"If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it."
— John Lennon

"Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty."
— John Lennon

"(Said of the Irish) "This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."

(This quote may be misattributed as I have not yet found a reliable source that confirms that Freud made this comment about the Irish.)"
— Sigmund Freud

"If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed."
— C. S. Lewis

"And I realized that I’d tolerated him this long because of self-doubt."
— Anne Rice (Interview With the Vampire)

"Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment."
— Chögyam Trungpa

"You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak."
— George Clooney

"Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existance is defined in terms of control."
— Terence McKenna

"Great people have great egos; maybe that's what makes them great."
— Paul Arden

"The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness."
— John O'Donohue (Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom)

"If we take memetics seriously then the 'me' that could do the choosing is itself a memetic construct: a fluid and ever-changing group of memes installed in a complicated meme machine."
— Susan J. Blackmore (The Meme Machine)

"No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves"
— Hugh Prather (I Touch the Earth, the Earth Touches Me)

"Doffing the ego's
safe glory, he finds
his naked reality."
— Dag Hammarskjöld (Markings)

"Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

"Huxley: "Tell me something Bryce, do you know the difference between a Jersey, a Guernsey, a Holstein, and an Ayershire?"
Bryce: "No."
Huxley: "Seabags Brown does."
Bryce: "I don't see what that has to do..."
Huxley: "What do you know about Gaelic history?"
Bryce: "Not much."
Huxley: "Then why don't you sit down one day with Gunner McQuade. He is an expert. Speaks the language, too."
Bryce: "I don't..."
Huxley: " What do you know about astronomy?"
Bryce: "A little."
Huxley: "Discuss it with Wellman, he held a fellowship."
Bryce: "This is most puzzling."
Huxley: "What about Homer, ever read Homer?"
Bryce: "Of course I've read Homer."
Huxley: "In the original Greek?"
Bryce: "No"
Huxley: "Then chat with Pfc. Hodgkiss. Loves to read the ancient Greek."
Bryce: "Would you kindly get to the point?"
Huxley: "The point is this, Bryce. What makes you think you are so goddam superior? Who gave you the bright idea that you had a corner on the world's knowledge? There are privates in this battalion who can piss more brains down a slit trench then you'll ever have. You're the most pretentious, egotistical individual I've ever encountered. Your superiority complex reeks. I've seen the way you treat men, like a big strutting peacock. Why, you've had them do everything but wipe your ass.""
— Leon Uris

""Deslumbrado y alterado por esa luz, pero también por ser únicamente el doctor Pasavento, quise creer que todo lo que me pasaba era, simple y llanamente, producto de una fuerte resaca. Porque si uno lo pensaba bien, ¿era verosímil que durante toda la noche un médico, sin duda monstruoso, probablemente un neuroquímico del cerebro, me hubiera implantado la memoria de doctor Pasavento?"

Doctor Pasavento. Enrique Vila-Matas (Satán Vivo). p. 172. "
— Enrique Vila-Matas (Doctor Pasavento)

"[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires."
— Thornton Wilder (The Bridge of San Luis Rey)

"Unbelievable,” I said when it was done. And Brilliant and Audio crack and That one will be everyone’s breakup song, and so on, because great is never good enough for the artists; they always want to know exactly what you mean and which nanosecond of the song you mean it about."
— Kelley Eskridge (Dangerous Space)

"But if it is true that human minds are themselves to a very great degree the creations of memes, then we cannot sustain the polarity of vision we considered earlier; it cannot be "memes versus us," because earlier infestations of memes have already played a major role in determining who or what we are. The "independent" mind struggling to protect itself from alien and dangerous memes is a myth. There is a persisting tension between the biological imperative of our genes on the one hand and the cultural imperatives of our memes on the other, but we would be foolish to "side with" our genes; that would be to commit the most egregious error of pop sociobiology. Besides, as we have already noted, what makes us special is that we, alone among species, can rise above the imperatives of our genes— thanks to the lifting cranes of our memes."
— Daniel C. Dennett (Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life)

"The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous."
— Margot Fonteyn

"Cada uno es su hobby favorito. Uno siempre es experto en uno mismo. "
— Chuck Palahniuk (Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey)

"I see myself..in those pages as she goes back and forth, enjoying simply enjoying the beauties of the moments then chastising herself for having ‘no edge’ being simple and worse, harmless."
— Michael Cunningham

"I can imagine no greater catastrophe than if I were mistaken, and the theory were correct that what I consider secondary instincts or drives are actually primary instincts! Because in that case the emotional plague would rest upon the support of a natural law while its archenemies, truth and sociality, would be relying upon unfounded ethics. Until now both lies and truth have taken recourse to ethics. But only lies have profited because they were able to appear under the guise of truth. Under these circumstances, egoism, theft, petty selfishness, slander, etc., would be the natural rule. (26.july.1943)"
— Wilhelm Reich (American Odyssey: Letters & Journals, 1940-1947)

"When I pass, speak freely of my shortcomings and my flaws. Learn from them, for I'll have no ego to injure."
— Aaron McGruder (Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read The Newspaper)

"The ego relies on the familiar. It is reluctant to experience the unknown, which is they very essence of life."
— Deepak Chopra (The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore)

"At least when one speaks of oneself one is passionate, well-informed and specific."
— Jan Neruda (Prague Tales)

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
— Mark Twain

"To find the modesty, The innocence you once knew. As was the case long ago. Do you remember?"
— Mark Steven Rhoads