Quotes on Self Esteem

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: “We are the proud parents of a child who’s self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn’t need us promoting his minor scholastic achievements on the back of our car."

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment.

Black people are the magical faces at the bottom of society's well. Even the poorest whites, those who must live their lives only a few levels above, gain their self-esteem by gazing down on us. Surely, they must know that their deliverance depends on letting down their ropes. Only by working together is escape possible. Over time, many reach out, but most simply watch, mesmerized into maintaining their unspoken commitment to keeping us where we are, at whatever cost to them or to us (Bell).

I was once afraid of people saying, “Who does she think she is?” Now I have the courage to stand and say, “This is who I am.

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes.

You've got to love yourself enough, not only so that others will be able to love you, but that you'll be able to love others.

To have an incredible increase in self esteem, all you have to do is start doing some little something. You don't have to do spectacularly dramatic things for self esteem to start going off the scale. Just make a commitment to any easy discipline. Then another one and another one.

The root of humanly caused evil is not man's animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst.

Self-justification, therefore, is not only about protecting high self-esteem; it's also about protecting low self-esteem if that is how a person sees himself.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all.

I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Would you take it? Suppose further that the pill has a great variety of side effects, all of them good: increased self-esteem, empathy, and trust; it even improves memory. Suppose, finally, that the pill is all natural and costs nothing. Now would you take it? The pill exists. It is meditation.

The courage to be is the courage to accept oneself, in spite of being unacceptable.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.