#l

Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An 'instinct' in as unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man's desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of history. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#human-nature #instincts #life #man #thought

Commandment #1: Believe in yourself. Commandment #2: Get over yourself. ↗

— Kristan Higgins

#self-assurance #self-knowledge #self-knowledge

Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you! ↗

— Frank Herbert

#self-knowledge #self-knowledge

If you behaved nicely, the communists wouldn't exist. ↗

— Jenny Holzer

#cynicism #politics #cynicism

The library in summer is the most wonderful thing because there you get books on any subject and read them each for only as long as they hold your interest, abandoning any that don't, halfway or a quarter of the way through if you like, and store up all that knowledge in the happy corners of your mind for your own self and not to show off how much you know or spit it back at your teacher on a test paper. ↗

— Polly Horvath

#libraries #reading #summer #self-knowledge

To 'know Thyself' is considered quite an accomplishment. ↗

— L. Frank Baum

#self #self-knowledge

I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#wisdom #self-knowledge

I don't want to inhabit the human world under false pretenses. ↗

— Janet Frame

#self-knowledge #self-knowledge

To understand yourself: Is that a discovery or a creation? ↗

— Pascal Mercier

#honesty #illusions #perception #personality #self-awareness

Pure intuitive faith differs as much from fanaticism as fire from smoke, or music from mere noise; those who confuse the two are like the deaf. ↗

— José Rizal

#faith