Self Actualization Quotes

“When significant proportions of our time are spent working, recuperating from work, compensating for work, or doing the many things necessary in order to find, prepare for, and hold on to work, it becomes increasingly difficult to say how much of our time is truly our own. [ch.three]”
― David Frayne, The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work

“Resiliency comes from a discovered self, not a constructed self. It comes from the gradual emergence of your unique, inborn abilities in a process called individuation. The better you become, the more unique you become as an individual – and it never ends. If your identity is based mostly on external factors, you will feel anxious about change that threatens your identity sources. You will try to keep the world around you frozen in place. If your identity is based on your personal qualities, abilities, and values, you can let parts of your world dissolve away without feeling threats to your existence. With a strong inner sense of who you are, you can easily adapt to and thrive in new environments.”
― Al Siebert, The Resiliency Advantage: Master Change, Thrive Under Pressure, and Bounce Back from Setbacks

“Indeed, we believe everyone has a book in them - a book, not a symphony, and not even a poem. What is it, this book everyone has in them? It is, perhaps, that haunting entity, the 'true' self. The true self seeks release, not constraint.”
― Rachel Cusk, Coventry: Essays

“Dr. Kerry said he'd been watching me. "You act like someone who is impersonating someone else. And it's as if you think your life depends on it."

I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.

"It has never occurred to you," he said, "that you might have as much right to be here as anyone." He waited for an explanation.

"I would enjoy serving the dinner," I said, "more than eating it."

Dr. Kerry smiled. "You should trust Professor Steinberg. If he says you're a scholar-'pure gold,' I heard him say-then you are."

"This is a magical place," I said. "Everything shines here."

"You must stop yourself from thinking like that," Dr. Kerry said, his voice raised. "You are not fool's gold, shining only under a particular light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were. It was always in you. Not in Cambridge. In you. You are gold. And returning to BYU, or even to that mountain you came from, will not change who you are. It may change how others see you, it may even change how you see yourself-even gold appears dull in some lighting-but that is the illusion. And it always was."

I wanted to believe him, to take his words and remake myself, but I'd never had that kind of faith. No matter how deeply I interred the memories, how tightly I shut my eyes against them, when I thought of my self, the images that came to mind were of that girl, in the bathroom, in the parking lot.

I couldn't tell Dr. Kerry about that girl. I couldn't tell him that the reason I couldn't return to Cambridge was that being here threw into great relief every violent and degrading moment of my life. At BYU I could almost forget, allow what had been to blend into what was. But the contrast here was too great, the world before my eyes too fantastical. The memories were more real-more believable-than the stone spires.

To myself I pretended there were other reasons I couldn't belong at Cambridge, reasons having to do with class and status: that it was because I was poor, had grown up poor. Because I could stand in the wind on the chapel roof and not tilt. That was the person who didn't belong in Cambridge: the roofer, not the whore. I can go to school, I had written in my journal that very afternoon. And I can buy new clothes. But I am still Tara Westover. I have done jobs no Cambridge student would do. Dress us any way you like, we are not the same. Clothes could not fix what was wrong with me. Something had rotted on the inside.

Whether Dr. Kerry suspected any part of this, I'm not sure. But he understood that I had fixated on clothes as the symbol of why I didn't, and couldn't, belong. It was the last thing he said to me before he walked away, leaving me rooted, astonished, beside that grand chapel.

"The most powerful determinant of who you are is inside you," he said. "Professor Steinberg says this is Pygmalion. Think of the story, Tara." He paused, his eyes fierce, his voice piercing. "She was just a cockney in a nice dress. Until she believed in herself. Then it didn't matter what dress she wore.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“The less confident we are in ourselves, the less we are in touch with ourselves and the world, the more we want to control.”
― Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee Artist of Life: Inspiration and Insights from the World's Greatest Martial Artist

“The worst thing about being underweight or overweight; too dark or too white – in short too plain and bland in someone’s perception is the fact that most people just end up talking to you because they feel you can be a good stepping stone. And guess what – it sucks! It sucks being the ladder to so many, helping everyone grow and bloom, only to find yourself splayed upon the mud to be used as a path from one person to another. Not moving an inch. Just lying there on the sticky dirt infused ground – hoping someone would help you up – no one ever comes. The only person who can help you crawl out is yourself. Get up. Try. Just try.
You ARE Enough!”
― Sijdah Hussain, Red Sugar, No More

“Nothingness is the beginning of everything. Fret not when thou hath nought; be merry for thou hath but an empty scroll whereon to write thy own reality.”
― Kayambila Mpulamasaka

“No one is perfect, and that's what makes life and living a perfect start. Where there is no yardstick or measure for perfection, one learns to accept that they simply are perfect just as they are; one can be whatever they so choose to be and that which they choose freely is perfect. How more profoundly can freedom of expression and freewill be illustrated?”
― Kayambila Mpulamasaka

“People like to catch lights and put them inside their jars, so they can say they're lightkeepers. They like to capture bolts of lightning, the aurora borealis, flames and rainbows. If you are any of these, your friends and family and random passersby are going to want to control you in one way or the other. Don't be captured. Don't be put into their jars.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Read Nietzsche. Reject all mainstream religions. Your objective is not to worship God, but to become God. Only God has all the answers to the mysteries of life. Therefore if you truly seek those answers then you are seeking the ultimate secret: how to transform yourself into God. It is precisely with this quest that the Philosopher’s Stone and the Holy Grail are intimately involved. That is why they have supreme spiritual power, why they command such enduring fascination.”
― Michael Faust, Eastern Religion For Western Gnostics

“From the moment I had first understood that my brother Richard was a boy and I was a girl, I had wanted to exchange his future for mine. My future was motherhood; his, fatherhood. They sounded similar but they were not. To be one was to be a decider. To preside. To call the family to order. To be the other was to be among those called.

I knew my yearning was unnatural. This knowledge, like so much of my self-knowledge, had come to me in the voice of people I knew, people I loved. All through the years that voice had been with me, whispering, wondering, worrying. that i was not right. That my dreams were perversions. That voice had many timbres, many tones. Sometimes it was my father's voice; more often it was my own.

I carried the books to my room and read through the night. I loved the fiery pages of Mary Wollstonecraft, but there was a single line written by John Stuart Mill that, when I read it, moved the world: "It is a subject on which nothing final can be known." The subject Mill had in mind was the nature of women. Mill claimed that women have been coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to define their natural abilities or aspirations.

Blood rushed to my brain; I felt an animating surge of adrenaline, of possibility, of a frontier being pushed outward. Of the nature of women, nothing final can be known. Never had I found such comfort in a void, in the black absence of knowledge. It seemed to say: whatever you are, you are woman.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“Be kind to yourself and you would've taken a step toward self-actualization.”
― J.R. Incer, Boost Your Brainpower 365

“It might seem that we have to generate the sense of openness, freshness, joy, revelry, or stillness we touch in such moments. From the Buddhist perspective, however, such a state of being is already there within us and has been so since the beginning.
It's tantalizing to think that perhaps expansiveness lies waiting to be uncovered within us while we go searching for it everywhere else. It’s not something we go toward so much as it is what we are left with when all our running around ceases. Our deeper nature is simply what’s left when we put down the endless task of trying to be somebody”
― Ralph De La Rosa, The Monkey Is the Messenger: Meditation and What Your Busy Mind Is Trying to Tell You

“Many girls think of the 'feelings' of those who are hurting them. This is the catastrophic consequence of likeability. We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

“If you had to watch your life over and over again forever, it would be hell if your life were shit. I absolutely get it. If we don’t live lives we can be proud of, we’re fucked”
― Mike Hockney, The Last Bling King

“Only on the hard path can you actualize your potential, grow, mature, have peak human experiences and enjoy epiphanies. The hard path alone allows you to fulfill yourself. The easy path destroys your soul.”
― Thomas Stark, God Is Mathematics: The Proofs of the Eternal Existence of Mathematics

“You're the best thing that's ever happened to you.”
― Jennifer Ho

“The temple, or the house of God, truly lies within us rather than outside.”
― Michael Faust, The God Within Me

“The adjective “Faustian” describes the insatiable striving for the unattainable, the impossible, for all knowledge and all power, for the infinite and perfect. The Faustian human will bow to no tyrant God. He will worship no God. He will never be a slave, servant or serf. He will have no lord and no master. Religious people regard Faust as having “sold his soul to the Devil”. In fact, Faust liberated his soul from the Devil (the Abrahamic God) so that he himself could become a God.”
― Joe Dixon, The Intelligence Wars: Logos Versus Mythos

“Although our intrinsic nature and unconscious processes, which defy human cognition substantially influence us, every person possess a liberal dosage of personal autonomy to determine the ultimate essence of their existence. Nature’s endowments enable every person to declare their determined purpose, and deploy the human allotment of free will to pursue their driving passion. With courage, creativity, and effort every person seeks to realize their ultimate embodiment.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster

“We live and then we stop living. We exist and then we stop existing. That means I only get one chance to do a good job. I want to do a good job.”
― Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

“After 15 years in America, I learned just two things for sure about America. One, they give you three meals a day in jail, no exceptions. Two, the only real way to make a living in this place is to be a bullshit artist. After 20+ years in America including 8 years of AA meetings, I decided that I finally have an American Dream. My american dream is to drink beer all day and host overtalkers anonymous meetings. Please vote for Andrew Yang.”
― Dmitry Dyatlov

“The author wishes to point out that following one's True Will results in forces (energies) being released in one's body and one's environment. These forces then very often trigger astonishingly powerful magickal results. In studying the lives of persons such as are mentioned above, one sees that through persisting in following one's True Will despite incredible odds, results are frequently obtained, first in attaining the security of having a roof over one's head. Then friendships can develop as well as sexual intimacy. One begins to develop self-esteem, as one is no longer living in constant anxiety and fear. As the magickian reaches upward toward self-actualization, he or she becomes more congruent, allowing for the effortless flow of the Singular Energy through him or her.”
― Laurence Galian, 666: Connection with Crowley

“We pity all those who can't see beyond their own dark, inner emotional storms to the bright dawn ahead. Fuck 'em! Revalue all values. Let's transform this world. Let's transform this universe.”
― Thomas Stark, The Book of Thought: Mind Matters

“The Faustian knows that no one is coming to save him. He must save himself. He will try anything, go anywhere, in his quest for the Holy Grail. He commits himself unreservedly to the greatest cause of all – to discover the innermost secrets of creation. And only one person possesses those secrets: God. And that is Faust’s sacred and infinitely inspiring quest – to become God himself. He is the Nietzschean Superman. He has no limits, he bows to no false prophets, he needs no ancient books full of rules and commandments and silly parables and stories.”
― Michael Faust, The Right-Brain God

“You shape yourself, you make yourself. There is no one to save you other than yourself. It’s not Christ, Mohammed or Moses who’s responsible for your life, it’s you. In the end, souls judge themselves.”
― Michael Faust, The Right-Brain God

“Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, we have to escape from the eternal recurrence of our day-to-day lives. We have to try new things, learn new things, become people of wide interest rather than narrow focus. We should test our limits, not let limits define us. When a new day comes, we should feel as grateful as Bill Murray, the most overjoyed man on earth when he was able to break out of the prison of repetition.”
― Michael Faust, Nietzsche: The God of Groundhog Day

“This life you are leading right now is not a dress rehearsal. You are right here right now. You are on stage and everyone is watching. You are not practicing behind the curtain. The curtain is up. Everyone can see what you are doing. Well, what are you doing? How are you using your life? Life is not an exercise in shrinking. It’s about growing … growing to stupendous proportions that amaze the world. You can’t grow your body, but your mind can stretch infinitely, all the way to divinity. It’s time. Time to become a god.”
― Ranty McRanterson, Regatta De Mort: The Mad God

“The greatest love, such as the troubadours proclaimed, also requires supremely challenging obstacles. It is by overcoming obstacles that we transform ourselves into higher beings, that we find the deepest love and discover our inner hero. So, don’t flee from obstacles, don’t bemoan your fate. If you are faced with difficulties, smile! If you can beat the odds, you have a chance to become something astounding. Don’t run away. Tackle them head on.”
― Adam Weishaupt, Sin for Salvation

“No deity is watching you and no one cares. Your life is your own business and not anyone else’s. You are on your own personal journey through eternity. Everything is up to you.”
― Joe Dixon, The Intelligence Wars: Logos Versus Mythos