Quotes by Nathaniel Branden

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

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.

A mind that trusts itself is light on its feet.

We are parts of one universe, true enough. We stand within an almost infinite network of relationships. Yet each of us is a single point of consciousness, a unique event, a private, unrepeatable world. This is the essence of our aloneness.

Never marry a person who is not a friend of your excitement.

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.

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

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

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?

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

It is a mistake to look at someone who is self assertive and say, Its 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.

The opposite of self-assertiveness is self-abnegation--abandoning or submerging your personal values, judgment, and interests. Some people tell themselves this is a virtue. It is a virtue that corrodes self-esteem.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The idea of original sin--of guilt with no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives--inherently militates against self-esteem. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality. Sin is not original, it is originated--like virtue.