56 quotes about Self-knowledge
Click here to search the web for Self-knowledge



The conqueror and king in each one of us is the knower of truth. Let the knower awaken in us and drive the horses of the mind, emotions, and physical body on the pathway which that king has chosen.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Arundale, George S. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

There is a period of life when we swallow knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Bailey, Pearl quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Baruch, Bernard M. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. He must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand --like precious fragments or torsos in a collector's gallery --in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Benjamin, Walter quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

It's not only the most difficult thing to know one's self, but the most inconvenient.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Billings, Josh quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Many a man who has known himself at ten forgets himself utterly between ten and thirty.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Bowen, Catherine Drinker quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one's own mind.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Bradley, Francis H. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Self knowers always dwell in El Dorado; they drink from the fountain of youth, and at all times owners of all they wish to enjoy.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Bristol, Claude M. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

One secures the gold of the spirit when he finds himself.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Bristol, Claude M. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Buck, Pearl S. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Camus, Albert quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

The self-explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes the explorer of everything else. He learns to see himself, but suddenly, provided he was honest, all the rest appears, and it is as rich as he was, and, as a final crowning, richer.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Canetti, Elias quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it -- this is a hard lesson.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Catton, Bruce quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practiced, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good. God, Nature, the wise, the world, preach man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Charron, Pierre quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Colton, Charles Caleb quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Eckhart, Meister quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, Know thyself, and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Eliot, George quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

You have to know what's important and what's unimportant, for you.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Fink, David Harold quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Franklin, Benjamin quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Gurdjieff, George quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Getting in touch with your true self must be your first priority.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Hopkins, Tom quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Jung, Carl quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Kafka, Franz quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Kempis, Thomas quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

He knows the universe and does not know himself.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | La Fontaine, Jean De quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

He who knows others is clever; He who knows himself has discernment.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Lao-Tzu quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Know they thyself, presume not God to scan. The proper study of mankind is man.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Lao-Tzu quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Lavater, Johann Kaspar quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Lichtenberg, Georg C. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Lindbergh, Anne Morrow quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world -- introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably -- that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Lippmann, Walter quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

If you want to be truly successful invest in yourself to get the knowledge you need to find your unique factor. When you find it and focus on it and persevere your success will blossom.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Madwed, Sidney quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Mansfield, Katherine quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

You can live a lifetime and at the end, know more about other people than you know about yourself.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Markham, Beryl quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Become aware of internal, subjective, sub-verbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction, of conversation, of naming, etc. with the consequence that it immediately becomes possible for a certain amount of control to be exerted over these hitherto unconscious and uncontrollable processes.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Maslow, Abraham H. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Pope, Alexander quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

'Tis not need we know our every thought or see the work shop where each mask is wrought wherefrom we view the world of box and pit, careless of wear, just so the mask shall fit and serve our jape's turn for a night or two.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Pound, Ezra quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Know thyself. Nothing in excess. The Self is required to balance the Self.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Ralph, Blum quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

It is part of our pedagogy to teach the operations of thinking, feeling, and willing so that they may be made conscious. For if we do not know the difference between an emotion and a thought, we will know very little. We need to understand the components (of emotions) at work... in order to free their hold.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Richards, Mary Caroline quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Our lives teach us who we are.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Rushdie, Salman quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

A true knowledge of ourselves is knowledge of our power.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Rutherford, Mark quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our backs.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Seneca quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

To know yourself, see how others do, to know others look into your own heart.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Smiles, Sydney quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Know thyself.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Socrates quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can -- namely, surrender our will and fulfill God's will in us.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Teresa of Avila, St. quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Thoreau, Henry David quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Thoreau, Henry David quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Thoreau, Henry David quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

You never know yourself till you know more than your body.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Traherne, Thomas quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Know yourself, master yourself, conquest of self is most gratifying.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Unknown, Source quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

I know myself, but that is all.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Unknown, Source quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Before a man can wake up and find himself famous he has to wake up and find himself.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Unknown, Source quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Analysis and synthesis ordinarily clarify matters for us about as much as taking a Swiss watch apart and dumping its wheels, springs, hands, threads, pivots, screws and gears into a layman's hands for reassembling, clarifies a watch to a layman.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Unknown, Source quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK

Know one, know all.
Email this quotation to a friend     View quote | Upanishad, Katha quotes
      Related items on Amazon USABooks from this quotation author on Amazon US or UKBooks from this quote author on Amazon UK