Nathaniel Branden quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Nathaniel Branden

Nathaniel Branden Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Nathaniel Branden on Wise Famous Quotes.

The real basic power of an individual isn't what he or she knows; it's the ability to think and learn and face new challenges.

When your principles seem to be demanding suicide, clearly it's time to check your premises

As you grow in self-esteem, your face, manner, way of talking and moving will tend naturally to project the pleasure you take in being alive.

Regardless of what we think we're teaching, we teach what we are.

What is required for many of us, paradoxical though it may sound, is the courage to tolerate happiness without self-sabotage.

Integrity means congruence. Words and behavior match.

I have to respect other's opinions even if I don't agree with them.

If we do not believe in ourselves- neither in our efficacy nor in our goodness- the universe is a frightening place.

Our motive is not to prove our self-worth, but to live up to our possibilities.

Most of the time, I regard the judgment of people as a waste of time. I regard the judgment of behavior as imperative.

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

Do not marry the enemy of your excitement.

We must become what we wish to teach.

To honor the self is to be willing to think independently, to live by our own mind, and to have the courage of our own perceptions.

It would be hard to name a more certain sign of poor self-esteem than the need to perceive some other group as inferior.

The greater a child's terror, and the earlier it is experienced, the harder it becomes to develop a strong and healthy sense of self.

Where we see self esteem, we see self acceptance. High self esteem individual tend to avoid falling into an adversarial relationship with themselves.

The stability we cannot find in the world, we must create within our own persons.

Anyone who really loves you wants you to be authentic. And anyone who doesn't want you to be authentic doesn't really love you.

What is guilt? It is moral self-reproach-I did wrong when it was possible to have done otherwise.

To attain "success" without attaining positive self-esteem is to be condemned to feeling like an imposter anxiously awaiting exposure.

Perhaps the essence of our evolution as human beings is to keep answering, on deeper and deeper levels, the basic question: Who am I?

A goal without an action plan is a daydream.

The lies most devastating to our self-esteem are not so much the lies we tell as the lies we live.

Feel deeply to think clearly.

We tend to feel most comfortable, "most at home", with people whose self esteem level resembles our own.

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

Sometimes pain is easier to bear alone than happiness.

Of all the judgements we pass, none is as important as the one we pass on ourselves.

Most of us are capable of more than we believe.

I am responsible for my own existence and happiness.

The desire for self-esteem without integrity is like the desire for wealth without effort-a longing for the unearned.

No one is coming to save you ...

A woman in love will do almost anything for a man, except give up the desire to improve him.

Take responsibility for finding it. It is only by grace of the second type

An emotion is both a mental and a physical event.

A productive purpose to which you give yourself fully and joyfully is one of the great adventures of life. It is a uniquely human source of happiness.

Capitalism, by its nature, entails a constant process of motion, growth and progress.

Your life is important. Fight for it. Honour your highest potentials.

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

One of the most important forms of heroism is the heroism of conciousness, the heroism of thought: the willingness to tolerate aloneness.

Fear and pain should be treated as signals not to close our eyes but to open them wider.

In the inner courtroom of my mind, mine is the only judgment that counts.

Respect starts with ourselves.

High self esteem people can surely be knocked down by an excess of troubles, but they are quickerto pick themselves up again.

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.

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

The world belongs to those who persevere.

The first love affair you must consummate is the love affair with yourself. Only then are you ready for a romantic relationship.

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

If you face life without confidence in your own powers, you succumb too easily to setbacks and adversity; you lack the will to persevere.

You have a right to your feelings. Your feelings are there to tell you something, but they are not infallible guides to behavior.

Ideas do matter and do have consequences.

For "I" to become "we" and yet remain "I," is one of the great challenges of marriage.

A mind that trusts itself is light on its feet.

If you are terrified of making mistakes, you will be reluctant to acknowledge them when you do make them-and therefore you will not correct them.

To trust one's mind and to know that one is worthy of happiness is the essence of self-esteem.

Fully to surrender to love can be terrifying. But it is the price life asks in exchange for the possibility of ecstasy.

Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship to myself.

When people are not accepting toward themselves they
are often obsessed with acceptance by others.

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

The ultimate test of our integrity is not how we deal with those whom we agree but how we deal with those who we do not agree.

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.

Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.

Do you want to be like Goethe or any of those so-called geniuses who marry a nothing hausfrau?

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

Be careful what you say to your children. They may agree with you.

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

When self-esteem is low, we are often manipulated by fear ... We live more to avoid pain than to experience joy.

A depression is a large-scale decline in production and trade ... there is nothing in the nature of a free-market economy to cause such an event.

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

Freedom is still the most radical idea of all.

Self-esteem is a powerful force within each of us ... Self-esteem is the experience that we are appropriate to life and to the requirements of life.

The United States was the first country in the history of the world to be consciously created out of an idea - and the idea was liberty.

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

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

The concept of romantic love as a widely accepted cultural value and as the ideal basis of marriage was a product of the nineteenth century.

The thing I want you to understand," Ayn was saying, "is that no matter how hard the battle, it can be won. You can break through.

It is very difficult to accept in others emotions you cannot accept in yourself.

When we bury our feelings, we also bury ourselves. It means we exist in a state of alienation. We rarely know it, but we are lonely for ourselves.

One of the characteristics of love relationships that flower is a relatively high degree of mutual self-disclosure

Doing more of what doesn't work doesn't work.

The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.

Either you will make your life work, or your life will not work.

I cannot organize my behaviour optimally if my goal is merely "to do my best." The assignment is too vague.

To persevere with the will to understand in the face of obstacles is the heroism of consciousness.

You can no more have too much self-esteem than you can have too much health.

So far as we can ascertain, in primitive cultures the idea of romantic love did not exist at all.

Your life is important. Honor it. Fight for your highest possibilities.

If I am unwilling to take responsibility for the attainment of my desires, they are not really desires - they are merely daydreams.