Honoring the Self Quotes

“The art of being is the art of knowing ourselves, of accepting and existing in harmony with ourselves, and of living out, in action, the highest possibilities of our nature. It includes three basic concepts: self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-assertion.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self: The Pyschology of Confidence and Respect

“If we are willing to take responsibility for that which is within our power, I think that frees us to see clearly that which is not, and to understand, therefore, the limits of our accountability. But if we too often fail to take such responsibility and feel vaguely guilty over our avoidance, the paradox is that in our confusion we often end up blaming ourselves for events beyond our control.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self: The Pyschology of Confidence and Respect

“Morally and psychologically, it is not the degree of a person’s productive ability that matters, but the person’s choice to exercise such ability as he or she does possess. It is not the kind of work selected that determines moral stature and psychological well-being (provided, of course, the work is not inimical to human life), but whether or not a person seeks work that requires and expresses the fullest, most conscientious use of mind, assuming that the opportunity to do so exists.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self: The Pyschology of Confidence and Respect

“Independence is reliance upon our own mind and judgment, the acceptance of intellectual responsibility for our own existence.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self: The Pyschology of Confidence and Respect

“Indeed, it is precisely the givens of existence, such as this book has been concerned with, that call on the heroic potentialities of our nature. We have seen that one such given is the fact that we are beings of volitional consciousness. Another is that our life depends on our thought and our effort. Another is that success is never guaranteed. Another is that some measure of suffering is virtually inevitable for every human being. We have no choice about the existence of such challenges; our only choice lies in how we will respond. To be heroic is to persevere. To love the process and the struggle. To laugh without restraint and to weep without restraint. To remain open and vulnerable, which means to remain feeling. To allow the life-force to lift us as high as we can rise. And to be able to say, at the end, “I loved the adventure of the journey.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self: The Pyschology of Confidence and Respect

“Breaking free of other people’s limiting values, philosophies, and life scenarios obviously includes a good deal more than breaking free of the influence of mother and father. We may need to challenge important aspects of the implicit philosophy of the culture in which we live. We may need to check and confront many of the basic premises that almost everyone takes for granted. This is a subtle and difficult task, because we rarely even know where to begin; the premises that need to be questioned are too much a part of our own thinking. The premises involved may pertain to the ultimate meaning of life, the values by which we are to live, the nature of virtue, the meaning of maleness and femaleness, the nature of knowledge, the ultimate nature of existence itself. To think independently and radically about such issues is not an easy undertaking. We shall deal with at least one example of this challenge when we take up the subject of ethics.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self: The Pyschology of Confidence and Respect

“To think, to judge, to choose our values is to be individuated, to create a distinct, personal identity. But thus to affirm that I exist is to open myself to the realization that I am finite, that my life is limited, that I am mortal, that one day I will die. The rebellion against the inevitability of death results in a rebellion against the challenges and opportunities of life. If I refuse to fully live, I cannot die.

So: fear of autonomy entails fear of self-responsibility entails fear of identity entails fear of aloneness entails fear of death.

That which does not exist cannot perish.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self: Self-Esteem and Personal Transformation

“Productiveness is the act of supporting our existence by translating our thought into reality, of setting our goals and working for their achievement, of bringing knowledge, goods, or services into existence.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self: The Pyschology of Confidence and Respect

“No belief is more prevalent—or more misguided—than that we can achieve our happiness by the pursuit of any random desires we experience. To live for our own happiness, we must learn what that happiness objectively requires. Rational egoism does not consist of doing whatever we feel like doing, a policy that can clearly lead to self-destruction. Morality exists for the individual, the individual does not exist for morality; but without reason, thought, and knowledge, egoism is meaningless. The purpose of ethics is not to transcend egoism, but to identify the means by which egoism is optimally fulfilled.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self: The Pyschology of Confidence and Respect

“The fact that we live among other human beings should not obscure the intimately personal nature of our need for a code of ethics. Our self-esteem requires it, our happiness requires it, our life requires it.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self: The Pyschology of Confidence and Respect

“Life, for a human being, is a constant process of thought, of motion, of purpose, of achievement; it is not the state of merely not being dead.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self: The Pyschology of Confidence and Respect