. The greatest psychological advance in history is just around the corner and will also have to do with cleaning up. Cleaning up lies and "coming out of the closet" is getting more attention these days. Some day we will look back on these years of suffocation in bullsh*t in the same way we look back on all the years people lived in, and died from, their garbage. — Brad Blanton

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that I'd stumbled across the kind of man I used to find irresistible, or that he'd managed to stare right inside my brain to locate my weaknesses. The thrill of being wanted while pretending not to be interested was a game I'd played over and over during my youth. I'd grown up since then. I'd done more than my share of getting mixed up with men who were all ego and muscles, and he reminded me exactly why I'd given them up.
Unfortunately, my body hadn't got the memo yet. — Kyra Lennon

Sometimes they would just pay me to stay home and not do anything else, which sounds fantastic but doesn't do much for your ego. Its probably a little like getting alimony-the money is nice but has a nasty aftertaste. — Craig Ferguson

Some people only go to church for the social life. They like having all the friends in church or getting the praises of men by doing certain things, but they don't go there to actually worship God. They go there so others can worship THEM instead. — Lisa Bedrick

The appeal of magic is that it promises to render objects plastic to the will without one's getting too entangled with them. Treated from arm's length, the object can issue no challenge to the self. According to Freud, this is precisely the condition of the narcissist: he treats objects as props for his fragile ego and has an uncertain grasp of them as having a reality of their own. The clearest contrast to the narcissist that I can think of is the repairman, who must subordinate himself to the broken washing machine, listen to it with patience, notice its symptoms, and then act accordingly. He cannot treat it abstractly; the kind of agency he exhibits is not at all magical. — Matthew B. Crawford

What does this patch-sewing mean you ask? Eating and drinking. The heavy cloak of the body is always getting torn. You patch it with food and other ego-satisfactions. — Rumi

Ego stops you from getting things done and getting people to work with you. That's why I firmly believe that ego and success are not compatible. — Harvey MacKay

Art can model the more difficult dynamic of transfiguring one's life, but at some point the dynamic reverses itself: life models, or forces, the existential crisis by which art - great art - is fully experienced. There is a fluidity between art and life, then, in the same way that there is, in the best lives, a fluidity between mind and matter, self and soul, life and death. Experience seems to stream clearly through some lives, rather than getting slowed and clogged up in the drift-waste of ego, or stagnating in little inlets of despair, envy, rage. It has to do with seizing and releasing as a single gesture. It has to do with standing in relation to life and death ... owning an emptiness that, because you have claimed it, has become a source of light, wearing your wound that, like a ramshackle house on some high exposed hill, sings with the hard wind that is steadily destroying it. — Christian Wiman

Everything comes back to the horse, which is why I love it. You put your ego aside, and you concentrate on getting the best performance out of this creature. — Edie Campbell

Drive, ego and cocksureness are all essential elements in terms of getting exactly what you want but losing everything you've got. — Dane Cook

There is who loves you quietly, and respects you quietly, and wishes you privately, and walks away when he sees you busy with someone other than him, and his ego restrains him from getting near you, and contents himself with the love for the sake of love — Nizar Qabbani

The desire to transcend one's own ego boundaries, to share completely, even for a moment, the consciousness of another person must be a universal longing. It motivates many of our activities from taking drugs to making love, and lies behind the search for new ways of getting close to one another that is so intense in our society today. — Andrew Weil

Your ego is gushing all over me and getting my favorite shoes dirty. — Nicole Williams