Our Ego Quotes & Sayings

The universe is bigger than our egos and can supply more than our demand. — Joe Vitale

Ego sends a lot of messages through the sub-conscious that do not serve our true nature, even a little bit. — Taite Adams

Fear inhibits our ability to understand,
doubt our ability to trust,ego hinders the emergence of truth. — I. Alan Appt

Adaptedness) of the conscious mind by adding to it contents of the unconscious, our aim is to create a wider personality whose centre of gravity does not necessarily coincide with the ego, but which, on the contrary, as the patient's insights increase, may even thwart his [sheer] ego-tendencies. Like a magnet, the new centre [i.e., self] attracts to itself that which is proper to it.80 — C. G. Jung

To know God begins with knowing ourselves, our true selves, whom we uncover as we make choices that help us step beyond the influence of the ego. — Peter Santos

But us women, well, we like our egos stroked every once in a while and a boy mourning over us is a huge boost — J.L. Paul

The priest set the flask down on the step and folded his hands. "For the sin of lust you have confessed, mon fils," he said in an easy tone, "you are contrite, n'est-ce-pas?"
Vitor closed his eyes and saw hers before him, sparkling like stars. "Yes."
"For your penance I give you a novena to our Blessed Mother and the task of seeing your brother well matched to a woman who will bring him to heel."
"Only that?" Vitor lifted a brow. "Father, you are too lenient."
The priest drew a cross in the air above his brow. "Ego te absolve a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti."
"Amen."

-Denis & Vitor — Katharine Ashe

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

Hugo and I yield entirely to each other. We cannot be without each other, we cannot endure discord, war, estrangement, we cannot take walks alone, we do not like to travel without each other. We have yielded in spite of our individualism, our hatred of intimacy. We have absorbed our egocentric selves into our love. Our love is our ego. — Anais Nin

When we place our discontented egos on the altar of gratitude, we develop contented altar egos filled with thanksgiving. — Craig Groeschel

Love is the movement within life that carries us, that enables us, that causes us to break out of what Alan Watts calls the "skin-encapsulated ego." Without love, we are self-centered, but love enables us to move the center of our lives outside our ego. Therefore it expands our lives and, needless to say, enriches it. Any human being would give anything to love or be loved. When it really happens, it is like heaven on earth. — Huston Smith

I have from my experience come to the conclusion that Gita has been composed to teach this one truth which I have explained. We can follow truth only in the measure that we shed our attachment to the ego. — Mahatma Gandhi

When our pride usurps Truth, we walk on the shifting sands of relativism, an ego driven reality. — Alisa Hope Wagner

It has nothing to do with age, it's not our languages, religion, gender, coulour of our skin; It's a soul within a well, that echoes deep beneath the ego's shell. True life can't ever start, until we offer up our heart . — Dawud Wharnsby Ali

the art of living is to be found in doing things well: every single action, every single day. In a dualistic world - one of polarities, perceived by our ego as one of separateness, filled with objects and subjects - it means using everything we have, secular and spiritual, to do things well. In this way, we create a life that manifests the divine, creates beauty, and does not seek achievement as its purpose. This requires full attention to everything we do: not making things "right" or perfect, but making them consciously, based in the authentic being we are — Claude Poncelet

Author Martha Beck says of the ego, "Don't leave home without it." But do not let your ego totally run the show, or it will shut down the show. Your ego is a wonderful servant, but it's a terrible master - because the only thing your ego ever wants is reward, reward, and more reward. And since there's never enough reward to satisfy, your ego will always be disappointed. Left unmanaged, that kind of disappointment will rot you from the inside out. An unchecked ego is what the Buddhists call "a hungry ghost" - forever famished, eternally howling with need and greed. Some version of that hunger dwells within all of us. We all have that lunatic presence, living deep within our guts, that refuses to ever be satisfied with anything. I have it, you have it, we all have it. My saving grace is this, though: I know that I am not only an ego; I am also a soul. And I know that my soul doesn't care a whit about reward or failure. — Elizabeth Gilbert

As we know from our government, the more power you have, the more of a bureaucrat you are, and the more ego you have invested in being right, the greater the odds are that you will never change your opinion. — Richard Linklater

Ego contraction, however, prevents precisely the free expansion that enables us to find our connection to spirit. This is often described as the difference between the self and the Self. The self is the isolated ego clinging to its small reality; the Self is the unbounded spirit that can afford not to cling at all. Detachment means that you live from the Self instead of the self. — Deepak Chopra

Fine, then, stay here and keep our seats warm while your ass expands to the size of your ego. (Todd) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

When we accomplish one thing, our ego wants to bask in the glory, though our soul is ready to move on to the next. — S. Kelley Harrell

Healing happens when we recognize that the world our ego sees is a world of projection. The world our soul perceives is a revelation of great truth, love and beauty. — Catherine Carrigan

Humour allows us to see that ultimately things don't make sense. The only thing that truly makes sense is letting go of anything we continue to hold on to. Our ego-mind and emotions are a dramatic illusion. Of course, we all feel that they're real: my drama, your drama, our confrontations. We create these elaborate scenarios and then react to them. But there is nothing really happening outside our mind! This is karma's cosmic joke. You can laugh about the irony of this, or you can stick with your scenario. It's your choice. — Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

To a realized master, death and rebirth is in every breath. Death is that of body consciousness, ego and limits of the mind. Rebirth is that of the cosmic mind of being the Spirit. In this realization is liberation.

When awake as liberated, each prayer and each moment of meditation is for humanity as there is no more individual ego or identity left. Such realized masters continually gift humanity with the grace of higher consciousness- so that each of us attain our fullest potential in goodness. — Nandhiji

[Duration is] the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former state. — Henri Bergson

Some studies of successful language learners have suggested that they're more "open to new experiences" than the rest of us. Temptingly, psychologist Alexander Guiora proposed that we have a self that's bound up in our native language, a "language ego", which needs to be loose and more permeable to learn a new language. Those with more fluid ego boundaries, like children and people who have drunk some alcohol, are more willing to sound not like themselves, which means they have better accents in the new language. — Michael Erard

Ego can't sleep. It micro-manages. It disempowers. It reduces our capability. It excels in control. — Robert K. Greenleaf

Until the ego dissolves or evolves to become one with our true self, we remain slaves of our own egos. — Assegid Habtewold

To awaken within the dream is our purpose now. When we are awake within the dream, the ego-created earth-drama comes to an end and a more benign and wondrous dream arises. This is the new earth. — Eckhart Tolle

Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more. The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease. It is the same dysfunction the cancerous cell manifests, whose only goal is to multiply itself, unaware that it is bringing about its own destruction by destroying the organism of which it is a part. Some economists are so attached to the notion of growth that they can't let go of that word, so they refer to recession as a time of "negative growth". — Eckhart Tolle

Sometimes we can take offense so easily. On other occasions we are too stubborn to accept a sincere apology. Who will subordinate ego, pride, and hurt-then step forward with 'I am truly sorry! Let's be as we once were: friends. Let's not pass to future generations the grievances, the anger of our time'? Let's remove any hidden wedges that can do nothing but destroy. — Thomas S. Monson

The truth is that we are a part of God. God could not have created anything except out of his own consciousness. We're all his dream, and our duty in life that God has assigned to us, that the universe has placed squarely in our laps, is to find out who we really are. "Gnothi seauton," as the Greeks used to say. "Know thyself." But to know thyself, if you trace it back, to the deeper and deeper levels, you discover that that self is not your body or your ego or your personality or your country or anything, that's just a sack of self-definitions that you carry around with you — Goswami Kriyananda

When we meditate, we go beyond the swirl of thoughts, memories and emotions that tend to keep us stuck in our ego's story of who we are. We enter an expanded state of awareness and discover our own inner fountain of joy, a source of happiness that isn't dependent on anyone or anything. — Deepak Chopra

Every time we open one door, we close another. It's lovely to spend Sunday morning with our new love, cooking breakfast and taking a walk together. But in the midst of our happiness, we may feel nostalgia for our former Sunday morning ritual of uninterrupted time alone at a favorite restaurant reading the newspaper. We need to acknowledge the presence of both excitement and loss, to feel their rhythm as they ebb and flow through a new relationship. If we try to deny our losses, they lead to resentments, a gnawing discomfort, and a desire to withdraw.

Yet we also need to remind our ego that love means letting go of our entrenched rituals, of comparing, of wanting life to stay the same...Entering a relationship and living in the heart of the Beloved means our life will change, our shells will crack open and we will never be the same again. — Charlotte Kasl

Granted, the Scott Paper story is one of the more dramatic in our study, but it's not an isolated case. In over two thirds of the comparison cases, we noted the presence of a gargantuan personal ego that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company.33 — James C. Collins

The point of self-reflection is, foremost, to clarify and to find honesty. Self-reflection is the way to throw self-lies out and face the truth - however painful it might be to admit that you were wrong. We seek consistency in ourselves, and so when we are faced with inconsistency, we struggle to deny. Denial has no place in self-reflection, and so it is incumbent upon a person to admit his errors, to embrace them and to move along in a more positive direction. We can fool ourselves for all sorts of reasons. Mostly for the sake of our ego, of course, but sometimes, I now understand, because we are afraid. For sometimes we are afraid to hope, because hope breeds expectation, and expectation can lead to disappointment. And — R.A. Salvatore

Perhaps the most powerful Tollean insight into the ego was that it is obsessed with the past and the future, at the expense of the present. We "live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation," he wrote. We wax nostalgic for prior events during which we were doubtless ruminating or projecting. We cast forward to future events during which we will certainly be fantasizing. But as Tolle pointed out, it is, quite literally, always Now. (He liked to capitalize the word.) The present moment is all we've got. We experienced everything in our past through the present moment, and we will experience everything in the future the same way. — Dan Harris

I happen to believe that America is dying of loneliness, that we, as a people, have bought into the false dream of convenience, and turned away from a deep engagement with our internal lives - those fountains of inconvenient feeling - and toward the frantic enticements of what our friends in the Greed Business call the Free Market. We're hurtling through time and space and information faster and faster, seeking that network connection. But at the same time we're falling away from our families and our neighbors and ourselves. We ego-surf and update our status and brush up on which celebrities are ruining themselves, and how. But the cure won't stick. — Cheryl Strayed

In this world, man has two significant possessions: intelligence and emotion. These two possessions govern our day-to-day life. But very often we see that emotion (ego) gets the upper hand in our life. We know that even if someone is extremely intelligent, when his emotion comes to the fore it will devour him. He is compelled to do what his emotion asks him to do. — Sri Chinmoy

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper. — D.H. Lawrence

Fundamentally there is just open space, the basic ground, what we really are. Our most fundamental state of mind, before the creation of ego, is such that there is basic openness, basic freedom, a spacious quality; and we have now and have always had this openness. Take, for example, our everyday lives and thought patterns. When we see an object, in the first instant there is a sudden perception which has no logic or conceptualization to it at all; we just perceive the thing in the open ground. Then immediately we panic and begin to rush about trying to add something to it, either trying to find a name for it or trying to find pigeonholes in which we could locate and categorize it. Gradually things develop from there. This development does not take the shape of a solid entity. Rather, this development is illusory, the mistaken belief in a "self" or "ego." Confused mind is inclined to view itself as a solid, ongoing thing, but it is only a collection of tendencies, events. — Chogyam Trungpa

The only reason why we are always thinking of our own ego is that we have to live with it more continuously than with anyone else's. — Cesare Pavese

Consider how many times you have gossiped about the person you love the most to gain the support of others for your point of view. How many times have you hooked other people's attention, and spread poison about your loved one in order to make your opinion right? Your opinion is nothing but your point of view. It is not necessarily true. Your opinion comes from your beliefs, your own ego, and your own dream. We create all this poison and spread it to others just so we can feel right about our own point of view. — Miguel Ruiz

Who was responsible for this fear of the feminine that could only be described as acute collective paranoia? We could say: Of course, men were responsible. But then why in many ancient pre-Christian civilizations such as the Sumerian, Egyptian, and Celtic were women respected and the feminine principle not feared but revered? What is it that suddenly made men feel threatened by the female? The evolving ego in them. It knew it could gain full control of our planet only through the male form, and to do so, it had to render the female powerless. — Eckhart Tolle

Often we take personally the slings and arrows of our 'abusers'. But frequently we are merely the interchangeable pawns of their own neurotic dramas. Anyone else in your position would have received the same treatment. There is nothing especially noxious or negatively noteworthy about you. — Brian L. Weiss

The aim of far too many teachings these days is to make people "feel good," and even some Buddhist masters are beginning to sound like New Age apostles. Their talks are entirely devoted to validating the manifestation of ego and endorsing the "rightness" of our feelings, neither of which have anything to do with the teachings we find in the pith instructions. So, if you are only concerned about feeling good, you are far better off having a full body massage or listening to some uplifting or life-affirming music than receiving dharma teachings, which were definitely not designed to cheer you up. On the contrary, the dharma was devised specifically to expose your failings and make you feel awful. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

Sometimes it seems that half of the fairy tales of the world are some form of Cinderella, ugly duckling, or poor boy story, telling of the little person who has no power or possessions who ends up being king or queen, prince or princess. We write it off as wishful dreaming, when it is actually the foundational pattern of disguise or amnesia, loss, and recovery. Every Beauty is sleeping, it seems, before it can meet its Prince. The duckling must be "ugly," or there will be no story. The knight errant must be wounded, or he will never even know what the Holy Grail is, much less find it. Jesus must be crucified, or there can be no resurrection. It is written in our hardwiring, but can only be heard at the soul level. It will usually be resisted and opposed at the ego level. — Richard Rohr

If this constant sliding and hiding of meaning were true of conscious life, then we would of course never be able to speak coherently at all. If the whole of language were present to me when I spoke, then I would not be able to articulate anything at all. The ego, or consciousness, can therefore only work by repressing this turbulent activity, provisionally nailing down words on to meanings. Every now and then a word from the unconscious which I do not want insinuates itself into my discourse, and this is the famous Freudian slip of the tongue or parapraxis. But for Lacan all our discourse is in a sense a slip of the tongue: if the process of language is as slippery and ambiguous as he suggests, we can never mean precisely what we say and never say precisely what we mean. Meaning is always in some sense an approximation, a near-miss, a part-failure, mixing non-sense and non-communication into sense and dialogue. — Terry Eagleton

So many of us have separated ourselves from our source and have lived on ego consciousness. — Wayne Dyer

How sweet it is to let God purge our souls of ego and bitterness, and to have a little taste of heaven here on earth. — Marilyn Nelson

if we were to give up our problem we wouldn't know who we would be without it. That's because the ego convinces us that we're nobody without our special problems. — Loretta Siani

To put it simply, my mother worried. She worried about our neighbors' reactions. Would they break me with their disparaging glances, their cruel intolerance? She worried I was just like every other teenage girl, all tender heart and fragile ego. She worried I was more myth and figment than flesh and blood. She worried about my calcium levels, my protein levels, even my reading levels. She worried she couldn't protect me from all of the things that had hurt her: loss and fear, pain and love. Most especially from love. — Leslye Walton

To develop strong ego boundaries, children need parents with strong boundaries. No shame-based parent has these. Toxic shame greatly damages our boundaries. Without strong boundaries for protection, a child cannot thrive. Having damaged boundaries is like living in a house without locks on the doors. — John Bradshaw

We must realize that we are all, like Dr. Faust, ready to accept the devil's inducements. The devil is in each one of us in the form of an ego that promises the fulfillment of desire on condition that we become subservient to its striving to dominate. The domination of the personality by the ego is a diabolical perversion of the nature of man. The ego was never intended to be the master of the body, but its loyal and obedient servant. The body, as opposed to the ego, desires pleasure, not power. Bodily pleasure is the source from which all our good feelings and good thinking stems. If the bodily pleasure of an individual is destroyed, he becomes an angry, frustrated, and hateful person. His thinking becomes distorted, and his creative potential is lost. He develops self-destructive attitudes. — Alexander Lowen

Words, like anything else used too often, soon depreciate in value, lose their edge, and cease to bite into our lives. When phrases, such as unconditional love, trip too easily off the tongue, the speaker's ego may experience a temporary rush of exhilaration using an in salvation slogan, but his heart remains unchanged. — Brennan Manning

Complexity serves nothing but our ego. Be able to say what you do in a way that people can understand. — Chris Brogan

The law of karma is neither fatalistic nor punitive; nor is man a hapless, helpless victim in its bonds. God has blessed each one of us with reason, intellect and discrimination, as well as the sovereign free will. Even when our past karma inclines us toward evil, we can consciously tune our inclination towards detachment and ego-free action, thus lightening the karmic load. — Dada Vaswani

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

When it comes to the education of our young, this privilege should only be given to those whose visions are solely in the uplifting benefit of the child. There is no room for the ego in the education of children! Children should not be looked after, nor educated, by those who have not made a sacrifice within their hearts, laying down their own personal agenda and dreams, for the total ascension of the child. Even if you are to educate the children simply sitting under a tree; if you have the vision and the heart of a sage, those children will grow to be mighty men and women under your watch! And even if you wine and dine the children, putting them up in a palace; if you do not have the vision and the selfless heart of a sage, all you do is in utter vanity! — C. JoyBell C.

Life is sacred. Life is art. Life is sacred art. The art of sacred living means being a holy actor, acting from the soul rather than the ego. The soul is out of space and time and hence always available, an ever-present potential of our being. It is up to each of us to celebrate and to actualize our being and to turn each meal, conversation, outfit, letter, and so on, into art. Every mundane activity is an opportunity for full authentic self-expression. The soul is our artistic self, our capacity for transforming every dimension of our lives into art and theater. — Gabrielle Roth

The trouble is that the whole 'accept Christ' attitude is likely to be wrong. It shows Christ applying to us rather than us to him. It makes him stand hat-in-hand awaiting our verdict on him, instead of our kneeling with troubled hearts awaiting his verdict on us. It may even permit us to accept Christ by an impulse of mind or emotions, painlessly, at no loss to our ego and no inconvenience to our usual way of life. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Our real beliefs are generally not to be found at the level of ego. — Peter Rollins

We are all actors, set on the stage of the world, as the curtains open we put on our best performance to this audience of life. — Anthony Liccione

It's the band that really counts and not our egos. Egos probably destroyed more bands than anything else did, and that's something we want to avoid at all costs. We want to give the audience something real, something spectacular, and if it would be about egos, it would hardly be worth their time. — Chester Bennington

Our ego is our silent partner ... too often with a controlling interest. — Cullen Hightower

I get pretty terrified, to be honest, when I'm on tour. You really have to muster a lot of ego to go our there, which I find rather draining. — Michael Hutchence

We must learn to outgrow our egos in exchange for constructive dialogue rather than debate. In addition, we must be capable of stating problems and proposing solutions clearly and succinctly, without distortion of meaning or misunderstanding, even when these solutions are radically opposed to accepted norms. — Jacque Fresco

We are not the personalities that our egos are so valiantly defending. Our personalities are simply the result of our current programming. — Ken Keyes Jr.

Our ideas of self are created by identification. The less we cling to ideas of self, the freer and happier we will be. — Jack Kornfield

No one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellow man. Service to others is akin to duty, the fulfillment of which brings true joy. We do not live alone - in our city, our nation, or our world. There is no dividing line between our prosperity and our neighbor's wretchedness. 'Love they neighbor' is more than a divine truth. It is a pattern for perfection. — Thomas S. Monson

The ego-drama is nothing compared with the theo-drama. The fun begins when we let God write our stories. — Robert Barron

Relationships are a development and a dance between our inner male and female sides. A one-sided development of the male side leads to ego, struggle, destructivity and a separation from life.
A one-sided development of our female side leads to dependence and passivity. It is when we have developed a balance and harmony between both our male and female side that a new spark of joy, creativity and wholeness arises within ourselves. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Our vast collections of knowledge and experience are just part of ego's display, part of the grandiose quality of ego. We display them to the world and, in so doing, reassure ourselves that we exist, safe and secure, as "spiritual" people. — Chogyam Trungpa

We human beings are born in ego, live in ego, are brought up in ego and will die in ego. We need a certain degree 0f vision when we live in this world for achieving and attaining our goals in life. — Mata Amritanandamayi

For 10 years, I'd been working as a freelance writer and editor, making money but not a living. It was a good arrangement family-wise, allowing me to stay home with our daughter, but not so great financially or, sometimes, ego-wise. — Will Allison

The problem in our society is the ego psychology and conventional wisdom about "look out for #1." That conventional wisdom thinks that "love your enemy" is to some a principle no one can ever live by. — Robert Thurman

The pathologized images have moved the soul in several ways: we are afraid; we feel vulnerable and in danger; our very physical sustance and sanity appear to be menaced; we want to prevent or rectify. Especially this last seizes us. We feel protective, impelled to correct, straighten, repair. For we have confused something sick with something wrong. [ ... ]
affliction reaches us partly through the guilt it brings. Guilt belongs to the experiences of deviation, the the sense of being off, failing, 'missing the mark'. [ ... ]
However the true missing of the mark is taking the guilt literally, where failings becomes faults to be set right. This places the guilt on the shoulders of the ego who 'should not' have failed. Then pathologizing reinforces the ego's style and guilt serves a secondary gain, increasing the ego's sense of importance: ego becomes superego, drivenly busy with repairing wrongs. A guilty ego is no less egocentric than a proud one. — James Hillman

Awe is the moment when ego surrenders to wonder. This is our inheritance - the beauty before us. We cry. We cry out. There is nothing sentimental about facing the desert bare. It is a terrifying beauty. — Terry Tempest Williams

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. ~ Anton Ego, Ratatouille — Walt Disney Company

When the glory of God is the treasure of our lives, we will not lay up treasures on earth, but spend them for the spread of his glory. We will not covet, but overflow with liberality. We will not crave the praise of men, but forget ourselves in praising God. We will not be mastered by sinful, sensual pleasures, but sever their root by the power of a superior promise. We will not will nurse a wounded ego or cherish a grudge or nurture a vengeful spirit, but will hand over our cause to God and bless those who hate us. Every sin flows from the failure to treasure the glory of God above all things. — John Piper

The ego is our pain, but it is what we know and we resist moving out of it. The effort it takes to grow out of painful patterns often feels more uncomfortable than remaining within them. Personal growth can be so painful because it can make us ashamed and humiliated to face our own darkness. But the goal of personal growth is the journey out of dark emotional patterns which cause us pain to those which cause us peace. — Marianne Williamson

Seeing the faults of others is indeed an echo of our own fault; the biggest fault is our own fault. That is known as the mad ego. — Dada Bhagwan

The source of wisdom and power, of love and beauty, is within ourselves, but not within our egos. It is within our consciousness. Indeed, its presence provides us with a conscious contrast which enables us to speak of the ego as if it were something different and apart: it is the true Self whereas the ego is only an illusion of the mind. — Paul Brunton

It's always a fun collaboration with my brother. I'm very fortunate to be able to work with him. There's an honesty to collaboration. There's a lack of a gender or ego in our conversations. And so you can really throw anything around. — Christopher Nolan

Our insistence on being different from everything around us is one of the greatest mistakes of mankind. We stubbornly maintain an illusory distinction that sets us apart from rock and ice, water and fire, plant and animal. Both religion and rationality try to explain it through an elaborate vocabulary of separation - soul, atman, spirit, ghosts in the machine or simply the idea of selfhood. We have dreamed up gods so that we can reassure ourselves that somewhere, someday, somehow, after this life is over, something awaits us: a presence that recognizes who we are. But if we approach a mountain instead, accepting that we are nothing more or less than an integral part of its existence, our ego merges with the nature of the mountain. In — Stephen Alter

Our greatest fear is that we will lose the love in our life ... that we will be abandoned, left alone, bereaved, misunderstood, deprived, hated and rejected ... but we can never be OUT OF LOVE. We are love and if our minds separate ourselves from who we really are it is a painful delusion. Ego personalities, including our own, might separate ourselves from love but love never dies because it is what we are made of. — Susan Mitchell

The more successful you become, the more the demands of your ego will increase. In the beginning, you simply want to succeed, but your ego will not be satisfied. When you become a little more successful your ego wants to kill your competition. And when you become even more successful, it wants to make you the universal king. There's no telling what ego wants because our desire doesn't have any limit; therefore, its demands continually increase. — Gelek Rimpoche

Imagination paints a charming view of the future, conveniently adapted to the demands of our current emotion. — John Armstrong

We are all children of one God and the only thing that separates us is our ego — Kapil Kumar Bhaskar

There are two things you need to ask for, to open up that channel, so you get the light. One is humility, because our ego is always going to block that guidance, and so you ask for humility.And the second thing you're going to ask for is courage, because what you're going to be asked to do is bigger than what you think you can do. — Sandra Cisneros

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ... each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition
all such distortions within our own egos
condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts. — Tennessee Williams

The creative act is also in a small way a suffering act - we start out with our ego, this hope of making this thing whatever it be, but so often it eludes us and it collapses and we kind of regress into this mental suffering, we can't find what we're looking for. — Michael Leunig

Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment. It dethrones the ego from the center of our lives and puts others there, breaking down the carapace of the selfishness that holds us back from an experience of the sacred. And it gives us ecstasy, broadening our perspectives and giving us a larger, enhanced vision. — Karen Armstrong

The ultimate test is always your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build our personal problems right into the machine.
The machine responds to your personality. It's just that the personality that it responds to is your real personality, the one that genuinely feels and reasons and acts, rather than any false, blown up personality images your ego may conjure up. These false images are defaulted so rapidly and completely you're bound to be very discouraged very soon if you've derived your gumption from ego rather than Quality.
The real machine you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be out there and the person that appears to be in here are not 2 separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together. — Robert M. Pirsig

If we constantly apply ourselves to meditation practice during the course of our lives, we may be able, though with some difficulty, to strip away all the supports that maintain the illusion of the ego-self. However, the material fabric of the ego's support-bot the world and the physical body-is destroyed by death and all contact with its "friends" is severed. Now the mind is truly left to its own devices and its experience of reality is much more direct and immediate. The worldly concerns which formerly served as the support of the ego have all been stripped away and the insubstantial nature of its condition has been exposed in all its falsity. It was never really real at all, and the awesome power of this truth may strike the consciousness like a bombshell! — Stephen Hodge

The world' is man's experience as it appears to, and is moulded by, his ego. It is that less abundant life, which is lived according to the dictates of the insulated self. It is nature denatured by the distorting spectacles of our appetites and revulsions. It is the finite divorced from the Eternal. It is multiplicity in isolation from its non-dual Ground. It is time apprehended as one damned thing after another. It is a system of verbal categories taking the place of the fathomlessly beautiful and mysterious particulars which constitute reality. It is a notion labelled 'God'. It is the Universe equated with the words of our utilitarian vocabulary. — Aldous Huxley

It's tempting to tether ourselves to the familiar comfort of the way things are, but fulfillment is often discovered in the unpredictable and unknown. We can serve ourselves and our universe, best, when we can take the journey that takes us from the limited desire of our ego, to the ever-expanding love and wisdom, of our divine nature. — Jaeda DeWalt

This is where we are at right now, as a whole. No one is left out of the loop. We are experiencing a reality based on a thin veneer of lies and illusions. A world where greed is our God and wisdom is sin, where division is key and unity is fantasy, where the ego-driven cleverness of the mind is praised, rather than the intelligence of the heart. — Bill Hicks

The problem is that we have allowed our egos, the part of us which believes that we are separate from God and separate from each other, to dominate our lives. — Wayne Dyer

The worldly life has arisen through the ego. One is indeed free if the ego dissolves. What is the foundation on which the ego stands? It is the ignorance of the Self. — Dada Bhagwan

Our life force is a form of flowing energy, a blast of verve renewed through our ongoing daily interactions and the inevitable collisions between the id and the ego. — Kilroy J. Oldster