Quotes & Sayings About Self Examination

All of us must come to an honest, open self-examination, an awareness within as to who and what we want to be. — M. Russell Ballard

Having children made me go down a road of serious introspection and self-examination. I think it's informed and hopefully enhanced my creativity. — Madonna Ciccone

Although we amplify our cognitive degree of awareness and enhance our appreciation for life experiences by maturing, it also brings us death. Facing a certain death forces a person to examine the worthiness of continuing to live. — Kilroy J. Oldster

That is the greatness of literature, and its paradox, that in reading about fictional others we end up reading about ourselves. Sometimes this unwitting self-examination provokes smiles of recognition, while other times, ... it provokes shudders of worry and denial. Either way, we are the wiser, we are existentially thicker. — Yann Martel

Seldom do we think about how seldom we think. — David C. Alves

I don't write books because I have answers. I write books because I have questions. What we are is the questions that we ask, not the answers that we provide. It's all about the process of self-examination. I think that's what the best writing always contains. — John Edgar Wideman

True wisdom, as the fruit of self-examination, dialogue, and generous encounter between persons, is not acquired by a mere accumulation of data which eventually leads to overload and confusion, a sort of mental pollution. Real relationships with others, with all the challenges they entail, now tend to be replaced by a type of internet communication which enables us to choose or eliminate relationships at whim, thus giving rise to a new type of contrived emotion which has more to do with devices and displays than with other people and with nature. — Pope Francis

When something bad happens is when you really learn. It causes self-examination, it causes you to take a look at yourself. You naturally start analyzing. It's not that you're wrong; it's that sometimes you just need to make adjustments. Change your way of thinking, change your way of doing, change your way of choosing. — Jennifer Lopez

Even a monotonously undeviating path of self-examination does not necessarily lead to self-knowledge. I stumble towards my grave confused and hurt and hungry. — Quentin Crisp

Provocative. Striking. Rachel Resnick is a virtuoso on the page. Her fearless examination of the desperate thirst to find love is guaranteed to break your heart. Yet her cool-eyed analysis of the roots of this addiction inspires hope that through committed self-understanding, maybe each of us can change toxic patterns, whatever they may be. — Samantha Dunn

Writing entails undertaking a spiritual journey, an exploration of the blemished self that is delightfully challenging, painfully arduous, and unfathomably rewarding. Writing allows an admittedly flawed person to artfully confront their inglorious personal history, examine the present, and cogitate upon the future. Thoughtful writing creates a person's own precursors: it revises a person's conception of the past into a more detailed, accurate, and comprehensive philosophical context, alters how a person perceives the "now," and alters the course and outcome person's future. Writing is the ultimate psychological experience and an immaculate method to examine a person's thoughts, debunk a person's delusion, and analyze a person's values. — Kilroy J. Oldster

In Advance of All Parting is a tough, unsentimental examination of marital grief. Musically elegant and inventive, understated and passionate, the poems give us a profound glimpse into how the events of a life can form a center of gravity that fixes the self in its force field. Theres a cold, truth-telling clarity about them that makes them as unsettling as they are beautiful. Ansie Baird has created a richly-drawn world in which this elemental drama plays out, and the result is vivid, startling poems in which pain has left its indelible tracks. — Chase Twichell

Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves. — Richard Whately

The symptoms and the illness are not the same thing. The illness exists long before the symptoms. Rather than being the illness, the symptoms are the beginning of its cures. The fact that they are unwanted makes them all the more a phenomenon of grace-a gift of god, a message from the unconscious, if you will, to initiate self-examination and repair. — M. Scott Peck

Let America realize that self-scrutiny is not treason. Self-examination is not disloyalty. — Richard Cushing

Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others as by self-examination thoroughly to know our own. — Francois Fenelon

I had written hundreds of memos during my 26 years at the company, and all had shared a common thread. They were about self-examination in the pursuit of excellence, and a willingness not to embrace the status quo. This is a cornerstone of my leadership philosophy. — Howard Schultz

These are often the children of overbearing narcissistic parents who cannot tolerate the teenager's growing need for separateness and threaten the child with psychological or actual abandonment as a punishment for exercising independence. The child considers the risks and decides prematurely to do what is expected, becoming a doctor. . .without first engaging in a journey of self-discovery. When the parents' or culture's roles and values are adopted wholesale and without examination, the process of establishing a personal identity is short-circuited. Some of these individuals rework this struggle more successfully later in life, while others are never free from the narcissistic web and only feel good when they are pleasing someone other than themselves. — Sandy Hotchkiss

Through intense self-examination and ceaseless selfchallenge, create change, and adjust your track toward growth and completion. — Ilchi Lee

There is still a need for those of us nestled deep within the Christian bubble to look beyond the status quo and critically assess the degree to which we are really living biblically. — Francis Chan

The problem with writing a monthly book is that you're going through your work like a man running for a bus, red-faced and out of breath. There isn't time for reflection or critical self-examination. — J. Michael Straczynski

I see what you mean. It must be a huge relief, and an easy way out, to think the devil is always outside of us. ( ... ) we would stop looking for Sheitan outside and instead focus on ourselves. What we need is sincere self-examination. Not being on the watch for the faults of others. (p. 257). — Elif Shafak

Frankly, I have always dreaded writing - there always seemed to be pain involved, unpleasant self-examination and a lot of fear. — Trent Reznor

Economic disasters or foolish wars are hardly guaranteed to bring about large-scale individual self-examination or renew the appeal of truly participatory democracy. — Pankaj Mishra

Judging others is too often escapism dressed in the garb of righteous indignation, whereby I dutifully point out in others that which I probably should be pointing out in myself. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that Mankind has invented yet. — John Updike

The unlived life is not worth examining ... Self-awareness, self-examination, self-consciousness are for the quiet moments. In the arena they are paralyzing. The self must not be held out of the arena until living skills have been learned. — Jo Coudert

In a democracy private citizens see a man of their own rank in life who becomes possessed of riches and power in a few years; this spectacle excites their surprise and envy, and they are led to inquire how the person who was yesterday very equal is today their ruler. To attribute his rise to his talents or his virtues is unpleasant; for it is tacitly to acknowledge that they are themselves less virtuous and less talented than he was. — Alexis De Tocqueville

The artist and the fundamentalist arise from societies at differing stages of development. The artist is the advanced model. His culture possesses affluence, stability, enough excess of resource to permit the luxury of self-examination. The artist is grounded in freedom. He is not afraid of it. He is lucky. He was born in the right place. He has a core of self- confidence, of hope for the future. He believes in progress and evolution. His faith is that humankind is advancing, however haltingly and imperfectly, toward a better world. — Steven Pressfield

A man's greatness lies not in wealth and station, as the vulgar believe, not yet in his intellectual capacity, which is often associated with the meanest moral character, the most abject servility to those in high places and arrogance to the poor and lowly; but a man's true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examination, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself, as the emperor says he should not, about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not do that which he thinks and says and does. — Marcus Aurelius

The heart of the difference between cheap-grace doctrines of guilt-free existence and the Christian gospel is this: Modern chauvinism desperately avoids the message of guilt by treating it as a regrettable symptom. Christianity listens to the message of guilt by conscientious self-examination. Hedonism winks at sin. Christianity earnestly confesses sin. Secularism assumes it can extricate itself from gross misdeeds. Christianity looks to grace for divine forgiveness. Modern consciousness is its own fumbling attorney before the bar of conscience. Christianity rejoices that God himself has become our attorney. Modernity sees no reason to atone for or make reparation for wrongs. Christianity knows that unatoned sin brings on misery of conscience. Modern naturalism sees no meed for God. Christianity celebrates God's willingness to suffer four our sins and redeem us from guilt. — Thomas C. Oden

The conventional view of a person's self-command structure is definitely bureaucratic, on the model of a corporation or an army, where superior agents simply pass commands down to inferior ones. However, closer examination of corporations and
armies has shown that despite the establishment of hierarchical command structures, they remain marketplaces where officers must motivate rather than simply ordering behaviors. — George Ainslie

You know, kid, ethics isn't about choosing between right and wrong; it's about choosing between grey and grey. It's about choosing between two equally desirable but mutually exclusive courses of action. Freedom or security? Courage or comfort? Self-examination or blissful happiness? Column A or Column B? — Will Ferguson

Why she did not like Jane Fairfax might be a difficult question to answer; Mr. Knightley had once told her it was because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman, which she wanted to be thought herself; and though the accusation had been eagerly refuted at the time, there were moments of self-examination in which her conscience could not quite acquit her. — Jane Austen

So is language change progress or degeneration? It is neither, of course. To assert that language change is for the better or worse requires some measure of what "good" or "bad" language is, and the issue of language change needn't come into question here. But no coherent criterion has ever been given: upon examination, the pronouncements of the self-appointed pundits are always a mix of cultural biases, half-understandings of languages, and an obvious compulsion for telling people what to do. — Charles Yang

I've always felt that maybe one of the reasons that I did well as a student and made such good grades was because I lacked ... self-confidence, and I never felt that I was prepared to take an examination, and I had to study a little bit extra. So that sort of lack of confidence helped me, I think, to make a good record when I was a student. — Denton Cooley

The writing of novels is one of the few ways I have found to approach the altar of God and Creation itself. You try to worship God by performing the singularly courageous and impossible favor of knowing yourself. — Pat Conroy

Maturity colonizes your adolescent mind, like an ultraviolet photograph of a vast cosmic nebula that turns out, on closer examination, to be a pointillist self-portrait. — Elan Mastai

This religion takes away the courage of thinking of unusual things and prohibits self-examination above all as the most egregiousof sins ... It is one step away from protestantism. — Stendhal

In an age of constant live connections, the central question of self-examination is drifting from 'Who are you?' towards 'What are you doing? — Tom Chatfield

The major problem in our lives is to decide and clarify our responsibilities. To truly be committed to a life of honesty, love and discipline, we must be willing to commit ourselves to reality. This commitment, according to Peck, "requires the willingness and the capacity to suffer continual self-examination." Such an ability requires a good relationship with oneself. This is precisely what no shame-based person has. In fact, a toxically shamed person has an adversarial relationship with himself. Toxic shame - the shame that binds us - is a core part of neurotic and character disordered syndromes of behavior. — John Bradshaw

The biggest research of all when I do a character is self-examination. You look at yourself and you ask, 'How am I similar to this person and how am I different?' — Vera Farmiga

A nonviolent life is an act of self-examination and self-purification, whether by an individual, group or nation. — Mahatma Gandhi

I don't live my life wondering how to live my life. — Marty Rubin

Jim Grimsley's unflinching self-examination of his own boyhood racial prejudices during the era of school desegregation is one of the most compelling memoirs of recent years. Vivid, precise, and utterly honest, How I Shed My Skin is a time-machine of sorts, a reminder that our past is every bit as complex as our present, and that broad cultural changes are often intimate, personal, and idiosyncratic. — Dinty W. Moore

Transcendent Oneness does not require self-examination, self-help, or self-work. It requires self-loss. — Barbara Ehrenreich

The evil components of our shadow are the part of us that we deplore, the part of us that we prefer not to admit. One must set themselves free from all inhibitions in order to initiate close encounters with their innermost monster. By standing toe-to-toe with the part of ourselves that we most detest, a person is in a position to slay their fiendish sense of self and, by doing so, undergo a soulful transformation. — Kilroy J. Oldster

In self-examination, take no account of yourself by your thoughts and resolutions in the days of religion and solemnity; examine how it is with you in the days of ordinary conversation and in the circumstances of secular employment. — Jeremy Taylor

Later, I would realize that the position of most black students in predominantly white colleges was already too tenuous, our identities too scrambled, to admit to ourselves that our black pride remained incomplete. And to admit our doubt and confusion to whites, to open up our psyches to general examination by those who had caused so much of the damage in the first place, seemed ludicrous, itself an expression of self-hatred - for there seemed no reason to expect that whites would look at our private struggles as a mirror into their own souls, rather than yet more evidence of black pathology. — Barack Obama

Most important, whether or not we openly struggle with unwanted behavior or addiction, the Twelve Steps provide a framework for examining ourselves, pondering the possibility that our behavior has been or is
detrimental to others. It can be a very productive undertaking for self-assessment and examination. — Eileen Schmitz

Guilt is not all bad. Without it there is nothing to drive a person toward self-examination and toward God for forgiveness. — Billy Graham

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. If it is held that the instinct for preserving the species should always be obeyed at the expense of other instincts, whence do we derive this rule of precedence? To listen to that instinct speaking in its own case and deciding in its own favour would be rather simple minded. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest. By the very act of listening to one rather than to others we have already prejudged the case. If we did not bring to the examination of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them. And that knowledge cannot itself be instinctive: the judge cannot be one of the parties judged: or, if he is, the decision is worthless and there is no ground for placing preservation of the species above self-preservation or sexual appetite. — C.S. Lewis

Perhaps someone may say 'But surely, Socrates, after you have left us you can spend the rest of your life in quietly minding your own business.' This is the hardest thing of all to make some of you understand. If I say that this would be disobedience to God, and that is why I cannot 'mind my own business', you will not believe that I am serious. If on the other hand I tell you that to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others is really the best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living, you will be even less inclined to believe me. Nevertheless, that is how it is, gentlemen, as I maintain; though it is not easy to convince you of it. — Socrates

General, and a scarcity of individual healers. It was the doctrine of Marcus Aurelius that most of the ills of life come to us from our own imagination, that it was not in the power of others seriously to interfere with the calm, temperate life of an individual, and that when a fellow being did anything to us that seemed unjust he was acting in ignorance, and that instead of stirring up anger within us it should stir our pity for him. Oftentimes by careful self-examination we should find that the fault was more our own than that of our fellow, and our sufferings were rather from our own opinions than from anything — Marcus Aurelius

I think, Charlie, you have talent. I do. But I don't think you'll get far until you examine yourself and study.Until you let yourself be your subject. That's the exquisiteness of youth: you are allowed the luxury of vanity, of self-examination. Take it! Don't be ashamed of yourself. — Kathleen Glasgow

He who knows himself knows others. — Charles Caleb Colton

There is no greater delight than to be conscious of sincerity on self-examination. — Mencius

We must insist that free oratory is only the beginning of free speech; it is not the end, but a means to an end. The end is to find the truth. The practical justification of civil liberties is not that self-expression is one of the rights of man. It is that the examination of opinion is one of the
necessities of man. For experience tells us that it is only when freedom of opinion becomes the compulsion to debate that the seed which our fathers planted has produced its fruit. When that is
understood, freedom will be cherished not because it is a vent for our opinions but because it is the surest method of correcting them. — Walter Lippmann

Who do you want them to think you are? How do you think people see you? Or don't you let them near enough to see. You make up their minds for them. Do you think you succeed in convincing people that you are what you seem to be? You make people meet you on your own territory. You don't help them. You let them verbally hang themselves and then feel better about yourself, your power, your own sense of worth. You have the power to alienate them and if they allow it, you might even manage to make them feel awkward and foolish--foolish for letting you affect them at all. Do you want them to like you? Or are you one of those people who "don't care what people think." You're not living your life for them, so why should you give a fuck what people think? You make people come to you and, when they eventually do, you punish them with your smugness. Nothing ever out of character. — Carrie Fisher

Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plowshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring, and reserve a nook of shadow for the passing bird; keep a place in your heart for the unexpected guests, an altar for the unknown God. Then if a bird sing among your branches, do not be too eager to tame it. If you are conscious of something new - thought or feeling, wakening in the depths of your being - do not be in a hurry to let in light upon it, to look at it; let the springing germ have the protection of being forgotten, hedge it round with quiet, and do not break in upon its darkness. — Henri Frederic Amiel

By earnest self-examination strive to realize, and not merely hold as a theory, that evil is a passing phase, a self-created shadow; that all your pains, sorrows and misfortunes have come to you by a process of undeviating and absolutely perfect law; have come to you because you deserve and require them, and that by first enduring, and then understanding them, you may be made stronger, wiser, nobler. — James Allen

To seek Truth is automatically a calling for the innate dissident and the subversive; how
many are willing to give up safety and security for the perilous life of the spiritual revolutionary? How
many are willing to truly learn that their own cherished concepts are wrong? Striking provocative or
mysterious poses in the safety of Internet [social media] is far easier than taking the risks involved in
the hard work of genuine initiation. — Zeena Schreck

I don't like and even resist, being broken wide-open. But, when the contents of my unconscious self spill out of me and i sift through all the disowned parts of who i am ... it's an uncomfortably enlightening and eye-opening experience. It feels a bit like emotional bloodletting. I guess every now and then, i need that release valve to open all the way ... — Jaeda DeWalt

It's too easy only to blame the militarists, racists, sexists and other pushers of violence for the mess we're in. What is harder is self-examination, moving beyond caring by looking inward to ask the personal question: What more should I be doing everyday to bring about a peace and justice based world, whether across the ocean or across the living room? — Colman McCarthy

I ... recommend to every one of my Readers, the keeping a Journal of their Lives for one Week, and setting down punctually their whole Series of Employments during that Space of Time. This kind of Self-Examination would give them a true State of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. One Day would rectifie the Omissions of another, and make a Man weigh all those indifferent Actions, which, though they are easily forgotten, must certainly be accounted for. — Joseph Addison

Plato worries our thinking might become too reflexive and comfortable with itself. — Rebecca Goldstein

Strange, when one thinks of all the other boys, infinite experimental kisses, test tube infatuations, crushes, pseudo-loves.
All through this physical separation, through the testing and the trying of the others, there has been this peculiar rapport, comradeship, of us two so alike, so similar, but for science-boy and humanities-girl - the introspection, self examination, biannual deep summarizing conversations, and then the platonic parting. — Sylvia Plath

There are two parts to the problem of measuring the objective exchange-value of money. First we have to obtain numerical demonstration of the fact of variations in the objective exchange-value of money; then the question must be decided whether it is possible to make a quantitative examination of the causes of particular price movements, with special reference to the question whether it would be possible to produce.
So far as the first-named problem is concerned, it is self-evident that its solution must assume the existence of a good, or complex of goods, of unchanging objective exchange-value. The fact that such goods are inconceivable needs no further elucidation.
If the one is proved to be soluble, then so also is the other; and proof of the insolubility of the one is also proof of the insolubility of the other. — Ludwig Von Mises

Well, we start with this outrageous idea that the ground of being, existence itself, is a person, and that this person is intimately concerned with each of our lives and desires us to turn our hearts toward him. Once you accept that level of insanity - or faith, as we prefer to call it - then it makes perfect sense to try to discern what God's purpose is for your life through a disciplined process of prayer and self-examination, discernment, as we say. — Michael Gruber

It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception. — Robert Motherwell

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it. — Patrick Henry

Assurance is not to be obtained so much by self-examination as by action — Jonathan Edwards

We can't reimpose old myths on ourselves or believe in new ones made up out of a desire for comfort; therefore, the path of self-examination is the only one a person of conscience can reasonably follow. — Alan W. Watts

With all foreign travel, you learn as much about where you're from as what you're visiting. — Jonathan Haidt

I think life is self-examination. Certainly the voyage that one takes. — Richard Gere

I think therapy is a rather misguided notion of capitalist societies whereby the self-indulgent examination of one's life supersedes the actual living of said life. — Peter Cameron

Intellectuals seemed to think that their life - the life of the mind, the endless self examination, the continuous autobiography afflicted upon all comers-was somehow higher than the repetitive, meaningless lives of the common people. Virlomi knew the opposite to be true. The intellectuals in the university were all the same. They had precisely the same deep thoughts about exactly the same shallow emotions and trivial dilemmas. They knew this, unconsciously, themselves. When a real event happened, something that shook them to the heart, they withdraw from the game of university life, for reality had to be played out on a different stage.
In the villages, life was about life, not about one-upmanship and display. Smart people were valued because they could solve problems, not because they could speak pleasantly about them. — Orson Scott Card

This focusing outward ... painful as it was, saved her from a more intolerable examination. — M.L. Stedman

What does a life of total dedication to truth mean? It means, first of all, a life of continuous and never-ending stringent self-examination. We know the world only through our relationship to it. Therefore, to know the world, we must not only examine it but we must simultaneously examine the examiner. — M. Scott Peck

He can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office. — C.S. Lewis

Necessity demands that one should carefully examine who it is that comes to the position of spiritual authority; and coming solemnly to this point, how he should live; and living well, how he should teach; and teaching rightly, with what kind of self-examination he should learn of his own weakness. — Gregory The Great

Since the time of Voltaire and two-chamber Government, which is at bottom simply distrust and personal self-examination, and gives the popular mind that bad habit of being suspicious, the Church of France seems to have realised that books are its real enemies. — Stendhal

with grief? There is no dealing; he knows that much. There is simply the stubborn, mindless hanging on until it is over. Until you are through it. But something has happened in the process. The old definitions, the neat, knowing pigeonholes have disappeared. Or else they no longer apply. His eyes move again to the calendar. Wednesday, November fifth. Of course. Obvious. All the painful self-examination ; the unanswered questions. At least he knows what is wrong today. Today is Jordan's birthday. Today he would have been nineteen. — Judith Guest

The rise of the buffered identity has been accompanied by an interiorization; that is, not only the Inner/Outer distinction, that between Mind and World as separate loci, which is central to the buffer itself; and not only the development of this Inner/Outer distinction in a whole range of epistemological theories of a mediational type from Descartes to Rorty;' but also the growth of a rich vocabulary of interiority, an inner realm of thought and feeling to be explored. This frontier of self-exploration has grown, through various spiritual disciplines of self-examination, through Montaigne, the development of the modern novel, the rise of Romanticism, the ethic of authenticity, to the point where we now conceive of ourselves as
having inner depths. — Charles Taylor

It should be a man's task, says the Imitation, 'to overcome himself, and every day to be stronger than himself.' 'In withstanding of the passions standeth very peace of heart.' 'Let us set the axe to the root, that we being purged of our passions may have a peaceable mind.' To this end there must be continual self-examination. 'If thou may not continually gather thyself together, namely sometimes do it, at least once a day, the morning or the evening. In the morning purpose, in the evening discuss the manner, what thou hast been this day, in word, work, and thought. — Marcus Aurelius

What great performers have achieved is the ability to avoid doing it automatically. — Geoff Colvin

If only I had more money is the easiest way to postpone the intense self-examination and decision-making necessary to create a life of enjoyment - now and not later. — Anonymous

The journey into self-love and self-acceptance must begin with self-examination ... until you take the journey of self-reflection, it is almost impossible to grow or learn in life. — Iyanla Vanzant

It is curious how an age of public self-revelation, and of the use of psychological jargon, should also be an age when self-examination is rarely practised. — Anthony Daniels

Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society and state in which we live. — Hans-Georg Gadamer

Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses. — Eric Maisel

A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing. — Albert Einstein

Almost universally, when people look back on their lives while on their deathbed [ ... ] they wish they had spent more time with the people and activities they truly loved and less time worrying about aspects of life that, upon deeper examination, really don't matter at all that much. Imagining yourself at your own funeral allows you to look back at your life while you still have the chance to make some important changes. — Richard Carlson

There have been many instances of people combining the political life with the spiritual life, a life of constant self-examination. Gandhi was a great example of that. — Pankaj Mishra

Examination of our past is never time-wasting. Reverberations from the past provide learning rubrics for living today. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I can't even fathom myself from twenty-four hours ago. I was so busy following my rotten little heart, Disney princess-style. I did end up in a palace, so that's cool. — Stefan Bachmann

Self-examination is the process of accountability to your soul ... It is far better to "become" your truth than to speak your truth. Self-examination is the practice of becoming your truth. — Caroline Myss

Self-examination with a close-up mirror in an antiseptic environment is what Nine Inch Nails is based on. — Trent Reznor

Hang on for some metaphysics. The Aneristic Principle is that of order, the Eristic Principle is that of disorder. On the surface, the Universe seems (to the ignorant) to be ordered; this is the aneristic illusion. Actually, what order is "there" is imposed on primal chaos in the same sense that a person's name is draped over his actual self. It is the job of the scientist, for example, to implement this principle in a practical manner and some are quite brilliant at it. But on closer examination, order disolves into disorder, which is the ERISTIC ILLUSION. - Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C., Principia Discordia — Robert Shea

A person must move beyond guilt and unexamined thoughts and motives in order to discover a purpose for living vibrantly. — Kilroy J. Oldster