249 Ego quotes

I think the hard thing here is seeing the truth. To see the truth, you have to get your ego out of the way because your ego doesn’t want to face the truth.

More the knowledge, lesser the ego. Lesser the knowledge, more the ego.

When one is without ego, one becomes infinitely free of all personal judgments, and perceives life and the world with divine eyes and mind. Nothing is offensive to them and they remain in perfect serenity and peace always.

The ego is not master in its own house.

You can either be a host to God or a hostage to your ego. It’s your call.

Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.

You’re not looking for perfection in your partner. Perfection is all about the ego. With soulmate love, you know that true love is what happens when disappointment sets in – and you’re willing to deal maturely with these disappointments.

Stupidity combined with arrogance and a huge ego will get you a long way.

If your ego starts out, ‘I am important, I am big, I am special,’ you’re in for some disappointments when you look around at what we’ve discovered about the universe. No, you’re not big. No, you’re not. You’re small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that’s limited on Earth.

The ultimate aim of the ego is not to see something, but to be something.

Ego is to the true self what a flashlight is to a spotlight.

Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness.

Ego is one of the biggest weapons that is used to take us down. It’s self-destructive. It’s a problem on all levels – even regular people can have big ego problems.

Ego is just like dust in the eyes. Without clearing the dust, we can’t see anything clearly, so clear the ego and see the world.

Ego is false confidence, self-respect is true confidence.

Ego is about who’s right. Truth is about what’s right.

Ego is a social fiction for which one person at a time gets all the blame.

The ego, however, is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image, it is your social mask, it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power because it lives in fear.

The ego isn’t a real thing, it’s just the unexamined mind.

The ego is the single biggest obstruction to the achievement of anything.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

The Ego is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is your social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear.

The ego is as little absolutely permanent as are bodies.

The ego is antifragile. When attacked it inflates to protect itself.

The Ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it-just don’t get lost in it.

The ego is always looking to find something – the spirit can see what’s already there.

The ego is a veil between humans and God. In prayer all are equal.

Our ego is our silent partner – too often with a controlling interest.

Your ego is your self-image created by thought. It’s your social mask requiring validation because it lives in fear of losing its sense of identity.

Your ego is an avid interpreter. It is so quick to interpret events as ‘bad’ or ‘good’ or ‘right’. It never fails to see the little picture.

Egotism sucks us down like the law of gravity.

Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries.

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.

Egoist: a person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.

Ego trip: a journey to nowhere.

Ego takes everything personally.

Ego interrupts intuition.

Ego expands to fill the space not filled with knowledge.

Where id was, there ego shall be.

All ego really is, is our opinions, which we take to be solid, real, and the absolute truth about how things are.

All you need to know and observe in yourself is this: Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that’s the ego in you.

Big egos have little ears.

Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space.

Complaining is one of the ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself.

Most of us are convinced that we are our egos, which is who we think we are. The ego is part of our incarnation. It dies with the body, which is why we are so afraid of death. Death scares the hell out of who you think you are, especially if you think you are this body.

One of the ego’s favorite paths of resistance is to fill you with doubt.

The Ego’s job is to kill everything but itself.

The ego seeks to divide and separate. Spirit seeks to unify and heal.

The ego relies on the familiar. It is reluctant to experience the unknown, which is the very essence of life.

The key is to ego is distinguishing between when it’s serving you and when it’s getting in your way.

The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly no longer the ego but just an old, conditioned mind patter. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.

The ultimate aim of the ego is not to see something, but to be something.

There are two kinds of egotists: Those who admit it, and the rest of us.

To me the ego is the habitual and compulsive thought processes that go through everybody’s mind continuously. External things like possessions or memories or failures or successes or achievements. Your personal history.

Ego, let it go.

Starve your ego. Feed your soul.

Rule your mind or it will rule you.

Confidence without ego.

Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.

Drop ego and listen.

Think big from the heart, not the ego.

A man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.

Attempting to destroy something out of hate or ego often ensures that it will be preserved and disseminated forever.

Avoid making yourself the subject of conversation.

Be capable of negating your ego.

Do things that feed your soul, not your ego and you will be happy.

Conquer and tame the ego.

When the ego dies, the soul awakes.

Don’t let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn’t go with it.

Goals must never be from your ego, but problems that cry for a solution.

I can’t tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.

Identity invites confirmation bias, which neutralizes your ability to learn. Shedding identity is a prerequisite to wisdom.

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.

If I only had a little humility, I would be perfect.

If there’s one skill which can substantially improve the life of every single person, it is emotional self-control. If you drop your ego, don’t take things personally and adopt a detached perspective, your ability to deal with all types of people/situations will immensely improve.

If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue.

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

Leave the ego otherwise everyone will leave you.

Let us be more simple and less vain.

Less ego, more excellence. Less talk, more do. Less rude, more polite. Less fear, more wins.

Leave your ego at the door every morning, and just do some truly great work. Few things will make you feel better than a job brilliantly done.

Let your action be free of all traces of ego. When an action is free of ego it leaves no problems in its wake.

Letting go of your ego opens the door to taking a new and creative course of action.

Never let anyone’s ego kill your vibe. Stay positive and don’t feed negative energy.

No time for reading. For controlling your arrogance, yes. For overcoming pain and pleasure, yes. For outgrowing ambition, yes.

Read books that challenge your beliefs and make you feel stupid. You don’t get better by protecting your ego. You get better by exposing it to truth and being vulnerable. This is how you remain fluid and grow.

Self-worth comes from one thing – thinking that you are worthy.

Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego.

The more you dis-identify with your ego, the more complete is your freedom.

The nice thing about egotists is that they don’t talk about other people.

The smaller you can make your ego, the less conditioned you can make your reactions, the less desires you can have about the outcome you want, the easier it to see the reality.

There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right.

We cannot bear very much reality, we are biased to protect our egos against the onslaught of unwelcome truths.

We must go beyond the constant clamor of ego, beyond the tools of logic and reason, to the still, calm place within us: the realm of the soul.

We optimize for short-term ego protection over long-term happiness.

What I’ve found in my research is that realism and self-honesty are the antidote to ego, hubris, and delusion.

When ego is lost, limit is lost. You become infinite, kind, beautiful.

When you drop ego, you can have great fun because you are no longer taking anything personally. You are a detached observer which has a peculiar joy of its own. Ego is a source of great tension. Egoistic people are anxious, self-defensive and uptight. Drop the ego and chill out.

Your ego screams for people to acknowledge you. But you must do nothing. Take it. Eat it until you’re sick. Endure it. Quietly brush it off and work harder.

To live in the light of a new day and an unimaginable and unpredictable future, you must become fully present to a deeper truth – not a truth from your head, but a truth from your heart; not a truth from your ego, but a truth from the highest source.

A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul.

A boaster and a liar are cousins.

Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.

Every man who is high up likes to think that he has done it all himself, and the wife smiles and lets it go at that.

Flattery is all right so long as you don’t inhale.

I have an ego the size of a small planet.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.

If every fool wore a crown, we should all be kings.

If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

If you learn how to make fun of yourself, your ego will go down.

If you want to improve, you must be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

It’s hard to be humble when you are as great as I am.

There’s no ego when you’re a ukulele player.

When you’re older and wiser a lot of the ego has gone out of the window.

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‘Ego’.

Whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware. The cosmic banana peel is suddenly going to appear underfoot to make sure you don’t take it all too seriously, that you don’t fill up on junk food.

The ego says: I’m still angry about yesterday, the spirit says: new day, new attitude.

Always keep your ego in check and not be afraid to listen. Listening is a great art form.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

Every ego wants to be special. If it can’t be special by being superior to others, it’s also quite happy with being especially miserable.

Fixed mindset is about ego, growth mindset is about presence.

For the ego to survive, it must make time – past and future – more important than the present moment.

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.

Humility is born of the spirit, humiliation of the ego.

I believe that the biggest problem that humanity faces is an ego sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and identifying what one’s strengths and weaknesses are.

I don’t care what you think unless it is about me.

I don’t want to see you. I don’t like you. I don’t like your face. You look like an insufferable egotist. You’re impertinent. You’re too sure of yourself. Twenty years ago I would have punched your face with the greatest of pleasure.

I live for myself and I answer to nobody.

I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.

I’m willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong.

If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.

Ignorance, intolerance, egotism, self-assertion, opaque perception, dense and pitiful chuckle headedness – and an almost pathetic unconsciousness of it all, that is what I was at nineteen and twenty.

It’s not the great stars that win; it’s the great teams that win. It’s the teams that subjugate their ego to the team and put the team first.

Kill the cow of your ego as quickly as you can, so that your inner spirit can come to life and attain true awareness.

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.

Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.

Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.

One learns to ignore criticism by first learning to ignore applause.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.

Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go.

Signs of spiritual retardation: Aversion to solitude. Conscious of status in the herd. Invested in social formalities. Talkative and un-self-aware. Indulging in petty vanities. Focused on improving and projecting appearance. Materialistic snob. Completely identified with the ego.

Since narcissists deep down, feel themselves to be faultless, it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world’s fault. Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad. They project their own evil onto the world. They never think of themselves as evil, on the other hand, they consequently see much evil in others.

Through being “right”, you feel superior and through feeling superior you strengthen your sense of self. In reality, of course, you are only strengthening the illusion of ego.

When you’re upset because someone doesn’t like you, it’s your ego operating: you validate your existence based on their approval.

I reach out to touch her, the goddess beholding me. “Thank you for coming.” I shout with gratitude. “Now let’s go create a night to remember!”

Na minsan, ang manunulat ay hindi lang ang manunulat kundi ang tauhan din ng kanyang kwento. Ang tauhan ay ang puso’t kaluluwa, ang sarili, ng isang manunulat.

They say I don’t exist. They say I am an extension, an indulgence, imagination of a schizophrenic person.

The best way to ease your anxiety while waiting for a decision is to move into your alter ego.

In a corner of my soul there hides a tiny frightened child, who is frightened by a corner where there lingers something wild.

If you really want to be different, you’d better keep quiet and be a good person on the inside.

You can survive but not live with a single identity.

There are two of you in you, let both coexist.

Normality? Keeping one’s insanity a secret.

Anything you can do, I can do better.

He has dark brown pupils, and mine are grey. Dead gray, that’s what he tells me.

This is the day I give birth to my liberation.

Nice words and nice appearance doesn’t conclude that someone is nice, i believe that the nicer you look, the more deceptive you appear.

With the black male as a teenager, where you’re coming from the ghettos and that kind of stuff, you’ve got to assert yourself, be macho, not let anybody walk over you, so that’s where all this unnecessary bullshit comes from – from egos. That’s why there are a lot of fights. That’s how come the whole thing with rap has been violent. It’s because of the male ego.

Pakistani feature films are all about catering to the male ego and male fantasy.

Your language, dear,” Victoria reproved gently. “A lady never curses in public. There are much better ways to handle the delicate male ego.” Keiley paused. “With a two-by-four?” she asked. Victoria’s lips pursed a smile tugged at her lips. “Only as a last resort,” she murmured humorously. “And never in public.”

A woman who doesn’t care what men think of her – ah, this is dangerous. This is the worst conceivable insult to the male ego.

What I was being told in my 20s in the close-quartered, male-ego-infused work space, was that I had to stop reacting with my emotions to sexual desire towards me. The change, in other words, had to be made in me.

The great corrupter of public men is the ego – corrupter because distracter. Wealth, sensuality, power cannot hold a candle to it. Looking in the mirror distracts one’s attention from the problem.

I love being under submission to my husband…I believe in keeping the male ego intact.

The male ego with few exceptions is elephantine to start with.

A guy is a lump like a doughnut. So, first you gotta get rid of all the stuff his mom did to him. And then you gotta get rid of all that macho crap that they pick up from beer commercials. And then there’s my personal favorite, the male ego.

Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark.

That’s when she’d learned that male egos and fruit had a lot in common: Both bruised easily.

There are much better ways to handle the delicate male ego. With a two-by-four? Only as a last resort and never in public.

But marriage goes in waves. You’ve got to be patient. People bail and give up on their marriages way too early. They just don’t put the work and the effort into it. You’ve got to suck up your ego a lot of times, because that can be a big downfall.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.

Man is not a rational animal he is a rationalizing animal.

Human populations that do not have contact with the psychedelic tremendum are neurotic because they are male ego dominated.

Male egos require constant stroking. Every task is an achievement, every success epic. That is why women cook, but men are chefs: we make cheese on toast, they produce pain de fromage.

All my battles were with male egos. I’m just looking for equality, not to dominate. But I want to be able to control my vision.

We are constantly protecting the male 1ego and it’s a disservice to men. If a man has any sensitivity or intelligence, he wants to get the straight scoop from his girlfriend.

There are a lot of male egos out there that cannot deal with highly successful women. And it’s their problem.

Men learn while they teach.

I like the moment when I break a man’s ego.

It’s the sick and twisted male fantasy that we want classy ladies out in the world that make us look good, but in the bedroom, men want subservient women who please all of their whims. It’s the typical bullshit of male ego.

The walls of pride are high and wide, can’t see over to the other side.

The pride that keeps us from forgiving is the same pride which keeps us from accepting forgiveness.

The offspring of riches: Pride, vanity, ostentation, arrogance, tyranny.

The hated man is the result of his hater’s pride rather than his hater’s conscience.

Something good should be a source of pride, correct? ‘Yes’. And can one really take pride in a momentary pleasure? Please don’t say yes.

Receive without pride, let go without attachment.

Pride was the belt you used to hold your pants up when you had no pants.

Pride must die in you, or nothing of heaven can live in you.

Pride makes us do things well. But it is love that makes us do them to perfection.

Pride is ugly. It says ‘If you succeed I am a failure’.

Pride is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals.

Pride goes before destruction.

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man… It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.

Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.

Never let pride or concern for your reputation pull you farther into the morass; both will suffer far greater blows by your persistence.

Learn to fail with pride – and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error – by mastering the error part.

Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know.

Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying.

He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle.

Forget about winning and losing, forget about pride and pain.

Fight your own pride and ego and be open-minded and always learning new techniques, new things from anyone.

Cast out pride and vanity; have no thought of trying to rule over others or of outdoing them.

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

All a man has is pride. Sometimes you have it so much it is a sin. We have all done things for pride that we knew were impossible. We didn’t care. But a man must implement his pride with intelligence and care.

Freedom means the power to act by soul guidance, not by the compulsions of desires and habits. Obeying the ego leads to bondage; obeying the soul brings liberation.

I’m willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong.

Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.

Nations have their ego, just like individuals.

Well-ordered self-love is right and natural.

The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.

The last time I saw him he was walking down lover’s lane holding his own hand.

The hallucination of separateness prevents one from seeing that to cherish the ego is to cherish misery. We do not realize that our so-called love and concern for the individual is simply the other face of our own fear of death or rejection. In his exaggerated valuation of separate identity, the personal ego is sawing off the branch on which he is sitting, and then getting more and more anxious about the coming crash!

Self-love seems so often unrequited.

Our own self-love draws a thick veil between us and our faults.

Love is happy when it is able to give something. The ego is happy when it is able to take something.

It has always seemed strange to me… the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

Ego judges and punishes. Love forgives and heals.

Body is purified by water. Ego by tears. Intellect is purified by knowledge. And soul is purified with love.

As you dissolve into love, your ego fades. You’re not thinking about loving; you’re just being love, radiating like the sun.

People confuse ego, lust, insecurity with true love.

The ego is the biggest enemy of humans.

Fragile egos make for fragile friendships.

Your ego is your soul’s worst enemy.

Too much ego will kill your talent.

My opponent is my teacher, my ego is my enemy.

Some people’s insecurity and ego fragility cannot tolerate the slightest offense.

In all that surrounds him the egotist sees only the frame of his own portrait.

It is a narrow passageway that leads to the garden of contentment. Big egos don’t fit.

It doesn’t matter how well you’re doing, your ego and their accomplishments make you feel like nothing.

Ego is the great enemy. Ego will hold you back every single time.

Your worst enemy is hiding within yourself, and that enemy is your nafs or false ego.

If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.

The foundation of the Buddha’s teachings lies in compassion, and the reason for practicing the teachings is to wipe out the persistence of ego, the number-one enemy of compassion.

Learning is easier if you are honest about your own ignorance. People want to seem ‘in the know.’ They try to signal that they are intelligent and informed. This is often counterproductive. Insecurity is the enemy of learning. A master knows how to be a beginner.

An outside enemy exists only if there is anger inside.

A willingness to be wrong in conversation can help you avoid being wrong in a costlier arena. Better to lose an argument than a fortune, or a war.

Comfort and luxury are usually the chief requirements of life for your ego – its top priorities tend to be accumulations, achievements, and the approval of others.

People that put themselves above others will fall longer and harder.

Fear of fear is the birth place of the ego, its resting place and its final destination.

If someone corrects you and you feel offended, then you have an ego problem.

Once the ego inflates it will only come back to earth through some jarring failure.

One big mistake I see people make over and over is focusing on proving themselves right, instead of focusing on achieving the best outcome.

The great corrupter of public men is the ego — corrupter because distracter.

The greatest prison of all is the one our ego puts us in.

The gulf left by the absence of ego is quickly filled with knowledge.

We are vulnerable to the effects of truths we are unwilling to face. Perhaps they threaten our ego or the mental model that structures our routine. Disturbing information is easily rationalized or ignored. Trouble grows in the shadows we fear to illuminate.