Our True Selves Quotes & Sayings

We all want to be someone else. And sometimes we succeed in convincing ourselves we can be.
But it doesn't last, and our true selves, broken and scarred, always win out in the end. — Sara Gran

The agony of this chronic stage of being cannot be endured for long. At the deepest level, toxic shame triggers our basic automatic defensive cover-ups. Freud called these automatic cover-ups our primary ego defenses. Once these defenses are in place they function automatically and unconsciously, sending our true and authentic selves into hiding. We develop a false identity out of this basic core. We become master impersonators. We avoid our core agony and pain and over a period of years, we avoid our avoidance. — John Bradshaw

Each of us is here to discover our true selves; that essentially we
are spiritual beings who have taken manifestation in physical form;
that we're not human beings that have occasional spiritual experiences,
that we're spiritual beings that have occasional human experiences — Deepak Chopra

When the light of God's truth begins to find its way through the mists of illusion and self-deception with which we have unconsciously surrounded ourselves, and when the image of God within us begins to return to itself, the false self which we inherited from Adam begins to experience the strange panic that Adam felt when, after his sin, he hid in the trees of the garden because he heard the voice of the Lord God in the afternoon.
If we are to recover our own identity, and return to God by the way Adam came in his fall, we must learn to stop saying: "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked. And I hid." [Genesis 2:10] We must cast away the "aprons of leaves" and the "garments of skins" which the Fathers of the Church variously interpret as passions, and attachments to earthly things, and fixation in our own rigid determination to be someone other than our true selves. — Thomas Merton

When we love God because we feel we SHOULD love him, instead of genuinely love out of our true selves, we have forgotten who God really is. — Francis Chan

Generally, the longer it takes for us to make a decision, the greater the disconnect between our current experience of life and our true selves. — Elaina Marie

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

We are not inviting - we are guarded. Most of our energy is spent trying to hide our true selves, and control our worlds to have some sense of security. — John Eldredge

We all serve the illusion from time to time, but when we are able to see through it, we become open to reality. Then and only then can we understand and know our true selves and our purpose in life. — Gary Markwick

It is as if we have been wandering in a foreign land looking for peace and purpose in our lives and a true sense of who we are. Jesus stands in our midst and beckons us home so that we can be restored to our true selves. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Unraveling external selves and coming home to our real identity is the true meaning of soul work. — Sue Monk Kidd

Some of being an adult, though, is about protecting and preserving what we discover to be the best parts of ourselves, and here's a hint: they're almost always the parts we've struggled against for years. They make us weird or different, unusual but not in a good way. They're our child-sides, our innate selves, not the most productive or competitive or logical, just true. — Shauna Niequist

We are either becoming more of our true selves or drifting into a false self. In — Jeff Goins

Prayer, true prayer, does not allow us to deceive ourselves. It relaxes the tension of our self-inflation. It produces a clearness of spiritual vision. . . . It saps our self-deception and its Pharisaism. . . . So by prayer we acquire our true selves."242 — Timothy J. Keller

I think that even in this place we ought to live as if we had no wishes and no future, and just be our true selves. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

...A huge "army" of immature guys with blinders over their eyes, looking for UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, are going nowhere. Such men are all ending up to be eternal dating losers, because they are simply wasting huge amounts of effort, trying hard and hoping to find something that does not exist on the planet.
To achieve the goal of personal happiness, we have to be honest with ourselves first of all. We need to be brave enough and smart enough to look into the mirror at our true selves, without our comfortable masks of lies or hypocrisy.

LET'S FACE IT:
There are always reasons why we feel love for another person; we don't love someone for no reason at all. We love them for the qualities they possess, which we admire; for those amazing, bright emotions they evoke from within ourselves; for the love and care that we so acceptingly receive from them; and for what good feelings we experience being around them, etc.

Be HONEST with yourself! — Sahara Sanders

The true beauty of nature is her amplitude; she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our nuclear arsenals cannot threaten (much as we can easily destroy our puny selves). — Stephen Jay Gould

The more deeply we are our true selves,
the less self is in us. — Meister Eckhart

He was not a likeable figure but then when you are a part of a family, you cannot wish to see someone wither away even when you dislike him. He is a part of your blood, he and all his idiosyncrasies. There is always a tinge of warmth in the corner of your heart, reminiscent of the good times spent together. Then there are always those moments, when you wonder why everything turned out so different. When you wonder what possibly could hold people together, if not the fact that they come from the same blood? Or are we just not born to be that way? Craving to be something that we cannot be, each with our own false ceilings to hide our true selves? — Amit Sharma

The root cause of loneliness is not the absence of another, but the absence of the awareness of our connection to our true divine selves. - Swati Nigam — Bryant McGill

To gain a true understanding of human experience, we must understand both our conscious and our unconscious selves, and how they interact. Our subliminal brain is invisible to us, yet it influences our conscious experience of the world in the most fundamental of ways: how we view ourselves and others, the meanings we attach to the everyday events of our lives, our ability to make the quick judgment calls and decisions that can sometimes mean the difference between life and death, and the actions we engage in as a result of all these instinctual experiences. — Leonard Mlodinow

We must become reacquainted with our true human selves. — Bryant McGill

Revelations help us accept the things we need the most, expose the secrets we so desperately try to hide and illuminate the dangers all around us. But more than anything, revelations are windows into our true selves... of the good and the evil and those wavering somewhere in between. But they have the ultimate power to destroy all that we cherish most. — Emily Thorne

Through reflection, awakening, and choice we are able to exist as our true selves. However, this is not the end. In order for us to realize and put into practice the life purpose we have chosen, endless choices await us. — Ilchi Lee

That our selves and all men are apt and prone to differ it is no new Thing in all former Ages in all parts of this World in these parts and in our deare native Countrey and mournfull state of England.
That either part of partie is most right in his owne eye his Cause Right his Cariage Right, his Argumts Right his Answeres Right is as woefully and constantly true as the former. And experience tells us that when the God of peace hath taken peace from the Earth one sparke of Action word or Cariage is too too powrefull to kindle such a fire as burns up Families Townes Cities Armies, Navies Nations and Kingdomes.
[Letter of Roger Williams to Town of Providence, March 28, 1648] — Roger Williams

Ultimately the body will rebel. Even if it can be temporarily pacified with the help of drugs, cigarettes or medicine, it usually has the last word because it is quicker to see through self-deception than the mind. We may ignore or deride the messages of the body, but its rebellion demands to be heeded because its language is the authentic expression of our true selves and of the strength of our vitality. — Alice Miller

Mom? What's that noise. Are you in a room full of ghosts? "No it's my Clairvoyant Certification Course. We're learning to connect with our true selves. — Katie Delahanty

You'd help if you could, wouldn't you, boy?" I said. "It's no wonder they call you man's best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the truest friend we ever have known, a better friend than we deserve. You have thrown in your lot with us, through thick and thin, on battlefield and hearthrug, refusing to leave your master even when death and destruction lie all around. Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by- — Connie Willis

Or maybe I was trying to break out of my skin, thinking about how my parents had been actors in roles and the roles were to be my father and mother-and the reason I could see those as roles was that in such extremes, in private, they must have let down their guard and expressed their doubts, their fears, the extent of their despair or hopelessness as our situation worsened and the world revealed the outlines of its true harshness. But because of me, there were whole eternities of hours each day when they had to pretend otherwise, and how I wish I could go back and tell them not to do that. That all I wanted was to see their true selves, remember their true selves. — Jeff VanderMeer

I believe one of our souls' major purposes is to know, love, and express our authentic selves. To live the life and be the person we were created to be. However, our true selves only emerge when it's safe to do so. Self-condemnation, shame, and guilt send your true nature into hiding. It's only in the safety of gentle curiosity, encouragement, and self-love that your soul can bloom as it was created to do. — Sue Thoele

We discover our true selves in love. — Thomas Merton

Manliness has been defined as assertion of the self. Womanliness has been defined as the nurturing of selves other than our own - even if we quite lose our own in the process. (Women are supposed to find in this loss their true fulfillment.) But every individual person is born both to assert herself or himself and to act out a sympathy for others trying to find themselves - in Christian terms, meant to love one's self as one loves others ... Jesus never taught that we should split up that commandment - assigning 'love yourself' to men, 'love others' to women. But society has tried to. — Barbara Deming

The mind is a mass of contradictions and conflicts. We lie to make others trust us. We hide our true selves in the pursuit of intimacy. We chase happiness in ways that drive happiness away. When we're wrong we fight the hardest to prove we're right. Caught — John Verdon

The best gift we can give other people is our whole selves in truth. By doing so we give them a true and accurate mirror that allows them to see themselves. We also give ourselves the best opportunity to grow. — A.C. Ping

If God is inside our nature and our history, he can take over our lives. What is an opportunity for believers - finding freedom in surrendering our lives and our selves to God - is overwhelming and demeaning for others. And it is true that to invite Jesus into one's life is to be changed. Christ breaks down our defenses, including the habits of ordinary life. — Francis George

The inspired life is living life in deepest connection with our true selves, acting on what we truly need, want and desire, and basing happiness on what is in our control. — Elaina Marie

The most important gift we can give ourselves is the commitment to living our authentic life. To be true to ourselves, however, is not an easy task. We must break free of the seductions of society and live life on our own terms, under our own values and aligned with our original dreams. We must tap our hidden selves; explore the deep-seated, unseen hopes, desires, strengths and weaknesses that make us who we are. We have to understand where we have been and know where we are going. — Robin S. Sharma

We create false selves, hoping to control how other people treat us, all the while keeping our true selves hidden. To ensure we are not hurt again, we push relationships aside - including our relationship with God - or pretend to be someone who's stronger, more intelligent, more faithful, and more respectable. The end result is that our lives are based on lies and that real joy and peace will forever escape us. — Chad H. Young

Our spiritual traditions have carried virtues across time. They are tools for the art of living. They are pieces of intelligence about human behavior that neuroscience is now exploring with new words and images: what we practice, we become. What's true of playing the piano or throwing a ball also holds for our capacity to move through the world mindlessly and destructively or generously and gracefully. I've come to think of virtues and rituals as spiritual technologies for being our best selves in flesh and blood, time and space. There are superstar virtues that come most readily to mind and can be the work of a day or a lifetime - love, compassion, forgiveness. And there are gentle shifts of mind and habit that make those possible, working patiently through the raw materials of our lives. — Krista Tippett

Writing is mysterious, and it's supposed to be ... any path that gets you there is a good path in the end. But one true thing among all these paths is the need to tap a deep vein of connection between our own uncontrollable interior preoccupations and what we're most concerned about in the world around us. We write in response to that world; we write in response to what we read and learn; and in the end we write out of our deepest selves, the live, breathing, bleeding place where the picture forms, and where it all begins. — Andrea Barrett

If we hold tightly to anything given to us unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used we stunt the growth of the soul. What God gives us is not necessarily "ours" but only ours to offer back to him, ours to relinguish, ours to lose, ours to let go of, if we want to be our true selves. Many deaths must go into reaching our maturity in Christ, many letting goes. — Elisabeth Elliot

When the soul opens its shell, it liberates the fundamental center that is the spirit. And once born, the spirit spreads its wings and flies with all the freedom of love, going to nestle in the heart where resides true Divine love. Love is God in full flight, and it is found inside our own selves. It is the bird coming back to its nest, the spirit returning to its reality, and the creature to the Creator, all coming together in the domain of the One who is and always was. — Alex Polari De Alverga

Only by glaring into the depths of ones own reflection can we find our true selves. It is here where the mirrored voices of our souls speak and can be heard. — Paul Morabito

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking our words more seriously and discovering their true selves. — Henri Nouwen

He means to rename us
to return us to our true names, our truest selves. He means to heal our soul holes. From the very beginning, that Eden beginning, that has always been and always is, to this day, His secret purpose
our return to 'our full glory'. — Ann Voskamp

What I have learned lately is that people deal with death in all sorts of ways. Some of us fight against it, doing everything we can to make it not true. Some of us lose our selves to grief. Some of us lose ourselves to anger. — Carrie Jones

Sometimes we represent our weakness as if it were bad. We don't think it's okay to be weak ... We have been injured in many ways and our real self houses all of the evidence of those injuries. The pain, the brokenness and the emotional underdevelopment we all possess is part of who we really are. — Henry Cloud

Our true selves have scared people away. So we sometimes give them someone else to love unconditionally before introducing them. — Darnell Lamont Walker

When we do align with it, we thrive. And when we do not, we suffer. This is not "punishment." It is merely the Law of Cause and Effect. With each thought we think, we either align with universal love, or we disconnect ourselves from it. Whichever is our choice determines whether we then feel connected to, or disconnected, from our own true Selves. — Marianne Williamson

I've come to believe in some kind of afterlife. A return to our true selves, a spirit self. We're just in this physical body till we go back to spirit. — Kent Haruf

Emotional intimacy is most meaningful and profoundly felt when we share our true selves with our partner and when we create a loving space for our partner to do the same. — Elaina Marie

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We camouflage our true being before others to protect ourselves against criticism or rejection. This protection comes at a steep price ... we are misunderstood. When we are misunderstood, especially by family and friends, we join the 'lonely crowd.' Worse ... we tend to lose touch with our real selves. — Sidney Jourard

Introspection makes our conscious motives and strategies transparent to us, while we have no sure means of deciphering them in others. Yet we never genuinely know our true selves. We remain largely ignorant of the actual unconscious determinants of our behavior, and therefore we cannot accurately predict what our behavior will be in circumstances beyond the safety zone of our past experience. The Greek motto "Know thyself," when applied to the minute details of our behavior, remains an inaccessible ideal. Our "self" is just a database that gets filled in through our social experiences, in the same format with which we attempt to understand other minds, and therefore it is just as likely to include glaring gaps, misunderstandings, and delusions. — Stanislas Dehaene

First letter : The power of authenticity

The most important gift we can give ourselves is the commitment to living our authentic life. To be true to ourselves, however is not an easy task. We must break free of the seductions of society and live life on our own terms, under our own values and aligned with our original dreams. We must tap our hidden selves; explore the deep seated, unseen hopes, desires, strength and weakness the make us who we are. We have to understand where we have been and know where we are going. Every decision we make, every step we take, must be informed by our commitment to living a life that is true and honest and authentic to ourselves and ourselves alone. And as we proceed, we are certain to experience fortune well beyond our highest imagination. — Robin S. Sharma

Sometimes it's only in the ecstasy of unrepressed movement that we may enter the stillness of our authentic selves. In such sacred moments, the world seems to be in step. This is why the idea of finding love across the dance floor endure - symbolizing that, when we know the true rhythm of our heart, we know the other. — Alexandra Katehakis

Generally we waste our lives, distracted from our true selves, in endless activity. Meditation is the way to bring us back to ourselves, where we can really experience and taste our full being. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Women's evolution at this time is demanding that we go beneath the obsession about counting calories and losing weight, and reclaim our sacredness as women, our right to our own voices and our ability to make our own choices. Until we can do this with the most fundamental issue of food and body, we will be forever stuck in an obsession that keeps us from our true selves. — Carol Emery Normandi

In a world trying to increasingly isolate us from our environment and our true selves, books are our route to freedom, and to each other'. — Matt Haig

We can't turn our true selves off and on situationally and expect them to carry and sustain us. Rationing creativity results in bipolarism of the spirit. Our creativity is also our life force. When we turn it off and on like a spigot, we start to become less and less able to control the valve. — S. Kelley Harrell

According to the psychosurgeons, we act more in keeping with our true selves in a dream than in any other situation, including the throes of orgasm and the moment of our deaths. Maybe that explains why so much of what we do in the real world makes so little sense. — Richard K. Morgan

In our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever ... listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, It is all one vast awakened thing. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended. — Jack Kerouac

We are better than our culture. Load us down with prejudice, equip us with indifference, and we will nevertheless, at the critical moment, cast the nonsense aside and find our true selves. — Jack McDevitt

Goddess does not want us to imitate some ideal of perfection, but to be our true selves. — Deborah Harkness

Sometimes wearing a mask is the best way to show our true selves. — Lisa Mangum

The Dictionary [Emily] Dickinson used defined tender as 'anxious for another's good' and a pioneer as 'one that goes before another to remove obstruction or to prepare the way for another.' This seems to me a good way to think of Jesus: sojourning before us, clearing the brush, bushwhacking, even
removing the impediments of sin, making a path that will lead us to our true selves, and to God. — Lauren F. Winner

True happiness starts in the core of our true selves as a constant, a guidepost, a default, and a strength that shines from the inside out. — Elaina Marie

Sometimes it is only in our darkest hours that we show our true colours in life. — Anonymous

True Godliness doesn't turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavors to mend it ... We have nothing that we can call our own; no, not our selves: for we are all but Tenants, and at Will, too, of the great Lord of our selves, and the rest of this great farm, the World that we live upon. — William Penn

These brief weekly sessions helped to bring about valuable changes and health improvements in the participants. The motto was: we are all different and special, so we do not attempt to become like somebody else, but connect more deeply with our true selves. — Patrizia Collard

Longing for our idealized images of life separates us from our true selves and from our true callings. — Stephen Cope

The night knows nothing of the chants of night.
It is what it is as I am what I am:
And in perceiving this I best perceive myself
And you. Only we two may interchange
Each in the other what each has to give.
Only we two are one, not you and night,
Nor night and I, but you and I, alone,
So much alone, so deeply by ourselves,
So far beyond the casual solitudes,
That night is only the background of our selves,
Supremely true each to its separate self,
In the pale light that each upon the other throws. — Wallace Stevens

The imagination is not an escape, but a return to the richness of our true selves; a return to reality. — George MacKay

Rilke wrote in one of my favourite books [Letters to a Young Poet], "Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." It takes courage to live as our true selves; especially when doing so can be faced with such unkindness. But I believe the more we show of ourselves, the more we make space for positive change in the world. I feel so grateful I get to be a part of a series that is contributing to that change. — Elise Bauman

The thing that you are too young to understand is that we all hide things. We hide them from our lovers because we wish to present our best selves, but also because if it is real love, we expect our loved one to simply understand it, without needing to ask. In a true partnership, the kind that lasts through the ages, there is an unspoken communion. — Cassandra Clare

We intend to hide our shortcomings, and the fear inside our hearts, but instead, we hide our beauty, our true selves. — Jo Ann Fore

It can take years of tears to melt the hardness that develops in this world, covering our tender, gentler inner selves. Tears for every devastating loss, tears for every humiliating failure, tears for every repeated mistake. Those who honor those tears, and even honor them, are not failures at love but rather its true initiates. First the pain and then the power. First the heart breaks and then it soars. — Marianne Williamson

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are. — Alain De Botton

We face challenges pushing us in a million directions all the time, whether we're being pulled to hide our truths or pushed to compromise our integrity. The more we are connected to our true selves, the more whole we are. The more whole we are, the stronger we are to navigate our own life. — Elaina Marie

To be true to ourselves, however, is not an easy task. We must break free of the seductions of society and live life on our own terms, under our own values and aligned with our original dreams. We must tap our hidden selves; explore the deep-seated, unseen hopes, desires, strengths and weaknesses that make us who we are. We must understand where we have been and where we are going. — Robin Sharma

We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need - but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need - within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves. — Alain De Botton

To anyone who has full awareness of our "exile" from God, our alienation from this inmost self, and our blind wandering in the "region of unlikeness," this claim can hardly seem believable. Yet it is nothing else but the message of Christ calling us to awake from sleep, to return from exile, and find our true selves within ourselves, in that inner sanctuary which is His temple and His heaven, and (at the end of the prodigal's homecoming journey) the "Father's House. — Thomas Merton

Parenthood has the power to redefine every aspect of life - marriage, work, relationships with family and friends. Those helpless bundles of power and promise that come into our world show us our true selves- who we are, who we are not, who we wish we could be. — Hillary Rodham Clinton

Marriage can be a magnificent lesson in becoming our best selves; that is true. — Marianne Williamson

When we find delight in another person, we've actually found something joyful inside ourselves that involves a shift in our awareness, a shift in our perception, because the same person is not necessarily attractive to other people.In relationship, whenever we're drawn to someone or repelled by someone, they're both mirrors of the self. We're attracted to people in whom we find traits that we want or desire in our own selves. And we are repelled by people in whom we find traits that we're denying in ourselves. So relationship is a true mirror of where we are in our evolution in consciousness. — Deepak Chopra

One of the reasons that hiddenness is such an important aspect of the spiritual life is that it keeps us focused on God. In hiddenness we do not receive human acclamation, admiration, support, or encouragement. In hiddenness we have to go to God with our sorrows and joys and trust that God will give us what we most need.
In our society we are inclined to avoid hiddenness. We want to be seen and acknowledged. We want to be useful to others and influence the course of events. But as we become visible and popular, we quickly grow dependent on people and their responses and easily lose touch with God, the true source of our being. Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Too many of us move through our lives with our true selves buried below layers of repressed emotion. With so much energy channeled toward sustaining the repression, there is little left over for the deeper questions. The consequences of our evasion are profound. Our stockpiles toxify into a cache of weapons that turn inward against the self: quick fix, long suffering. As Rumi said, "Most people guard against the fire, and so end up in it." This is the power of then. If we don't deal with our stuff, it deals with us. — Jeff Brown

Now comes the hour to choose between being acceptable to others or being acceptable to one's own self, for we must kill our true selves off in order to survive. — Morrissey

Choice is the key, because human beings are the only creatures who can choose to evolve, who can shape their destiny. Furthermore, we have been given the gift of "self-awareness," which allows us to step back into our true selves to observe and use our brains to create the world we wish to live in. — Deepak Chopra

Everyone wants to be loved for who they are, even if we keep our true selves locked up and hidden. It's a nice little fantasy to believe that the right person holds the key and all the things you do not say are just somehow, magically, known. — Kate Moretti

Within alpinism's narrow framework we seek transcendence and relentlessly pursue what remains hidden from us on flat ground: our true selves. — Steve House

I don't think. I react. My action is divorced from all emotion and logic. It isn't human or inhuman-it just is.
I believe that choices like these, made in absolute crisis, come from our True Selves, bypassing all experience and thought. These kinds of choices are the closest thing to fate that human beings will ever experience. — Daniel H. Wilson

If we don't know who we are, we conceal our true selves and wear the image of others — Sunday Adelaja

A further, albeit more complex, possibility is that our conscious selves might suffer from characteristic uncertainty about our true values, and gather information about them from choices we make (the Jamesian: "How do I know what I like until I see what I pick"). — Tali Sharot

And when we love, we know love will last. Significantly, we know, having learned through much trial and error, that true love begins with self-love. And that time and time again our search for love brings us back to the place where we started, back to our own heart's mirror, where we can look upon our female selves with love and be renewed. — Bell Hooks

When anyone gets devoured by drugs or alcohol, their souls are in hiding on another plane. Addictions are a kind of possession and to recover our true selves, we need help remembering who we really are. — Suzan Saxman

Express to our world what is alive inside us not what their world says we should be ... Our true selves should never be created by others, Held in their pockets like belongings, like trinkets. We are skaters. We are artists. We are free. — Jason E. Hodges

Why should we always try to be true to our natural selves? What if our natural selves are assholes? Stalin was true to himself — A. J. Jacobs

We don't need any self-help. We need our selves to stop helping those who don't let us be our true selves. — Saurabh Sharma

Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves. — Haruki Murakami