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Nathaniel Branden Quotes | Quotes said by Nathaniel Branden

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #1

    A bully hides his fears with fake bravado. That is the opposite of self-assertiveness.


  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #2

    All positive interactions with other human beings involve, to some degree, the experience of visibility-- that is, the experience of being seen and understood.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #3

    Anyone who engages in the practice of psychotherapy confronts every day the devastation wrought by the teachings of religion.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #4

    Chances are, when you were young, you were told, in effect, Listen, kid, here is the news: life is not about you. Life is not about what you want. What you want is not important. Life is about doing what others expect of you. If you accepted this idea, later on you wondered what had happened to your fire. Where had your enthusiasm for living gone?

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #5

    Genuine self esteem – please understand this – genuine self esteem is not competitive or comparative. Genuine self esteem isn’t expressed by self-glorification at the expense of others, or by trying to make yourself superior to everyone else, or diminishing others in order to elevate yourself. Arrogance, boastfulness, the overestimation of your abilities, reflect low self esteem, even though we’re often encouraged to believe the opposite. In human beings, joy in the simple fact of existence is a core meaning of healthy self esteem. Thus understood, how can you possibly have too much of it?

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #6

    If you choose not to live self-responsibly, you count on others to make up your default. No one abjures self-responsibility on a desert island.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #7

    In a world in which the total of human knowledge is doubling about every ten years, our security can rest only on our ability to learn.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #8

    In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #9

    Integrity is congruence between what you know, what you profess, and what you do.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #10

    It is a mistake to look at someone who is self assertive and say, It's easy for her, she has good self-esteem. One of the ways you build self-esteem is by being self-assertive when it is not easy to do so. There are always times when self-assertiveness requires courage, no matter how high your self-esteem.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #11

    It is humiliating to realize that when you drive yourself underground, when you fake who you are, often you do so for people you do not even like or respect.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #12

    It is naive to think that self-assertiveness is easy. To live self-assertively--which means to live authentically--is an act of high courage. That is why so many people spend the better part of their lives in hiding--from others and also from themselves.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #13

    It is not only negative feelings that become blocked. The repression extends to more and more of his emotional capacity.When one is given an anesthetic in preparation for surgery, it is not merely the capacity to experience pain that is suspended; the capacity to experience pleasure goes also - because what is blocked is the capacity to experience *feeling*. The same principle applies to the repression of emotions.

    Chapter 1: Discovering the Unknown Self, pg. 9, Bantam Edition, 1984

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #14

    It is painful to face the self we know we have never had the integrity to honor and assert.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #15

    It sounded, I told him, as if he had never learned to balance projecting goals into the future with appreciating and living in the present.
    ...
    To the extent that our goal is to prove ourselves or ward off the fear of failure, this balance is difficult to achieve. We are too driven. Not joy but anxiety is our motor.

    But if our aim is self-expression rather than self-justification, the balance tends to come more naturally. We will still need to think about its daily implementation, but the anxiety of wounded self-esteem will not make the task nearly impossible.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #16

    Live with integrity, respect the rights of other people, and follow your own bliss.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #17

    Most people do not erode their self-esteem over big issues but over small ones, little acts of betrayal and hypocrisy forgotten (repressed) very quickly. But the computer in your subconscious mind forgets nothing. It records your spiritual profit and loss. The balance sheet reflects your present level of self-esteem--and sends you the information via your emotions.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #18

    Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #19

    One of the great self-deceptions--and one of the great foolishnesses--is to tell yourself, Only I will know. Only you will know that you are a liar; only you will know you deal unethically with people who trust you; only you will know you have no intention of honoring your promise. Whose knowledge or judgment do you imagine is more important? It is precisely your own ego from which there is no escape.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #20

    One of the hardest expressions of self-assertiveness is challenging your limiting beliefs.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #21

    Out of fear, out of the desire for approval, out of misguided notions of duty, people surrender themselves--their convictions and their aspirations--every day. There is nothing noble about it. It takes far more courage to fight for your values than to relinquish them.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #22

    Productive achievement is a consequence and an expression of health and self-esteem, not its cause.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #23

    Romantic love can be terrifying. We experience another human being as enormously important to us. So there is surrender - not a surrender to the other person so much as to our feeling for the other person. What is the obstacle? The possibility of loss.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #24

    Self-discipline is the ability to organize your behavior over time in the service of specific goals.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #25

    Self-esteem is not a luxury; it is a profound spiritual need.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #26

    Some people stand and move as if they have no right to the space they occupy. They wonder why others often fail to treat them with respect--not realizing that they have signalled others that it is not necessary to treat them with respect.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #27

    Suffering is just about the easiest of all human activities; being happy is just about the hardest. And happiness requires, not surrender to guilt, but emancipation from guilt.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #28

    Tell me how a person judges his or her self-esteem, and I will tell you how that person operates at work, in love, in sex, in parenting, in every important aspect of existence - and how high he or she is likely to rise. The reputation you have with yourself - your self-esteem - is the single most important factor for a fulfilling life.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #29

    The challenge for people today--and it is not and easy one--is to maintain high personal standards even while feeling that one is living in a moral sewer.

  • Nathaniel Branden Quote #30

    The first act of honoring the self is the assertion of consciousness: the choice to think, to be aware, to send the searchlight of consciousness outward toward the world and inward toward our own being. To default on this effort is to default on the self at the most basic level.

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